Exodus 3010 help

I started to play Exodus 3010 and stuck at the beginning. I ran into huge rondon fleet and i don't know what to do to pass them. Whatever I say to them they attack and kill me. If I attack first, they kill me. What should I do?

If anyone remember this game, I would appreciate some help.

[NPI]

you have three pages of help in this mag, if you're familiar with the language

http://pc.sux.org/phpgraphy/index.ph..._93_11_044.jpg
http://pc.sux.org/phpgraphy/index.ph..._93_11_045.jpg
http://pc.sux.org/phpgraphy/index.ph..._93_11_046.jpg

and here:

http://pc.sux.org/phpgraph/index.php..._93_01_037.jpg

Tnx for the links,

I'm familiar with the language and I have these in the paper, but there is little help in there.

The question stands, what to do with huge Rondon fleet. Please .

[MrD]

Sorry to mega bump this, but there must be about only three people still alive how have any idea how to play this ridiculous game.

If you're having trouble with the 'Huge Rondon fleet that looks old', then you should probably take stock of what you have: by this point, you should have acquired sufficient copper to allow you to build three BG fighters and equip them with Grey Lasers. If you don't have this, then you should restart and make sure not to miss any of the meteor deposits up until now.

The Rondon fleet always attacks you (after you get the wonderful dialogue options of 'huuuah' 'eeeek' 'oh noooo' 'aeeeeu' and 'nooo') at the end of this conversation, just like the first Rondon attacks you after you try and talk to him.

With the three fighters prepared with pilots, you should order them to attack all. -USUALLY- this allows you to get somewhere in the battle, but it is a very tough fight. One of the most dangerous things your ships can do is crash into each other...

Save State spamming is the only real way to get anywhere, unless you've decided to ignore the Rondon communication signal and have been REALLY LUCKY enough to have another meteor deposit appear before they turn to attack you.

I eventually won that battle by sending all three ships to attack, and then ordering one to return to Starlight. The enemy ships were distracted by the fleeing ship long enough for the two other ships to open fire.

[Angus]

Originally Posted by MrD

I eventually won that battle by sending all three ships to attack, and then ordering one to return to Starlight. The enemy ships were distracted by the fleeing ship long enough for the two other ships to open fire.

Good work, Admiral.

There are a couple of reviews of the game on the Amiga Games database, one by me which isn't really going to help you. Nathan's review is pretty detailed and might offer some thoughts to you. I ended up a bit frustrated because the game seemed to offer so much, but I couldn't really get at it.

I'm very interested to hear about your progress though, good work.

[MrD]

I've been taking screenshots as I go, and I'm hoping to try and put together a coherent Let's Play type walkthrough when I'm done.

About a dozen encounters into the game, I was attacked by an automated laser defense thing that attacked me no matter what I said. The info screen said it had a magnetic beam, which meant on the battle screen it jammed all my weapons.

In the absense of any jamming device jamming device, I did the only thing I could: flew four BG fighters into the thing. ("Knowing their weakness, I sent wave after wave of my own men at them...!")

I have now passed 'the first stage' of the Exodus 3010 journey. Streuth!

I need to load now and this time send my four most useless men in unarmed ships.

Gentlemen ( [ Show youtube player ]), I have brought you here as you represent the worst the human race has to offer. The ships computer informs me that you four score the lowest in the core fighter pilot competencies of PilotSkill, FightingSkill, Aggression and Courage. I wouldn't trust any one of you with a toothbrush, never mind a space fighter. However, fate has presented the Starlight with a foe suitable to your unprecedented level of skill.

This is an automated defense station owned by an unknown alien race. It has charged weapons and will be in range to fire on the Starlight in 16 hours. When in range, it will destroy the Starlight in 15 minutes. It has no defences against fighters and it is stationary with no ability to maneuvre.

You will be fliying the Blue Giant Fighter, the workhorse of the Starlight's defence complement. Your mission is to fly directly into the defence station and destroy it. The ships will have no beam weapons or missiles mounted, as I don't trust you with them. I'm also told there's also a jamming device or something.

