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NIC
NAVIGATION INTERCEPTION COMMITTEE DIRECTIVE
- Players. Any number of players can collaborate to play against the computer.
- The Setting. The Navigation Interception Committee, the NIC, has five secret agents (code names: Aqua, Plum, Lime, Gold, and Coral). There is also a spy. NIC's agents play against him. Yes it's a "him". Anyway, when the agents block the spy's advance during a game he gets spooked and starts all over in the next game. If the agents manage to block him in five consecutive games he's done for good, which means that the N.I.C. saved the world.
- The Spy's Path. The spy's mission is to reach a target city. His purpose is not stated but it can't be good. He drives, flies, or sails around the world, passing through thirty-nine cities to reach the target on his fortieth game round.
- The Agents' Mission. The agents must stop the spy before he reaches the target city. The odds favor the agents but only if they do a decent job. An agent who is already waiting in the target city does not count: once the spy reaches the target, he wins that game.
- Medals and Map Marks. The five spy icons on the right side of the console track the team's winning streak. Each game the team wins turns the next spy into a medal; a game the spy wins turns them all back into spies. Five medals means the world is saved. A crossed-out spy marks every city where the spy was stopped, and a black flag marks every target he reached. These marks stay on the map for the whole series.
- Series Versus Games. Reload the page to start a brand-new series. Press the red GAME button to start the next game within the same series. Again, you win a series if you block the spy in five consecutive games.
- The Agents' Moves. At the start of each game, the five agents are stationed at air bases around the world, and the spy's starting city is revealed.
- Game Rounds. A round consists of optionally moving the agents to a new location, followed by the spy's stepwise advancement toward the target.
- NIC's Tactical Assets: Planes. In a single round, Nic's agents can jump on a plane and fly between open air bases.
- Ground Vehicles. The agents must drive away from the air bases to pursue and catch the spy.
- Boats. NIC has a fleet of five interceptor boats to catch the spy if he is near the shore or if crosses oceans or any large bodies of water, which he does in almost every game.
- STOVL Fighter Jets. NIC's agents can call on vertical-take-off jets to transport them from the field back to any open air base.
LET'S PRACTICE THE BASICS:
Double-click on the white bar above and drag this window away from the game console. Now press the red GAME button and notice the numbers flashing on the bottom display of the right panel.- When the numbers stop flashing, zoom and drag the map to see the colored circles marking the current location of the agents. Find the smaller black circle. That's the spy.
- Now check out and try all the console displays and buttons, but don't press the GO button just yet.
- Now scroll to the top of these instructions and press the Path Reveal button. Looking back at the map you should see the entire path that the spy will take. During a real game you can't see the whole path. You can only see it from the start to the current spy's location. Well, actually the whole path will be revealed when the spy's advancement is blocked. But you should use this Path Reveal feature for training. By the way, spy paths never repeat. Each game has a different path that has never been seen before.
PRACTICE FLYING BETWEEN AIR BASES:
During each turn, you either assign a new destination city to each agent, or you let them stay where they are.- First, click one of the agents' code names (Aqua, Plum, etc.).
- This causes markings to appear on the map.
- The airplane icons mark air bases that the selected agent can fly to on his or her next move. As a rule, they are located within a five-thousand-mile radius of the selected agent. The complete set of air bases is randomly picked in each game.
- Zoom in to one of those air bases and click it. Its name should appear to the right of the agent's code name, replacing the current city or air base name. The agent will not move just yet. That will happen when you press the GO button. Meanwhile a dashed arrow in the agent's color shows the planned move, so the whole team can see the plan. The arrow is gray when that move is not allowed.
- The GO button will only move the agents if it is green.
- The GO button will turn or stay gray if you picked a city that is not allowed, or if you have not answered the country borders challenge that appears below the console at the beginning of the game and every time the spy moves to a different country.
PRACTICE DRIVING:
The open circles that you see when you click an agent's code name are cities that the agent can drive to on the next move.- Zoom in and click an open circle. The name of the clicked city should show up in the next city column next to the agent's code name.
- Most of the time the open circles are relatively close to the current agent's position, but sometimes you'll see them spreading over larger distances. That's because the length of the spy's jumps from city to city can vary a lot, and the allowed distance the agents can travel equals the distance the spy will travel on his next move. There is, however, an upper limit of five hundred miles.
- Most likely the agents will have to drive to catch the spy, but trying to catch him from behind may or may not pay off. If it doesn't the agents might be stuck in the middle of nowhere with no nearby air base to drive to, and thus, no way to fly to another base.
- In this case an agent can call a personal vertical-take-off fighter jet.
PRACTICE FLYING A STOVL JET:
Click one of the open circles and press the GO button.- On the next round, click an air base that is far from the agent's position, that is, an air base that is not located within the allowed distance radius. Note that although the airport name appears in the next city column, the GO button turns gray.
- Now request a jet by clicking the fighter jet icon to the left of the agent's name.
- Notice that when you do that, the GO button turns green, which means the jet can take you to the chosen air base.
