STATION 1.0


BY SHAREWARE SYSTEMS
72 CASCADE DRIVE
#36
ROCHESTER, NY 14614
(716) 262-2220
(716) 262-2257 fax
CompuServe 72311,55



Legal Stuff: (Sorry, but the lawyer insists we include
this.) This software is licensed "as is", without
any warranty whether expressed or implied. Because
of the many hardware and software enviroments in
which this program may be used, no warranty of
fitness for a particular purpose can be given.
The user must assume the entire risk of using the
program. Any liability of Shareware Systems is
limited exclusively to product replacement or the
refund of the registration fee.

You are licensed to use this software for thirty
days and to distribute copies of it for a minimal
fee (ten dollars or less). If you continue using it
beyond this time you must register it. Registration
is $10.00 or $5.00 if you are the first to include a
new event suggestion that we subsequently use.

For your registration fee you will receive a copy
of the latest update of version 1.0. You will also
be able to register version 2.0 at a discounted
price. Version 2.0 is planned to be in Windows, and
to be available the Summer of 1992.

Shareware:
Shareware is a marketing concept for copyrighted
software. If any vendor has told you that this is "free,"
"public domain," or "low cost " software we would like to
know, because they are defrauding you and hurting us by
misusing our trust.
Vendors should label this program as "shareware," if they
do so they are charging a legitimate cost of distribution
fee. Shareware is copyrighted software that you can try out
before you buy, and then if you use it on a regular basis
you are trusted to pay the programmer for their work in
creating it. Any price you have paid a vendor for this
disk (it should have been less than $10.00) has only gone to
cover their costs of duplicating and distributing the disk.
These vendors are legitimate people performing a service for
both programmers and the public. Programmers let these
vendors distribute their disks without getting any money
from the vendors, thus distribution costs are low and so is
the price of the disk. The public gets to try the program at
home on their own machine for the price of distribution, and
if they enjoy the program and use it then they must pay the
programmer directly. Generally the programmer can charge you
less for the program than a commercial equivalent would cost
because they have fewer advertising and packaging costs.
So everyone benefits from this method. However, the success
of the system depends on you; if you pay for what you use
more and better programs will be written and released, if
you don't then it will whither because all the shareware
programmers will either starve or find other work.
Shareware Systems:
We are a small company that is just venturing into the
shareware market. We are very happy to be bringing you this
new and (we think) different game. At this time we are
planning on releasing a Windows version next Summer (1992).
The Windows version will be version 2.0, any updates and bug
fixes between the two versions will be 1.*.

If you have any suggestions or complaints concerning
this game we will be happy to hear from you even if
you choose not to register.

Vendors Please Notice: We are grateful to all legitimate,
ethical vendors who choose to distribute our product. We do
have a few requirements that must be met before we allow
distribution of our product.
1) You must make clear that our product is shareware, not public
domain software or freeware.
2) You must explain that the only thing the buyer is getting is
the chance to try the product, that if they like it there
is a registration fee.
3) You must not change any of the included files in any
manner. You must include all the files in the file
packing.lst.
4) While you may add short files to help your customer,
you may not imply that you have written this
software or that you have any copyright on any of
our files. You may not include more than one
advertising file.
5) This product must be sold only under the name
"Station." It may not be bundled with any other
software or included in a game pack under any
other title. As long as all programs are listed
separately and the name "Station" is used for our
program, you may include it on the same disk as
other programs.

Systems Requirements:
Hardware: IBM compatible PC with 8086 or better and 512K
RAM. Hard drive recommended, but not required.
Software: MS or PC-DOS 2.0 or greater.

Game Introduction: If you have ever wanted to live the life
of a natural entrepreneur, but were put off by the insect
life, here is your chance to experience it in the comfort of
your home.

You can run an Australian sheep ranch, play the real
estate and wool markets, or just see how many goodies you
can get of all sorts. This is a text simulation game, but
you can watch the markets flux and track the shearing of
your sheep. Be sure to watch the message boxes or you may
lose sheep or employees. If you want jump into the game, buy
land and housing first or you will lose all your sheep and
fall into poverty.