(Sir, why don't we disable the jamming device with a countermeasure developed in the ship's contructor system?)

See that system over there, son? That system controls the ships research and manufacturing capability. There are over 2,000 controls on that device and for reasons yet to be explained, 1,989 of those cause the ship to self-destruct.

We're going with my plan.

You leave immediately. Dismissed.

Get the hell out of my sight.

And then maybe look into this jamming device.

There seems to be a lot to this game. (In its native German, Amiga Joker gave it 80%.)

It's all just hidden behind the ridiculous leaps you have to make in item combination, the guesswork in choosing the right combination of products at any encounter, making sure you mine everything, and deciphering the mangled dialogue (HELLO i AM space POLICE) to avoid prompting battles against invincible foes.

Every realisation I make while trying to play this game makes me appreciate it a bit more. Not that much, mind: it's still Exodus 3010 and it's still terrible. I'm enjoying it more than Amiga Wing Commander though. I like that they used proper 3D objects in the space sections. (Not as cool as Starfighter 2 though.)

Realising that the combat was designed to work in a flat plane makes flying a lot more straightforward: it's like Lylat Wars' All-Range-Mode. Full 3D combat would probably take ages to program. Unfortunately, it means that spaceflight sim veterans won't be able to fly the ships properly, and it's best left to the autopilot.

I have a strong hunch that this game won't have that much of an ending. It is 'The First Chapter', after all, but I still really want them to get to Mrynn.

[MrD]

Does anybody know anything about how NULL-K-SPACE works?

There's a couple of Space Depot puzzle levels that are set in NULL K SPACE, and it seems that it freezes your fighters when you enter it, so you can't control or recall them. (Meaning also you can't leave the tactical screen and return to the Starlight menu, ever!)

One of the later encounters is a 'ship frozen in NULL K SPACE', so I think I'm on the right track. There was a flashing tetrahedral object in there, so I blew it up. Several of my ships are now stuck, but the remaining ships are free to return to the ship through beaming triangle.

Anybody know how to un-jam a NULL K SPACEd ship?

The second magazine page there says that the Help option on the tactical screen can be used to do something to ships frozen in NULL K, but I don't know how to use it.

Edit - It appears that a ship with sufficient hull EN strength can donate 70% of it to un-jam a NULL Ked ship by clicking Ship A [HELPS] Ship B on the tactical screen. You can order ships to do this even if they've been NULL Ked themselves. I don't think it works until you've destroyed the tetrahedron though (the freed ship would get Ked again), which makes NULL K encounters 'send all the ships at it manually one by one and hope it runs out of hit points before you run out of ships'.

[Angus]

Originally Posted by MrD

Does anybody know anything about how NULL-K-SPACE works?

I can only read your adventures with admiration.

If at the end of this you fancy donating a review of the game to the AGDB, perhaps with some small hints, I'd be very happy to upload it.

Cheers - and good luck.

[MrD]

As annoying as the Rondons are, with their stupid, big, fat, scary face, their story is actually proving to be quite tragic.

Though not as tragic as the innocent pilots I sent to their death because I can't figure out how to attach shields to the ships. It's almost as if they didn't put that feature in. (Although there's shield gauges in the cockpit view...)

A review, eh? Well, I'm not sure I'm qualified...

I'm finding figuring it out the game as if it were a puzzle more enjoyable than playing the game itself. If I knew how to play the game, it would become pretty simple as there's not really much in the way of tactics in the tactical view, and the conversation tree is just a conversation tree.

It's an adventure game where all the 'action' comes to you, which I suppose is why I like it. I can't stand watching characters walk from room to room.

Hmm... anybody know about a series of Docs disks called Devious Designs? Apparently, there's some information about Exodus 3010 on Disk 6, but the only reference I can find to these disks is on an Atari website and there's no links to the disks. Are they known by another name?

