BEWARE - THIS IS A REACH FOR THE STARS CAMPAIGN WALKTHRU. DO NOT READ!

Scenario One: To The Stars It's impossible to lose this scenario. You must build up Martian Industry to its maximum of level two and form a colony on Barnards Star 4. Follow the tutorial instructions to learn how to play the game. If you're not doing the tutorial you should think about colonizing the Asteroid Belt and building it up to maximum before colonizing Barnards Star.

Scenario Two: First Contact Whether or not you are following the tutorial, try to build up all your colonies as far as possible. There is one colonizable planet at Sirius and two at Sadalsuud. Colonize them. The Saurischi are at Deneb and you will win the scenario by capturing their planet of Iskandar. Before you do this, research everything in Era two and build an unstoppable fleet of cruisers and destroyers (there's no point building more than 20 of each). Your cruisers should be equipped mainly with the Volley HS-4 attack drone which gives them good attack at all ranges and some planetary attack capability. When you're ready, move your fleet to Deneb, destroy the Saurischi fleet and invade their planet with marines.

Scenario Three: The Hive War Begins You will have the fleet you ended Scenario two with so you will be in a good position to attack the Saurischi. Resist the temptation to do this. You play the Saurischi in Scenario Four and any damage you inflict on them here will only make your job tougher in that scenario. Your real enemy are the Hive, so concentrate on them. You should find colonizable planets on Alcor and Pollux, but Izar is only useful as a central staging post to station an interception fleet. Arkab, Zaniah and Pherkad may all have colonizable planets, but also enemy bases. Cebelrai in the bottom left corner of the map usually has a planet that you can inhabit and small bases at this and other outlying stars can be useful when you reach scenario six. To win the scenario you must sign a neutrality pact with the Saurischi and then destroy 20 Hive ships. This is relatively easy as at low tech levels Hive ships are not very good. Once they have encountered the Hive themselves, the Saurischi will accept any proposal that you send them. You should not try to hunt down the Hive as this will end the scenario before you have had a chance to build up. Once you have researched all of Era three, send a fleet to hunt down your 20 ships. The Hive homeworlds are on Ain and Syrma, so that would be a good place to start.

Scenario Four: Overrun Playing as the Saurischi you must survive as long as possible. Every five turns you hold off the Hive gives you one extra turn before the Hive attack Humanity at the start of Scenario Five. If you survive the maximum 45 turns, you will gain an extra nine turns breathing space. The key to success is to ignore planetary development and concentrate totally on building up your fleet. You have a small fleet to start and you cannot afford to lose it. However, you have several advantages. You have a better nav range than the Hive (particularly in your own space), you have interior lines, so you can intercept any attack very quickly and you have far better ships. The system Zaniah is the most central location to station your fleet. From Zaniah you should be able to reach all your colonies in one turn. Try to avoid hyperjumps which will take two or more turns. While your fleet is in hyperspace it can't defend anything. To fight the Hive you should design ships based around the Balefire guided missile. Your superior engines will allow you to dictate the range at which almost all combats are fought and though the Balefire is almost useless at close range it is so superior at long range to make it the obvious choice. Try to anticipate where the Hive will send a fleet and send your fleet to intercept them. Sometimes you will be wrong and you may lose a couple of outlying colonies this way. Don't try to re-colonize any lost world, just defend your shrinking Empire. Accept that you will lose some colonies and concentrate on defending the ones you have left. The Hive get significant reinforcements starting on turn 20. They will also be doing research and improving their ships, so expect the odds to get worse as the game progresses. If you encounter a fleet too large to defeat, run. If you lose your fleet you will never recover.

