MOVE / AIM Arrows or d-pad —
eight directions. You shoot the
way you're pointing; there is no
auto-aim.
FIRE Space / B
TRANSFORM Shift / A
 (plane ⇄ walking robot)
PICK UP / DROP C / Y
BUILD PANEL B key / X or a
 shoulder. B buys, A exits.
PAUSE Start
 In PLANE form, near ANY friendly
 unit — package OR live troop.

REPAIR Sitting over your base or
an outpost you own also rebuilds
your armour, over time, the same
way it refuels you.

FUEL Moving burns it, and the
plane burns it far faster —
hovering costs even when you're
still. Walking still is free.
Refuel by sitting over your base
or any outpost you own. Run dry
and you explode and restart at
home, so plan the trip back.

AIR AND GROUND DON'T MIX
As a plane you cannot shoot
anything on the ground — but
nothing on the ground can shoot
you either. Transform to the
walking robot to fight, and to
be fought. Planes can only hit
other planes — except missile
trucks, the one anti-air unit.
Their missiles chase you through
the sky, but touch down and they
lose you: a missile can only ever
hurt something airborne.

ONE AT A TIME You can only
have one thing on order. Costlier
units take longer to build. Watch
the box at the top: red while it
builds, blue when it's ready to
lift. Nothing new can be started
until you've collected it.

BUILD PANEL B, or either
shoulder button. Pick the unit
(▲▼), pick the order it lands
with (◀▶), press A to buy.
 Shortcuts, without opening it:
 1 Infantry $30 — the only unit
   that can capture
 2 Motorcycle $40 — fastest
 3 Armored Car $60 — quick,
   poor against buildings
 4 Gunboat $70 — water only.
   Launch it over a lake and it
   never leaves that lake. Nothing
   on land can reach it.
 5 Tank $80 — best vs bases
 6 Repair Truck $90 — unarmed.
   Mends every damaged unit near
   it. Its orders work as normal,
   except it breaks off to repair
   where others break off to fight.
   It cannot be told to Hold.
 7 Missile Truck $110 —
   anti-air only. Homing missiles
   that hunt a flying commander
   and nothing else — it cannot
   shoot ground units at all, so
   guard it. Hits very hard.
 8 Missile Boat $120 — anti-air
   on water. Longest reach in the
   game, useless against ground.
 9 Turret $140 — immobile, and
   the only thing that fights
   air AND ground at once: a gun
   for troops and missiles for
   planes, on separate reloads.
   It always holds — you choose
   its post by where you drop it.

LAVA (CALDERA) Units will not
walk into a river — they path
around and cross at a ford. But
anything that ends up in one
burns: a unit you dropped there,
or you on foot. Fly over it and
it can't touch you.

ICE (WHITEOUT) A frozen lake is
ground — you walk over it, and no
boat can launch there. Thin ice
is the paler, badly-cracked kind,
and it only holds infantry,
motorcycles and armored cars.
Anything heavier starts cracking
it and goes through a second
later — reverse off in time and
you live. You are heavy. The hole
left behind is open water for the
rest of the battle.

ACID (VIOLET WASTE) The craters
boil over on their own clocks.
A rim that swells and glows is
about to go, and when it does the
splash reaches well past the lip —
the bright ring you see IS the
radius that hurts. Nothing here
blocks you; the danger is standing
in the wrong place at the wrong
second.

FALLOUT (GROUND ZERO) Goo pits
poison anything that loiters at
the edge. Bomb craters and
collapsed buildings do no damage
at all — they are simply solid, and
there are a lot of them. This is
the level where flying units over
the wreckage beats marching them
through it.

THE MOON (TRANQUILLITY) Nothing
here hurts you and nothing here is
wet — there is no water at all, so
neither boat can be built. What
there is instead is craters, and
none of them can be crossed.

THE STATION (ORBITAL SEVEN) Only
the gangways are floor. Everything
between them is open space: units
cannot cross it, and neither can
you on foot. As a plane it isn't
there at all — which makes this the
level where flying a unit across
beats marching it round.

DIFFICULTY Set on the title
screen. EASY is the opponent this
game shipped with. MEDIUM and
HARD build faster, take outposts
two and three at a time, garrison
what they hold, and push further
from home. Hard also earns a third
again as much income.

ORDERS Q Attack
 W Defend — guards the spot you
 dropped it. Chases anything that
 comes near, then walks back.
 E Capture
 R Hold — never moves from
 where you dropped it, and shoots
 anything that comes in range.
 T Threats — hunts the enemy
 commander, and fires the moment
 it lands.
 The package spawns on the
 central pad of your nearest
 base or outpost.

RE-TASKING Open the build panel
while carrying something and it
becomes a re-task screen: you can't
build (that crate is already paid
for) but you can change the order it
lands with. ◀▶ to pick, B to set.

Your guns cannot hurt a base,
in either form. Commanders fight
commanders and units; forts only
fall to the army you deliver.

Main bases are solid — ground
units go around a fort, never over
it. Outposts are open, which is how
infantry get inside to take them.

Captured outposts are mini-forts:
they pay income AND host packages.

OUTPOST CAPTURE
Only infantry can capture. Each
one that enters the outpost is
absorbed and flips one corner box
to its team color. 4 corners of
your color = ownership.
Defend by sending your own infantry
in — they push enemy corners back.

Destroy the red base to win.