Alien Legacy
 

Feel free to comment and discuss this game here. Also, if you have any useful tips or tricks don't hesitate to share them with the others! Thanks!

Review & download

I recall this game being a competent but very linear strategy title, with no replay value.

I asked the developers when it first came out why they provided two different officers for each of the positions you could appoint. Their reply was that they initially intended the choice between the pair to present different difficulty levels, but never got round to implementing it due to having to get the product out the door.

Wow, this looks great. Definetly going to try it out :D

It is really great! You really should :p

Trouble starting
 

Anyone able to help on playing this with Dosbox? I mount the drive and start it, select my sound card, and then I hear sound but no video ever appears. The Dos screen just stays there (I've also tried starting it by selecting no sound card, but the same thing happens, minus the sound). Using Dosbox 0.73.

I remember playing this game in January last year, when i manage to get a copy and played on my old pc. The game is very good, since i'm almost finishing him again.

I'm getting a 'file is corrupted or damaged' every time I try to unzip this download. It sounds riveting, so does anyone have any advice?

The File works fine for me, so it may be a problem with your Unpacker.

This is already the third post which complained about corrupted Archives. :mhh:

Did your DOSBox on default settings? Because I have no problems with game. At all. I checked CD-version, though...

CD rip was almost small enough for the site (165 MB). Docs are uploaded and I can provide them until they are posted. They are also on replacementdocs.com.

Very good 4X game
 

This is a very good 4X game, comparable to Ascendancy. Gameplay becomes quite chaotic after the early turns, so a moves/production queue manager could have taken this game much higher regarding gameplay.

Is there a manual for this game? I'm guessing everything which will probably work but i'd rather have some idea what things are.

Alternatively, would anyone like to explain what various things are or do?

What are the first three cargoes you can transport around, for example? The humans and robots are obvious but without roll over details i'm scratching my head.

I'll plod on while i wait...

Cheers.

Manual has been uploaded to FTP site and is waiting to be added to the game page.

OK, cool.

What's an FTP?




Should i write a post of what i have figured out already for other noobs?

Expect manual and other extras on Monday.

Long, long answer: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File_Transfer_Protocol

The acronym is sometimes used as a shorthand for "FTP Server" (like in this case).

Hey, why not? :)

Thanks. Don't think i'll read that though, will probably be too much technical mumbo jumbo.

Okay then, here goes.

Firstly, the icons i was wondering about are, from left to right:
Ore (looks like a railcar with stuff in it, if you look at it closely)
Energy (yellow lightning bolt)
Life Support (a thermometer infront of a blue thing)
Humans (mans face)
Robots (Robot figure)

On the colony screens there is a second row of icons representing:
Habitats
Factories
Power Plants
Laboratories

As colonies are the focus of the early stages of the game i'll cover them first. I haven't actually got past this stage yet but there is foreshadowing of a battle stage later on.

As your advisors will tell you, you should build a Habitat, then a factory and power plant.
Habitats are really cheap and allow you to house humans which are required to run other buildings, they also produce Life Support resources. I usually send 5 ore, 5 energy, 5 LS and 15 robots when i'm supplying the colony for the habitat.

Once the Hab is built you can then build stuff that requires human crew like the factory. You need to send more resources down from the Calypso for factories too. You should be able to fit all that are needed in one more transport load, 4 ore, 7 energy, 5 life support and 4 humans (leaves room for 10 more of something)

Then you can build the power plant.

Besides construction costs, buildings have maintenance costs which you can see when you hover the cursor over the building after it has finished building (there is a lag for building time). As well as available resources listed in white next to each icon are gain/lose numbers in green and red, respectively.

Your colonies advisor will tell you you can specialise colonies to produce something specific and then transport it around by setting a vehicle on 'pipeline'. Which makes this a good time to discuss vehicles.

You start with access to 4 'vehicles', some sort of atmosphere capable system vessel and the Calypso itself. I haven't moved the Calypso yet but it seems to take a lot longer to get places but can reach the outer system, which the vehicles can't do at basic tech levels but might be necessary later. You'll need it for the stock pile in the beginning though.

