Sorry about the long post, I kept thinking of things I could add. Spoilered mostly to reduce length but I marked parts that reveal the storyline and other cool parts as heavy spoilers. Also I should say I enjoyed Caravaneer, the town production and supply and demand was well implemented and overall it's easily the best flash game I've ever seen and ranks next to only Pirates of the Western Sea for a trading game. (not that I'm a connoisseur of flash games but still, good game)
Tips Part 1 (spoilered only to save space)
Well, in my case. I was using the offline version you can download so I don't know if the online version continues past the point offline ends. When I finished the Desert Patrol quest (of which the ending choices are sweet by the way) it just went to the town screen after I exited and there were no buttons at the bottom, meaning you can't exit the town and ending your game.
Tips:
Stay on the far border from your enemies and use the M4 to make aimed shots. You'll hit much more then the enemy.
Wounded enemies run slower as they get more and more wounded.
Save often. It might be a good idea to reload if you lose a strong hireling.
Stick to the starter route the sheriff tells you of until you've enough money to pay some henchmen.
Once the combat scene loads get all your people fairly close to one another in the first turn. That way the separated guy doesn't get overrun while his friends are across the map and missing his attackers.
Check food and water before you leave town. Water is always available (not always free but is cheap)
Jorge Arbusto is someone you will recognize. He killed only 9 men in my game due to being found late or I would have made him the badass of the group.
Carry at least 3k medicine for personal use at all times. Also turn meds use on for all wounded.
Turn game speed to maximum.
Distribute ammo button is your friend. Just hand them the two weapons and hit the button. Also there is no penalty for going to max encumbrance.
Save before you talk to quest people. There are lots of ways for you to totally screw up the Desert Patrol quest through dialogue.
Some more tips:
1: After you talk to the sheriff in the first town, buy the $300ish wagon and a mule if possible. You won't need to buy upgraded weapons until you've done the 3 south east town route a few times and even then I'd recommend you just rob some robbers for their weapons after leaving the starting route. Armor I would recommend buying however if you see an upgrade in the shops. Military armor is the best but isn't found on the starter route.
1b: At the start I had a group of me and two hirelings for a while, but once you start getting around 50k or so saved and heading out of the starting route make sure you start hiring again. I ended up with around ten or so by the time I started the desert patrol quest and that almost wasn't enough.
1c: Try to pick high ap characters first with good sniper skill, then if their ap are roughly even go for the high Phys. shape ones with good sniper skill, with some highly skilled hirelings to boost skills. High Phys. Str. is mostly for carrying an RPG 7 and it's rockets along with the standard issue M4. Don't go for the moderately skilled but pansy hirelings. Do however hire one high skill doctor and mechanic even if they are pansies. Also high sniper skill + high ap = good hireling. AP>Sniper>Phys.Str. If they can only carry 10KG at the start, they'll barely be able to hold an M4 and some ammo with a military armor for a while but it will increase a little to the point they can hold grenades or a shotgun.
1d: For the main character, MAKE SURE HE HAS 8 OR 9+ Physical Shape SO HE CAN USE BADASS ROCKETS AND TAKE MORE BULLETS TO KILL BECAUSE HE'S STRONGER THEN YOU DAMMIT. After that pump agility, hopefully to ten. Intelligence isn't important, as far as I can tell that just affects your skill gain and you can hire some specialist hirelings to boost the party skill up. I think good starting stats would be 8 phys, 10 agi, 6 acc, and 1 intelligence.
2: Don't hold onto a crapload of weapons and equipment like I did. They are 100% dead weight once the towns won't buy them from you anymore. (which is going to be after your first visit probably)
2a: Ammo is light but you won't need any of the pistol ammo. I bought 1000~ rounds for the M4 and didn't buy any more and that was practically all I shot the whole time.
2b: All water container are obsoleted by blue plastic water barrels which can be found once you leave the starter route. So don't buy other types and prepare to dump or ignore looted ones cause stores won't buy them from you. If you are in cars you only need 2 plastic water barrels as they hold 200L each and with no animals you use under 10L on short trips between towns.
3: Mules are my favored animal before I bought my landrovers. Relatively fast and also only moderate forage and water consumption. If you use camels keep in mind not only are they slow (3kmh vs mule's 5kms meaning even slow bandits can catch you) but they also can't haul wagons. Horses only give the 15kmh speed if your men are equipped with mechanized vehicles that can keep up (apparently there are no seats in the wagon) so you may as well use a land rover at that point.
