Planet X16

Planet X16 is a real-time strategy game in which you gather resources, build a base and prepare to defend it against the Protoids. You have 9 to 10 minutes before the enemy attacks, so use that time to establish resource production and fortifications.

Gather resources

Build a smelter near rocks and crystals. Use a builder to collect minerals and drop them beside the smelter, which picks them up and processes them as needed. Crystals are the most valuable, so process them first; once they run out, work through the rocks from largest to smallest.

Build a power station and place up to eight solar panels around it. If you need more panels, build another power station. Gas refineries go on volcanoes, and tapping more volcanoes provides more gas.

Defend your base

Move rocks or build walls to fortify vulnerable areas. Build sentry tanks at the factory and position them a few spaces behind your wall, where their long firing range can cover it. Set them to sentry mode; they need to be spinning to defend.

The game has no fog of war, and you can see anything in the main view area. To track mobile player and enemy units live on the mini-map, you need a radar station. Player units appear in white and Protoid units in yellow.

Choose your forces

Units differ in speed, cost and strength. Heavy tanks are slow, expensive and take a long time to build, but a small group can decimate an opponent's base. ATVs are cheap and fast, but have little firepower.

Missiles can easily devastate an opponent's base, but they are expensive and slow to build, and each launch requires a new missile. Target coordinates are measured in spaces relative to the silo and shown in hexadecimal, so coordinates differ between silos.

The Protoids

The Protoids typically wait until their army reaches a certain size before attacking your base, but they rush to defend their own if you attack. Their tanks can blast through terrain in their path or build bridges over water so other units can reach your base. They also rebuild destroyed parts of their base, so a partly successful attack may need to be followed up before they restore it.

Difficulty levels

Easy, normal and hard settings change several aspects of the enemy, including its tank-to-soldier ratios and the number of sentry pods it builds. Bases have as few as four pods on easy and as many as 12 on hard. On easy, the Protoids do not build a factory and therefore produce no tanks; without tanks, they also do not cross water or create paths through forests or rocks. On hard, they start with two bases.