Scenario Five: Backs to the Wall In order to win this scenario you must inflict 250 points of casualties on the Hive. Each Hive destroyer you eliminate is worth one point, each cruiser three points, each dreadnought six points and each super dreadnought 12 points. Destroying or invading a Hive colony is worth 50 points. Having just played the Saurischi with their excellent ships you may be fooled into thinking you can take on the same sort of odds with Human ships. Unfortunately Earth ships just aren't that good. However, your economy is far better than the Saurischi and you can also put a lot of effort into Research and improve your technology. Apart from your destroyers which are superior, your ships are about equal to Hive ships. Their ships are a lot cheaper though, so in the long term they can afford to take losses far more than you can. Each time you meet a Hive fleet you'll be able to fry a large group of destroyers, but at one point per ship it'll take a long time to reach 250. The key to victory are those colonies, worth 50 points each. You need to concentrate on building a fleet capable of planetary bombardment. This means researching the Ship of the Line Hull and the Broadside II Active Mine. Marines are also useful in case a Hive colony is on a Human compatible planet. Even with dreadnoughts it will be hard to destroy an established Hive colony. It's better to wait until they create colonies in systems close to you. Hit those colonies while they have a low population and bingo, a quick 50 points. With the Hive's massive production base it's not a good idea to waste time in this scenario. Get out there and clock up your points as quickly as possible. If you haven't researched everything in Era 5 by the end of the scenario, then so be it. The Attack Cruiser Hull, Troutcorp N-5 ECM and Volley HS-6 Attack Drone are the most important items in Era 5 so be sure to research them first. Don't split your fleets. You want the largest fleet possible, to give yourself the best chance of winning any battle.

Scenario Six: X-Space or Bust In this scenario the Hive are too powerful and will defeat you, given enough time. Having said that, good play can hold them off for quite a while and every turn you delay them is to your advantage. As in Scenario Five, you don't want to split your fleets. You want the largest possible fleet so you can avoid defeat as long as possible. Don't allow your fleet to get too far from Sol and Barnards Star. The Hive can do a lot of damage in a couple of turns. If you lose Earth and Barnards Star IV you will find that your production base has been reduced so much that the end will come quickly. Destroy Hive colonies if there is an opportunity, but don't get carried away doing this. The important Hive colonies are too far away from Earth to attack without leaving yourself undefended. Destroying outlying Hives will not significantly damage the Hive economy. The start of scenario messages tell you not to try to defeat the Hive by conventional means. Instead you should look for some sort of Alien technology to help you win. The technology you are after is on the planet Mirphak 4 in the bottom right corner of the map. Send a colony ship to Mirphak. When you colonize Mirphak 4 a new technology, the Dimensional Portal will appear in Era 7 of your tech tree. You should try to research this as soon as possible because the Hive can overwhelm you very quickly. However, you also want to research as much other technology as possible. A compromise between these two aims is to research the Era jumps to Era 7 and then to partially research the Dimensional Portal. Ideally you can reach a point where there are only a few SPs left to research the Dimensional Portal. Then you can look at researching other technology until the Hive overwhelm you. At this point you can complete the Dimensional Portal. Researching the Dimensional Portal allows Humanity to escape to a parallel universe and ends the scenario. Don't worry about your position at the end of the scenario. You carry nothing over to the next scenario except your position on the tech tree and your ship designs.

Scenario Seven: Into the Unknown This isn't a particularly hard scenario to win. If you survive till turn 40 with two or more colonies, you will win. However, it is important for future scenarios that you expand as far as possible and create a large economic base. You are up against the Meridi, physically the largest species in Reach For The Stars. Their base ship is a superdreadnought, so they can be incredibly tough to face in combat. Their weakness in combat is that they don't have any effective missile weapons. Therefore, not only are they vulnerable to missile attack, their battle tactics are predictable. By far the best formation for the Meridi will be Line of Battle. They will almost never pick Echelon. You should base your tactics on this knowledge. Despite what you're told in the Scenario Briefing, the Meridi aren't your real enemy, the Combine are. The evil totalitarian Combine have engineered a war between you and their enemies, the peaceful Meridi. You'll find this out later, but base your strategy on it now. You should try to avoid combat with the Meridi wherever possible. You should expand towards the bottom and the right of the map, concentrating far more on development than on military build-up. A colony on either Yildun or Nunki is vital to success in the next scenario.

Scenario Eight: A Terrible Mistake In this scenario you play the Outies, rebels battling the Combine. You must get at least one ship to a Human colony so that you can tell them what rotten chaps the Combine really are. You only have ten turns to do this in. You start on Alsciaukat and a large Combine task force starts right next door at Taygeta. They will jump to Alsciaukat on turn one and destroy your colony on turn two. You cannot face them, so you must run. Jump to Pleione on turn one and establish a colony there. Jump to Alnair on turn two and do the same. You should now be in one turn's jump distance of Yildun or two of Nunki. If you created colonies there in Scenario Seven it will be easy to win the game by jumping to it. If not, you will have to try to reach one of the colonies you set up in the previous scenario. If the Combine intercept you on the way, run. Even then you may not succeed in getting away. If the closest Human colony is outside your Navigation range then the only way to win the scenario may be to go back and replay Scenario Seven. In any case you do not have to win this scenario, though the next one will be easier if you do.