- If you click the fighter jet button by mistake, you can cancel it by clicking the same icon in the Cancel column.
- Note that each jet carries just one agent, with a limit of five jets per game.
PRACTICE INTERCEPTOR BOAT DEPLOYMENT:
- To deploy a boat, select a boat radio button and click on the map.
- Boats can technically be placed anywhere because the program cannot detect land versus water. Players must voluntarily place boats only on water.
- Still, there are lots of places they can go, including the Great Lakes, the Caspian Sea, and the like. Placing them in rivers is not fair but what about estuaries or deltas not far from the ocean? Yes that is totally fair.
- The initial deployment of any boat can be anywhere in the world. After that, if you do not reload the web page, boats may only move a distance equal to the spy's current step up to a maximum of 500 miles. You can see two circles around the boats. The step distance circle is the one that has a line, instead of just points. You will be cheating if you creep your way out of the step distance circle before pressing the GO button.
- The second unconnected circle always has a radius of two hundred miles. Be careful when using this circle to judge distances. You can do that at a given latitute, but as you approach the poles the 200 miles circle becames much bigger because the map is a Web Mercator projection of the globe.
PRACTICE CATCHING THE SPY:
- Refer to the above figure. It illustrates six basic strategies to catch the spy.
- Important distance requirements. To catch the spy, using any method other than The Arrest, the two participating agents or boats must each be within two hundred miles of each other and of the spy.
- Press the Path Reveal button above, then practice each of the strategies listed below. You may have to start new games to find situations suited to each strategy, so you don't have to practice them in this order.
- If you just want to advance through rounds quickly while practicing these strategies, open Settings and check "no borders quiz." That turns off the country borders challenge, so pressing GO never gets held up while you're training.
- The Bermuda Triangle. Does the spy's path include a step onto a small island or peninsula? Deploy three of Nic's boats as shown in the figure. When the spy tries to move outside the area his path will be blocked regardless of direction.
- The Blockade. If one of the spy's moves is over water, you can block that move with two of Nic's boats.
- The Barricade. This is similar to a blockade, but done on land by two agents positioned on each side of the spy's predicted next step. To practice a barricade, at least one of the agents must drive away from an air base. Does the spy's path go near an air base? If so, fly two agents there and then drive to positions on both sides of the spy's step.
- The Harpoon. This method can be used when the spy just got to a city that is close to two agents. Place one of the agents on the spy's city and the other nearby, regardless of direction. This also works if you place both agents in the spy's current city.
- The Arrest. In a real game this is the most difficult method. But since you can see the spy's path here, you can drive an agent to a city on the path and arrest the spy when he gets there. In an actual game, toggle the spy π button to view his potential next destinations. Keep in mind the spy usually picks one of the furthest destinations from the available set.
- The Shield. This is a last resort method. It requires knowing the location of the target city and placing three agents around it. This is the reverse of the Bermuda Triangle: you are preventing the spy from entering it.
STRATEGY AND TEAM WORK.
You can play the game all by yourself, but if you have several players you can strategize as a team.- Longer spy steps. Watch the changing numbers in the Spy Intel panel when loading a new game. There is some chance that pauses on certain numbers correlate with longer spy steps corresponding to those numbers. It is not a certainty. It is just probable. Still, it's worth writing down those pausing numbers.
- Path direction. You should know that with each step the spy gets closer to the target. Use this fact to plan the next move.
- Distance from the target. With each spy step the distance from the target is displayed on the Spy Intel panel. Use the β drawing tool on the left side of the map to draw distance circles and pinpoint the target city's location by triangulation.
- Country Borders Challenge. This challenge pops up whenever the spy enters a new country, and you cannot move your agents until you answer the question correctly. The collective knowledge of the team should help in answering the question quickly.
- Target Country Facts. Most target cities have populations over a million and are always located in one of the forty-one countries listed below. A few times each game, a hint about the target country pops up just above the map and disappears again after the next move. Write down these hints and definitely feel free to use the internet to help you figure out the target country.
- Making the game easier or harder. You can do this in settings. While the set of air bases is randomly picked, you can increase the total number, up to one hundred and twenty two, to make the game easier, and vice-versa. Likewise, you can increase the maximum non-fly distance, which will make it very easy to catch the spy just before he takes a long trip to his next city. Lastly, you could increase the two-hundred mile blocking distance to catch the spy from further away. As for the other settings, they have to do with the way the spy's path is calculated. It's probably best to leave them unchanged.
- Argentina, Australia, Austria, Belgium, Bulgaria, Bolivia, Brazil, Canada, Chile, Colombia, Costa Rica, Germany, Denmark, Ecuador, Spain, Finland, France, Great Britain, Greece, Hungary, Ireland, Israel, Italy, Japan, Mexico, Nicaragua, Netherlands, Norway, New Zealand, Panama, Peru, Poland, Portugal, Romania, El Salvador, Serbia, Turkey, Ukraine, Uruguay, United States, and Venezuela.