Vehicles can perform a number of missions which need to be selected before you can add cargo in some instances. Transport allows you to move resources to and from colonies and Calypso. Pick the destination and load up the cargo, left click for add, right click to remove, then click Launch and wait.

To explore a planet select 'explore' and the destination and then launch. The vehicle will go into orbit of the destination where you can send it into the mercator zone and pick a target square to explore. It's best to wait till you have a specific zone to explore unless you are after some spare resources (you can find ore and power, as well as some research items on the planet surface).

Icons on the Mercator screen represent scanners for ore and energy and, after a tech upgrade, suitable colony sites. These scanners chew through a vehicles energy so be careful spamming them. There is also an icon to build colonies. Being able to build a colony with a basic system vehicle is pretty cool.

On the actual 3d exploring screen you have a toggle between 3d and top down (for bombing i guess), something which activates a scanner of some kind, a bomb dropping icon (seems to be a nuke) and something which toggles between a radar and cargo mini window on the right. Arrows and 'leave' buttons should be obvious.

Prode is another important order for the vehicles. Choose destination and check to see you've got enough energy for a round trip before launching or you might have to wait for the planets to realign, literally, before you can get your vehicle back...

Pipeline allows you to set a vehicle on a loop, takings a set cargo to one place and bringing something else back. I'm not sure if there is any downtime between arriving and leaving again. I think Pipelines will become pretty important later in the game but you can get by without them at the beginning.

Before going on to Techs i'll say this. I think you should build extra vehicles as you build more colonies. One for each col and a couple of spares seems like a good number.

Ok, so of the basics of the game only techs are left.

There are seven different technology fields which are researched individually in research labs by right clicking on them. Below each icon is a value which represents the stored up knowledge in that field and above each icon will be a number representing how much of each tech type is required to invent the technology decribed.

Cycle through techs witth the arrows or by clicking the picture and click invent on what you want if you have enough of each required research type. Techs take some time to finish and will either roll out immediately or allow upgrades to buildings or new building types.

I think that is enough to clear up the confusion a new player will have when they first start up the game so i'll finish up soon. Right after a little parting advice:

You don't have to remember averything your advisers tell you, these will all be shown in your PDA. Right click on most screens for the menu which takes you to it.

I put a bunch of labs on the Calypso and a bunch of factories on the first colony, you can then transport things around with your vehicles.

Also, when building a colony, it doesn't matter where you put new buildings but putting them in groups of the same sort will make it easier to see what each is producing. The buildings which are already on a planet when you build a colony don't seem to do anything either so don't worry about them.

Ok, i'm done.

Enjoy. :)

Interesting, sounds a bit like MOO. I'll add this to me list.

It is interesting but it's not really that similar to MOO.

The scope of MOO is much wider, AL is concerned with only one solar system, not the whole galaxy. It is a very detailed solar system though, with several planets, asteroids and moons.

MOO also has more action. I've been playing AL for a few hours (4 or 5) and the alien bad guys (Alpha Centaurians) haven't shown yet. They is a sense of foreboding however and i'm wondering how long i can get by without building anti meteor guns.

The way technologies work in MOO is quite different too and AL has only one type of smaller ship, to the point i'm at.

This is a bit more info to add to my previous guide type post.

I have compiled a list of the Ore, Energy etc. costs to build and maintain most of the buildings available on colonies and Calypso.

Each building has costs to build as well as a build time, once they are built they must be maintained which is what causes the drains on your resources. Ore, energy and lifesupport are on-going costs and (as far as i can tell) humans and robots are one off costs to maintain (you just need people to work there but they aren't used up).

Buildings also produce resources over time. In most cases i think this is 10 turns but in the case of vehicles it is much longer, 35 turns, maybe 40, per vehicle. The resource drain rate seems to be slower, otherwise a factory producing ore would be unable to sustain itself.

