Red Conquest: In-Depth Interface Tutorial

Introduction

Hello and welcome to my In-Depth Interface Tutorial for Red Conquest. This tutorial is split into multiple posts, each representing their own area in the menu. When I'm done with this, I will post a Table of Contents here in the first post.

So, after I've heard so many people complain about the game's interface because they seem to have problems with it, I thought "I should make a tutorial that describes really EVERYTHING in the in-game interface".

This tutorial focuses on the interface you will use when you are IN A MATCH! It won't tell you what happens when you click on "Campaign" in the main menu, because THIS should be obvious...

I will not only show you WHAT the different options do, but also HOW to use them effectively.

Also note that I will make up some names for some functions or parts of the Interface when they aren't named.

So, here we go...

MAP OVERVIEW

Just after starting a (Campaign/Challenge/Multiplayer/whatever) match, you will be confronted with a map overview. It shows the units you have at the beginning and their positioning, as well as asteroid fields and resource areas. If the "No Fog of War" option is activated, you will also see the enemy's units.
Sometimes the mission objectives are also shown.


Simply tap once (or, if the objectives are shown, twice) to start the match.

MAIN INTERFACE


When you haven't opened any other sub menus, you will see this interface.
The interface is separated into two parts:
1. The Information part (all panels/buttons on top of the screen)
2. The Control part (bottom of the screen)

(Note: The main interface changes it's color depending on whether you play Red or Blue! The sub menus don't do that)

There is a "third part", which is basically the rest of the screen. tap a unit to bring up the unit sub menu.

The Information part


This part doesn't change any button functions in sub menus. It consists of three panels:
Newest events
The "button" on the left hand side. Touch it (and hold down) to bring up the information about the newest events. There are three event-types:
1. Unit built: One of your producers has produced a unit. Move your finger onto a "Unit built" icon and release, then the unit menu for the unit will open.
2. Enemy seen: When an enemy comes into the sight range of your units (or an enemy units is produced in No-Fog matches) it will show some kind of angry spiky face. Release finger on it to go to the location where the enemy has been seen.
3. Combat: Appears when one of your units starts fighting an enemy. Release finger on it to go to the location where the fight happened.

Zoom
The "button" on the right hand side. It shows the zooming level you are using at the moment. You can zoom in and out by either using pinch gestures, or you can hold your finger down on the zoom button, which will then show a slider where you can adjust the zoom level.

Tribe Status(name made up)
In the middle there is a small bar. On the right side of the bar there is your unit population cap (some people call this the "popcap"). It shows two numbers formatted as "XX/YY", XX standing for the food your units are already using, and YY standing for the maximum food you can use.
On the left side of the tribe status bar there is the Resource Panel. It is shown in the format "XXXXXXX +/-YYYY", X tells you how many resources you have and Y tells you how many you are collecting / using right now.
(Note: The developer is thinking about splitting the +Y and -Y into two parts, this would prevent irritations caused by equal income and usage which might look like a frozen resource panel)

 

THE CONTROL PART


The Control part consists of five buttons: (from left to right)
1. Multimove: Hold finger on it and it shows "Squad Multimove" and "Fighter Multimove"

2. Select: Press a finger onto it, it will show "Ranged Select", "Manual Select", "Select all"

3. Circle: Shows (clockwise, beginning with circle all button) "Circle All/Builders/Resources/Bases/Enemies/Combatants"

4. Fleet Orders: Shows "Fleet Build Orders", "Fleet All Stop", "Converge Here/On Base/On Planet"

5. Options: Shows "Game Options" and "Mission Parameters"

THE MULTIMOVE MODE


This mode is accessed by clicking on the Multimove button. All Control Part buttons disappear, a "Tick" button named "Confirm" appears. All Units will be surrounded by a circle. Drag this circle to the place you want the unit to go, the unit will follow. This is fully multitouch-enabled, so you can control up to 5 units at once (iDevice hardware limitation ) if you can manage so many fingers at once

The Multimove mode is best used to finely tune the positions of your army. When you have built a strong formation and an enemy tries to split it into two parts, let the formation run against the enemy, he will be pressed back by your force.
When you are out of combat and need to quickly tell your whole army to go from one place to another, the Select Mode may be more useful than this. But the Multimove mode is useful to control a small amount of units.

FIGHTER MULTIMOVE:
This is a special form of multimove. You can activate it by either releasing the finger on the "Fighter Multimove" button in the main interface or pressing the "Escort Management" button in the Unit Menu.

