So, AI War: Fleet Command is quite an intimidating game. You’re in control of a growing number of units (from a few hundred to many thousands), against a pair of unpredictable AI personalities with the power to overwhelm you at a misstep. All progressing in real time. Oh, dear.

The game mitigates this by giving you semi-autonomous units that don’t need babysitting, and an assortment of effective orders to give them. You mostly control the pace of the game through your offensive actions, so you also control how violent the AI becomes in response. It’s designed to get your mental gears moving, but luckily it doesn’t devolve into a click fest.

But it does kind of turn into a “what was that control again,” and “what the hell do I do now” fest. Instead of printing out the manual and hotkey guide (both of which are out of date), or playing the 4-hour tutorial again, or interrupting the game to check the controls, I made a short, economic reference for AI War. It’s 8 tiny pages and fits in a pocket.

The AI War Pocket Reference is crammed with helpful information:

Nearly every hotkey in the game, neatly and logically organized.

A suggested system for prioritizing targets on the Galactic Summary. (This was one of the biggest mysteries for me as a new player, and I may change it in the future.)

A key to how the Planetary Summary is arranged, to make it easier to take in at a glance.

A high-level description of the game’s flow, for when you start wondering what you should be doing. (I may also change this in the future.)

All of the above fits on a single sheet of paper, folded into an 8 page booklet using the PocketMod method.

Download the AI War Pocket Reference here.

Print it, fold it:

A few extras:

The source document in Open Document Text format. Feel free to use for your own purposes. (Fonts are ModeNine and Inconsolata.)

in Open Document Text format. Feel free to use for your own purposes. (Fonts are ModeNine and Inconsolata.) A longer version with extra pages that didn’t make the 8 page limit.

with extra pages that didn’t make the 8 page limit. To convert any PDF to a PocketMod, use the PDFtoPocketMod converter.

Credits: Thanks to PocketMod for the idea and the super easy conversion method, and to Arcen Games for AI War.