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(4) Medical, Explosive, Mechanics: These are in the same order.
You do need someone to bandage the wounded guys, so at least
one person with some Med. knowledge is necessary. If you are
doing pretty well ( cautious player ) you may not need those
high Med. guys because these guys are always expensive. Someone
with 20 - 40 in Medical skill should be good enough.

Disarm Explosive is pretty tricky. The higher the skill the
better. But, this doesn't guarantee he/she can always disarm an
Explosive safely when his/her skill is very high. 40 is the
minimum requirement. 80 or even 90 is highly recommended.

Mechanic part is tricky too. This one can be divided into two
parts: at home or in the field. For at home, there are some
other factors, Dex., Wis., must be considered too. To make it
short, Sparky or Speck is the best choice for this. For in the
field, you might want he/she has more APs, higher Mar., and maybe
some other skills because this person might need to fight as well
as picking locks. Vinney becomes a pretty good bargain at the
beginning. Later on, you might want to consider Boss, Static, or
even Magic ( the best choice, let Mike do this job is a waste,
you only need Mike to pick lock very late in the game ). Mechanical
skill over 80 is highly recommended.

(5) HPs, Wisdom: No brainer for the HPs. There is no evidence for the
influence of Wisdom, but obviously, the higher the better.

If you still can not decide whom to choose, here is my suggestion:

Fidel ( Explosive ), Ivan, and Ice for shooting. Bud for shooting and
field Doc. Vinney for field mech. Wolf will be a good all around player
but you will encounter some problems with him if you are not doing well.
I recently discard him from my starting list. He is still a good choice
for novice player. Then, you might want to hire Sparky ( a little better
than Speck ), Fox ( Doctor ), and Smoke ( backup Explosive expert ) on
Day 2. Other than these, Larry seems to be a good Doctor + Bomb Dude at
the beginning. Beth is also a nice choice for cheap field doc and fast
girl. Snake seems to be a good shooter plus a Camo-U-Flage at the
beginning. Still, you must remember, only you can decide who is the
best choice for your team. ( Note: Ice might not join you after Day 1
if you did not do well. )

It is a good thing to leave one space vacant. Then, Jack will offer
you native guide the second day. The guide is free and he will also provide
some information about the sector first time your team enters it. All four
guides have different special skills. But don't expect them to kill many
enemies for you.

There are some things you should pay attention for if you are still
not familiar with all the system:

(1) How to get the "Doctor" or "Repair" option at the beginning of the
day. Just put the Medical Kit or Tool Kit in the right hand of the
person and get back to the screen. You will find these two options
are available after you have done this.
Note: Always use 100% kit!

(2) Press the "tree" icon at the beginning of the day to know where are
the four processing plants. You will need a good plan to get these
plants. Make your plan on Day 1!

(3) When your team travels to the other sector, there is a possibility
that you will be in pretty severe situation ( bad luck ), so you
might want to "quick save" before you enter the other sector. The
positions of the enemy are not always the same, so a few trails
might improve the situation. If you use the "Alt-X" instead of
"quick save", then the position of the enemies are the same.

(4) Since the combat is "turn-base", you should have a good look at
the whole sector when you enter it. It doesn't cost any time and
you will be able to arrange your plan to attack this sector. Of
course, you have to assume where the enemy might be. Once you
are familiar with the symbol in the island map, you could probably
tell most of the terrain about the unknow sectors just from the
map. This could be helpful when you decide which part is the best
position to enter that sector. The map is identical to the real
terrian.

(5) The AI will be different in different level. But, there are one
common thing for all the levels: The enemy will response to all
the gun shot. If you are playing easy level, the enemy might not
take cover all the time and if you try to lure him, he will
probably response to that. In harder level, the enemy will take
cover all the time and might not come out of the door if he
feels it is not safe to do that. In such case, you will need to
have a good plan to get them. Becareful when you are chasing an
enemy. There might be an ambush by other enemy.

(6) Always try to use several mercenaries to kill a single enemy. The
more enemies involve in a battle, the higher chance your mercs get
shot. Even a "Critical" condition enemy can fire at your guys
and sometimes that will be a very lucky shot! So, don't risk at
all. Don't try to kill a "Critical" enemy by walking out of a
cover. Your merc might miss and enemy will have easy shot at
this guy.

Caution: If your merc(s) involve in a battle too long, i.e. the enemy
can shoot at the same guy for many times, there is a pretty
good chance your merc(s) will get hit even he/she is well
covered behind something.

(7) The amount of the ammos is limited. Don't shoot your enemy when
you have no idea whether you have a line of sight or not. Just
don't waste your ammos unless you do it on purpose. Beware of
this then you will always have enough ammos to play.

(8) Always let your mercs hide behind a cover. There is no sure cover
at all. If you can see an enemy, you can shoot him. So does he!
Hiding behind a tree will not guarantee the safety. Bush is the
same. But, at least it is better to hide behind something than
wild open. If the enemy shoots your guy, you can try to shoot
back immediately. This is because there got to be some space for
the bullet to pass.