Habitat level 1_______Maintainence ground/space
ore:________2_______o: 2/1
energy:_____1_______e: 3/4
life support:_1_______ls: 1/1
humans:____0_______h: 3/2
robots:_____5_______r: 2/1
build time:___5_______produces 5 life support

Factory level 1_______Maintainence
ore:________6_______o: 5
energy:_____8_______e: 9
life support:_6_______ls: 8
humans:____4_______h: 10
robots:____10_______r: 7
build time:__10_______produces 5 ore or 1 robot or 1/4 vehicle

Factory level 2________Maintainence
ore:________10 _______o: 2
energy:_____14_______e: 5
life support:_10_______ls: 4
humans:____15_______h: 15
robots:_____8________r: 8
build time:__24_______produces 10 ore or 2 robots or 1/2(?) vehicle

Power Plant level 1____Maintainence
ore:________6_______o: 1
energy:_____9_______e: 1
life support:_10______ls: 3
humans:____16______h: 6
robots:_____7_______r: 3
build time:___9_______produces 6 energy

Power Plant level 2____Maintainence
ore:________12_______o: 3
energy:_____16_______e: 2
life support:_18_______ls: 6
humans:____25_______h: 12
robots:_____10_______r: 5
build time:__19_______produces 9 energy

Research Lab level 1__Maintainence ground/space
ore:________5_______o: 10/12
energy:_____3_______e: 6/6
life support:_3_______ls: 4/5
humans:____12______h: 8/8
robots:_____5_______r: 4/3
build time:__9_______produces 1 research point in chosen field

Research Lab level 2__Maintainence g/s
ore:________7_______o: 18/18
energy:_____6_______e: 10/10
life support:_6_______ls: 7/9
humans:____0_______h: 18/18
robots:_____5_______r: 7/6
build time:__5_______produces 2 research points in chosen field

Anti Meteor Gun_______Maintainence
ore:_________30_______o: 2
energy:______5________e: 11
life support:__25_______ls: 5
humans:_____21_______h: 10
robots:______12_______r: 8
build time:___24_______provides protection from asteriods (and aliens?)

Mass Driver___________Maintainence (haven't built one yet)
ore:_______25________o: ?
energy:____35________e: ?
life support:_30_______ls: ?
humans:____21_______h: ?
robots:_____15_______r: ?
build time:__15_______catapults ore to colonies, requires AM gun.

You are able to upgrade existing buildings to higher levels once they are available (so don't worry about being stuck with something you have to dismantle), presumable for a cost similar but probably slighly more than the differene in the cost between the two levels. I haven't been able to check this though.

I noticed some interesting things in regards to upkeep costs while transcribing this. Factories become much cheaper in materials but require more staff to run at level 2 but Power Plants seem to be less efficient, but probably worth it later when you are running out of space for buildings.

Labs are also pretty cheap to build but, whoa, really expensive to run so i'd suggest turning some off when you aren't trying to get specific tech points. I might have even built more than i need and could dismantle some. Researching techs works quite different in AL than most other space games (but similar to Imperialism). Techs become available over time and with certain discoveries on planets (or in the case of Mass Drivers, after you build an A.M. Gun) and you only need research occasionally so having them running non stop is of less benefit than in, say, Master of Orion (where you can win through tech).

Another thing worth noting is that a colony with one each of Habitat, Factory producing ore and Power plant will be self sufficient and slowly accumulate ore, energy, lifesupport and humans if there are some spare to reproduce. After some time the factories can be switched to robot production to make the colony fully self sufficient. Labs obviously make a colony hard to balance but it is probably posible to squeeze in an AM Gun or Mass Driver without upsetting the balance too much.

That will do for now (i'll go play again) but i'd love to hear other peoples feedback on the game and these 'guides'.

can someone add some lines on how to setup your dosbox?
i found the intro (at startup until menu) run better on 10000 cycles and are lagging when using 20000 cycles.
which are your most stable settings?

try typing
core dynamic
cycles max

after all i found some good settings.
can someone explain me which factor builds life-support-cells?

