The Tone Rebellion/Gameplay

The Tone Rebellion is a Real Time Strategy computer game released by Logic Factory in 1997. In it players choose a tribe of "floaters" and do battle with the "Leviathan," an unthinking plague spreading corruption throughout the island universe. In multiplayer mode, players can co-operate against the Leviathan or fight one another.

Game Version
The most recent version of the game is version 1.31E. This walkthrough assumes that you have the most recent version of the game installed and some details may be different if you are using an earlier version of the game. A patch for the game to update to version 1.31E is available but must be installed manually. If you have the patch, follow the instructions in the readme file.

Loading the Game
The game was designed in the period where the main form of DRM was to require you to have the game CD in order to play. If you have downloaded the game you likely have an electronic copy of the CD in the form of an .iso file. While you can install the game normally from the .iso file, to play the game you must also mount the .iso file so that the game identifies it as if it is a CD in the drive.

At this point you could start the game by running FLOAT.EXE from the game folder, but if you want to set up a multiplayer game you need to do so using the autorun feature of the CD (or .iso file).

Starting a Game
Once you open the game you are prompted to choose between resuming your previous game, loading a saved game, quitting the game, and starting a new game. Choosing to start a game leads you to a screen that allows you to choose your tribe, the size of the universe, and the game difficulty level.

The Tribes
There are four tribes to choose from. Each one has a colorful symbol; clicking on the tribe selects that tribe and gives you some background information about that tribe. The background is mostly fluff and you don't need to read any of it to play the game. The symbols are reminiscent of the four traditional elements of fire, air, water, and earth, but actually these terms are never used in the game and they instead represent the four 'realms of existence,' physical, supernatural, ethereal, and natural. However, it may help you to remember the aspects of these realms by using elemental terms for them.

The main difference between the tribes is what types of units they can make. The choices are:
 * The Tarks, the physical (or 'fire') tribe. The Tark units tend to be tough but slow.  Their primary unit fights at close range.
 * The Zygons, the supernatural (or 'air') tribe. The Zygon units tend to be faster but less hardy.  Their primary unit attacks at long range.
 * The Cepheans, the ethereal (or 'water') tribe. Cephean units are fast but more fragile.  Their primary unit fights at close range.
 * The Dyla, the natural (or 'earth') tribe. Dyla units tend to be tough and slow.  Their primary unit fights at long range, and has the longest range of any unit.

In The Tone Rebellion you are going to want a mixture of close combat and long-ranged units, but each tribe has a mixture of both (if your primary unit fights at close range then your other combat units will fight at long range and vice versa), so it doesn't matter too much which tribe you choose as the play style will be somewhat similar no matter which group you select.

The one other difference will be the spell selection of your magical units, but that is a much more complex issue and will be covered in more detail later.

Universe Size
The universe of The Tone Rebellion consists of a number of island worlds connected by bridges. Each of the island worlds has a radically different look, but otherwise they all functionally work the same. There are five islands that must appear in every game: the home islands of each of the four tribes, and the island lair of the leviathan. So the selection you make refers to how many other islands will also appear in the game, either two (for a total of seven), six (for a total of eleven), or ten (for a total of fifteen) islands.

This not only determines game length, but since the number of upgrades your units can receive is based on the total number of bridges connecting the islands, less islands means less bridges, so you won't be able to get all the upgrades in the game unless you play with a large universe. On the other hand, you may not need them in a smaller game.

Difficulty
The game difficulty levels are not named and have five levels. The effectiveness of the game AI does not seem to increase much from one level to the next; the main difficulty seems to be that the enemies deal more damage and are harder to kill at higher levels.