FAQ Ver 8/12/1999 by pierce@ezsf.net

Intro:
Jeff Wayne's War of the Worlds is a Risk-like game based on taking territories
combined with RTS combat
to resolve conflict. Its setting is 1898, with a very retro-technology outfitted
British attempting to hold off
the heat ray equipped high tech Martian invasion. Send in the ironclads! It also
features in-game music
from the 1978 musical by Jeff Wayne, which still has a strong cult following and
adds quite a lot to the
atmosphere.

Excellent value at $20 (TRU 7/15/99). The manual is a bit terse with barely a
wasted sentence -we'll try to
help you here. Once you scale the learning curve necessary to get used to the
different interface (about an
hour of playing around) you'll find a very enjoyable game.

The game also lends itself to being easily tweaked through a windows utility
tool, allowing a tougher
fighting AI, and there is the tantalizing possibility that multiplayer support,
while unadvertised, may get
working if enough of us tinker with it.

 Basics of the game:

How do I win:
Destroy the other side's master base. This is Grampian Mountains in Scotland for
the Martians and the
Houses of Parliament in London for the British. This should be your single
minded goal.

How do I move the units? I'm confused:
The click and hold to drag menu options takes a while to get used to, especially
for experienced RTS
players (like Command and Conquer) since it uses both the left and right buttons
of the mouse. The
important thing to learn is that some pop up menus only appear while the right
mouse button is held
down. What is highlighted when you release the mouse button is your choice from
that menu. It's
faster once you get used to it, so bear with it.

Basically, you will move units (groups of vehicles) on the large Britain map by
dragging them to other
sectors as in Risk. When units from both sides meet, a RTS combat mode will
ensue.

Large Map (War Map) movement:
Click on a unit to select it; A box will appear on it. Moving the cursor over
other territories will now
produce a large arrow (but only if you can legally move to them). You'll get a
nice sweeping arrow with
the time of arrival at its head if headed into an enemy held territory. Pay
particular attention to this as it
determines if you'll be night fighting or not. If you don't like the arrival
time (i.e. You're human and don't
want to right at night), advance the clock a few hours before ordering them out.

Once selected, you can move units through multiple territories if you wish, but
are unable to move more
than one territory past a command post controlled territory. With battleships in
particular, you'll find
yourself unable to sweep up the coast but forced to issue several movement
orders over time as your ships
keep stopping in empty neutral sectors.

Initially you'll need six lorries for a fair fight against one martian unit. To
group multiple units together,
hold down the shift key while clicking on the units to send, or drag a box over
them. If you include
ironclads in the attack you'll initially see two arrows with two different dates
(ironclads are slow), but after
you finalize the attack they'll both arrive at the same time -the later date of
the two. So pay attention to the
later attack time -that's when you'll arrive.

Small Map (Battle Map) movement:
Much easier and well described in the manual. Click on the unit or its thumbnail
in the upper left of your
screen. Click again on the landscape to send it where you want. Humans should be
careful and not try to
cross bridges while under fire. Use the CNTL key to target forced fire against
the enemy. Multiple units
can be grouped together by dragging a box over them. In general, doing this for
Martian units and ironclads
is a bad idea because the multiple units will often block eachothers line of
fire.

How do I advance the time?
You either move the slider over to advance the clock, or type a value between
1-9, 9 being fastest. The
Martian "cycles" == Human "days".

How do I pause the game?
Only possible on the big map. Backspace pauses the game clock, as does moving
the slider to the left. You
can issue as many commands as you want while time is stopped, then kick the
clock back up again as
above. (The clock ticking sound does not stop when the game is paused, which is
confusing initially.)

How do I build buildings in my own territories?
First, move a construction vehicle there. Without it you can't build anything.
Look at the time -you may
want to run the clock ahead a few hours if you don't want to be placing
buildings in the pitch dark of night.
Now click anywhere in the empty space of that territory with your right mouse
button and hold it down.
While holding down the right mouse button you should get two squares to pop up:
An "X" for cancel and
underneath that a few wavy lines that means "landscape".  Drag down to the
mountain icon to change
maps, then release. You should get a briefing map during the load, then the
actual map itself.

You've changed maps to the close up view? (i.e. the "Battle Map") Good. In the
upper left edge of the
screen are thumbnails of all your units in this sector.  Select your
construction vehicle with either a double
left click or by selecting it and then pressing the Home key. Now that you've
selected the construction
vehicle, click and hold the right mouse button, doing a drag to the Construction
Crane graphic before
releasing. You'll get a pop-up filled with the different items you've researched
so far available to be built in
this sector. Left clicking on items will copy smaller pictures of them off to
the right into the build queue.
Clicking on the same picture multiple times will result in it being made
multiple times -this is indicated by
a tiny "footnote" number in the lower right of the each picture in the queue,
and may be set to infinity if
wanted.

Now of course the first thing you want to start in each sector is building
-worst case a communication
center if its entirely barren. When you click on this your pointer will become a
rectangular outline of the
foundation of the building to be built as it's moved over the landscape.  You
have to place this somewhere
before it can be built, the basic strategy being place it far away from where
enemies would come from and
where you can build defenses to protect it After a while players  have an idea
of which structures they want
to build and queue them all up placing their foundations one after another. This
allows them to ignore
backwater  territories for a while and instead concentrate on the action at the
front.
Note: In construction you only have to use the battle maps for construction of
buildings (you have to place
their foundations somewhere in each map). You will save a lot of time switching
maps if you choose to
build your  vehicles from the larger map of Britain (the War map) rather than
zooming in to each sector.
You can do this once the proper foundational buildings are laid -just choose a
vehicle factory in the F2
view of the main map and you'll be able to load its construction queue pop up
here also.
Also note: You will need to build level two factories to be able to build level
two vehicles after you've
researched them, and additional support buildings are needed for the more
advanced vehicles (like a
Munitions Factory for self-propelled guns). Because of this it usually makes
sense to cluster several
factories into the same sector rather than spread them out between several
sectors.

