1. Gameplay

Welcome to "The Outbreak", a online survival strategy game. The purpose of the game is to act as mayor of your town, survive and becoming a safe haven for your people. As newcomer we advice you to read this section of the guide first to better understand the game.

Game interface

As soon as you have logged in to the game you will find the game interface. The header of the interface will be visible on all pages and gives you a good overview on the status of your town. The header is divided in 3 different parts.

Random events

Every 24 hours your town will receive a random event possibility. When you click on 'Random event', you will receive the result immediately. The result will be random between good, neutral and bad.

Time counter

Each ingame week lasts an hour in realtime, there is a passing of weeks through 4 seasons, in each season there are 13 weeks.
Each time the week passes a whole hour (1:00, 2:00, 3:00 etc.), in game terms we call this a 'tick'.

Menu

Townshall	Find all your basic town information and events that have happenend around your town.
Inventory	Gives you an overview of your daily income of resources, your owned property, population and your army.
Construct	Here you can construct new buildings for your town.
Fairground	Market to buy and sell resources, regional news, government contracts(or missions), bounties, tavern chatroom and award nominies.
Relations	Manage your town relations or clan and trade with other players.
Special Operations	Order your agents to perform special operations.
Army	Hire new troops for your army.
Attack	Organize an attack convoy to raid other players.
Map	The map with all towns, government and acre locations on it.
Mail	Send an ingame mail to other players.

Seasons

We have tried to make a realistic scenario and in the winters of Kansas food grows very scarce. Stone is frozen and very slippery, you just don’t want to work there. Snowploughs no longer clear the (free)ways, you must make your own path through the snow and that’s a time consuming business. Gas is no longer available so central heating is no longer available either, so besides cooking you now give your people warmth by burning wood. If you run out of wood, people will die from the cold.

The different seasons have the following effects:

Spring:		Gameplay as normal
Summer:		1/3 extra farming output
Autumn:		Gameplay as normal
Winter:		Farming output reduced with 2/3, Stone quarries stop working, Woodcutters output reduces with 1/3 and the travel time between towns increases to 200%.

Resources

In this bar you can see the current level of your resources and how much you gain or loose of them each tick.
From left to right the resources are:

	Cash:	Needed to construct buildings, hire troops and to buy other resources on the market.
	Food:	Needed to construct buildings, hire troops and feed your people.
	Wood:	Needed to construct buildings and to keep your people warm.
	Stone:	Needed tot construct buildings.
	Fuel:	Needed to transport good or troops.
	Power:	Needed for certain buildings to be functional.
	Operation energy:	Needed for your agents to perform special operations.
	Force readiness:	Needed to attack other players.

Read more on how to gain or loose resources on the resources section of the guide.

How long does the round last?

Except for the beginner area, every area will have a cycle of 6 weeks and resets to give all players a fair chance of winning the game. Each round last 961 hours or weeks, when the round ends it takes 24 hours for the round to be reset.

After the reset players have a 24 hours period to signup there new town. After a total of 48 hours the round will start ticking again at 20:00 GTM +1:00.

The beginner area is for players to get familiar with the game, no prizes can be won here and when you reach level 40 you can complete the game and join one of the other areas to really compete with other players.

Next Chapter - > 1.1 Missions