4: M4 carbine is the best weapon by a long long ways, outclassing much heavier machine guns except at close ranges because machine guns can't hit jack. It's so light everyone can carry it and the military armor and still have enough weight left for ammo and a grenade or two. Stronger allies can carry an M4 and a shotgun and more ammo then they need. The strongest can carry an RPG 7 + rockets and an M4, like Martin Miloshi in the screenshot at the bottom. The only real M4 downside is low damage per hit but you can shoot a bunch of times accurately across the map. Bandits just a little northwest of the starting route carry M4s fairly often. The only thing that gives it a run for its money is one of the R.P.G.s or bazooka and only because of their power and explosive radius. This is partly due to the 70% accuracy rating of the M4 which is much higher (by at least 20%-30%) then anything but a sniper rifle, but also due to the fact that its ap scores are as following: quick 2 ap, aimed shot 3ap, three round burst 5, five round burst 7. It's low damage but high chance to hit. Also 30 round clip. Aimed shot is the way to go until they get close and then go into burst mode or if they're melee go for the ol' shotgun.
4a: Shoot shotgun users first, then rifles, then pistols, then swords/unarmed (unless their much closer) This is because enemy shotguns can hit for 1 damage from across them map on everything in their "cone" with 100% accuracy. 1 damage isn't much but it's more then the 0 that 80% of the rest of the enemy will do with a miss when they're on the other side of the map and if they hit your men it'll be for <10 and be a fluke shot.
5: Shotguns rock against the sword users you'll see at the start but aren't so hot when the enemy shoots you while advancing more slowly.
6: Grenades mostly suck except against swarms of melee users and for a certain mission from the desert patrol involving a certain hidden bunker, and only if you spawn on the side closest to the gate in their fence.
WARNING: this spoiler is about the hardest part of the Desert Patrol quest and gives an easy solution to the hardest required fight I found in the game.
I save-scummed until I got spawned on the south side. All the enemies on this map have heavy armor and a variety of the best weapons you'll see. Let me explain how they come out in this mission since it's unique. They start with 2 guards outside in the first round. Whether you drop them or not in the next round about 10 guards rush out and conveniently line up outside. This places them within explosives distance of each other, and throwing range of you, so if you brought grenades (or save-scummed like me once I realized their value) you can wipe out both waves with RPGs and grenades without them firing or moving once if you brought enough men. This is honestly the ONLY way I was able to take them out without losing 1/3 to 1/2 my force to their heavy armor, machine guns and rockets on the first wave. Oh, and by the way, there are two waves.
Tips Part 2 (spoilered only to save space)
7: Buy some land rovers from Qubba as soon as your group is strong enough to make it and can buy a few (at 25k or so a piece). The fuel cost isn't bad at all. There are two towns near Qubba that sell fuel, the one to the southwest usually has a huge surplus. The desert patrol HQ city also sells fuel if you need it down south. The disadvantage is cars can't haul wagons, which I think is silly. This will lower your hauling capacity somewhat, but dude, your going 4x faster and travel isn't such a pain because you can outrun the vast majority of everything and because you won't have to carry a bunch of extra water for your animals, just fuel which is in my opinion easier to keep track of then both forage and water.
8: Pretty much everything costs more in Qubba, the capitol. If you want to make a buttload of money on your first trip there, buy and hold onto all the medicine you find where it's under $1 or even $1.50. Then sell it at $2+ dollars at Qubba when you do make it there. Since each medicine is 1g instead of 1kg like most goods you can hold more then you'll ever have in one wagon. Also pretty much all goods except Crude oil sell for more at Qubba. One of the easiest routes is crude to the town directly north of Qubba and then take alcohol back.
9: Don't go to the north east unless you have cars and even then a few bandit groups will have 25kmh 4-wheelers that will catch you.
10: Don't fight police or caravans, unless you are told of a specific one for a quest or they're already hostile. Plus you can outrun police easily in cars.
spoilers for the end game of the desert patrol quest beyond this point.
The game gives you the option of sending each of the 11 missiles in the Government's arsenal separately anywhere you want via azimuth and distance but you have to read the missile instruction manual first. I was lazy and launched all my 11 nukes at the capitol. (<Please, no reward is necessary, I'm doing it to free our people!> is what I told the desert patrol chief but as soon as I realized the possibilities I knew what must be done.) You also have the option of detonating them miles and miles above harmlessly, locking down the system, and simply powering it down. They all seem to end the same with an unexitable city in the offline version.
Also, here are some screenshots that will help you, especially if you do the desert patrol quest.
First, the guy I won with. Notice the katanas I'd saved my whole game in the false hope the desert patrol would buy them and the rest of my 3000kg of weapon stockpile at some point since they claim to be undergunned by the evil Government the whole game.
Second, here some screenshots I took so I wouldn't have to navigate through the game five or ten times to read the
missile instruction manual.
Feel free to save them if you choose the desert patrol quest. Also I'm not sure if the
is a European or U.S. version. The instruction manual implies it makes a difference as one is in km and the other in miles.
Victory:
Qubba, Capitol city cancels exist: hit by 11 nukes.
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Topic: Caravaneer (Read 15466 times)