How do I build defenses?
Use sapper vehicles instead of construction vehicles, and otherwise it's the
same. Defense works go up
rather quickly. To keep you from overbuilding a sector into unrealistic
fortresses there is a limit to how
many defensive gun emplacements of each type you can build per sector. When
using multiple sappers in
the same sector some work can only be done by the first sapper to prevent swarm
construction cheats, and
expect the resource use to redline while under construction.  It is quite
possible to hold a sector with
defensive emplacements alone.

How damaged are my units?
You'll notice in the upper left hand side a thumbnail of your units and a series
of boxes underneath for each
vehicle in that unit. Watch this to see which units are taking the most damage.

How do I repair vehicles?
You can only do this on the large map, not while in the middle of battle. Move
the damaged unit into a
sector with a repair facility -a wrench will appear over it. Ships do not
require a shipyard to be repaired,
only a repair facility. Each repair facility can only repair one unit at a time,
but you can build multiple
repair facilities in a sector. Also keep in mind you cannot restore or combine
less than full strength units
back to 5 vehicles. Units that have been reduced to one vehicle left should be
considered for suicide
scouting missions rather than repaired, or destroyed outright. Badly damaged and
missing vehicle units still
consume resources from their sector when idle, as the pop-up window will show
you; destroying wounded
units will lift your construction efficiency back towards 100%.

How do I repair defensive guns and buildings damaged in combat?
Mobile Repair Vehicles. For defensive structures like guns, fences, etc. that
take less than 8 days to build it
may be better to destroy badly damaged (ie. badly smoking) ones and build new
ones in their place. You
can't do this with Communication Centers, however. (Well you can, but it'd be
very, very stupid.)

How do I infiltrate a base?
Get a unit like a lorry, select the magnifying glass, then select the command
base. It will close with the
command base and have to sit a while before it reports "task accomplished". It's
a bit hard to infiltrate
Command bases before your own units destroy them, but doing so will let you know
the contents of
adjacent enemy held sectors, both in terms of defense units and vehicles (use F1
and F2 to view if
successful) once back at the War Map.

Black dust? How do I launch it as a Martian?
You have to do this by hand. Select the units you want to fire black dust,
select the black dust, then select
the units to fire at. Especially satisfying firing at ironclads.

Why are there all these rail lines on every map?
The rail lines are possibly  used by the humans to transport resources back and
forth. To quote
Gamecenter's preview:

    For instance, during a battle in Newcastle, the only way to win the battle
is to
                   blow up a railroad bridge over a river. Blowing it up may
allow you to destroy
                   some of the Martian hardware, but losing that bridge may mean
that shipments
                   of steel don't get where they're supposed to be on the
strategic map. It might
                   actually be better to lose the units rather than lose that
vital railway connection.

This was at an early beta stage and may not be true of the final version. Needs
confirmation.
                                        
The music is really great! Can I play it on my normal CD player?
Yes. The first CD track is the computer files, not much fun to listen to, so
skip over it  Tracks 2 and on
have the game music in CD compatible form, and can be played on your home or car
stereo the same as
any other music CD.

How do I change the CD volume in the game? There's only an On/Off switch on the
menu.
The game music is played by a CD player while you play the game; You need to
change this volume with
the Volume Controls panel for CD players on the desktop, not while playing the
game. You can go under
the Control Panel to do this, but most people just bring this up by clicking on
the speaker icon to the lower
right of the desktop.

Game Strategy:

General:
Vehicles are not allowed to "jump" sectors, but are only allowed to move into
sectors adjacent to ones held
by your command posts. (The martian landings at the beginning of the game are an
exception to this rule).
A strong front is the best defense for your rear, since they're unable to move
past it. Optimizing resource
production to keep close to 100% is more important than the RTS combat.

Also don't get too concerned about building up your second line. Command Posts
have to be built before
they can carry the battle to the next sector in, so this will offer you time to
regroup.

Also feel free to play wars of attrition, destroying a sector, retreating and
letting it become re-occupied,
then destroying it again after a command post is built but before positional
defenses can be set. The AI can
also be fooled into attacking strongly defended sectors if you remove most
vehicles from it.

Research:
If you are exhausting the research tree before ending you're not playing
aggressive enough. Unlike many
strategy games (like Master of Orion 2 or X-Com), there is no way to increase
your research rate over the
other side by hiring more scientists. While you research some super-special
technology, so is the AI, at
exactly the same rate, so the technology balance stays the same between the two
sides.

One of the beauties of the game is that there's multiple valid research paths
that will allow you to win. You
can play a game where you go heavy on defensive technology (fences and mines)
and gleefully watch them
fall into your traps. Or you can play a conventional ground war and research
track layers and self-propelled
guns. You can also play an indirect war with battleships and units to scout for
them/lead them back into
range. (A mortar bike-battleship  battlegroup proves interesting, I think.) You
can even try stealthy-spy
kinds of missions by sending out armored sappers or drones to infiltrate and
destroy enemy command posts
rather than just front line conflicts over and over again, and the Martians have
the ability to super glue
vehicles into place and cast lunacy on the Earthlings. You'll see several
people's (very opinionated) ways
of playing later. None of them are the "only" way of playing, however.