Edit - To equip shields to a craft, you have to left click on the HANGAR text at the top of the screen. It switches from weapons to defensive measures. ARGH. Now I have to rewind to when I lost dozens of guys trying to defeat some other guys in a magnetic field. This is not where I expected the control to be. > : (

[MrD]

I have now completed Exodus 3010. Being able to equip shields onto craft was a great help against the Hondragun Pirats Corporation. I suggest that the OP have a go at producing basic shields and equipping them on the EQUIPMENT screen (click the HANGAR caption after you've brought up the weapons and missiles menu to get the option to equip a shield).

Want to know what happens in the end?



THE ORDINARY GAME OVER SCREEN IS WHAT HAPPENS.

When you reach Mrynn, the planet appears on the scopes the same way as any alien craft encounter or any of the other in between milestone planets. When I clicked on the 'New Object Found' and the description of Mrynn appeared, I just left it alone thinking the end sequence was about to begin.

Starlight dutifully crashed into the planet and killed the human race.

This game seems to have a strange preoccupation with suicide: being unable to build a Blue Giant Fighter triggers the self-destruct, as does not being able to ready a pilot due to engine damage or running out of pilots. Fighter pilots in the tactical phase will switch from their given orders (FIGHT, WAIT or RETURN) to KAMIKAZE when their hull strength drops to below 15%.

I used lousy pilots in Blue Giant fighters myself as a means of destroying enemies I couldn't destroy any other way. I later figured out that the 'magnetic field' levels that disable your weapons should be treated as puzzles: there's enough objects lying around the combat zone for you to manipulate to destroy whatever's blocking Starlight from advancing. You can use your tractor beam to move objects, and one level requires you to trick the enemy into crashing into the return-to-Starlight navigation buoy. (There's several puzzle levels that you need to complete in order to get enough resources to complete the final battle: mine mazes, levels where the crates move in formation and crash into each other or Starlight if you're not fast enough, that sort of thing.)

Now Starlight itself was apparently programmed to crash into the surface of the planet that's supposed to save the human race.

Of course, I couldn't let that happen. I loaded up, and decided to attack Mrynn as if it were hostile.

Here's what really happens.

Spoiler warning:
1-2-3
(Coming soon to a vgmuseum.com near you. )

The human race has been saved, our Exodus is complete! Spare a thought for the 22 pilots that died in the line of duty.

It still uses the game over music, but I suppose it's moving enough to be appropriate.

Edit:
Remember when I said you had to "avoid prompting battles against invincible foes"?

The final battle is against a Vampirer fleet. It's described as "an invincible fleet of invincible ships".
Indeed.

Haven't visited for some time and now I see this. What can I say, I'll keep trying. Tnx MrD

[MrD]

No problem! This seems to be the official website for Exodus 3010 on the Internet now. :P

If you have any questions about how to play the game or use the interface, feel free to ask. Every encounter and battle in Exodus 3010 is possible without Action Replay codes or save state hacking, it just takes patience. (I got to the penultimate battle without knowing how to equip shields..!)

I managed to defeat those Rondons and continuing towards new Home

However, I have another problem with small depots, the ones surrounded with mines. Whatever I do, mines explode and destroy depot (and my ship) if I'm too close. Is there any way to tractor depot without destroying it?

[andreas]

MrD, just one question from somebody who never played this:

One of the toughest war action games I've ever played to this day is Desert Strike with these huge cannon things (to deface a famous quote: Shoot Me Again, SAM! ) which can blow you to smithereens in no time with every (!) hit causing 150 or 200 units of damage.
I found Level 2 as difficult as Level 7 or 8 in other games.

