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 become a safe haven for your people. As a newcomer, we advise you to read this section of the guide first to better understand the game.

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'.

Outbreak rounds

Except for the beginner round, every 2 months our game is reset to give all players a fair chance of winning the game. Each round last 8 weeks, the signup for the round is always opened on the 1st day of the month.

The start of the round is always on the 2nd day of the month. Both are timed on 20:00 GTM +1:00.

Starting months are:

February
April
June
August
October
December

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.

Seasons

As the game progresses your town will go through the 4 different seasons. Eacht season has iets own different effects. For example: During the winters, food grows very scarce. Stone is frozen and very slippery, making it impossible to quarry. Snowploughs no longer clear the (free)ways, so you must make your own path through the snow, which is a time consuming process. People need to burn wood to keep themself warm. 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%.

General 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 14 hours your town will receive a random event. When you click on the 'Random event,' you will receive the result immediately. The result be random, ranging between good, neutral, and bad events.

Townhall	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 ingame mail to other players.

Resources

In this bar you can see the current level of your resources and how much you gain or lose 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 to construct buildings.
	Fuel:	Needed to transport goods 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.