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Version 2,412c
Introduction ............................................................................................................. 4 1.1 1.2 Orientation - Controlling the map .................................................................. 6 Weaponry .......................................................................................................... 6
Defensive Battles .................................................................................................... 6 2.1 2.2 2.3 2.4 2.5 2.6 2.7 Placing defence units ....................................................................................... 7 Supplies ...........................................................Error! Bookmark not defined. Unit Stocks ....................................................................................................... 8 Fields of View................................................................................................... 8 The Timer......................................................................................................... 8 Issuing fire orders Over riding officers on the ground .................................. 9 Demolition ........................................................................................................ 9 1
2.8 3
Attacking Battles ................................................................................................... 10 3.1 3.2 3.3 3.4 3.5 Victory points .................................................................................................. 10 Paths................................................................................................................ 10 Score ................................................................................................................ 11 Supply drops .................................................................................................... 11 Movement orders ............................................................................................ 11
Battle controls ....................................................................................................... 11 4.1 4.2 4.3 4.4 4.5 4.6 Minimap .......................................................................................................... 11 Time................................................................................................................. 12 Unit Inspector .................................................................................................. 12 Nightvision....................................................................................................... 12 Screenshots ...................................................................................................... 12 Shortcut Keys .................................................................................................. 13
Aftermath .............................................................................................................. 13 5.1 5.2 5.3 Total per type .................................................................................................. 13 Average per unit ............................................................................................. 13 Total / Supply cost.......................................................................................... 14
Designing Units ...................................................................................................... 14 6.1 6.2 6.3 6.4 6.5 6.6 6.7 Loading and saving units ................................................................................ 14 Unit stats ......................................................................................................... 14 Components ..................................................................................................... 15 Augmentations ................................................................................................ 15 Customizing designs........................................................................................ 16 Variants ........................................................................................................... 16 Layer Colors .................................................................................................... 16
7.1 7.2 7.3 7.4 7.5 7.6 7.7 7.8 7.9 7.10 7.11 8
Normal Edit Mode .......................................................................................... 18 Prop Mode ....................................................................................................... 19 Moving props: .................................................................................................. 19 Deleting props: ................................................................................................ 19 Scaling props: .................................................................................................. 20 Rotating props: ................................................................................................ 20 Placing new props: .......................................................................................... 20 Terrain Edit Mode .......................................................................................... 20 Automatic path generation ............................................................................ 20 Bumpy shadow maps...................................................................................... 20 Saving as a new map ...................................................................................... 20
Recordings .............................................................................................................. 21 8.1 8.2 Saving a recording of an attack ..................................................................... 21 Fighting against recordings ............................................................................ 21
Challenges .............................................................................................................. 21 9.1 9.2 9.3 9.4 The online browser ......................................................................................... 21 Challenge Details ............................................................................................ 21 Posting challenges........................................................................................... 21 Rating challenges ............................................................................................ 22 Online .................................................................................................................. 22 Your profile ..................................................................................................... 22 Badge editing and custom badges .................................................................. 22 Friends............................................................................................................. 23 Messaging ........................................................................................................ 23 Medals, Unlocks and Achievements ................................................................. 16 Earning medals ............................................................................................... 16 Unlocks ............................................................................................................ 17 3