Note: Some research paths, like AA guns and defenses against black dust, will
only be open to Humans
after they first encounter it in combat. This insures a window for the Martians
when black dust and flying
machines will be potent. Some Martians may want to hold back on using these big
break through until you
they have enough of these new high tech toys to take advantage of the research
curve. In the tweaked
nastier games I like to play, Level II fighting machines  wait on using the
black dust until I need it against
ironclads. Then I've got about a three month window where it's very effective
and I go hunting ironclads
along the coast, even if I can't take the sector.

Resource management:
Paying attention to resources is necessary for your home front development. You
have to send construction
vehicles to territories that can produce more of the resources you need. To find
these enter resource mode
on the War Map by choosing the rightmost button on the view selector. You will
now see bars on each
territory. Hovering on the resource bar for that district will show if any more
can be gained by building
another raw material factory there -for instance, building a steel mill or coal
mine in London is idle -they'll
add zero to your resources, as the resource view will show. But building a
couple oil refineries in London is
smart -the first oil refinery alone adds 40 tones a week to your oil reserves.
F3 F4 and F5 allow viewing the
map in gradations of purple to show a particular resource distribution.

	    "Need Help" had this to add:
    As a human there are the little buttons on the right side of the screen of
the War
                   Map. The one on the bottom row to the far right is the
resource view. If you click it
                   each sector has three bars with little white lines across
each. The bars indicate
                   (left to right) Steel, coal and oil. The horizontal white
line indicates the amount of
                   that resource the vehicles and buildings in the sector are
using. If the white bar is
                   above the resource bars then it turns red. This means you're
using more than you
                   make, this is why you get the messages about low resources.
Resource bars can be
                   raised by building new facilities. Be careful though. If you
hold your cursor over one
                   of the resource bars for a few seconds a little information
in a box pops up. On the
                   bottom it will say how many more tones of the resource can be
made with the
                   making of a new facility. On top there are numbers telling
you how many tons of the
                   resource you are using and how many you are making.

                   When a vehicle (such as the Construction vehicle or sappers
lorry) is building
                   something then how many tons of resources it uses is raised.
This is true for Vehicle
                   Factories, Ship Yards, etc. Units in the sector also use
resources, a different amount
                   for being Idle, Working, Moving, etc. (you can find out this
information by clicking a
                   unit in Unit View and hold the cursor over it for a few
seconds. To find how many
                   tons of resources vehicle factories, etc use click on the
Construction view (middle
                   button) and click the building and hold the cursor over it.
All this is true for the
                   martian game, too (but with different resources,
blood,copper, heavy metals).


                   NOTE: On the Resource view there are buildings under each
resource bar. This
                   indicates how many of those factories, mines, refineries,
etc. are in each sector.

Also note that the Northern territories are relatively barren compared to the
South. The key to the game for
either side is owning the South. Northumberland is annoying to battle for, but
let the Martians own it for a
year if you want the AI to have even a fighting chance at giving you a
challenging game.

Strategy notes from different players:
Here in this section you will find strategy notes from different players, most
of which directly conflict with
each other. There is more than one way to win the game, but central to any
victory is proper resource
management. Any strategy or research limitation can always be compensated for
with adequate numbers,
and the only way to "waste" research is to research items you don't use later
on. Have fun, try different
research paths, experiment. In particular, there's far greater bragging rights
for the WotW player who's
won a game using very improbable combinations of research  rather than just the
conventional "lots of
track layers and rush" path, after all.

Also, keep in mind that it's more efficient to build multiple factors in a
single sector and leaving the
surrounding sectors empty except for resource producers (Coal Mines, Steel
Mills, etc). Many of the
support buildings for the more advanced vehicles take a long time to build;
building just one of them in a
sector with four factories is much better than trying to build four of them in
four different adjacent sectors
with only one factory each. Build these concentrated manufacturing sectors in
the land locked middle
sectors of the North to maximize the number of sectors to draw resources from.

Concentrating a group of unit's fire on one target is good for Humans, but not
so good for Martians, true to
the book. For Humans, much of their strategy is grouping multiple puny guns
together to fire at only one
Martian at a time. They're greatly restricted in movement by the landscape, but
because of their small
stature seldom block each other's shot at those 50 meter tall Martian tripods. 
Martians have little
restriction in movement through the landscape because of their tall walking
tripods, but find it often a
restriction in getting their line of sight weapons to bear --their beam weapons
are easily blocked by the
landscape or any of their own units. Grouping Martians together means much of
their fire power is wasted:
Only the front line of a group has a clear shot to attack with. This
particularly becomes apparent when
attempting to fight street to street and with buildings in the way. Be careful
when laying out beam weapon
defenses also since those in the back will be unable to shoot until the front
line is destroyed. In the book
munitions have a nasty habit of exploding when hit by a heat ray, making things
much tougher for humans.
The default settings have humans more resilient than this to make the game
playable.


Trivia:
The landscapes are actual imports from aerial photos of the UK.