(9) Had better always reserve 2 APs for your merc to Crouch. That will
reduce a lot of the chances of injury. Don't know what is the
exact difference between Crouch and non-Crouch, but the difference
is pretty obvious when you are playing with or without it. Crouch
behind a bush is probably the best cover you can get.
( Check out the route before you really move him/her. See the
manual about how to do it. )

(10) There are a lot of traps in Metavira. You will probably encounter
this problem from Day 2. The only sure thing is let the Explosive
expert try to disarm it while in real time ( "quick save" before
doing it ).

(11) All the items you can find in the game have some certain usage.
If you can not find the way to use it, then read the items list
in next section. Most of them are simple: A + B => C. Maybe more:
C + D => E.
Sometimes specail skill is essential in doing this.
Hint: Explosive expert is good in making bomb items. Mechanical
expert is good in combining and modifying items.

(12) All the processing plants in enemy hand have detonators. You must
use silencers to take those sectors. If you can find the detonator,
then you might use weapons without silencer after you disarm the
detonator. ( This is the only spoiler in this section. )

(13) Beware of the performance of your team. Check your "team info"
while you are contacting the A.I.M., you will see some detail
information about your team's performance. Some mercs will not
join your team if you fire too many mercs ( turnover rate ) or
have too many causalities ( Are you Dr. Death? ). The interactive
of the mercs will be significant if these two factors are taken
into account.
Also, you can see the difficulty setting at the upper right corner
in this screen.

(14) The first sector you want to start might be sector 50. This one
is pretty easy and has a lot of trees to hide. Almost the enemy
will be always in the north part in this sector so you will not
have big trouble in winning. Suppose you plan to take 3 sectors
on day 1, you can attack S50 -> S49 -> S59. Then you can arrange
4 guards in S49 & S50 while you are attacking S59. Never leave
a sector without any guard!

(15) Beware of the condition of a merc. Low breath ( BLUE BAR ) will
cause a lot of trouble. Non-bandaged wound will keep bleeding.
Read carefully about the special warning in the manual p. 32.
And, after a merc is hit, his/her breath will decrease as well
as the health.

(16) The enemy can launch an attack at your sector across the water,
but your guard won't be able to swim to a water unless this
sector is "safely" linked to your home sector. ( See the manual
for the explanation about this. ) Be sure to put 8 fuards for
every sector adjacent to any enemy sector no matter this sector
is connected by land or separate by water. You might want to put
couple guards in secondary lines so that you can reinforce a
sector which has survived an enemy attack.

* (17) A "Q & A" for Novice Player:
How can I find those things behind a tree or something?
A: If you are close enough or it is dropped by an enemy, you
can always use the "Ins" key to toggle to an overview ( of
all sector ). In this view, all the items that are "visible"
to you will be a flashing dot! Right click the mouse on the
dot will bring you to that position in previous screen. To
check it out, press and hold "Ctrl" key to get the hand
cursor. A pickable item will cause the hand to become "red".

(18) Always use the items with the best condition. 100% gun, 100%
lock kit, 100% Grenade, 100% whatever. If you are using a first
aid or medical kit "in the field", then it doesn't matter. But,
when you are using it at home ( Medical kit and Tool kit ), then
this does matter. The higher the condition of the items, the
less likely you get into trouble. A 100% item never get you
into trouble.

(19) If the item has a number in the lower right corner, then you can
try to put it with other same thing in one pocket. Some items (
Ex: ammos ) can put up to 5 in the same pocket.

* (20) Study the "quick reference" for the control methods. You will
find this study pay off later.

I think I already provide too many information for novice player. Just
remember one thing: record whatever you think is useful and plan before you
launch an attack. You need to try many things before you have a better
idea of this game.

One more thing: your enemy are those "red" guys! Don't shoot at those
"blue" or "yellow" guys. Mercs are in "green". Guards are in
"blue". Tappers
in "Yellow". Bad guys in "RED"! This has been explained very clear in the
manual, but obviously too many people did not read manual before starting
the game. Too many people had made this mistake at their first trial.
Hope you are not one of them.





III. Trouble Shooting

This section is really a tough one! I will do my best to help all
of you.


Offical Trouble Shooting: ( Partly quoted from Sir-Tech )

1. Low XMS memory will not let the program run. You must make sure you
have enough memory to run the program. For 4 MB RAM, you can only
run the game by "JAVM.BAT" but it won't run as fast as usual. I can
not remember the exact minimum RAM to start by "JAVM.BAT", it seems
to be about 3.5 MB. ( Brenda mentioned this in the net once. )

2. Many people had reported having problem with "SMARTDRV" running.
Sir-Tech suggests to turn it off before you run the game.
( My problems never come from SMARTDRV. )

3. If the game "freeze" or "lock-up", you can try to hit "ESC" or
press "CTL-F"(?). This might not work.
If you still can not solve the problem by doing this, you are welcome
to call Sir-Tech Technical Support at (315) 393-6644 ( USA ) at the
time mentioned in "Introduction" section.


Some people suggested to disable the "EMM386" if your program won't
run. I can't imagine how can they do it because I was always low in RAM
before I can start the program.


Here are my problems and how I solved ( not really ) them:

1. The game won't start at all. It just keep telling me that I need to
configure the sound before I run the program. I swear I did that for
a dozen times but it just kept asking me to set the sound.