General Notes on Red Lightning: As of this writing, there have been no changes to the rules. There are no known bugs. Due to production constraints, it was not possible to include a complete Order of Battle (a list of units used in the game) in the rules manual. Since many players will miss this info, A very complete Order of Battle is included as an ASCII file on your Scenario disk. The file is labeled OB.ASC. Feel free to print this file for reference. This will generate a large printout. You might want to examine or edit it before printing. On the ST, you may examine or print this file out directly from the desktop by simply clicking on the filename. On IBM compatibles, you may TYPE the file for examination or PRINT the file from DOS. See your DOS manual for details. On the Amiga, you may examine the file using MORE or print it using PRINTFILES. See your DOS or Enhancer manual for details. Of course, you may also print or examine the file by using any word processor or text editor which can digest ASCII files. This will also generally give you greater control over the appearance of the printout than is possible using the basic system utilities listed above. Keyboard rosettes for use in illustrating the basic control modes in the IBM version of the game are given below. IBM SCROLL mode keys (numeric pad): ... . ... <4> and <6> keys not .. ... .. used in SCROLL mode. . . . . . . . The key may also . . . be used to toggle to . . . MENU mode. . . . <7> <8> <9> NW N NE <5> change to MENU mode SW S SE <1> <2> <3> . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .. ... .. ... . ... IBM MENU mode keys (numeric pad): . <1>,<3>,<7> AND <9> ... keys are not used in . . . MENU mode. The . key may also be used . to toggle to SCROLL . mode. <8> up item . . ....... left right ....... . <4> <5> <6> . change to SCROLL mode down item <2> . . . . . . ... . 13 June 1989 Version 1.1 notes (Amiga version 1.0) As a result of suggestions made by helpful early players of the game, a number of small but significant changes have been made to certain game functions. Most of these changes are simply improvements on existing game functions, and thus require no additional comment. One change resulted in an additional menu item added to the General game menu. The following paragraph should be added to the rules at the end of section 3.3: *Mvmnt Center gives you the option of having the program automatically center the screen on units chosen for Travel mode movement. If you choose to have automatic centering (the default) then the program will center your units for you after they are selected. This gives a good all around view of the unit at the beginning of its movement. If you choose not to have the program center your units before travel movement, no centering will take place unless the unit is very close to the edge of the display area. This allows you to set up your display as you wish before your moves. Some players find this option useful for long moves, especially before they have become familiar with the map. There are also a couple of rules points (Appendix E) that need clarification: *When a sub unit is attacked by airstrike, each piece of equipment in the sub unit has the following chance of surviving the attack: (equipment survivability + 19) / 30. Example: Each T-72 in an attacked sub unit will have a (9+19)/30= 93% chance of survival. *Convoy Attrition Percentage (page 27) First line should read "The MAXIMUM amount of losses that a convoy will suffer is calculated as follows:" (Actual convoy losses will vary from 10% to this maximum value.) Norm Koger 2.0 26 July 1989 Amiga Notes Red Lightning is intended to be completely compatible with multitasking systems. The depth arrangement gadgets and screen dragging features work in the standard Amiga fashion. Just click on the gadgets or drag the screen out of the way to get to other applications. If you decide to install RL on a hard drive, be sure to copy RedLightning, Images, SavedGames, and Scenarios to your drive. This is most conveniently done from the workbench. Just drag the four visible icons in the default window opened from your game disk over to your open drawer window. There are no restrictions on the path to the RedLightning drawer. (It doesn't even need to be called RedLightning. Just be sure to copy all of the above to the drawer, whatever it's called.) Red Lightning can be played from the CLI or shell if you prefer to avoid the Workbench. This will require that you set "stack 10000" before executing "RedLightning". A prototype script file ("RL":based on the one I use) is included in the "s" drawer of your game disk. If you are using the CLI or shell to play games, you probably have an unusual system, and your script file will have to be slightly different from mine. The game disk is set up as a "minimal boot disk". This means that it has the necessary files for play of Red Lightning, but not all of the files normally available for use by the shell or Workbench programs. If you want to be able to fully use the Workbench or shell programs while playing RL, be sure to boot from your normal Workbench disk before playing the game. If you don't have at least 1 meg of RAM, this is not likely to be an issue. 512k systems don't have enough memory left over to do much with RL running anyway. Norm Koger 2.0 7 August 1989