Richard Burton's introduction monologue is taken from the 1978 recording. Nigel
Hawthorne (Madness of
King George III, Demolition Man) was hired by the Rage to do further vocal work.
Doesn't good vocal
acting shine? There is also conjecture that one of the Martian's voices is
played by Paul Darrow. (Avon
from Blake's 7)

Jeff Wayne was in contact throughout the design of the entire game and made sure
the plot lines didn't
conflict with his original work. He even composed new music just for the game.

It is rumored that the game was fixed on a release coinciding with the 100
anniversary of the publishing of
H.G.Well's original book in 1898. Despite the December 1998 copyright, most
people didn't see it until
1999, and probably didn't care.

Rage started the project back in 1995, before 3D accelerator cards hit the
market. The designer notes with
regret he'd have liked to have included graphics accelerator support if he could
do it over again.

There is a strategy guide available --$15 from Amazon currently. I found it
rather useful and better than the
average strategy guide, but the author advocates a bit conservative of a game.
He probably used a much
more aggressively tweaked beta-version. It certainly spells out the armor,
attack strength and range (in
pixels) explicitly for every unit.

No patch is forthcoming. The dev team has broken up and is on to other projects.
Rage Software still
continues, but GT Interactive (who bought the game from Rage) logged a $50
million loss for 1998 and is
currently looking for a buyer.

Yes, Human Farms and Blood are part of the original book by Wells. The Martians
have evolved to no
longer needing digestion organs like stomachs or intestines to turn food into
blood, they just drink blood
directly and use the saved space in their bodies for more brains. Mankind
strongly resembles a blood host
animal on Mars, which is why the Earth looks so good -lot's of food. The
Martians plan to eventually set
up something like chicken coops to grow men in for food.

Fighting Machines, Handling Machines and Digging Machines are all vehicle names
original to the book.
Likewise the Red Weed and the Black Dust.

In the book's end when the invasion of Earth doesn't go so well, the Martians
may have attempted to
colonize Venus.

Fans of the game may also want to scan the web for "Space:1889".

Patch:
There is no patch. The game works out of the box.

Known Bugs and workarounds:

See also GT's documented bugs for the game at
http://www.gtisonline.com/pc/waroftheworlds.html

Delay changing maps: (see also Cheats:Registry)

The delay is from loading authentic geographical maps from Britain -these things
are huge. Unfortunately
this has been unnecessarily lengthened by the programmers (who developed on a
very high level system
and didn't notice) to force you to see the in-between map for some amount of
time. You can either click the
left button each time, or you can hack the registry to set the delay in changing
maps to 0, eliminating all
unnecessary delays (this is very trivial to do -see Cheat:Registry section).
Some people have also used
software utilities to move this down.

Bill notes:

     I have done 2 things on my system. I have
                   edited the Registry for the "Briefing" and Debriefing" delay
entries down to 0. I
                   forget the exact location, but if you are familiar with
editing the registry you should
                   be able to find them. If you are not familiar with editing
the registry you perhaps
                   should not mess with it. The second thing I did was buy a
product called Vramdir
                   ($10) which I used to put the games harddrive directory into
system RAM. I also
                   put my swapfile into system RAM with Vramdir. My lag time is
down to about 4 or 5
                   seconds going to the BattleMap and about 1 second going to
the WarMap. But, I
                   also have a PII-450 with 128 meg of RAM.

   I put C:\Program Files\Jeff
                   Wayne's The War of the Worlds in Vramdir. I also partitioned
my harddrive into
                   logical drives and identified one (D: in my case) to be the
WIN95(8) swapfile and
                   then put the D: drive in Vramdir. Also, don't forget that
Vramdir only works for 30
                   minutes after startup in the free download version. (So you
may want to reboot your system
                   fresh once you figure it out to see if it actually improves
performance for you.)

Note you can also reduce visits to sectors by filling the building queue with
several buildings to be
constructed and laying their foundations all at once. If you forget which
resources are in a given sector, it's
still usually faster to lay them out while on the screen and delete them later
on (if necessary) from the
WarMap than it is to go see-saw back and forth several times between maps.

I too have noticed some faster response from using Vramdir on my system. Well
worth downloading.


Stalemate forcing a withdrawal:
Occasionally a stalemate will happen where the humans are unable to destroy the
remaining martian
buildings in a sector because of movement limitations. You are then forced to
self-destruct your own
buildings or retreat before you can leave the screen. You can also use the
cheats to remedy the problem by
destroying the other side, if you wish.

Battleships are over-eager:
Settling a ship to attack land based units will rarely result in the ship
jumping the beach and damaging
itself. This was intentional by the designers as a hamper to the human side.
Don't ask your ships to fire too
deep inland -they'll gladly suicide to get the shot off if that's what you need,
but it's a waste. Use mortar
bikes to scout out units and then retreat into the battleship's firing range
instead. Building higher level ships
with farther gun ranges makes this less likely to happen, BTW.

Land vehicles do a lemming and drown themselves.
Likewise, tell your ground units to go drown in the sea or a river and sometimes
(randomly) they'll stupidly
follow. Don't do this -although rarely the Martians are smart enough to blow up
the bridges and you have
no choice. One player has reported a very rare luring of a martian unit to
charge off a cliff and into the sea
when attacking with submarines, destroying it.

Bermuda Triangle:
Some players report that storming out with a full fleet of five ships will
sometimes end up with some
becoming lost at sea when they harbor.

