Rules for Little Green Guys With Guns

Welcome to the wonderful world of Little Green Guys With Guns!

On another world, far away, there is nothing but war. Color battles color, and the streets are littered with the bodies of the dead.

Fortunately, nearly everyone involved in the whole shooting thing visits the Clone Bank on a regular basis, so aside from the occasional embarassment of coming across your own moldering corpse, it's not so bad.

This world is divided into factions ruled by Executives of every color. Unlike other inhabitants, an Executive is blessed with two eyes (so he can see both sides of the problem, one assumes). He is surrounded by fiercely loyal underlings who will die to protect him.

All the Executvies fear the secretive, mysterious Board of Directors.

What is this document?

This is the reference manual for the game. You can learn to play LGGWG using the tutorial that comes with the client (you can download it from lggwg.com).

What is LGGWG?

LGGWG is a play-by-email game. You will mail a game request to the Servinator (the program that manages and executes LGGWG games at lggwg.com) that indicates who you want to play against. Then, for each turn, you and your opponents will create sets of orders for your Little Green Guys. You send these orders to the Servinator.

After everyone sends in their orders, the Servinator will send you the results of your moves and give you a chance to give more orders. This all continues until one of the teams wins, usually by killing everyone on the other side.

How do I set up LGGWG?

Download the client from lggwg.com, set up a free team account at the site, play the tutorial, and start a game with a friend! It's that easy!

The free team account on lggwg.com allows you to track games in-progress on the website, pick a default color for your team, post on our message board, and get resends of moves that went missing. It also allows you to switch your email address mid-game. (This can be very handy if you leave your move file on your work computer, and then resend the move to your home address!)

Installing the client should be self-explanatory. You will get a program will read any .tak files you get from the Servinator, as well as let you give orders and start games.

The first thing you have to do when starting up the client is set your preferences. You can read more about that on the preferences help page.

Once you have installed LGGWG, you can double-click on most .tak files and they will automatically start the game in Windows(tm). If you are using Unix, you must save the attachment and then run your script on this. (This is documented in the README that comes with the Unix version.)

How do I play LGGWG?

Starting a Game of LGGWG

To start a new game of LGGWG, find your opponent's team name. You can find opponents on lggwg.com or find an old gamer friend from high school or college and drag him into this bizarre Little Green subculture.

Then, follow the directions on the game start help pages.

Winning a Game of LGGWG

The game ends when only one team has any living units (besides mines and flags).

The object of this game is to have the highest score.

Mostly, the highest scoring team is the one that remains standing, but this is not always the case in games with 3 or more teams.

You get score by damaging other teams and checkered flags. Damage comes from either one team overtly attacking the other team or players stepping on mines. You can also damage the other team during death-explosions by Firebots, flags, crates, Executives, or other explosive units.

You lose score by damaging your own team, either through friendly fire, explosions you cause that hit your own teammates, or stepping on your own mines.

The last team standing automatically scores all the remaining living flags (except his own).

It's important to remember that on maps that have Executives, you can't keep fighting without your Executive. This is because, like in chess, when an Executive dies, everyone on his team dies with him. The player who did the finishing blow to the Executive scores all of the damage from the companions.

How Do Orders Work in LGGWG?

This section sounds very ponderous, but it's actually very easy. If you're new to LGGWG, we suggest you download the client app from the website and try the World's Fastest Tutorial, and then refer back to this section if you have questions.

Each team records their orders for their team. These orders are:

Move: Walk from one space to another.
Targetted Fire: Attack a particular square within range. The pink asterisks indicate the path of the bullet.
Opportunity Fire: If someone from an enemy team is visible, pick one at random and take a shot at them. If no one is visible, ignore this order (do the next order instead). Always favor shooting an Executive over shooting anyone else. (Footnote: If there are multiple targets and some are hidden by mines, favor targets that are visible vs. those that are obscured by mines.)
Opportunity move: Like a combination opp-fire and move. If there is a visible target, shoot first, then move. Otherwise, move.
Hold: Wait while a team with more troops and/or actions moves. Holds are discussed further below.
Forfeit: Give up. The actual effect of forfeiting is that all of your troops are killed through suicide, which can have a detrimental effect on your score (it's penalty damage except in flag games). Firebots and Executives will explode as normal.

Each order is sequential---that is, every order will be executed one at a time from first to last. Like a chess game, no two pieces move simultaneously.

When all teams have submitted their orders, the turn is resolved semi-simultaneously as follows:

At orders-issuing time, there is a defined team order (look for it below the map in the client).
In team order, the first order for each team is executed.
If an order cannot be executed, either because movement is blocked or the unit who is to execute the order is dead, the team passes and loses the turn. In other words, the order converts into a Hold.
Repeat, only this time with the second order for each team, and so on.

Although movement can be blocked, units will always take targetted shots ordered. If a target is out of range (i.e. the player has walked towards a square and then issued a targetted fire, but was blocked from moving), the attack will be to the nearest square along the line. This can frequently result in unwanted behavior, but Little Green Guys do one thing best---they follow orders.

(Footnote: When firing out of range, the path of the bullet runs along the line from your unit to the nearest space in range, not the line from your unit to the out-of-range space.)

Let's take an example. Say the team order is Red, Blue, Yellow. Red issues orders to move his Executive north, shoot once, then move south. Blue issues an order to move his Snipey south, south, south, fire. Finally, Yellow issues an order to his Firebot to hold and then fire. The orders would be resolved in this order:

Red: Exec North
Blue: Snipey South
Yellow: Firebot Hold
Red: Exec Fire
Blue: Snipey South
Yellow: Firebot Fire
Red: Exec South
Blue: Snipey South
Blue: Snipey Fire.