Scenario Nine: Against The Combine If you won Scenario Eight then you will enter this scenario at war with everybody, which is actually better than the alternative. You must convince the Meridi of your good intentions, which means not destroying any of their ships or colonies for between four and eight turns. Each time you destroy a Meridi ship add one to this number, so don't shoot back. You can't defeat the Combine and the Meridi. Continually send requests for peace to the Meridi. Eventually they will accept. Once this occurs they will withdraw from the war and will not do anything unless the Combine attack them. Use the Meridi as a buffer zone. It is even possible to colonize worlds in Meridi systems, sheltering under the protection of their fleets. If you did not win Scenario Eight then you will start at peace with the Combine. They will attack you at a random point in the next dozen turns. Try not to expend too much energy attacking the Meridi because you know they are not your real enemies. Once the Combine have declared war on you, follow the instructions above until the Meridi agree to make peace with you. Once you are at peace with the Meridi you have to defeat the Combine. They have a far larger economic base than you, so you will have to use better strategy. The Combine ships are tougher than yours so you must avoid battle and attack their planets. The key to doing this is to use marines. You and the Combine are both humans, so you can invade Combine colonies with marines and take over their infrastructure mostly intact. Each colony you invade increases your number of colonies by one and reduces theirs by the same amount. This can rapidly alter the balance of power. Avoid the larger, more heavily defended Combine worlds. Pick off the weakly defended colonies. At the same time colonize as rapidly as possible. You quickly want to reach a situation where you simply have too many colonies for the Combine to deal with. This can be helped by splitting your main fleet into two or even three task groups, each of which is powerful enough to knock out weak planetary defences. Don't remain in one system for more than two turns or the Combine may be able to attack you and destroy one of your fleets. When you become powerful enough to absorb the losses you can attack the more developed and better defended Combine worlds. As their economic base shrinks they will not be able to replace their ship losses and each attack on a defended planet will make them weaker. Eventually you will be able to tackle their fleet head on. Once the Combine fleet is destroyed they will not be able to recover. It is important to do as much research as possible in this scenario. Most important is that you research superdreadnought hulls and create a superdreadnought ship class. Failure to do this will result in your having no superdreadnoughts in Scenario Ten. If you look like destroying the Combine before you've researched everything in the tech tree you may wish to leave a single Combine colony alive until you finish off your research.

Scenario Ten: Return to Earth The last time you faced the Hive your technology was not a lot better than theirs. That has changed. Ship for ship you are now far superior. You start the scenario with enough ships to create two fleets of 96 ships, the maximum that can fight in a single combat round. Split your fleet into two. One fleet should stay close to Earth, never more than one turn away. It should destroy Hive colonies close to Earth, colonize available worlds and act as a mobile defence for your core colonies. Your other fleet should seek out and destroy the most developed Hive colonies. Remember that the Hive are capable of colonizing a planet and building up a very high population very quickly. It's very hard to stop this, but it really doesn't matter that much. What you should target are shipyards first, colony centres second and industry third. While a colony can be re-established it takes a lot of resources to build up that colony. Therefore what you need to attack is the Hive's production base. Without shipyards the Hive can't create new ships. Without colony centres they can't re-establish colonies on planets you attack. Without industry they can't build ships or facilities. Without any of these things it doesn't matter how many of them there are. If you follow this strategy you will reach what seems like a status quo for quite some time. You will expand to the largest area that you can defend with one fleet. You will lose the occasional colony when the Hive attack an unprotected system. But you will destroy hundreds of Hive ships and slowly build up those colonies you have. You will also research new technologies, creating an even wider technology gap. Your attacking fleet will destroy a colony every turn and the Hive will replace these. However, the new colonies will have no facilities and the average Hive colony will become steadily less well developed. As you build up you should try to create a third fleet. Once you do this you can start destroying Hives faster than they can be replaced. From this point, destroying the remaining Hive colonies is surprisingly rapid.