   Scott Hunter adds:
   As for the Bermuda Triangle bug, yea, I've experienced that many
   times. It's wholly dependant on the map into which you move forces/find
   forces participating in combat (i.e. the territory which you are defending):
   if the available 'legal' ocean space is too small to accommodate the naval
   vessels you have in the strike force, the program will delete those forces.
   The computer must calculate an initial starting position for every unit, and
   failure to find accommodating space forces the computer to remedy the
   situation. Poof. No more massive armada. And the computer`s idea of "enough
   physical space" is far less frugal than any arrangement of space we players
   could devise. You have to be careful.

Running out of memory calculating 3-D graphics:
All units are rendered in 3-D without an accelerator, so having tons of units on
the screen (Weenie-
swarming is a common tactic for some) with lots more buildings can cause the
game to boot back to
Windows as it runs out of memory.

1) Shut down all other processes before launching the game to free up memory.
2) Buy a monster system. Top grade system users never see this problem at all
-particularly users with
lots of L2 cpu cache (also known as SRAM, as opposed to ordinary DRAM)
3) Reduce your resolution and turn off  all fancy graphics like lighting 
effects before that giant 100+ unit
battle.
4) Turn off drawing of all non-combat units with Unit View mode. (F1)
5) Try turning on the Reaper in the registry. (Does not work for all systems)
6) Add more memory! The recommended minimum is 32 MB and 64 MB is suggested!
Sure, I played the
game on a 16 MB system too, but I wasn't surprised when I got problems as a
result. Now that I've
upgraded my 16M system to 64M, the chugging has disappeared and only main delay
is getting the
CD-ROM up to speed when changing music tracks. What a difference! I no longer
need to use
VRAMDIR with 64M -Win '98 does a good enough job on its own.

Check out http://www.vikingcomponents.com if you're interested in upgrading your
memory -they
seem to have every system available listed in their database. They also have an
excellent "Support"
section that consists of Adobe script sheets showing you how to do the upgrade
yourself (with photos).
Check out the sheet first and see if you feel comfortable following the
directions. I found a good price
on Viking's upgrade kit at http://www.insight.com YMMV ("Your mileage may
vary.")

Remember! Always ground yourself before working with static sensitive equipment
(like memory).
Any wire that runs 10 feet through the ground is a good ground. For most people
this means touching a
cold water pipe inlet under the bathroom sink, since these are all metal and
eventually run through the
ground. The goal is to discharge any static electricity your body may have
before you destroy the chips
by shock them.

Also note that attacking in a less cluttered corner of the battle map and
clearing units in that area first will
reduce the total number of units to render for that sector. Lure all enemy
vehicles to their deaths before
tackling the fences, defensive guns and buildings to reduce the number of
graphics on the screen -a smart
tactical move anyway.

London is the most graphically intensive sector. Wareman noted:

    I've encountered the London crash "bug" when playing on my AMD K6 machine,
but I
                   haven't seen it on my Pentium II. Perhaps that could be a
cause. In any case, I was
                   able to still enter the London battle on the AMD K6 by going
into options and turning
                   off many of the graphic options (shadows, lighting, and
shading, and maybe
                   cranking it down to 8-bit sound). London is the most complex
map in the game and
                   thus needs quite a bit of 'oomph' to make it into memory. I
hope that helps you.

Doesn't work with NT because no ActiveX 6.x for NT yet:
NT 4.0 with service pack 5 is rumored to solve most compatibility issues with
Xactive 6.x, but I can't
confirm. It's at:
http://www.microsoft.com/ntserver/nts/downloads/recommended/sp5/

       Papyrus said:
       I'm not a developer, but NT 4.0 with Service Pack 5.0 does support
DirectX 6.x, but
       I don't know how well. So *theoretically* any win32 game w/ DX5,6
requirements should work.
       NT 4.0 SP3 and SP4 are DirectX 3 compatible, I say compatible because not
all of DX 3.x
       components are employed, for example joystick ...

Can't move ironclads up left side of map from the bottom shipyard (as Human):
Not a software bug. You need to build Communication Centers ("CC") all along the
coastal sectors before
ironclads can  move up along them. In cases where there is only a one sector gap
between Communication
Centers you can move in through one CC and move out with the other, but it's a
slow way of moving
because of communication delays; your  ship will come to a stop in the
in-between sector awaiting further
orders until you tell send them on their way again. Far better to just be done
with it and build the CCs
needed. You'll then be able to send the ships up a given coast with just one
command.

Can't move vehicles past the original border:
Again, not a software bug. You can send vehicles only one sector past your
Communication Centers, so if
you want to advance, you'll need to win one of those border sectors and hold
onto it long enough to build a
Communication Center in it. Doing this will allow you to advance your border and
send vehicles deeper
into enemy territory. Needless to say, losing your own Communication Center does
the opposite.

 It is not enough to defeat the enemy in combat. You also have to construct
buildings (like CCs) to allow
you to control a sector and actually use it. Try reading the WotW Tutorial to
get a feel for how the game is
played.

I keep building resources but I'm still running out!
Not a bug, just not understanding the game. Most sectors are only good for one
or two resources -building
Coal Mines in a sector that has zero coal is stupid. You also get dimishing
returns with each further
resource you build, so building a Coal Mine that will only give you 2 for that
sector is also a waste of time.
Concentrate on the sectors rich in what you need and let the rail lines move it
to where it's needed for you.

Also, don't stock pile vehicles in the back sectors. They suck off resources
even when idle, and they're
going to do the same amount of damage to the enemy no matter when you engage
(provided the enemy
doesn't get a chance to repair in-between), so it's more efficient to move
vehicles into combat quickly
rather than wait.