Your very elaborate review tells me this game is of the same difficulty level. Or is it even harder?!

hey fellas...i've just registered to tell you how to beat that annoying rondon fleet.

i used just one ship without even sacrificing it. just launch your single fighter and go to manual flight. once there, don't engage the enemy but just fly up an down until every rondon ship collides with themselves. collect salvage...that's pretty much it.

bye


edit: i've tried this tactic again to see if it's fool-proof but it didn't work out quite as planned although i did manage to collide some of their ships. basically try it many times, try to keep their ships in close formation (by flaying away from them turning and evading in the other direction so there's a bigger chance of them hitting each other). if you manage to destroy a large portion of their ships, return your fighter home (i suggest you do it manually so you don't get shot down), gather all of your ships and do it the old fashion way by fighting. or either repair the fighter and try the initial tactic once again. if you manage to reduce their fleet by half and if you manage to have at least 4 fighters you're much more likely to win.
but i suggest you use the first tactic and keep at it until it works.

[MrD]

Good to hear you're making progress, spantic!

My computer just crashed and a I lost about two thousand words' advice on depots right before I clicked reply. Please excuse me if I'm a bit terse.

Before you can tackle a Depot level, you have to be confident in how the space combat works. The space combat in Exodus 3010 works like the All Range Mode in Lylat Wars/Star Fox 64. It's like a flat 2D area which you can fly above and below. When you press 'up' or 'down', you're not pitching the ship, but instead ascending and descending. You have an altitude meter on your HUD shown to the left of your radar. You can see the 2D area from above when you go onto the tactical map.

Like all encounters in Exodus 3010, Depot levels are the same every time you encounter them. They should appear in the same order in the plot, and the layout of the crates and mines sholuld be the same when you send fighters to investigate.

I think Depot and Meteor levels are the more interesting encounters in Exodus: they're the only things you'll encounter which must be tackled by the player's piloting skills alone. You can't use the autopilot to get the crate for you, but you can use WAIT and RETURN to control multiple fighters if you need to.

You should treat Depot encounters as puzzles.

Depot levels usually consist of a crate surrounded by some arrangement of mines. The mines are sometimes static, but they usually rotate around the crate in some kind of pattern.

Sometimes the mines rotate around the crate, while staying at the same altitude:



Sometimes the mines can go above and below the crate:



Sometimes there are multiple rings of mines all rotating at once:



You have to:

* Approach the crate safely. You have to do this quite fast as it usually involves matching the speed of a moving mine. If you're going at the wrong speed, you'll collide with a mine.
* Aim towards the crate to allow you to tractor it. This is difficult because you can't set your speed to zero, so you'll be continually drifting within the cluster of mines. You may even crash into the crate.
* Tractor the crate. The crate has to be directly in front of you and quite close. When you press the tractor button, the crate will move to above and behind your craft, and it will stay there until you release it. This means that your ship is essentially 'bigger' while you're carrying a crate: if the crate bumps into anything back there, it'll be destroyed.
* Escape the minefield with the crate. Having the crate doesn't affect your top speed. Make sure you exit the cluster of mines in the correct direction. The Starlight and the 'flashing return pyramid' are to the South of the tactical 2D screen. If you exit the cluster of mines heading North and hit the autopilot RETURN command, your ship will fly straight through the cluster of mines on its way back! Fly the ship with the crate back manually if you have to.

If any of your ships, the crate, a meteor or a laser blast hits any of the mines, they will explode, destroying everything in their vicinity. If this happens, you should load a save state, because you need all the ships you can get.

You should practice using the accelerate and decelerate controls before attempting a Depot mission. The attempt on the crate should be done in one swift action, otherwise you'll mess up. In terms of speed, the Red is the fastest (4/4 speed), the Black is the second fastest (3/4 speed) and the Blue is the slowest (2/4 speed). Attaching weapons to the craft doesn't affect its speed.

Here's some techniques for retrieving crates:

If the mines are rotating at a steady speed, you can try to match the speed of the mines and move in a curve:



Slow down after you're sure you've cleared the mines and make certain to get the crate. There's very little information to tell you when you're safe so you just have to guess. The radar is rubbish and you don't get a side or rear view camera. Make sure that you have the crate before you attempt to leave. Time your departure correctly to head through a gap in the mines.