Game Specifics:
Start Up: When you start the game by typing "station"
it will ask you several questions:
1) What is your name? This should be simple to
answer.
2) What is the name of your Station? Just choose
any name for your station that you like.
3) Please enter a starting speed. Well, it may
not be phrased like a question, but answer with
a number between 1 and 100. One is very slow, 5
is about right for a beginner, and 100 is very
fast.
4) Please enter a difficulty level. Again 1 is
very easy, and 10 is very hard. We recommend
levels 1 and 2 for beginners. As the difficulty
increases you get less money to start with and
fewer good events will happen to you.
5) Can your monitor display color text? Can you
display more than one color of text on a screen
at a time? is what this means. Upon this answer
depends how the game sets up.
Play: The screen is organized into six windows. The
biggest window (on the upper left) is the main menu
and has the date of your ranch at the top. If you
press the letter next to a selection on the main
menu, a box will come up in the menu window and ask
you what you want to do--buy, sell, shear how many
sheep, and so forth. Some important options are:

Auto shear: will cause your employees to
shear the sheep automatically and at
such a time as to best avoid heatstroke
or frostbite. This is a nice feature,
but if you want to sell your sheep turn
it off, as sheared sheep cannot be sold.
Also very young sheep cannot be sheared,
so not all your sheep will be sheared at
once.
Investments: pops up a window allowing you to
invest in sheep, dog, or grass research.
If you invest then some events will
happen that otherwise could not. In
general, the more you invest, the better
the event will be for you. As in real
life, however, results are not
guaranteed
Game options: pops up another window that
allows you to modify the speed and
difficulty of your game, to save it, or
to load a saved game. It also will give
you your current score if you push E.
The autosell option in this window will
sell your wool a month after you buy it,
and is not dependent upon the market
value of the wool at all. The reports
option will allow you to decide how
often in years you get a report on your
profits, losses and expenses.

If you are doing anything in the main menu or its
submenus, then time will not pass; we find this is
the easiest way to pause the game if you need to do
something else.

The second window is just below, on the bottom left.
Here you will receive messages about your farm. If
your employees are overworked they will complain,
or if sheep die you will be told why, and more. If
you need to see earlier messages you can scroll
through them up to 200 lines back.

The other four windows are stacked on top of each
other on the right. They can be flipped through
either by pressing F1-F4, or by pressing the
spacebar repeatedly. F1 gives you the status of
your station including the amount of money you
have, the number of sheep you have, how many sheep
are sheared, and more. F2 is a summary of how many
buildings of each type you own. F3 gives you the
current buying and selling prices of every item you
can own. The lower price is the price you can sell
for, while the higher price is what you can buy at.
F4 tells you about how many sheep, dogs, and
employees you can feed, water, or house. These
capacities depend upon how many buildings you have
and how well they are kept up.

Strategies and Hints:

1) Buy land first. If you don't have land, you
cannot buy buildings and any sheep you buy will
starve. Also it is usually worth it to track the
market carefully and buy land when it is cheap.
2) Then buy buildings. The truly critical buildings
are folds, farmhouses, wells, and bunkhouses. We
recommend you always have extra capacity in these
items to prevent death of sheep or loss of
employees. If you do not have the money to buy
more buildings, then sell some sheep.
3) Next buy sheep and hire employees. Employees
shear the sheep, care for them, and keep your
buildings in good repair. However, they will care
for sheep before buildings so if you have too
many sheep your buildings will degrade and you
will lose capacity.
4) Dogs reduce the workload on the employees, so
fewer employees can care for the sheep. You must
have a kennel to house the dogs.
5) Fenced land has a considerably higher capacity
for sheep than unfenced land. If you need more
capacity and don't have the money for land, check
and make certain all the land you do have is
fenced.
6) Wells are not as effective during a drought as
they are in normal weather. You may want to sell
some sheep if a drought occurs.
7) Buildings can burn down or be otherwise
destroyed.
8) Lambs cannot be sheared. So don't worry if you
can't shear all the sheep you have.
9) Sheared sheep cannot be sold.
10) Money in the bank will earn interest. So don't
spend it all. Also your employees will leave if
you don't have the money to pay them.
11) When you are in a drought, the date above the main
menu is yellow, not green. Monochrome users will
see the date change from white to light gray.
12) Should you wish the game to run faster it is
possible, if you have a RAM disk, to tell Station
that the file STATION.DAT is not in the current
directory. Simply enter the path STATION.DAT is
in after the command STATION. For example if
your RAMdisk is D: then copy STATION.DAT to D:\
and type STATION D:\STATION.DAT. This can
greatly improve game speed as all events are
stored on disk.


Registration:

Please, if you like the game remember to register.
Aside from the legal obligation to register if you
use the game, we depend on the income from this
company for our food and rent. Remember if you do
use the game you must register, if you don't you
shouldn't register. That is how shareware works.
Very Darwinian, really.

If you choose to register you can print the
registration form by typing in:
"type register.frm> prn"
This is a one page document that you can stuff in
an envelope and send to us.

In either case, we thank you for trying Station,
and remind you that a Windows version will be
available around Summer 1992.




Happy Holidays
from
Shareware Systems



Robert L. Pierce
Tab Bennedum
Jennie Hazen
Heather Fleck