In fighter multimove, draw a line between the source unit to the target unit. ONE escort is transferred from source to target.

Tips:
1. You can't transport Escorts between two ships if they are too far away from each other. If possible, you can transport the Escorts by using another unit as a kind of "bridge". Simply transport some units from source to bridge, then from bridge to target. This may be very useful in battle!
2. Always keep your front units filled with escorts. They add both ATTACK and DEFENSE bonus to the unit. This allows the front units to kill the enemies faster AND to survive the incoming enemy waves longer.
3. In order to accomplish 2., it is best to always have a carrier with your army. The carrier can not only hold lots of Escorts and produce new ones, but it also grants the escorts even more bonus.

WAYPOINT MOVE:

Another multimove-like mode. It can only be activated by pressing "Move Squad" in the unit menu.

The special thing about the waypoint multimove: It only works for ONE unit AT A TIME! You can't multitouch here. Of course this would be nonsense if it hadn't some reason: You can add multiple WAYPOINTS to your unit's movement. To do so, you can drag a new waypoint "out of the unit", or press the "Add waypoint" button at the bottom of the screen. You can have as many waypoints as you like. There also is a "Pause/Continue" Button at the bottom of the screen. It allows you to stop the unit and continue it's journey without having to set new waypoints. When the unit is paused, you are allowed to "Delete all Waypoints", too.

All Multimove modes can be exited by using the "Confirm" Button in the bottom right hand corner (the green tick).
If a squad or waypoint multimove has been opened via a unit menu, there is a red "Return" button in the bottom left hand corner which brings you directly to the unit menu you came from.

 

SELECT MODE


The select mode has it's own sub menu. There are five buttons in this menu: (from left to right)

A. All Stop:
INSTANTLY orders all units in selection range (=> look at Selection Type) to stop moving. Simple.

Tips:
This may only happen vs humans, but it's still useful:
Imagine your enemy throws some combat units at you and then lets them run away. You follow them with lots of units but don't see that his REAL army is just waiting for you to walk into the trap. You now want to stop your units quickly before ordering them to turtle etc? Use this option. You can't be quicker.

B. Selection type:
There are three types: "Ranged Select", "Manual Select" and "Select all". Ranged select shows a circle in the middle of the screen and selects all units in this circle. Manual select lets you add units to the selection by clicking on them (they can be removed by just another click. simple ). Select all selects all your units on the whole map.

Tips:
1. If you want to be quick, NEVER use this menu. In the main menu, when opening the "Select" mode panel it will already show these options. This saves one tap (which can save lifes ).
2. The Ranged Select circle is always the same size of your screen. If you zoom out, you select more units. Use this to save time.
3. If you need to select all combat units on the whole map, don't use Manual select if they are scattered across the map. Rather use Select All and then use filters.

C. Filter:

There are 6 Filter modes: (Beginning with Keep all, clockwise)
"Keep all": This keeps all selected units in selection (so it doesn't do anything, lol use this when you accidentally touched the filter button)
"Only Bases": Removes everything but your bases from selection (I don't know any map where you have more than one base, but I guess there may be some or some may be added in future updates still nice to select your base if you don't know where it is)
"Only Harvesters": Unselects everything except harvesters
"Deselect all": Unselects all units
"Only Builders": Unselects all units not able to build other units (This may be useful to tell your base and foundries to run away while your battleships/destroyers stay in place)
"Only Combatants": Only keeps combatants selected (to move your whole army to one place etc)

Tips:
1. To quickly select all your combat units or all combat units in a certain range, don't use manual selection. Better use Select all/Ranged Select and then apply a filter. After some practice you will be able to do this in less than 2 seconds.

D. Action Menu:

This thing got it's own sub sub menu. It will show a "Return" button in the bottom left hand corner which lets you return to the Select sub menu with all selections still active. In the bottom right hand corner there is a "Confirm" button which quits the Action and the Select menu and removes all selections (they can't be saved for later use... but c'mon selecting the needed units takes 2 or 3 seconds...)

The other two buttons deliver the main functionality of the Action Menu:
Focus (the button on the right side):
Centers the camera on your ENTIRE selection group and changes zoom so you see ALL units in your selection.