Holds are special cases and generally used late in the game when one team can issue more orders than the other team. So, if Blue has 4 units left and Red has just one, Red can issue holds to make up for not having enough units, and save his movement (or, especially, opp-fire) until the end of the turn.

What kinds of interface cues show up while giving and executing orders?

Shooting looks a bit like this:

The top yellow number is the amount of damage you did. The bottom blue number is the amount of damage armor absorbed, so the two numbers together indicate how much damage you did. Here, the blue Snipey did 5 points of damage to the red snipey, but the red Snipey's armor blocked one point. (Footnote: Damage is scaled by how much damage is available to take, so even if you did 6 points of damage, if your target only has 1 HP, you will look as if you did 1 point of damage.)

After this shot, while giving orders you would see two green bars above their heads, like this:

They indicate percentage health for those units. So, the red Snipey is at half health.

What Kinds of Units Do You Get in LGGWG?

Snipey. Standard rifleman---average range, one shot, highly random damage, lightly armored.
Max. Hulking fellow who fires a machine gun with explosive shells. Fires three shells per turn that spread out to do 1 point of splash damage (oh, that razor sharpnel!). Damage is low. Medium armor, slow moving. Max unfortunately can hit himself easily if he shoots at an adjacent unit.
Puffer. Harmless-looking friendly-seeming pets, these are actually vicious creatures who move lightning fast and do a lot of damage (4 points) with their razor teeth at hand-to-hand range.
Executive. He looks passive enough, but he has a laser pistol that can hit quickly at good range (2-4pts per shot). He's a keen shot (you don't have depth perception for nothing). However, if your Executive is dead, you lose. Keep him alive at all costs! (And keep your distance when you kill one---they are sore losers and self-destruct while dying.)
Firebot. A heavily-armored robot that moves slowly but packs a giant wallop in a single fireball blast per turn that can fill rooms. Firebots can shoot through soft targets and living things, including doors, crates, and enemies. Firebots explode on death as well.
Miner. A lightly-armored cheap soldier who has a small hand-to-hand attack, but can place mines. Mines are deadly to everyone but other miners on the same team. Miners may not use opportunity fire.
Mine. Your miners can step on them without detonating them, but they are deadly to everyone else on your team! Step on them, and they will go boom and do 3-6 points of damage. You can always see your mines, but you can only see other team's mines when they are in your line-of-sight.
Flag. These are flags of various hit points that lay around the map (their health values are written on them). They serve little purpose except as recon outposts and things to defend. Losing all your flags is harmless, but is bad on the scoreboard. They do not explode on death.
Sheep. Sheep are worth no score, have one HP, and are doomed from the start. Before any team's moves commence, they will take one step randomly in a direction (if they can, although rarely if mostly cornered they will choose not to). Whichever team kills the most sheep is called The Sheepinator and is marked as such in the scoring dialog. There is no reward for being the Sheepinator (outside of, I suppose, mutton).

What Kinds of Terrain are there in LGGWG?

Floor. Anyone can freely walk through this.
Walls. You can't see through them or walk through them, but they do provide cover. Remember, Max can fire a shell at them and the shrapnel will fly through!
Doors. Shoot them to open them. They do not explode.
Windows. You can fire through them, but Little Green Guys are too lazy to climb through them.
Crates. Watch out for crates! They are packed with explosives. (Why do they ship so many explosives around on this planet? And why leave them out where they can get shot?) They will explode if you shoot at them. Explosions will hurt any units nearby.
Flags. Checkered flags are there as bonus points that you can rack up to boost your score.
Health packs. These give 5 HP back to anyone who walks on them. They are destroyed if fired upon.
Nuclear crates. These will explode with a two-square radius, throwing shrapnel through walls. Destroyed after taking 5 points of damage. They are hardened, which means that Firebots cannot fire through them (although there will be splash damage one square through as normal).
Locked doors. Once again, they are just like doors, but they only open after taking 5 points of damage. They, too, are hardened.

Reporting Bugs

The more specific you can be while reporting bugs, the better. Bad bugs:

"It didn't work."
"I couldn't run it."
"I think opp-fire isn't right."

Good bugs:

"My .tak files don't open when I double-click on them. I'm running version 0.0.17.0 of the client and I'm running a vanilla WinME machine."
"I downloaded the client .jar, installed it under Solaris, and then ran it under Java 1.4.2 and it wouldn't boot. I've included my start script."
"In move Cargo15-15-02.tak, I noticed that my Puffer named 'Hollywood' walked right past the Blue Snipey without taking a bite! What gives?"

If there is a bug in gameplay (a corpse walks, a guy walks through a wall, he fails to take an opp-fire shot you think he should), you can send me the .tak file and I can run it myself. That's the safest thing to do. If you can't do that, give me the turn number and game name where things are going wrong and I can pull it off the server.

Feel free to include screenshots of errors. ALT-PrtSc and pasting the result into Paint can be a real boon.

The mail client part of LGGWG is a vanilla javamail client. It currently doesn't do any authentication, and most of our experiences with authentication have shown that every mail system is different and it's very difficulty to support generally. However, we'd love to hear about your trials and tribulations with SMTP mode so we can collect more data and hopefully issue a new version with better mail support. Otherwise, there's always "Save to file"!

We also enjoy reading comments about interface and design.

Also, in debug mode (like the versions everybody is playing during the beta-test period), the game generates a file called TacticsLog.log, which is a text file that contains an interface debug dump that is very helpful in debugging mistakes. Zip it up and send it with your .tak file if you have interface problems.

Delete the log file from time to time; it can get big.