Why did the manual for Alien Legacy never get added? There were a couple to choose from.

Habitats make Life Support.

Well, i did upload it, but it wont show on Site. A Bug that only STD can fix. :sucks:nothing i can do, sorry. :cry:

beats modern titles
 

Wow, that game is amazing. I stumbled upon it last week and my last weekend was gone! The principle of the game is something new to me, the combination of build-up-strategy, adventure und space-battle elements makes this quite entertaining. Although the long exploring missions on the moons and planets tend to get a bit boring after some time. But I think this is a good example, that a good game doesn't need mind-blowing graphics. Recently I was often disappointed of modern games, which looked really great but lacked a congruent storyline or fresh ideas in game design or gameplay.
I have played it till the battle phase now and I must say I find it quite tough. I already lost about 15 ships to the aliens and can't find the right technology. My research adviser told me to search on the surface of Planet Prometheus for a crashed alien-ship, but I can't find it on the given coordinates. Has somebody an idea why that is?

Found this game after needing a Starflight/StarCon2/Space sci-fi fix. So far the mix of plot, exploration and colonization is fairly engrossing, although the interface could have been better with all the micromanagement required. Spoilers ahead...




I have started facing the Empiant threat. It seems the threat doesn't appear until Gamma1 roars to life. This has worked out well for me in the following way. I avoided destroying pylons because I trusted my science advisor more. I thought the mutagen would remove the biota threat, but it didn't. Later I got the muffler, but it triggered Gamma1 off. So I have been surviving by shooting the biota myself, which was bloody tedious. Luckily I got the bomb next, so muffling+bombing Gamma1 took care of that.

At this point I have a small stockpile of missiles, a few armour and laser upgrades, and about 60 ships. I reached this point by not dealing with Gamma1 until I had the bomb. But, it looks like the Empiants are vicious! By playing ahead on a dummy save I found that they are much less so if there are no humans on SSCronus. But eventually I need to build labs on SCronus, and then I can't avoid the attacks.

I think I can delay somemore and build more ships. But I find that when my ships are engaging the Empiants, the missile stock at the nearest colony disappears fast. This is a real pain when each ship can only carry one missile, and I need my ships to fight the buggers. Is there a way to transport missiles in bulk? Or am I doomed to losing many ships? Massing them off Cronus doesn't really help reduce losses.

BTW a small tip: send probe ships with human pilots to the Beta asteroids. Cost me 10 ships to learn this the hard way...

Have you checked the sectors surrounding the one your advisor reported to you, using the artifact scanner on the mercator screen? How is your battle with the squids faring?

need help here
 

I played this game in Dosbox, but it crashed only when I nuke the gamma asteroid, any suggestion how to fix it?

I've tried on the game other ways to finish the game but gamma ast still have to be blown up to pieces, so I think the problem lies in my Dosbox

Also having trouble getting this to run on DosBox; within minutes of starting it I get an error message reading, "Professional Error (2002), transfer stack overflow on interrupt 08h at 80:00000984" followed by a lot of alphanumerics and something about a "byte granular limit".
Anyone able to make head nor tail of that? I'd really appreciate the help, because I last played this game aged eight and have fond memories of it.

I really enjoyed that game when it came out and replayed it a couple months ago in Dosbox.

Any good space colony games with the same style out there?

Amazing game, thanks for uploading.

We have found the source for the extras problems, and now the extras that was requested can be accessed on the gamepage.

awesome! :woot:

I have almost reached the end of the game, but I've been stopped by a persistent crash [spoilers follow]:

In the end game, tracking down the rebel leader, I arrive at Hades D-10 and learn the location o the rebel bunker (H-12). When I leave the quadrant and while still on the planetary map, she delivers an open ultimatum, her message followed by my military advisor saying that we should obey for now.

After reading both messages the game crashes: they reappear one after the other. No matter how many times I click, the screen is taken up by these two messages and the game doesn't progress. I have to go to windows and close the game from there.