Action List:
This is one of the most important parts for the Select Menu.
Touch the Action List button and keep your finger onscreen to show the Action list popup.
It contains these buttons:

Basic Move: (Middle, bottom)
Moves all selected units to the area you are looking at.
Tips:
1. This is Multitouch-enabled!!! While pressing the Basic Move button with one finger, use another finger to scroll across the map. This way you can see the target destinations much better.
2. Use this when your formation is NOT UNDER ATTACK! When it is not under attack you don't need to do finely tuned movements to maintain the formation. When you are under attack you should use the Multimove Mode.

All Stop: (above Basic Move)
Stops all selected unit's movement orders.
Tips:
Use this when you notice that they are going to be trapped by the enemy and you want them to stay in place (if they are standing still it's often harder to break your formation!)

Line (Vertically/Horizontally): (to the left of Basic Move and All Stop)
Tells all selected units to build a line.
Tips:
1. Use this to build a line between your important producers and the enemy army.
2. It might be better to place 2 short lines behind each other instead of having one long line. This way your line is thicker and your enemy will have more problems breaking through. In addition, the units at the end of a long line may not be able to fight the enemy (out of range ). This doesn't happen so often with short lines.

Turtle!: (leftmost button)
Using this tells your units to build the "Turtle". What does this mean?
The turtle is a formation where the most important units (base/foundry etc) are in the middle and the less important units and combat units build a circle around it.
Tips:
1. Obviously you can use this to protect your base or foundry.
2. You can also build powerful attack formation with this.
Example (Blue only): Two MVs (Maintenance Vehicles, the Healers. Red doesn't have MVs because Red units have a slow autoheal), five Destroyers. Turtle them, the destroyers will be very powerful because of the healing support by the MVs
Other Example (Red and Blue): One or two Carriers, turtled by Destroyers/Battleships. Let the Carriers autobuild the maximum amount of Escorts and always transfer escorts to the Battleships/Destroyers so they stay totally filled. This adds a huge attack and defense bonus to your formation. The escorts even profit from another indirect bonus given by the carriers.

"Converge Here/on Base/on Planet" buttons: (rightmost buttons)
They tell the selected units to build a circle. "Here" builds a circle at the area you are looking at, "on Base/Planet" will tell the selected units to build a circle around the nearest Base / Planet.
Tips:
1. The more you are zoomed out, the bigger the circle. If you zoom in to max zoom level, the circle is VERY SMALL and the selected units try to go together as tightly as possible. If you zoom out very far, they will keep more distance from each other and also from the base/planet.
2. This might also be helpful if you want to build a turtle-like formation with a different unit order (but I don't know any straight strategies where you would try to protect your Battleships by using Foundries BUT everything is possible )


E. Confirm: Quit the Select Mode

 

CYCLE MODE


This picture shows the menu that pops up when you touch and hold the "Cycle" button in the main interface.

The cycle menu is easy. These are the possible options:

All: This is the button you must touch to see the popup. If you release your finger on this button, you will cycle through all of your units, sorted by unit type.

Builders: Cycles through builders, opens unit menu

Resources: Cycles through Resource areas, opens artificial cycle menu

Bases: Cycles through your bases, opens unit menu

Enemies: Cycles through enemies, opens artificial cycle menu with additional unit informations

Combatants: Cycles through your combat units, opens unit menu

The Cycle Menus:
When you activate a cycle mode, two different menus may open:
Unit Menu:

This is basically the unit menu, but the two Cycle buttons on the bottom of the unit menu only cycle through the selected cycle type units instead of cycling through all your units. (For more information about the unit menu read the "Unit Menu" section)

Artificial Cycle menu:

This is a nearly empty screen menu. On the left and right side there is one button each. The left button is called "Previous" and the right one is called "Next". They allow you to cycle through the selected cycle type units/resources etc.
If you chose to cycle through enemy units, the artificial cycle menu will also show general information about the unit type of the unit you are looking at.

FLEET ORDER MENU


There are five options in this menu:

3x"Converge":
These are nearly the same options like in the Select Mode, but they work without selecting and they tell ALL of your units to converge at the target destination.

"Fleet All Stop":
Like in Select Mode. Stops your whole fleet.

Fleet Build Orders:
This is the button that you have to press in the main interface to open the Fleet Order Popup. In my opinion it's the most useful button in the Fleet order menu. It opens the Fleet Build Order Screen.