Another plan is to go over the mines:



You'll have to use trial and error to see how sensitive the mines want to be. Sometimes you can go right up close to them, other times they seem to explode for no reason. If you're flying above the mines like in this animation, remember that the crate will try to move to above and behind your craft. If the crate is below you, it will try to move through your ship and crash into you!

You can also attempt to go below the mines. This is probably a better approach because the crate will already be above you.

You have to be very close to tractor the crate. You won't be able to go up to the minefield, stop, and then tractor the crate out. I never found a way to stop a ship, and tractoring the crate would cause it to float through the minefield towards you, probably setting it off.

You may be able to hang around -below- the minefield and tractor the crate. Just be wary that when the crate moves to the back of the craft, it may collide with the mines behind you.

You have to get pretty much every Depot crate you can if you want to win the game. Most of them contain essential resources that you only get once and are used to build the Black Phantom Fighter. Other crates contain resources that allow you to build specific pieces of fighter equipment. Although the Mothership Energy counter decreases when you're fired upon on the menu screenor something attacks into the Starlight on the combat screen, the 'Engine' screen itself is NEVER damaged by combat. Instead, parts will simply fail to work during the plot. Some of the resources that you don't have a use for are necessary to fix the 'Engine'. If you can't fix the 'Engine', you'll lose the ability to manufacture items, to launch fighters, or to thaw pilots. Basically, you'd be stuck.

Please bear with me while I edit this post and add more information before my computer decides to explode again. brb.

[MrD]

I swear that VBulletin hates me, I had a reply to Andreas all typed out and it logged me out and discarded my message AGAIN. AUGH!

Exodus 3010 is considerably harder than Desert Strike. I have complete confidence that there are less than a dozen people alive that have ever got anywhere in the game, never mind complete it. (English speakers playing the English translation, that is. It may have been big in Germany.) That's the reason why I was interested in it. There is (or rather WAS!) no ending on VGmusem for it, and every magazine review only had screenshots of the first encounter and every online review basically said 'I want to like this, but I don't know how to play it. I killed the human race. Sad face.'

I first played Exodus 3010 when I was seven years old. The setting and presentation of the game was completely unlike anything I'd played on the Amiga before. (I'm a Bob's Bad Day and Wiz 'n' Liz man.) The game opens with the destruction of Earth, and places the safety of the human race solely in your hands. How cool is that?

I should have got frustrated at the fact that I had no idea what I was doing, and the game refused to tell me what to do. I should have got frustrated that the only thing I did that seemed to have a lasting effect was blowing up the ship in a radioactive explosion. But I didn't. (I think it was perhaps the cool menu music.) Exodus 3010 fascinated me because it was the complete opposite of the games I liked, and it seemed to have absolutely no method to progress. All I could do was kill the human race and get that depressing music over and over again. It was only after weeks of off and on playing that I managed to thaw a pilot, build a ship and get into space. And then I managed to get into first person view, and then I hit keys randomly and self destructed. And then I crashed into the crate (or was it a meteor?) and died.

Who would write a game where you couldn't win? And who would write a game about killing the human race over and over? What is the point of Exodus 3010?

It was only now, fifteen years later, that I managed to tractor in that first meteor and meet the Rondon rookie. Even as I progressed through all of the scrambled dialogue, impossible duels, NULL K SPACE, Magnetic jammers, inability to equip shields and invincible fleets of invincible ships, I always wondered if the game's plot ever ended. Several times, in fact, I thought it had.

In the final battle, if all of your ships are destroyed and the game tried to switch back to the main menu, it will guru. Without fail. I have no idea why this happens, but I have two theories: either there was a 'bad ending' where the Vampirer's manage to destroy Mrynn (how that can be worse than the Starlight SELF DESTRUCTING and KILLING THE HUMAN RACE for NO REASON I dont know), or perhaps there's a coding bug where if ten pilots are lost simultaneously, there isn't enough lines on the status screen to display them all and there's a memory fault.

