I've seriously no idea.

I love the original. I truly enjoyed every second of it. I even enjoyed failing missions, or those rebellious countries where you have to repeat missions all over again.

But I can't seem to figure out how the sequel works.

Some things I'm having trouble with:

My agents don't pick up stuff. No matter how often I click on the items.
The controls are bothersomely clunky in an obonoxious kind of way.
My agents don't move automatically when I click somewhere.
My agents don't defend themselves automatically like they did thanks to the PANIC-Button in the original Syndicate.
My agents look like shit in the sequel.
The menu flickers, rotates and loops in such a quick and repetitive way it makes me nervous.

So I'm obviously doing something wrong because most people enjoy the sequel even more. So maybe you can help me out here...

A few quick tips:

-The agents have 6 equipment slots AFAIK, you can't pick up anymore than that. For explosives and grenades you can usually pick up 4 per slot (the little dots around the icon). Click when you get the little hand cursor. You don't need to pick up everything like in the first Syndicate since there's no ammo in this game.

-Map WASD+Q/E to camera controls. This is essential! Don't control the camera with mouse, it's much easier with keyboard. Plus you must rotate the camera pretty much all the time.

-Agents don't move? Have you selected any agents? Click on the agent tab you want to move or keyboard 1,2,3,4. And I think the key left of 1 chooses all agents.

-They don't defend themselves automatically. You have to use the drug slider on the agent tabs. I think if you adjust it with right mouse button it adjusts it for all agents.

-The game obviously looks more pixelated but I have no problem with it.

-Slow down your dosbox. I had to slow it down to about 75%.

And yes I like Wars more than the first one ;)

I think one of the problem / changes that I think might offend the original players are you cannot pick weapon that you already carry in order to sell it. In Syndicate, you can pick up miniguns for sell in order to do research and buy mods. But you can't do that in Syndicate Wars. Which is, logically, a missed opportunity.

What is the bar function above weapon icon? When I clicked on the right side then it shows red bar but when I click on the left side it turns blue. What does that bar do? Anyway how can I command specific agents by holding mouse and drag to another like Red Alert 2 and other real time strategy games?

> What is the bar function above weapon icon?

Blue Funk and Red Mist are explained in the manual.

> how can I command specific agents by holding mouse and drag to another like Red Alert 2

This is not base building RTS, it is tactical RTS. Dragging mouse does not select anything here.

yeah the camera rotation is horrible. I don't know how ir can be so clunky.

I even tried setting the keys to WASD but that is nightmare too if you misclick R it will instantly restart the whole mission...