Author Topic: Returning to Outpost 1.5  (Read 11953 times)

Offline Terrapin

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Returning to Outpost 1.5
« on: July 20, 2016, 09:41:45 PM »
Hello Everyone

A couple thoughts on returning to this little treasure. Outpost 1 is not self explanatory so thanks to the many contributors here.

Some very helpful threads:

Strategy Notes http://forum.outpost2.net/index.php/topic,4105.0.html
Nanotech Family Tree http://forum.outpost2.net/index.php/topic,3486.0.html
How to Start a Secondary Colony http://forum.outpost2.net/index.php/topic,4143.0.html

First things first, getting the game running. My copy of Outpost was entombed in a blue CD I created in the 90s like some ancient manuscript containing forgotten lore. Thankfully it still worked. It's an iso image so I copy all of the files into my Dosbox folder, mount it, and run Windows 3.1, which works like a dream in Dosbox, but the setup didn't transfer files into the new directory so I had to copy and paste everything. I'm not a techie so learning how to do all this was a painful effort. Anyway, after I did that all of the animations and sounds popped up and I felt like I was reliving my childhood.

This game is very sensitive to initial conditions, i.e. it's game over if you don't make the right initial steps, so thanks for the above links for getting me started. Forgetting how to play was a problem, haha, but after replaying a few times I really got the hang of it. Now that I've had a bit of experience I can give a few helpful hints in the guide below:

There seems to be four distinct phases of the game - preparation, opening, midgame, and endgame. Start out on beginning difficulty for the first few attempts. Easy mode is a actually difficult without a little experience in resource management, and for heaven's sake do not turn off automatic trucking - you will regret it. The game is notoriously buggy, e.g. orders will disappear, but the 1.5 version doesn't seem to be as bad as the initial release was reported to be. Outpost is an enjoyable game even though it is quite dated, only because of the theme and it features a realistic simulation of problems one might encounter actually colonizing another world. It's also challenging to manage the resources and a good pace of construction.

In the beginning you must select which star system to travel to and pack for the journey. A few of them do not have any suitable planets. Now I remember that the Sun is a G-type star, so I settled on one (82 eridani I think). Now how does one pack for moving to a new planet? Three groups of colonists (labor shortage is a pain), a reactor (it's ok for beginner/easy) and the fusion resources build up in your tanks anyway, a comm satellite so you don't have to build towers, interstellar probe, geological probe for mine sites. It doesn't seem to matter how much food you pack; you will run out as soon as you hit the ground. Follow the sequence to launch and land your probes and colony. Once you arrive at the planet you must select a site. The ideal site has lots of flat land in the middle so the dozers don't take forever, and so all of the mines are close to the smelter. Simply plant the seed colony pod on the square where you want to start.

As soon as your seed colony lands you must set about creating your colony. Layout must be done methodically because like I said the initial conditions affect the pace of the game to follow and your ultimate success in building a sustainable colony. If not done correctly you will end up in a stalemate or everyone will die. Clearing space, digging a shaft, and mining are the first things you are able to do. If you selected flat ground, the dozers only take one turn. Now start connecting tubes radiating out from the seed pod. Buildings must be connected to the tubes, which must directly connect to every other building. I chose parallel lines of tubes double spaced, but your layout choice is your own choice. Your colonists need to breathe and eat so the CHAP and two agridomes must go up if you don't want everyone to keel over and kick the bucket. Two or three mines is enough in the beginning, but build two storage tanks at first so the smelters have somewhere to put the refined minerals. Build more later. Getting extra robots in your toolkit is most useful, so you will need a warehouse and robot command. Set the seed factory to make dozers, and later, extra miners and diggers. Once underground, doze and build residences so your morale doesn't tank. Residences will also produce babies. Don't build too many too quickly. Some useful support buildings are recreation and police so the residencies don't turn into red light districts. It also helps to keep up morale to avoid that fate. Build a SPEW so you can take advantage of recycling and you can use the MPG stored in them as resources. Check the command center and population breakdown to make sure you have enough unemployed workers, and check the smelter and storage tanks to make sure you have resources flowing, before expanding your base. Though the accounts of everything seem a little buggy.

Once everything is setup you are in the midgame. The object of the midgame is to achieve a sustainable colony and then build laboratories and research your way to an Outpost utopia. Steadily expand your residencies so your occupancy stays under 300%, build more robot command, agridome, factories, mines, and storage tanks as needed. Only build what you need. This is an outpost after all and resources are very limited. If you overextend yourself, buildings will cease to function, you will not be able to build, and you will have to bulldoze to conserve resources. If you maintain a surplus of labor and prec minerals then go ahead and build laboratories. Research will lead to specific building upgrades and improvements. The sequence of research is very important so don't waste time on the incidentals. The first priority with research is to make a mad dash to nanotechnology. Follow the research tree provided in the link above. Once you build a nanotech facility and all of the hot lab research topics are green you have reached valhalla - infinite resources and food. It takes a real master to accomplish this quickly, so be mindful of a few other tasks. Robots don't last forever. Their fuel cells last 200 turns. You can combat this by either continually producing them or researching rebairbots and making fuel cells. The repairbot research upgrade is under computer science>artificial intelligence>robotics 1, and you will also need to research robotics 2 under electrical engineering in physics. Humanoid workers are also a nice touch especially if you are short on adults. The alien virus cure is nice, which you might run into in harder modes and the research tree is under medicine>pharmacology>alien pharmacology. Once those research priorities are taken care of, feel free to upgrade whatever you like. The efficiency studies are nice and will give you new buildings. If you don't get nanotech quickly, then the geology upgrades will help you with mining. Mines only last 100 turns per level, so watch out for the white specks on the minimap. The physics upgrades will lead you to the endgame, the final goal of which is to build a spaceport and leave your colony.