I didn't think they'd put shields in, but they had. I didn't think you could get out of NULL K SPACE, but you could. There's some enemies later on that you can't shoot because of a jamming field, but the game had sneaky tricks that allowed to you to defeat them nevertheless.

Exodus 3010's difficulty doesn't stem from any sort of reflex challenge or logical puzzle. It stems from a thorough examination of how not to make a game. A player of Exodus 3010 has to be completely stoic and have the ability to think through near impenetrable layers of nonresponsive gameplay.

In retrospect, everything in the game was perfectly logical, but presented extraordinarily badly. Perhaps the German Exodus 3010 came with a manual and was coherent, but all that's in the English version is nonsense, death, and 'AAAAAEEEHH. THIS IS STARLIGHT'.

Exodus 3010 vs. Desert Strike is a surreal comparison to make...

Desert Strike is explained to you in the intro, explained to you in the briefing, has an ingame help system, and it's pretty obvious that you have to shoot stuff. The game tests your reflexes and piloting skills, and is an all round good egg arcade-like game.

Exodus 3010 places you in completely unfamiliar place and doesn't tell you anything. If I could believe that it was intentional, then I would say it was a masterstroke. You're alone, and there is nobody to help you. You have to figure out everything yourself. Every time you do, you get one step closer to saving everyone. In some games, you unlock abilities through gameplay progression, or by achieving kudos or goals. In Exodus 3010, the game is wide open, but you have to figure out how to use it. Or die. For me, it became a surreal sort of survival horror. The universe hates you (and so does the Starlight it seems), and you will die.

If the execution of Exodus 3010 were changed, the effect would be entirely different. If there was a co-pilot telling you what to do, or bluntly stated mission objectives given at the start of every encounter, it would no longer be about discovering the game, but rather simply doing what you were told.

Maybe I'm reading too much into Exodus, but it's been on my mind for all these years, so give me a break. :P

I think I find it fascinating because of a similar scenario with my friend's copy of Midnight Resistance. In his copy, when we fought to the end and killed the big head, the game would always guru. I assumed that the end boss had killed the game itself because we couldn't rescue all the family when asked to PICK A WEAPON. It was only later that I found out that MR had an end sequence, and it probably wasn't on my friends version because it was a one disk crunch, and ending may have been taken out.

[MrD]

Here's some unnecessary science!

Assuming that the Earth in Exodus 3010 is the same Earth we're on now, and there hasn't been a second Exodus between 2010 and 3010, then we can calculate the distance from Earth to Mrynn using the information in the intro. (I say 2010, because there's about 18 months between the preparation of the Starlight (after February 3009) and the destruction of Earth (August 3010).)

The intro says that the Sun is the first planet that the Starlight will pass. Let's assume that it's -the- Sun (ignoring that it's not a planet). The distance between the Earth and the Sun is quoted in the intro is 16.3 LJ. That means that there are 16.3 LiveJournals per Astronomical Unit.

The distance to Mrynn (assuming from Earth and not Zendrion II, the second planet the Starlight passes) is quoted as 548.1 LiveJournals. That's 33.63 AU. That means that Mrynn is close enough to be within our solar system, and may lie within the Kuiper Belt.

It seemed like longer.

Also, it took me about two hours to get to Zendrion II, 118.9 LiveJournals from Earth (6.81 AU), with all my naffing about. Assume the Starlight has the ability to accelerate and decelerate instantly, then if it was stationary half the time (combat, encounters) and moving at full speed half the time (between encounters), then that means that the Starlight has a maximum speed of just under (95%) the speed of light. How about that!

[andreas]

Thanks MrD for your in-depth insights.
So for me this means, once I'm finally able to advance to level 2 in Desert Strike with NO cheating NOR any lost lives, I'll move over to Exodus 3010

Hopefully I can get it done before 2015 lol ...

me and my m8 played this game waaay back in the amiga days, we tried playing in on winuae as well, but we always got stuck cause we couldnt catch space ship to get the power up....

as far as i remember we could tractor them but the ship wouldnt process them, or something like that....

has anyone else got problems with that?