I played the game in DOS-Box, but the same problem appeared both when playing from VDMSound and Windows(XP).

You need an available colony spot on hermes at one point, might be this bug.

I remember playing this several years back and it was really amazing but I kept encountering a persistent error about mid game, right after the aliens invited me to do a joint research project if I remember correctly; started the game from the beginning 3 times but it always crashed when I was heading to build labs on the orbit of their planet. at that time I thought it was something wrong with the game version I had then. Is the version here ok, anybody managed to finish the game I mean? I'd hate to lose several hours on it and get stuck in the same place.

I used DOSBox and I had no such problems. I have to admit that I never got so far in the game though: Sierra games are known to have great stories but weak interface and coding... This one don't crash like I am used to with other Sierra titles but the playing interface is so weak that I gave up trying to defend my colonies against the Aliens...

Haven't even figured out the combat system yet... Short of "send your ships to die trying to destroy theirs"... :rolleyes:

How did you get the bomb? I've read about it in the FAQ on gamefaqs, but in my many, many replays over the years I've never managed to unlock a big bomb so i've always had to lob 80ish missiles at Gamma1 to blow it up :(

Also a tip for handling the emphiants, send vehicles on missile mission to cronus (the planet, not SSCronus) and keep them orbiting there. This really seems to keep the emphiants confined to cronus for the most part. When I use this tactic only my colony on hera gets harassed a bit.

Found a tactic which is quite cool. Limit the droid production to the mothership only!!

Because the only resource which needs a single, one-time investment to found a new colony are droids, but every other resource is gained as side-product when you produce something.
Think about it: Droids are not a "raw material", they are re-usable and won't be wasted. So the spendable resources like ore, power and life support shall have to be produced on the planets, while the unique resources droids/population stays on the goddamn mothership.

I have just restarted Alien Legacy for the 4th time, and having each colony produce a little bit of everthing turned out to be a macro-managing nightmare. If pipelined ships send too much of something to the mothership then factories can lack maintenance causing them to shut down. And then all hell breaks loose, factory temporarily shut down releases its droids, which are then sent to the mothership automatically, all you can do is laugh when the automated system fucks up and keeps following orders, ROFL

TL;DR It's not a good idea to produce droids on colonies and auto-transfer them to the mothership. Your factories might stall, causing the entire production line to shut down.

I went with a completely different approach: have every colony produce only robots (mainly for their own use) while the flagship produce almost exclusively ships.

My logic behind this was that the only resource you cannot afford to lose is your ships. You can rebuild colonies, search for resources, etc with a ship... But if you have no ships and no ship production capacity, you're done for.

So my colonies were pretty much self sufficient, and if the shit had to hit the fan I simply evacuated everything to the main ship. Starting with robots. I know this might sound weird to say, but the colons reproduce free and faster than what you can build robots. xD

So the colonies are basically like an exponential growing biological organism? (the more you have, the more colonies can be newly founded)

Hm, that looks like a better tactic than mine, thanks. At the moment I'm about to restart again from scratch, because everytime I have 5 colonies all chaos breaks loose. I just discovered that the exploring ships can be given some electricity to found a space-station and distant colonies, unload it to convert to energy/fuel and fly back :)

I did that too at the start but forget about that: build SS (Space Stations) in orbit of the world/moon/rock you wish to explore. Same as having a colony on the surface except that you can land wherever you want free of charge instead of always starting at a fixed point on the world/moon/rock... ;)

Bit ranting, the micromanaging is crazy :(
The colony list should be sorted alphabetically.
The transportation of huge amounts should automatically assign more ships when cargo of the first ship is full.
The ship mission assignment values should not reset to 0 after each launch, so you can send 8 ships to 8 asteroids with the same parameters (just have to change destination)

And last but not least important, the basic maintenance of each building should be kept when pipelining stuff in automatic mode. Once I pipelines all ore away, and the ore mine (who needs a little bit of ore to function too) stalled production. Then it's robot workers got released, of course these were freely pipelined away too ! LOL, before I noticed the crazy pipeline, an entire colony had shut down, and everything was transported to the Calypso again.


