S&I Game Manual

document updated: 7.27.1999
for mod version: .94 (beta 5)

Contents


Introduction
Science and Industry is a teamplay modification for half-life which puts players in the role of security officers at a high tech research corporation. Each corporation has scientists who conduct research. This research results in new weapons, better armor, and more cash for the corporation. Whichever corporation has the most cash at the end wins. Players can help the research progress better by protecting the lab from intruders, keeping the labs quiet, and by recruiting new scientists from a rival corporation.

Read the sections below for more detailed information.


Labs and Scientists
As a security officer, your mission, above all else, is to keep your corporation's labs secure and as successful as possible. When all is going well, the scientists should be moving about in the labs, doing a lot of research you don't understand. Depending on the layout of the map the labs may be one large room or several smaller rooms. Your scientists will be moving about freely in the entire lab area. If you keep your scientists happy, they will produce more research (better weapons and armor for you) and more cash for your team.

Efficency and Noise
Your corporation's scientists will find it VERY hard to work if there is a lot of noise in the labs, so part of your job as a security officer is to keep your labs quiet. You keep the labs quiet by keeping weapons from being fired in the area. Nothing disrupts work more than a rocket going off near your experiments, and this applies to your weapons as well as the weapons of rival security officers.

If you fail at this, and noise does happen in your labs, you will notice the efficency of your scientists dropping. You can tell how efficent your scientists are by looking at the atom on the bottom right part of the HUD. If all is going well, the atom will be completely white, if your scientists are disrupted, the atom will only be partially white, the rest grey. The more grey the atom is, the less efficent your scientists are. In addition, individual scientists will look sickly when their efficency get very low. If your scientists are less efficent, they will produce less cash and less research.

Once things quiet down a bit, scientists will begin to recover efficency until it gets back up to 100% over time.

Recruiting Scientists
A great way to help the productivity of your labs is to "recruit" scientists from a rival corporation. You can do this by sneaking/breaking into the rival corporation's lab, taking out a crowbar, and whacking a scientist upside the head (just like the real world). Unfortunately for you, the scientists will recognize your uniform as that of a rival company, and will panic and try to run away from you. Usually, its not too hard to catch them (as long the there aren't any rival security officers about), and you can sling them over your shoulder and bring them back to your company.

Once you get a scientist, you need to proceed back to your corporation and find the administrator. The administrator looks like the gman from half-life, and when you bring him a scientist, the scientist will be hired as part of your company.

As an added benifit, if you recruit a scientist from a corporation that has better technology than yours, he will bring research information with him.

Killing Scientists
First off, you can't kill your own scientists, so if you lob a grenade into your own lab and disturb your scientists you will only cause your scientists efficency to drop.

You can, however, kill rival scientists. You might think this is a good way to hurt the rival corporation, as they have to spend money to hire new scientists, and their research is disrupted for a while. However, your own scientists don't particularily like to hear about their colleagues, even at rival companies, getting killed, and so their efficency will drop each time you kill an opposing corporation's scientist.

When your own team's scientists are killed there will be a replacement "hired" after a few seconds. Hiring a new scientist costs your team money (see the scoring and costs section below for specific numbers).

Technology Tree
At the start of each map, each team will have a set small amount of cash, 3 scientists, and a few basic weapons (crowbar and magnum). A few seconds in, each team's scientists will be ready to begin research and a simple voting menu will pop up with the first choices. Each member of the team will have a few seconds to place their votes, then the votes will be tallied and the next research objective will be set.

The choices break down into three options (until a path is exhausted): the first option's tend to be more offensive/aggressive in nature, while the second is usually defensive, the third and final option is to improve armor by 25 points. You will not get anything from rechargers until you research better armor.

The speed at which each objective is discovered depends on how many scientists the team has, and how quiet they have managed to keep the research labs. If one team recruits the other team's scientists, it is quite possible that they will be several techs ahead of the opposition.

After the last item has been discovered, your scientitsts will begin researching "Future Technology". Each time they make a discovery your team will be awarded a large amount of cash (see scoring section for specific numbers).