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1 Introduction
Welcome Officer and congratulations on successfully completing the rigorous abridged commissioning course! This is a glorious day, your aim as you join King Georges army to help us finally bring this horrible war to an end by Christmas 1984. With you commanding our troops in the trenches, we know we will be chomping on bratwurst at the Kaisers expense by Christmas morning! Pay careful attention to all of the information in the Kings Warfare Manual. It may save your life, and more importantly bring victory to your King and Country. The King! The Kaisers, past and present, have consistently displayed an unlikely sense of humour in thinking that one day they will rule our green and pleasant land. So far, by some fluke, our brave troops have prevented this and have fought gallantly on foreign soil to defend our shores from invasion. However, Teutonic humour is no laughing matter and this on-going threat to our homeland is real, really real. It is vital that the military chain of command is maintained. Your General will provide you with carefully considered battle orders along with a personalised message to motivate and inspire the troops. Such optimism and belief in a swift conclusion to this stalemate war must be disseminated down to the troops, irrespective of your own views. Furthermore, all rumour of psychosis and breakdown in the upper ranks must be absolutely quashed. However, in the unlikely event that you should encounter the odd mad dog General, do remember that these are trying times and therefore try to be tolerant. Failing that (i.e. if the General fits into the rabid mad dog category), confiscate all bootleg gin and little blue tonic pills at once. HQ need not be informed; we are busy enough trying to win a war. As you know, this war commenced nearly 200 years ago as Britain stood up for our closest European neighbours. We were not simply reacting to the assassination of Archduke Franz Ferdinand of Austria and his wife and the shedding of some green feathered plumes. After all, if an Archduke who was nearly fatally shot in the morning chooses to travel in an open top limousine in the afternoon, that is his own silly business. Nor did we enter the war over a mere scrap of paper. In fact, although the lack of soft toilet tissue may have suggested otherwise, we had plenty of paper at that time and we werent even recycling back then. We went to war on a matter of principle and to ensure that there would be a buffer zone between our own shores and the German front line, thereby safeguarding our own countryside from getting all churned up, muddy and generally flattened. And in that, let us not forget, we have been successful. No Hun troops have set foot on our soil, well except for the Schne Inseln im Kanal formally known as The Channel Islands, but they were only truly British when it suited them anyway. Oh, and that mad Rudi Hess who so desperately wanted to try and negotiate
peace so the Scots would start selling the Hun decent Whiskey again, that he made an illjudged solo cross-channel shopping trip. Each Great War is fought through a series of battles. We must defend the ground that we have gained and offensively (you have free reign to be as offensive as you like to Fritz and his like) push the Hun back into his fatherland. If the Kaiser and his Fatherland troops should ever reach our beloved Motherland who knows what dysfunctional offspring would be generated? Once and for all we must end this war by unconditional surrender of the Kaisers Men and total victory for us. We must dispel the public perception first crystallized by Churchills 20th century statement: Never in the field of human conflict has so little been gained, by so many generations, at the expense of so many. Let us be the generation that ends this war to end all wars.
2 Campaign
The current campaign in the Great War is made up of a series of battles as shown in the campaign map. You must win a battle before moving onto the next and all battles can be played at 3 levels of difficulty. Most battles can be played either as the defending force or as the attacking/offensive force, the choice is yours. There are two phases to each battle irrespective of whether you are the attacking or defending army. The deployment phase where you strategically place your forces on the battlefield is the proverbial calm before the storm is swiftly followed by the mayhem of battle.
are placing. You will also find that there is an upper limit on the available supply level. If it reaches that limit, you will be warned, and you need to start placing units right away, otherwise you are effectively wasting potential supplies, have wandered off for a cup of tea or frankly are just not up to the job and are probably not giving Tommy the best chance to thoroughly humiliate the Hun.
2.4 Weaponry
The weaponry at your disposal (although this does not mean that the weapons are disposable) are: laser-gun emplacements, missile launchers flamethrowers, machine guns cannon/ballistics
3 Defensive Battles
Its probably best to start off by looking at your role from a defensive point of view as your first battle will be defending our position and making sure the advancing enemy 6
does break through our line and hence move one goose-step closer to our shores. It is solely your responsibility to select the infantry and turrets and strategically place them so they can best defend our position until the death if necessary. Retreat is considered an activity for the sensitive scholar or deluded infirm not the hardened soldier.
3.1.1 Turrets
Turrets house weaponry like laser-gun emplacements, missile launchers, flamethrowers, machine guns and cannon/ballistics. These all come in three different sizes, and normally they take time to construct and supply, but at the start of the battle in order to give Tommy a sporting chance, they can be placed instantly. Turrets tend to be good against enemy tanks and Mechs, although flamethrower and machine gun turrets are pretty good against infantry too. Turrets must be placed on good strong foundations, so they cant be positioned just anywhere on the map.