I restartet again and went with huge relief from Micromanaging. I use mass drivers in EVERY colony. It slows down the ore piling up. Then, have 1 factory on each colony slowly produce ships, when everytime one is finished, have it bring the rest surplus (like robots and humans) to the Calypso.

It is exactly to prevent such a thing that I specialized all my colonies. Some colonies were built with the sole intention to mine it so it would produce so many ore my ships could not lift them all at once. After a while I just sent more ships to compensate, on a single trip, to grab the extra ore.

When you have several colonies sending ore to the Calypso like that you don't really need to bother with ore management anymore. Mass drivers are in theory very interesting but their output is very low and it take a slot both on the Calypso and on every colony afterward. I ended up not building any, in the end.

Well, trust me if one factory has output 25 ore per 15 days and it raises total colony net surplus by 25...
and a mass driver has 25 "send away ore" per 5 days and it lowers total colony net by 25..
then don't trust your eyes. The ore net worth display is buggy!

Please consider that Mass drivers are not as weak as their description reads! From my experience, a colony with +110 ore can barely keep it's ore level with one of those. And they're quite easy to redirect towards space stations who mine energy or research, without ore income. Plus, they can transport ore to the Calypso while she's en route on long distance flights, and she (the Calypso) can redirect all incoming ore to another station itself as well.

Maybe, but just reading your description make me thing it is way too much work. You already have to micro manage your ships so it is not like I would not have done it in the first place.

Plus... Moving Calypso? What for? :what:

So far my network constists of ~20 colonies and 3 space stations, who are doing research. Never mind that you can upgrade your buildings to level 5 and they produce so much, that you have more resources needed to beat the game 3 times. Not! I play with self-imposed rule that everything must keep growing when I'm away. That means, every colony produces robot+ships and sends surplus to space stations who must be supplied with mass-drivers so they don't run out of ore.
Crazy, but it's cool when you can be absolutely sure that every colony always has extra material, robots, humans and produces their own ships to carry this surplus to the Calypso within the blink of an eye. That's relaxing!

How to avoid the biota
 

Here is a trick I found out by accident - the biota will not get aggressive unless you build more than a certain number of buildings on Gaea or Rhea. I built 8 colonies on Gaea, totalling nearly 50 buildings, and the biota did not activate until 1500 turns had passed. You can upgrade existing buildings on the planet as much as you want, and build space stations, and fill them with buildings, including Calypso, and you won't have to worry about the biota or anything else except overcrowding on the Calypso, until turn 1500. I have yet to build colonies on other planets - I will see if that triggers the biota.

Captain Picard

Anyone know how to get the "Theta Wave Scrambler" to Cronus? I send a ship there on the mission, but when it gets there, it just goes to the nearby space station and doesn't do anything. What am I missing?

That's what it's supposed to do, but you should get a video showing you that it was dropped into Cronus, then a message from the Empiants telling you that the war is over.

Anyone else have problems with sound? Sound does not work well no matter what sound card option I choose. It "skips"

same here, aswell as having stuttering videos and low FPS and graphic-artifacts.

Delaying Biota threat
 

Correction to my previous post - The biota will not activate until you have 30 life support buildings on Rhea or Gaea, or until 1500 turns have passed, whichever comes first. This means you can have up to 29 life support buildings on the planets and can build as many other buildings as you like planetside, until turn 1500. This way you can accumulate lots of resources by the time turn 1500 comes around, helping you to deal with the biota threat when it happens. Also, I don't bother upgrading factories, as the more advanced factories really use up ore much faster, and each planet only has a limited amount of ore.

Make that a limit of 15 residential buildings on Gaea and Rhea total. Once you build your 16th residential building, the life forms on those two planets will start to become aggressive, slowly at first, and then more and more violent. Residential buildings on space stations or Calypso do not count towards this figure.

Sound
 

Use a front end like D front and increase the emulation speed cpu wise, that should clear up sound issues.