WCS![[image loading]](http://i44.tinypic.com/f29660.jpg)
Happy holidays TL! For my first blog; I want to shine some light on a fairly unknown game, NetStorm: Islands At War. NetStorm is a RTS that was released by Activision in October 1997, a few months before StarCraft. It’s a unique, fast paced, and very fun RTS that some of you might want to try out while on your break.
Note: I’m going to abbreviate NetStorm; “NS”.
Basics
The story is that there are three furies constantly raging battle on the ground. Your people live on an island in the sky formed by the fighting below. To gain favour with the furies, you capture high priests to sacrifice them.
In practical terms, you start a game with your high priest and home island. You build a temple and workshop(s), bridge to your opponent (you’re in the sky), immobilise his high priest with the technology from your workshop(s), and sacrifice him on your altar for a reward of your choice.
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![[image loading]](http://i43.tinypic.com/35meird.gif)
The tech I've put into production from the workshops is shown on the left. You can pick two buildings per workshop and an extra one per level you upgrade it.
What makes NS unique?
Bridging
NS is unique because you don’t build mobile units like in other RTS. You use bridges to traverse the skies. Off of these bridges you can build buildings to fight. If you flank your opponent with bridges, you can hit their buildings from the side and since most only face in one direction, it’s a big advantage.
Bridges act as walls because your opponent can’t build bridges on top or off of yours. Therefore, if you build a bridge wall half the map away from your home island, nothing can reach your island. However, this is combated by building generators. Besides providing power for you to build other units, generators can use “meltdown” and explode destroying nearby bridges. This can be used to break a hole through a line of bridges. In addition, if you stay on your home island your opponent is going to collect all the resources on the map.
Golems, your starting resource collector, traverse bridges to get to geysers to collect storm power. Your high priest also walks over your bridges to get to new islands to outpost. Your opponent can walk over your bridges if he’s made a connection but he can’t build units or bridges off of them. For this reason bridges are coloured by player.
Technology
![[image loading]](http://i44.tinypic.com/2n8bksi.gif)
The NS tech tree
NS is also different from StarCraft because you don’t decide on your technology, or race, before the game. You can build multiple workshops on your island and use technology from all of them simultaneously. This allows you to mix and match technology from different tech trees. It’s like playing Zerg and Protoss at the same time and deciding you want to use arbiters to cloak your ultralisks. The cost is that you need different types of energy to power different technology.
![[image loading]](http://i43.tinypic.com/10pwmy9.gif)
A 1v1 game where red is using rain and thunder tech and blue is using wind.
Building
When you make a building, the outline is placed but a blue streak of light (best as I can describe it) must travel from your nearest outpost to it before it is operational. Your building can’t be hurt before it is built. This gives an advantage to the player with a closer outpost because his spent spent storm power is being used earlier.
What makes NS fast paced?
You need to think fast. The maps are randomly generated in NS so you have to decide where to bridge. You have to figure out which areas of the map you want to go for and the route you want to take between neutral islands to get there. You get six random bridge pieces to choose from so you also need to alter your route on the fly.
There is always a lot to do with your APM. If you’re not making units (buildings) or outposting then you should be using be bridging. Instead of a “set it and forget it” system of mining, you always need to be connecting to new geysers as you mine out existing ones. Geysers are generated when the map begins but more appear over time in random locations.
Bridges play a large role in blocking off where the enemy can build. You need to watch for meltdowns as one could easily pierce your defence and lose you the game. You need to be constantly bridging.
To break down the technique of NS, I’ll draw a parallel to SC. Your strategy would be what area of the map you want to control and where you’re going to bridge to establish that control. Tactics would be your unit placement and the orientation since most units can be placed to face in different directions.
What makes NS fun?
![[image loading]](http://i43.tinypic.com/fa80aa.jpg)
A 3v3 game. The screenshot was taken with the option to have island colour displayed.
It’s different from every other RTS you’ve played. If you’re like me, you were excited for C&C 3: Red Alert 3 and then horribly disappointed when it was another generic RTS. NetStorm is freeware, super fast to download, and endless fun.
NS is fantastic for 2v2 or 3v3 games. You can aid your allies with the tech you have to bolster their weakness. However, your buildings will take longer to build because your outpost is probably farther from the battle. This makes it so you normally can’t just overwhelm one opponent and tactical placement is more useful. The skills are extremely similar so you can easily be a 1v1, 2v2, and 3v3 player. Also, your partner can bridge off of your bridges and can help you connect geysers if you’re busy fighting.
Videos
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Here’s a FPVOD of four good players playing a 2v2. The video is at double speed so it isn’t quite this fast.
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Here’s a 3v3 FPVOD of players that aren’t as good. The teams are also a little one sided as well. It’s played at the correct speed. The person recording has a quite a bit of lag which you can tell by how long it takes the bridges to appear after being placed, ideally it’s instant. The player also has some sidebar that's overlapping NS.
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Here’s a 3v3 FPVOD of players that aren’t as good. The teams are also a little one sided as well. It’s played at the correct speed. The person recording has a quite a bit of lag which you can tell by how long it takes the bridges to appear after being placed, ideally it’s instant. The player also has some sidebar that's overlapping NS.
+ Show Spoiler +
If you want to try out the game, it’s abandonware, visit NetStormHQ. NS has a campaign but it's quite different from multiplayer. If you want some help starting out shoot me a PM. Have a Merry Christmas.
Hotkeys and Tips
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Hotkeys
q,w,a,s,z,x are your best friends. Each one is used for the corresponding bridge slot.
d is the hotkey for selecting the same building as you last built. Useful if you're building a lot of the same building quickly.
r or p selects your priest. If you double click it then it zooms your view to your priest.
c changes the way your bridges rotate (clockwise vs counterclockwise). You might like one way better than the other.
f2 turns your buildings and geysers transparent so you can bridge easier.
f3 shows or hides chat ingame.
shift+f3 gets rid of the islands being colour coded based on what temple you have. This is off in every screenshot but the last.
Tips
You can run Tmaker.exe in the package folder (which contains the game files) to get a level 43 fort. This is a saved file that has all the technology already unlocked. Part of the fun of playing the game the first time is to get all the technology by sacrificing priests. However, you may not want to bother so this is included.
Turn off Wind Noise under options. It's annoying.
You can increase the resolution a bit under options.
q,w,a,s,z,x are your best friends. Each one is used for the corresponding bridge slot.
d is the hotkey for selecting the same building as you last built. Useful if you're building a lot of the same building quickly.
r or p selects your priest. If you double click it then it zooms your view to your priest.
c changes the way your bridges rotate (clockwise vs counterclockwise). You might like one way better than the other.
f2 turns your buildings and geysers transparent so you can bridge easier.
f3 shows or hides chat ingame.
shift+f3 gets rid of the islands being colour coded based on what temple you have. This is off in every screenshot but the last.
Tips
You can run Tmaker.exe in the package folder (which contains the game files) to get a level 43 fort. This is a saved file that has all the technology already unlocked. Part of the fun of playing the game the first time is to get all the technology by sacrificing priests. However, you may not want to bother so this is included.
Turn off Wind Noise under options. It's annoying.
You can increase the resolution a bit under options.
I've been playing this game since '98 and it's surprising that you made this thread a week ago. Also, I didn't search because I figured no one had heard of it. "The number one game that nobody bought" - CNET.com