New and Changed Weapons
 New Weapons:
Radio: This works like the tripmine for placement. Once placed, the transister radio emits annoying music which will disrupt the research efforts of any scientists in ear shot. The radios can be easily destroyed by a solid hit from any weapon, they will also disappear on their own after 60 seconds.

Mind Ray: The mind ray is a limited range weapon ONLY useful against scientists. When used on your own scientists it will "heal" efficency -- making efficency rise more quickly for the scientist you are pointing the ray at. If you keep the ray trained on them for a bit it will make them operate at 110%, producing more research than they could otherwise. If you use the mindray on enemy scis, however, it will have the opposite effect, decreasing their efficency. THE MIND RAY DOES *NOTHING* TO PLAYERS.

G-I Destabilizer: The G-I Destabalizer produces a wave of low frequency sound around the player which makes anyone in the radius feel very, very sick. While sick, players will find their movement hampered and their FOV shifty. The effect should wear off after a few seconds, however.

Changed Weapons:
Glock -- removed
Magnum -- faster fire rate, a little less kick
Hand Grenade -- A secondary fire mode which "drops" a grenade rather than throws it.
Gauss -- The primary fire mode now damages armor more AND drains "energy" (uranium ammo) from the target hit. Color changed to reflect new effect.


Dying
If you should happen to die in the line of duty, your corporation will graciously bring you back by using advanced cloning technology. The technology does cost money (see chart below). A corporation whose security officers spend a lot of their time dying won't have much money left at all.

After being cloned, you will be invulnerable to attack for 5 seconds.

Scoring & Costs
Science and Industry uses seperate stats to evaluate the performance of players and the performance of a team. Team score is measured by the amount of cash a team has, whereas how well a player is doing is measured by numbers of frags. Bonus frags are given for a number of situations, to help balance out defense and offence.
 Team Scores
Produced per scientist per sec. (at max efficency): $60
Discovering a "future tech" $20,000
Cloning services (respawning) -$800
Hiring a new scientist -$5,000
 Personal Scores
Killing a rival officer 1
Killing a rival officer near labs (but disturbing scientists) 2
Killing a rival officer near labs (without disturbing scientists) 3
Defending a recruiter (someone carrying scientist) 2
Successfully recruiting a scientist 5


All about the HUD
HUD stands for "Heads Up Display", by which we mean all the stuff that appears on the screen to let you know what is happening. Here is a brief run down on what you will see:

-The top left of the screen is the weapons selection menu, it works just like it did in half-life, so hopefully you're comfortable with that.

-The center left of the screen is where voting menus will appear, this is where you select your team in the beginning and you make votes throughout the game.

-The bottom left of the screen contains your personal info, health, armor, and ammo they all work the same as they did in half-life, just in a different place.

-The bottom center of the screen is where you will see various game score messages such as when a weapon is discovered or you kill an intruder.

-The bottom right might be a bit tricky, it contains all the information about your corporation's research. First, the atom in the top left of the box lets you know how all about your scientist's efficency (the more "full" it is, the more efficient they are). The number next to the atom is the current number of scientists working at your corporation.
Underneath the atom is the information about your next research goal, the white bar is a progress meter which lets you know how close you are until your next discovery, and the icon next to it (if any) shows you what your team is researching. If you don't see anything where the icon should be it means that it is either the beginning of a map and your team hasn't got to tech level one yet, or you are past tech level 5 and are researching "future tech", or your team is in the midst of voting.

Bug Reports & Troubleshooting
To report bugs, please refer to the Bug List, if you DO NOT see the problem you are having, send an email to si@planethalflife.com describing the exact nature of your problem, your computer, what you were doing at the time, as much info as possible.

Credits
Science and Industry is the work of Potatojin and Goldmund. We would like to thank the various coding sites (wavelength, fixxxer, etc) for offering valuable information, our beta testers, all the other mods that inspired us/we borrowed ideas from, and Valve.