PLAYER'S MANUAL

TUTORIAL 1: Learning how to play Lost Admiral Returns!

Lost Admiral Returns is a turn based strategy game where you outmaneuver your opponents for control of coastal cities using battleships, destroyers, submarines, and other ships.

The latest information on Lost Admiral Returns can be found at the official website at www.lostadmiralreturns.com.

In many ways, Lost Admiral Returns is like a finely balanced CHESS game... for every good ship attack move, there are counter moves to choose from. Battles are often balanced on a knifes edge: Make the right moves at the right time and you win a glorious victory... or miss your one chance at countering your enemy's moves and go down in defeat. Fortunately in LAR you always have the next battle in which to achieve victory, or out-do your previous triumphs.

The first tutorial introduces you to the classic ship combinations in LAR, and covers the fundamentals of how to move ships, fight, and conquering cities with transports to earn Victory Points.  Accumulate the most Victory Points to win the battle...

Run the tutorial to walk through various basic ways to use the LAR game.  You can also use the Help and Advice Screens built into every menu in the game to learn more about various parts of the game.

Specific lessons in Tutorial 1 are:

1) Selecting ships during movement by right clicking on their image on the map.

2) Moving ships during the movement phase by left clicking on the hex you want to travel to.

3) Combat matchups that favor you:

• Destroyers kill submerged Submarines in one shot, taking minor damage back.
• Battleships kill Destroyers in one shot, taking puny damage back.
• Submerged Submarines hurt Battleships, while taking NO damage back.

4) Color indicators for what ships can still move:

• Green dots underneath the ship means it can still move.
• Yellow dots means you deliberately stopped the ship, but it can still move.
• Red dots means the ship is out of movement points for this movement phase.

5) Shooting in combat:  The combat screen visits each hex with ships fighting in them once per combat phase.  A close-up of the battle in that hex is shown, and each ships gets to fire at an enemy ship ONCE for that combat phase.  You can click on the large animated enemy ship images to fire, or on the small enemy ship images in the lower left area of the screen showing details of what kind of damage your various shots will do.  You have the option of viewing the movement map area around the battle hex instead of the close-up animations, and can speed up or slow down the way combat is resolved.

6) Moving Transports to claim cities.  You will only earn Victory Points for cities who's harbor hex has one of your Transports or Armed Transports alive in it at the end of the turn.  If both you and the enemy player have a Transport type ship in the city's harbor, neither side gets the Victory Points.

 
7) Protecting Transports using warships.  In combat, Transports and Armed Transports will be shielded from combat if there is a friendly warship in the hex with them.  I.E. avoid combat with your vulnerable Transports by always keeping a warship in the same hex with them.

8) Anchoring ships to prevent accidental movement later.  Any ship can be "anchored" using the Anchor button (or the 'D' key).  Anchored ships will not be allowed to move unless you first Un-anchor them using the same button or 'D' key.  This helps you prevent the accidental movement of Transports or their defending warships out of important city harbors.  Ships will automatically un-anchor if combat occurs in their hex, to give you a chance to move them again during the next combat phase.  Note that LAR will not prompt you to move anchored ships during the movement phase, so if you want to use an anchored ship, you must locate it on the movement map yourself, then right click on it to select it, and then un-anchor before moving the ship.

9) Scrolling the map in different directions.  You can scroll around to see different parts of the movement map by moving your mouse to the very edges of your computer's screen along the top, bottom, right, and left edges.  This will make the map scroll to reveal more of the map in the direction you nudged the mouse towards.  Scroll the map to see better in the direction you would like to move your ship towards.

10) Zoom in and out on the map.  You may also use the Zoom button or press 'Z' on your keyboard to cycle through different resolutions on the movement map area.  Normally a 5 by 5 grid of hexes is displayed, but you can change this to 10 by 10 or 20 by 20.  For all modes, you can still select and move ships... though the 5 by 5 display gives you the best detail and resolution on different ship types, etc.

11) Viewing different areas of the map using the MiniMap.  A miniature version of the entire battle map is displayed in the lower right of the screen during movement and combat.  Use this map to see all the city locations along with their name and VP values.  Move your mouse over the Mini Map and left click anywhere to shift the movement area view to show that part of the map.  You may also simply leave the mouse pointer over any part of the Mini Map for a moment and the movement closeup area will change temporarily to show the corresponding part of the map.  I.E. you can "quick view" parts of the map in the larger movement display area by drifting your mouse pointer across the Mini Map.

 
12) How to get more help and advice on playing Lost Admiral Returns.  Use the Help and Advice screens on any menu by clicking on the Adv and Hlp buttons at the bottom of the screen.

Earn Victory Points to win the battle:

Each city you can claim for your side by using a Transport type of ship will earn you the city's Victory Points at the end of each turn.  Regardless of how your warships are faring on the battlefield, what counts in the end is the Victory Points you earn from your cities during the game.

Some battles will require you to simply earn more total Victory Points by the end of the battle than your opponent to win.  Other battles will give you a better starting position than the enemy, and therefore you will be expected to earn significantly MORE Victory Points than the enemy to win.  I.E. Your starting position might be good enough that you must earn 30% more Victory Points than your opponent just to "break even" and barely win the battle.  If you earn 25% more VPs than the enemy, you will LOSE the battle (by an adjusted 5% percent, so to speak).

Flow of turns in LAR:

In LAR, battles are fought between the Red Player and Yellow Player for a specific number of turns.  Your goal is to earn enough Victory Points to defeat your opponent by the end of the battle.  This goal is listed as a percent of your opponent's VP Total that you must make.  I.E. score VPs of your own equal to 130% of your opponents to win on a map and start setup that favors you.

You will have only a certain number of turns to achieve this score ratio (or better) in.  Each game will have a setup stage, and then turns broken down into phases as follows:

• Red Movement Phase - red moves all their ships as desired.
• Combat Phase - both sides get to fire their ships once.
• Yellow Movement Phase - Yellow gets to move their ships now.
• Combat Phase - again both sides get to fire their ships once.
• City Ownership Phase - Ownership of cities is given to players who are the only one to have a Transport type ship in that city harbor.  The owning players earn Victory Points for that city, along with resources, and will get to repair any of their own damaged ships in that harbor, removing up to 2 points of damage.
• That ends the turn, and the next turn starts with Red Movement again.

Play Tutorial #2, #3, and #4 to learn more!

The other tutorials will teach you all about the intricacies of movement, combat, ship building during the battle, and selecting your units at the start of a battle.

This manual is broken up into sections explaining how to play the game, how the program menus work, and other details of interest to players of Lost Admiral Returns.

Please use the menu bar on the left to navigate the manual.

If you have questions, please visit our forum and look for help there.

If you find an error or omission in this manual, please email us at support@fogstone.com

Thank you for trying out Lost Admiral Returns!

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