Why do my ironclads rush out to close with the Martians rather than stay in the
deep water where they're
safe?
You need to research level 2 ironclads to get a farther firing range that will
allow them to safely bombard
from the deep waters where Martians can't tread. Here's the ranges from the
player's guide:

Formidable Class Ironclad - 1800 pixels
Warrior Class Ironclad - 2400 pixels
Invincible Class Ironclad - 3000 pixels

Cheats:

youlikeit        100 % efficiency
icomeback     Display all research
atchooo          Clear all Martians
punyhumans  Clear all humans


Making snapshot saves of games:
You can save games by making copies of the game slot files in the
C:/ProgramFiles/ Jeff Wayne's War of
the Worlds/Saved Games directory. Human.001 is the game in slot 1, for instance;
it ignores other file
names that it doesn't recognize as being gameslots saves in the same directory,
so I'll exit the game and
copy Human.001 to have a letter in front of it ie. aHuman.001, bHuman.001+ To
restore I just copy
whatever version I want to restore to replace the current Human.001 and I'm on
my way.

This works for all five slot numbers on both sides.

Making screenshots of the game:
In Windows, use the Print Screen key and the current screen will be saved to the
clipboard, thanks to
Windows. You can then save it as a file for later loading.  (Not really a cheat,
but people keep asking)

Switching sides, spying:
Under the C:/Program Files/Jeff Wayne's War of the Worlds/SavedGames directory,
Human.001+
Human.005 are the games played as Human that have been saved in those game
slots, and likewise there
are Martian.001 through Martian.005 for games played from the Martian side. You
can copy games from
the Human file names to names for slots on the Martian side and then look at the
Martian side with the
Martian CD. To do this take a game played in slot 1 as Human.001 and copy  it to
Martian.001 (you may
have to move your current martian.001). Now start the game from the Martian CD
as a Martian. You
should see the same campaign title you had for the Human game in the resume
campaigns section. Resume
this game, and now you're playing the Martian side of your game. You'll be able
to see  where all Martian
units really are, what research it's doing, etc -you can also continue play from
there with the AI filling in
for the side you just left. For a real challenge, try copying a savefile from
when you've almost won and
attempt for an extreme comeback playing from the other side.

NOTE: The AI only decides what units to build when a factory empties itself; if
all the factories are set to
build a unit until infinity, it will never be able to change it. Empty all your
factory queues to 1 unit left
being built or the AI won't have much to do.

Predicting the Martian pod drop pattern:

     The pod landing sequence is fixed at the beginning before you
                   advance a single minute. This is useful if you hate not
knowing how the pods will
                   drop/want to get an advantageous pod drop pattern. Start a
new game, make a
                   backup of the file in that slot before advancing the time a
single minute,
                   then fast forward the date through the invasion to
                   see how it happens without wasting time moving units or
anything. If you like it,
                   copy back your saved version into that slot and play it out
for real --the pod drops
                   will repeat in the same pattern you saw before. If not,
discard the version and fast
                   forward newly made versions until you find one worth playing
out.

Does the AI cheat?
It doesn't build the support buildings needed for a factory to produce a given
unit, it only has to research
the unit itself.

It also knows the strength of adjoining sectors at all times (it uses this to
plan invasions). It may or may not
only know the vehicle strength of a sector -some people have conjectured it
ignores the defensive
implements like fences and fixed guns when deciding to invade. In RTS combat
it's just as blind as you are,
if not more so. As a Martian, attacking at night generally means you can waltz
right in and clobber the
Humans before they can find you.

What are some of the more obscure units? Go ahead, spoil it for me.
This is all very well covered in the Players guide, but here goes:
Earth: Submersibles hide underwater where heat rays can't reach. Drills are
straight out of Jules Verne's
"Journey to the Center of the Earth" with cannons mounted on the sides, able to
submerge safe
underground and rise just in time to get their shots off.  Things get really
bizarre when these are in the
game.

Martians: Drones are kamikaze one shot missiles that do 400 damage to their
target when they hit. They're
excellent for surprise attacks against command centers. The Sensors allow you to
see further into the fog of
war than the enemy, really nice when attacking at night. They also allow you to
see mines by displaying
them on the main map. There's these glue extruding vehicles that freeze enemies
into place, helpless, while
other units can shoot them. Finally there's a mind control vehicle that will
inspire fear, freeze and lunacy in
the enemy, depending on how far you've researched.  The Tempest is just meaner
and more dangerous than
the fighting machine, but does not have multiple vehicles to a unit.


Registry:
	   Dave and Charlie, when they wrote the code, thankfully put a lot of values
into the registry,
mostly so they could easily tweak the code during the game balance phase later.
People have discovered the
scores of folders they've left of changeable values and have been changing them
ever since for custom
games. Most importantly, everyone uses the registry to eliminate any unnecessary
delays in changing maps
by setting the "delay" value both in the brief and debrief registry folders to
zero -this is very easy to do.


                   For those few not in the know of all things Windows (like
me), from the start button
                   bring up "Run". In the pop-up that occurs type "regedit" to
get the registry.

                   You'll see a list of folders. Open the folders along this
path:
                   HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Rage\Jeff Wayne's 'The War of the
                   Worlds'\1.00.000. You too can now share in the fun --Rage put
in a lot of
                   environmental variables into the registry that you can
modify. See
                   http://members.tripod.com/~fbjor/games/wowreg.htm   for an
ongoing list.

