Loon
The Loons have a problem we can sympathize with -- global warming.
Lakes and rivers are drying up, croplands are turning to dust, and it's
becoming really hard to find any ice for a rum and coke. So they've
come up with a plan -- move to the moon!
Help the Loons build a colony on their moon. Mine resources, build
habitats, farms, factories, everything needed to make them feel at
home. Support a big enough population and you may just save the Loons
from extinction.
Tutorial
At the start of the game, a handful of Loons have just landed on the moon with a few resources to get them started.
There are three panes at the bottom of the screen. The left one shows a
menu of commands applicable to the selected unit; you can either click
on the menu or use the keyboard shortcuts shown in parentheses. The
centre pane shows information about the selected unit, including the
resources it is holding and the maximum amount of each resource it can
hold. The right pane shows some statistics about your colony as a
whole, including the population it is capable of supporting.
If you click on the Lander, you will see that it contains some metal.
There are no commands in its menu, because it can't do anything. It got
you to the moon, it's done it's job.
The first thing you will need to do is build a Smelter. Click on a Loon and select the Build command, choose Smelter,
then move your mouse over the playing area until you see a green
rectangle, and click. The Loon will walk over to the place you chose
and establish a building site.
Nothing else will happen yet, because constructing the smelter requires
some resources. To find out what it needs, click on the building site
(be careful to get the building, not the Loon in front of it -- a large
green ring should appear). When a building is under construction, the
status pane shows you what resources it needs -- in this case, 50 metal.
You will need to use your Loons to carry metal from the Lander to the building site. Select another Loon, choose Get,
and click on the Lander. He should walk over to the lander and pick up
as much as he can carry. If you watch the centre pane, you should see
some metal appear in his inventory when he arrives. Now choose Put and click on the building site.
Loons can't carry much, so you'll have to use a few of them or make
several trips (you'll have faster ways to move resources later). When
the building site has enough metal, select a Loon, choose Work,
and click on the building site. A green bar should appear over the
site, indicating the build progress. You can tell several Loons to work
on it at once to get it built more quickly. When it's finished, the
construction sign disappears.
Now you need to find some Ore. Look around on the map (use the arrow
keys to scroll if you need to) until you find a clump of brown spots;
that's an ore deposit. Tell a Loon to Mine,
and click on one of them. A green bar appears over the deposit showing
the amount of ore remaining. When it stops going down, tell the Loon to
Put the ore into the Smelter.
Then select the Smelter and look in the status pane; after a few
seconds, some metal should appear there.
There are two other types of deposit. The yellow ones are Silica, which you smelt into Glass, and the blue ones are Water.
You now know most of the basic mechanics. Next you will want to build a
Factory so you can make Rovers to carry resources around more quickly.
To support a colony, you will need to build Habitats, Farms and Water
Tanks -- the more you build, the greater the population you will be
able to support. Build as many as you can -- the Loons that survive the
demise of their planet will thank you for it!