Main
Introduction
Storyboard
Release Information
Awards
Starting a Game
About A. Crowther
Interface
Monitors
Movements
Droid Status
Disk
Group Display
Hands
Sleep & Pause
Remote Control
Preferences
Droids
Skills
Inventory
Droid Parts
Tools
Weapons
The Camera
Items
Dev-Scapes
Optics
Environment
Walls
Doors
Shops
Encounters
Miscellaneous
Miscellaneous
FAQ
Tips & Tricks
Pre-Captive
Bugs
Did You Know?
Tools
Technical
The Map Generator
Sounds
Disk Directory
Drawing Encounters
Flying Items
Internal Graphics
Holamap
Fire Hydrants
View Rendering
Website
History
Acknowledgments
Links/Contact

Tips and Tricks

Instant kill using the ladder

Only one encounter can occupy a single tile. If your ladder is surrounded by three walls (with obviously one opening to reach it), you can climb the ladder and wait for an encounter to go right under it. If you go down the ladder at that time, the encounter will be pushed out of the way, but if there is already another encounter on that tile next to the ladder, the encounter will be crushed instead. Use the camera to know exactly when an encounter is trapped under the ladder.

It's safer to place the chest on socket than a charged hand on chest

There are only three things that can come in contact with electricity: Your leader's hand, a droid chest or a battery. Any other item will explode. If you need to recharge the chest of your droid, it is much safer to take the chest in your hand and make it touch the electric socket because if you accidentally touch anything else with a charged hand (arm, leg, head, inventory item, etc.), you will lose it.

However, note that a droid without a chest is completely vulnerable to hits. When you get financially comfortable, purchase a battery. Batteries don't destroy other objects and can only recharge chests.

Sell clipboards

Sell clipboards! In fact, when you first land on Butre, a good trick is to go and pick up the message from Ratt and place it in your inventory. Return to the Swan, land again, and there will be another message from Ratt.  Pick this up as well and repeat this 88 times by putting the messages in your inventory, hands and cursor. Enter a base and find a shop where you can sell all the messages and get 18,400 credits.

Keep some Zlots

Zlots are weapons that are sometimes found behind a wall panel. At the beginning, they are pretty useful because you lack the money to buy real weapons and ammunitions. After a while, you will see them as being useless, but do keep a couple of them around in your inventory because they are very useful to blow up mines when there are no electric sockets around.

Use the name book

You know these silly books that describe people only by their name? Well, it's time to use it for Captive. The name of a droid defines its dexterity, vitality and wisdom. Pick a name until you have descent initial skills (maximum initial value is 15 for each skill). You can use the MaxSkills tool to help you out.

Heavy money

A money bag can be quite heavy, and the heavier you are, the faster the electricity will drop. When you enter the base, the first thing you can do is drop all your money bags, except perhaps for one. You will need to get back to that specific location once the base has been destroyed anyway.

You can trust the shopkeeper

When you have found your first shop, leave your money bag in the hand of the shopkeeper. The bag travels from one shop to the next, so there's no need to carry it all the time with you and get that extra weight. Just don't forget to get it back before leaving the base!

Get more shots from canisters

Flambos are incredibly rare ammunitions. If you happen to find some canisters, there's a way to get more shots from them. A flambos canister only offer 10 shots, but if you drop it in fire, it will increase its capacity to 60 shots!

The same can be done for acid canisters that go from 10 shots to 50 shots when dropped in water.

Batteries can be partially recharged with fire

Dropping a battery in fire will set its power level to 23%, regardless of its current power level.

Kill'em all!

Once you have what it takes to leave the base, don't leave until all the encounters are killed. Encounters increase the experience points which allows you to increase your skills which make future encounters easier to kill.

Carrying more than a single probe

You can leave the base with more than one probe. The advantage of this comes when you can't find the probe of a future planet, for which you always have other probe(s) in backup. If you drop a second probe in space right after the first one has indicated a planet, it will go to the next planet which allows you to skip a level. However, note that all levels must be completed in order to access the space station and complete the mission, making level skipping useless.

Sleeping - One of the best weapon

Encounters may not see through walls, but they have a radar that tells them where you are. They are stupid enough to shoot in your direction no matter what is between you and them. If there is an encounter in the way, it will be shot by the other encounter. If the encounter has ammunition that bounces back, it will end up killing itself. The point is, if you hear a 'Clank!' sound, it means an encounter has been hit by something. Hit the sleep button which will hold your electricity level (if all devices are offline) and make time go faster. When you hear the money bag drop, wake up and laugh like a mad droid.

Letting an encounter kill itself does not prevent your droids from gaining experience points.

Before destroying the generators...

  • Make sure you have a space probe with you.
  • Sell all clipboards. They are useless on the other base.
  • Fix all your droids.
  • Gear up full on ammunitions.
  • If you followed the "You can trust the shopkeeper" advice above, get the money bag from the shop.
  • Fill up the electricity levels. Sockets no longer work when the generators are blown.
  • Activate the "Root Finder" Dev-Scape to locate the main door and lander.