The fleet build order screen is a very helpful screen if you want to order mass production of some unit types.
On the left hand side you see a representative unit of each type, those which can't be built (Battleships can't be built without Red Foundries, Monitors need Blue Carriers, and so on...) are crossed out.
Underneath each unit type you can see a number. This number tells you how many units of each type you already have on the whole map.

On the right hand side there are three "zones":
Build Later: Adds one unit to the END of the queue
Stop Building: Removes one unit from the queue
Build now: Adds one unit to the FRONT of the queue

You can drag a unit into one of these zones to order all builders who can build this type to add one unit of this type to the queue or remove one unit of this type from the queue.
When some unit build orders are in progress, you can also see a "+X" indicator next to the unit amount.

There are three buttons on the bottom of the screen:
Filter:

Allows you to send build orders to ONE specific TYPE of builders.

Escort Auto-Build:

Allows you to set the Escort Auto Build number of all (or all filtered) builders. If the number you select is higher than the maximum number a builder can hold (for example you order all units to auto-build 6 escorts, but Foundries can only hold 2 Escorts), the units who can't build that much Escorts will instead be set to maximum auto-build (so the Foundries would auto-build 2 Escorts...)

Confirm:
Quits the Fleet Build Order Screen.

 

OPTIONS BUTTON



The Options Button has got 2 functions which can be accessed by touching the button, moving the finger onto the function you want to access and then lifting the finger off the screen.

These 2 functions are:

Game Options:
This simply opens the pause menu (I won't describe the pause menu here. In the pause menu, all buttons are labeled, so finding what you need shouldn't be difficult)

Mission Parameters:
Shows the Mission Parameter Screen.


PRIMARY UNIT INFORMATION

When in any mode that shows the map (so not in the build screens), if you are zoomed out to the maximum, the game will display little icons which represent the units.
If you zoom in and exceed a special zoom level (45 %), the icons turn into detailed views of the units.

In detail zoom level, you see some information about every unit next to the unit.


This picture shows a base. What can you see?

On the left side of the base there are some triangle-like icons, some dark, some bright.
This shows the amount of Fighter Escorts the unit can carry. The bright pips show the amount the unit is actually carrying. If there are no dark pips, the unit can't carry more Escorts.

What are escorts?
Escorts (also called "Fighters", "Fighter Escorts") are additional mini-units that can be "carried" by other units. For red they are represented as these worm-like things flying around your units, for blue they are formations of 3 mini wingmen, like the ones in "Blue Attack!" (this is another great game by John Kooistra).
Escorts add attack and defense bonuses to the unit they are guarding.
Tips:
1. Always keep your front line units filled with escorts. I bet I've said this already in this tutorial, but it's VERY IMPORTANT! This adds a huge bonus to your units, making them able to do more damage and withstand the enemy waves longer.
2. If there is a carrier near the unit carrying the escorts, the escorts give even more bonus!

On the right side of each units there are edgy pips. These represent the (maximum and momentary) Health of the unit (dark pips + bright pips = maximum, bright pips = momentary. If there are no dark pips, your unit has got full health)

There is a small number floating near harvesters and bases, showing how much income they give you... move them a bit and see if it changes, by placing harvesters at the right points you can max out the income you can get with the amount of harvesters you have got...
# Comment:
# This was added with the latest update. I'll update the picture soon

If you look at the picture for a while, you will notice something else. There are thin lines starting from the middle of the base and ending somewhere outside the base.
These lines show that the base is harvesting resources. The longer the lines, the slower the harvesting process. If the lines are very long, you should move your base to the place where most of the lines come from. Then most of the lines should be shorter, resulting in a higher income!


UNIT MENU

The Unit menu is another nice quickly accessible menu. Tap on any unit and you open the unit menu of that specific unit.

What you see in the unit menu depends on the type of unit. I will describe the menu of a Base here. The only difference to non-builder units is the missing Build-Icon. Everything else stays in place. Units without escorts (=> Blue Scouts) also have no Escort Management Icon.

So, in thee unit menu there are 2-6 buttons on the circle and up to one button in the middle.

Beginning with the button on the very left, proceeding clockwise:

All Stop:
Stops the unit you selected. ONLY this unit, no others.