                   Exit and re-start WotW to make the values take effect, feel
free to change an application's
                   values in the registry because if you really screw it up you
can always reinstall it again.
                   Don't muck with your OS's values, however --you can easily
end up needing to
                   make a boot disk, etc. (See:
http://www.everythingcomputers.com)

To reduce your delay changing maps go into the folder "Briefing". You'll see
some variables with their
values appear in the right side of regedit, including Delay. Right click on the
icon for the variable Delay
and a pop-up appears asking you for a new value. Enter '0'.  Do the same for the
folder "Debriefing" which
also has a value Delay. This will reduce the delay on most systems, but not
eliminate it altogether. See also
'Known bugs: Changing maps delay'.

An ongoing list of registry values for WotW and what they mean is being kept at:
http://members.tripod.com/~fbjor/games/wowreg.htm   by fbjor.


I've played the game a lot of times and it's easy now. How can I make it more
difficult?

1) Stop building defenses with your sappers/diggers and only fight with your
vehicles.

2) Build a very good foundation for the AI by building lots of resources, etc,
then switch sides for a
comeback. (see Cheats section)

 I'd like to collect some of these scenarios and post them to the FAQ site for
people to download -
hopefully people can build some massively fortified defensive structures and be
a bit tricky with their
sector layouts to make it interesting.

 3) Change these values in WotW's Tweaks folder in the registry:
AI Retain Force: 0.05 				(default 0.2000000)
AI Outnumber Force: 1.500000 			(default 1.1)
AI strength table Martian Multiplier: 9.000000 	(default 3.000000)
AI strength table Human Multiplier: 4.000000 	(default 1.000000)

AI Outnumber force is the ratio to have in attack force before entering it. So
1.1 means "have 110% of a
sectors strength before entering it. This is the strength numbers including
multipliers. I find  a raw force of
1.5 works best against my style of playing  -you want the AI to enter a sector
with enough force to finish
the job. Adjust to taste.

AI retain force is the amount of force to retain in a sector when attacking. The
default of 0.2 means after
you get enough force to attack, leave 20% of it behind! No good. Put all AI
forces into a frontal assault.

AI strength table multipliers: When the computer plays these sides, make them
this much stronger. So
while the Martians are by default 3x as strong as the humans, we're now making
the AI 9 times as strong.

4) Since the humans rely on swarming with their numbers, you can also play with
setting these values when
playing human:
Max Boats in Sector:2      (or even 1 if you don't use submarines)
Max units in sector: 10     (or even try 7)

(Scott Hunter - shunter@cableregina.com) adds : A Right Honourable Challenge

If after coming to grips with the mechanics & rules you find the going too easy
in War Of The
Worlds, try this maneuver.  Throughout your game, during combat, select a single
group and right-click &
hold to bring up the behaviour/special abilities menu, find the Roam & Attack
command, and select it (pass
the cursor over it and release). Do this for each group you have on the
BattleMap until all are roaming
about, attacking the enemy with all the skill of... the enemy.

You mustn`t do this with all of your combat groups selected at once, lest they
*all* acquire the
same target - we want a real firefight, a pitched melee to ensue. Each group
will wander off in their own
peculiar direction at their own intervals (as you command them), engaging the
computer enemy on a more
equal footing given the few A.I. detriments inherent in the game.

	Poof: combat Chaos.

	Besides, this way Human defenses may be brought to bear in a fair and balanced
manner against
real live players. Again, both sides are now operating under the same tactical
intellect.

	Will this work very well for human Human players and their Ironclads? Probably
not, but you can
control those directly anyway. (You know you want to.) Any special abilities
will have to be manually
administered, so player tactical interaction still figures into the equation.
Abide by the combat results and
play it out. As long as you maintain your discipline and do not interfere
otherwise, you should have loads
of fun. Try it!

Has anyone got the multiplayer options in the registry to work?
Some, but not fully -we're still learning which registry entries are needed. As
we progress I'm including
how in this FAQ. Currently some people playing over the internet have said that
multiplayer worked but
that the game views got out of sync after a while with just  "Enable Network
Version" turned on.  It's quite
possible that sync problems can only be avoided by modem and serial line play,
the internet being currently
too lagged to allow decent play.

Other things that may need to be changed:

In networking:
Messages Guaranteed: Set to 1 to stop out of sync problems?
I am Human: Enable for Human player, or both players since they're human?
Session Name: Change to a name that matches the game slot title ie. "War of the
Worlds - "?

In 1.00.00
Game Frequency: default 30, may need to be set lower depending on network lag.

In System
Game max time (ms): default 25 Again, may need to set higher depending on lag.
Game min time (ms): default 20

More data from an early beta review at
http://www.gamecenter.com/Peeks/Warworlds/warworlds4.html

     Players looking for all-out slugfests between a lot of players on the
Internet
                   might be disappointed with The War of the Worlds. At the
moment, plans are in
                   place to only allow two players to compete head-to-head.

   "We know we're going to get questioned on this a lot, but for right now, the
                   focus on this title is on the single-player portion of the
game," says Lewis. "The
                   real-time portion of the game is so tightly interwoven into
the strategic game
                   that it shatters the experience to separate them, and the
game is being
                   designed and balanced for two forces, the humans and the
Martians." He adds,
                   "That doesn't mean that our plans are set in stone, but these
are our priorities
                   for right now."