The endgame has one goal - leaving and ending the game. That of course is optional. By 500 turns you should have thousands of colonists, an underground system that is several squares on each side and several levels down. Terraforming doesn't seem to do anything, but it is a nice touch. Building a spaceport will activate the launch button on the AI menu, and doing so will end the game. Or you can continue expanding and building. The last link above is about building a second colony on the site, which I have not been successful with yet.

Anyway, I hope all of this wasn't confusing. I probably forgot a few steps also, which is why I recommend getting help from many sources with this game. Cheers to those who understood and benefited from my little rant, or else to those who came before me and figured this all out.

~Matt

Offline Hooman

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Re: Returning to Outpost 1.5
« Reply #1 on: July 20, 2016, 10:09:53 PM »
Nice write up. And quite extensive too, particularly considering it's only your second post.

Offline leeor_net

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Re: Returning to Outpost 1.5
« Reply #2 on: July 21, 2016, 03:32:02 PM »
Would like to point out again this downloadable package Leviathan and I put together. Already has DOSBox, Windows and Outpost preconfigured: http://forum.outpost2.net/index.php/topic,5788.0.html

Anyway, beyond that, nice writeup!

Offline MultiSteveB

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Re: Returning to Outpost 1.5
« Reply #3 on: November 30, 2021, 06:27:44 PM »
Hello, Outpost-ians.  I wanted to try and get Outpost (the first one... 1.5?) to run on my Win10 PC.  I have been missing the game for a while now.  Has there been any success in getting a DOSBox configuration and ISO file for the CD version to work?

I'm not a complete newb when it comes to command line work, though I might be a little rusty or unfamiliar with anything too esoteric.  :D

Offline MultiSteveB

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Re: Returning to Outpost 1.5
« Reply #4 on: November 30, 2021, 06:28:36 PM »
Would like to point out again this downloadable package Leviathan and I put together. Already has DOSBox, Windows and Outpost preconfigured: http://forum.outpost2.net/index.php/topic,5788.0.html

Anyway, beyond that, nice writeup!

Unfortunately, that link seems to be broken now.  :-/

Offline leeor_net

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Re: Returning to Outpost 1.5
« Reply #5 on: December 07, 2021, 10:01:07 PM »
Yeah, we had to take it down after Activision started showing some interest in the property with the release of OP2 on GoG. We opted to play it safe.

That stated, to get it to run you'll need DOSBox and a copy of Win3.1 or Win3.11. These are easily found online though for the sake of preserving this site I won't provide direct links. Google search will yield good results.

You can get the DOSBox config that I used for the emulation package on the OP1 page here: https://outpost2.net/outpost1.html

There are a number of places you can find the ISO for the game. Again, google will yield good results.

Once you have all of those, you can run DOSBox, install Windows and a 256 SuperVGA driver (S3 drivers seem to work well for this with minimal need for troubleshooting), mount the ISO as your optical drive and run the installer. You can use a front-end like D-Fend to help you with all of this as well.

Hope this helps!

Offline Oldtimer6360

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Re: Returning to Outpost 1.5
« Reply #6 on: August 21, 2023, 10:08:45 AM »
I am a long time player of Outpost (off and on) since the first game came out in the 90s. I just have a few comments.
In addition to the good comments about the game in the main post, I have found a few things that may be of interest to all.
1) You don't need Windows 3.11 to play this game. Win 8.1 32 bit will work just fine. The issue is "32 bit", not really the OS in general, I believe. This old game doesn't play on 64 bit OSs without an emulator.
I've tried to make those work, but the instructions provided are poor at best, and make assumptions about the user's knowledge that are unwarranted, so it's like trying to learn Calculus II with some modern textbooks that assume you know the details and make logical leaps and you go "huh?". Yeah.
My suggestion is to get Win 8.1 instead of bothering with the ancient 3.11. I think it is a free download or very cheap. It is a pain to get set up though, especially if you're converting from Win 10.
2) For this game to work it's best, you have to run the Patch using Dosbox so that it can repair the bad software in the original game.
However, it still won't fix some things, such as the Monorail. If you attempt to set up a monorail, it will IMMEDIATELY crash the game. I've tried it twice and it crashed both times.
However, the patch does make the game much more playable. I've noticed that the other colony won't surrender as quickly, and I'm able to begin using the Trade feature.
3) You can play the game without the 1.5 patch; however it will be missing a lot of small things.
It is clear that this game COULD have been much bigger and better; and still could be with a newer engine that works with modern OSs. However, I'm not a fan of Outpost 2. I have tried to play it several times, and I just can't enjoy it. It isn't the same game and it isn't better IMHO.
4) For those who use Win 8.1 or older OSs, it should go without saying that those OSs aren't supported by anyone anymore, except for a very few. You can buy AVG antivirus and VPN that will work with 8.1; but the browsers aren't supporting it anymore, especially the OSs older than Win 8.1. So you are playing with fire by going on the internet with these OSs, even if you have AVG to help out. I can't say how good AVG antivirus is; but it's better than nothing. In any case, I just go to the website where I can download Outpost 1.5, get it, and then get off the internet ASAP! It's just too dangerous to stay on very long. In fact, the hackers are constantly (literally) pinging the internet to see which computers are using old OSs. And when they find one, they attack it automatically and set up your computer as one of their millions of BOT machines that they use to attack other machines with DOS (denial of service) attacks.
So my advice is if you must get on the internet, make it brief; and get off asap. Don't use your old game machine as your primary computer. We live in a very dangerous world. Best to you all.
« Last Edit: August 21, 2023, 10:44:31 AM by Oldtimer6360 »