Escort Management:
Opens the Fighter Multimove Screen (read "Multimove Mode" section for more information)

Build:
Opens the Build Menu of the selected unit. Read "The Build Menu" (next post) for more information

Move Squad:
Opens the Waypoint Multimove Screen (read "Multimove Mode" section for more information)

Select Next / Select Previous:
Lets you cycle through your units. If you activated the unit menu via a cycle option, you will cycle through the type of unit you have chosen.
If there are only 2 units, the "Select Previous" button will disappear.
If there is only 1 unit, both Cycle buttons will disappear.

The "button" in the middle:
Toggle Focus:

Tells the camera to auto-follow (or stop auto-following) the unit you touched. When the selected unit is in the middle of the circle, the button will disappear, but touching where the button normally is will still toggle auto-follow.
Tip:
You can activate auto-follow for a carrier, leave the unit menu and go to Multimove mode. Then you can control your army and you will always stay with your carrier (if you use a strategy that uses carrier in your army, for example as Escort Producer).

 

UNIT MENU continued: THE BUILD MENU



The Build menu can be accessed by touching "Build" in the unit menu of a builder.

All build menus consist of 3 main parts:

The Units:
On the left hand side there are the unit which can be built by the builder you selected. Next to them there is a lot of information, including the maximum Health, maximum Escort number, food needed to build, resources needed to build, and some small extra icons describing what that unit can do.
Tip:
Touch the description next to a unit and keep your finger onscreen. Under the unit part of the screen there is a text box. This box will show more information about the unit you are touching.

The Build Queue:
This thing is on the right hand side. If no build orders are processed right now, it will consist of 4 smaller and 1 bigger empty square.
You can order more units by dragging them from the unit area to the build queue. They will automatically slip to the down-most empty square.
The unit in the big square is the one that is built at the moment. You can drag it to any other place, this will stop the process and begin the building process of another unit (if there is another unit in the queue ). If the unit you paused is put into the big square again, it won't restart, but it will continue where you stopped it.
You can also add new units to any square by just squeezing it in between two units in the queue.

The Button-Bottom (lol ) :
From the left to the right the five buttons are:
Return:
Returns to the unit menu you came from

Pause/Resume:
Pauses/Continues the whole build queue of the selected unit.

Set Direction:
This activates "Set Direction" mode

In this mode you can choose in which direction finished units should start.
If you press the "Return" button in Set Direction Mode, you return to the build screen.
If you press the "Confirm" button, you directly go to the main interface again.

Auto-Build:

This allows you to tell the builder to automatically build up to X (you can choose X ranging from 0 to maximum capacity of the selected unit) Fighter Escorts when they have no other build orders in the queue.
Tip:
If you have enough resources, always have at least one or two carriers set to maximum auto-build. Also set your base to maximum auto-build so it can defend itself better if it is attacked.

Confirm:
Exits the build screen and shows the main interface.

 

FINALLY!

Finished. I needed more than 5 hours to do this! Whoa!!!

Comments:
I've learned something about the game while doing all the screenshots.
1. The Game-Speed option is nice I didn't want to get killed and have to restart over and over again, so I played the challenge level "A Fair Fight" with 33% speed. Screenshots from Blue side are all from challenge level "Red Enclave".
2. The AI is funny... I still had a Save State from my "Red Enclave - How to use strategy as Blue" tutorial. I wanted to make the picture with the unit menu having only two buttons. So I needed to build one Scout and let the enemy kill ALL other units (so the cycle buttons disappear). Ok, I've built the scout. Then, set the game-speed to "3.0x" and start suiciding my formation. Of course I couldn't send the whole formation at once to the enemy (because my formation would have crushed the enemy lol ), so at first I sent the Destroyers without the MVs. They died quickly. Then, suddenly the AI seemed to be in a kind of rage and attacked my MVs and monitors. They managed to kill 1 Monitor, but they lost 4 Carriers loool... Ok, then I suicided the MVs and sent ALL UNITS (including base, harvesters etc...) to the enemy, but I kept my scout on the other side of the asteroid field...
What did the AI do? THREE CARRIERS CHASED MY SCOUT!!! I had to evade the attacks with 3.0x game-speed lol xD
So, finally all other units died... I quickly changed game-speed to 33% and made a picture of the unit menu. Lol
(What did I learn? The AI seems to have a kind of priority on killing scouts. Or it just went crazy and didn't want me to make a screenshot of the unit menu with only 2 buttons )

 

FINALLY It's COMPLETED!!! YES!

Pictures are added, too!

Took me a lot of time. Please read (especially you lot who argued that you didn't understand the interface! ) and comment

 

Thanks for loving me