More info:

Setting to "1" the "Enable network option" entry in the 1.00.00 registry gives
                  some partially working code:

                  You'll now see a "Network campaign" option in the menu and the
normal game
                  is now called "Single player campaign".

                  If you're playing Human you get choose to either start a new
network
                  campaign or load a saved network campaign from the single
player slots you
                  had before. You then will be in receive mode. If you're
Martian you are
                  prompted for the method to connect to the other player.
Unfortunately I
                  don't have a second system to check out how well any of this
works beyond
                  this.

                  Also note that playing single player campaigns with the
multiplayer registry
                  entry on will not use the "SaveGame" directory, but will
instead save the
                  game as Human.000 (or Martian.000) in the main game directory
path. Since
                  these are used as the initial game files for the
non-multiplayer game, be sure
                  to back sure to make copies of Human.000 and Martian.000 into
a safe
                  directory before playing with this! (Worst case though, you
can always
                  re-install the game to restore these, or just copy them
directly over from the
                  top level of the game CD.)

Also, some games (like Total Annihilation: Kingdoms) are now only allowing
internet play across direct
TCP/IP connections in an attempt to avoid lag. Someone out there may want to try
this.

Has anyone succeeded  playing Martians vs. Martians or Humans Vs Humans
muli-player?
Not yet. Someone suggested the "I am Human" registry entry is there to allow
this. It's a possibility.

Internet sites of interest:
http://www/ezsf.net/pierce/wotw                              where to find
updates to this FAQ
http://www.gonegold.com/gguide/wotw.shtml         has links to all reviews
http://forums.gtgames.com/wow/  		           is a forum devoted to JWWotWs
http://members.tripod.com/~fbjor/games/wow.htm  is another page devoted to WotW
http://members.aol.com/skyyeyes/wow.txt       the original H.G. Wells novel,
thanks to Project Gutenberg
http://www.war-of-the-worlds.org/                           a fan site for all
things WotW

Appendix I: Current Questions
A hit list of questions I want the answers to!

Is it possible to reset the date in game files, and how?
How to retrigger the pod drops into a saved game for a second invasion.
How to legthen the pod invasion period of the game to give more pod drops to the
Martians.
How to get a successful two player game going?
Is it possible to play Martian vs Martian or Human vs Human?
Which way to tweak the registry research variables to speed up/slow down the
research rates, for both
player and the AI.


Appendix II: Known registry effects

Thanks to pearly@spencer-98.freeserve.co.uk, we now know that armour multipliers
are used during actual
building and vehicle creation. So if you up these values in the middle of a
game, objects built before your
change will all suddenly start smoking and appear damaged. Newly created objects
will be okay, however.

EnhancedRayFocusMechanismMultiplier
TightBeamMultiplier
SecondaryBeamAmplifiersMultiplier
    Modifying these upwards will allow the martians to fire over a farther
distance, but will also increase the
objecting finding load on the targetting algs (they have to search a larger
area). Pushing them to the point
where the Martians were able to fire across a whole map crashed the game on for
pearly.

                  AI Eff Threshold: Minimum efficency threshold the AI will
allow. Unfortunately
                  this is overrulled to build Command Centers (and Power
Stations for Martians), as
                  well as by the Frontline Attractors. The AI is not smart
enough to move resource
                  guzzling vehicles out of a sector where construction is
proceeding at 5%,
                  unfortuantely.

                  AI Frontline Attractor: While this does attract units to move
twords the front
                  line, I have yet to set this high enough to prevent the AI
from having one
                  vehicle per back sector, but it generally makes units above
the one per sector
                  minimum move forward to the lines. This may result in
starvation of resources on
                  your front, however.

                  AI Frontline Attractor for Defence: I believe this attracts
sappers/building
                  machines to be more likely to build defenses twords the front
line, but has made
                  little difference so far in observation. This may be because
of resource
                  starvation on the front.

                  AI Outnumber force is the ratio to have in attack force before
entering it. So 1.1
                  means "have 110% of a sectors strength before entering it.
This is the strength
                  numbers including multipliers. I find a raw force of 1.5 works
best against my
                  style of playing -you want the AI to enter a sector with
enough force to finish
                  the job. Adjust to taste.

                  AI retain force is the amount of force to retain in a sector
when attacking. The
                  default of 0.2 means after you get enough force to attack,
leave 20% of it
                  behind! No good. Put all AI forces into a frontal assault.

                  AI strength table Martian Multiplier: (default 3)
                  AI strength table Human Multiplier; (default 1)
                  When the computer plays a side, make the units this much
stronger. So while
                  the Martians are by default 3x as strong as the humans, a more
difficult game is
                  with the AI 9x as strong.

                  AI Invasion Threshold PC: (default 150) Number of days to wait
after the initial
                  Martian pod drop before starting the invasion to the South.
This is actually an
                  important period where the Martian AI sets up infrastructure
(like resource
                  factories) that it otherwise wouldn't get to do. Possibly only
produces
                  construction and builder machines during this phase, and
shifts to scout and
                  fighting machines afterwards, haven't been able to confirm.
Reduce this if you
                  don't like the safe haven of the first year knowing they won't
attack when
                  playing Human.

wjschneider@hotmail.com added:

                  Another item you can change in Debug is "Edit Functionality".
When this is on
                  you can click on an enemy vehicle (either side) and direct its
actions (including
                  self destruct). You can blow up bridges and buildings too. I
have noticed though
                  if I am playing with the cheat for all research on, when I try
to blow up a bridge
                  the game boots out to windows.