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. You may also find it useful to build an Academy to train more worker Loons.

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!

Resource Deposits

Type	Symbol	Usage
Ore		Converted to Metal by Smelter
Silica		Converted to Glass by Smelter
Water		Used to fill Water Tanks and supply some other units

Units

Type	Symbol	Built By	Resources to Build	Resource Capacity	Accepts	Provides	Function
Lander				100 Metal			Provides starting resources
Worker		Academy	5 Water	5 of each type			Carrying resources Constructing buildings
Smelter		Worker	50 Metal	100 Ore	Ore Silica	Metal Glass	Producing Metal and Glass
Factory		Worker	100 Metal	100 Metal 100 Glass	Metal Glass	Rovers	Constructing Rovers
Rover		Factory	30 Metal 5 Glass	50 of each type			Carrying resources
Academy		Worker	15 Metal 25 Glass	25 Water	Water	Workers	Training Workers
Habitat		Worker	50 Metal 100 Glass			Housing for 500 loons	Population support
Farm		Worker	100 Glass 100 Water			Food for 150 loons	Population support
Water Tank		Worker	20 Metal	100 Water		Water for 200 loons	Population support