3.1.2 Infantry
Infantry belong in trenches and bunkers, so this is the only location you can place them. Infantry get a defensive bonus from hunkering down in these, so they can last a good time against dastardly enemy guns. Infantry can be good against other infantry, and the good news is they are always deployed instantly. A trifling communication problem (or between us Officers, a potential desertion problem) means we cant get troops out of the 7
trenches once they are in there. The number of infantry that actually gets dropped therefore depends on how much room there is within each emplacement.
Right slap-bang in the middle of the top of the screen is the battle timer. At the start of the battle, its paused and there is a start battle button instead. This initial phase of the battle is called deployment and you get to place units without waiting for them to build. You can also reposition placed units. When you are ready to let battle commence, hit start battle and the timer will start counting down. When the timer runs out and the air-raid siren is heard, that indicates the end of the supplies for the attacker but any existing units or supplies they have will continue to be used. The battle is only really over when the enemy is destroyed. For you defeat is not an option. Think of your sweetheart back home. Remember your promise to King and Country.
3.6 Demolition
Every now and then you will make a tactical mistake. Yes, I know youre feeling invincible right now but keeping a cool head (or indeed any head) in the heat of real battle is somewhat different to simulated training. Sending that camel regiment to fight in Norway was definitely a good example. Will the IXth Indian lancers ever let us forget that one? Anyway, if you find that the location of a turret is not optimal, you can demolish the turret and get some of its supply value back. You can then use those supplies to build elsewhere. To do this, just right click a turret and select the demolish button that appears to the right. You will see a red countdown timer appear, as our brave Royal Engineers do their deconstruction work.
4 Attacking Battles
Defending a fixed position against dastardly enemy attacks is all well and good, but there comes a time when you have to put Fritz on the defensive and push forward in the name of King and Country. Almost any battle in Gratuitous Tank Battles can be played as the attacker, or as the defender. Attacking is very similar, with a few key changes. The main one is obviously that your objective is different. As attacker your troops and units will be on the move. Weaponry is conveyed by the twin peak pinnacles of ordnance, our gloriously innovative Tanks and Mechs. Indeed, if the enemy had not stolen our revolutionary Mech blueprints, we would have already crushed them underfoot like the insignificant cockroach that they are. All pernicious propaganda that suggests we in fact stole a German designed protomech from Munich University robotics Department, is a complete fabrication. Furthermore, under no circumstances should our by Royal appointment-with-death Mechs be referred to as Volksmechs. This was originally banded about in an ironic manner and must be stopped; specifically lederhosen must not be spray-painted onto these awesome fighting machines. The fact that our purely British mechs are left-hand drive is a co-incidence and that they are surprisingly efficient is solely down to our technical expertise and superiority. Remember, your attacking aim is to use our Mechs and tanks to their best advantage and keep pushing forward and get as many troops and units as possible past the enemy defences and off the map. You will be awarded victory points for your efforts.
4.2 Paths
As attacking forces, your troops are constantly on the move but you have to keep them under control, they cannot just wander anywhere. If you hit the R key you will be able to toggle on and off the display of routes your troops will follow from their deployment positions, which are marked in green. You will also see one or more exit points marked on the map at the end of each route. Troops that reach this point are safe, and even if they claim to be shocked by the odd shell, will be able to fight again another day and count towards your score.
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4.3 Score
Your score is shown at the top right. It also displays the score required to beat this particular mission. The more you exceed that score the better, because this counts towards your high score for this battle, on this difficulty level. This might just seem like a number, but it dictates the all-important decision as to whose turn it is to buy drinks in the Officers mess each evening. Bottoms up! The King!
5 Battle controls
Controlling the battle isnt just a matter of saying tally ho! and clinking champagne glasses. There are all sorts of things to keep an eye on once battle is engaged.
5.1 Minimap
At the bottom left of the screen is the mini-map. Think of this as a view of the entire battle, allowing you to quickly glance at the strategic situation. Your troops, and the dastardly enemy troops are shown in different colors, and newly constructing units show as green, deconstructing ones in red. Light blue icons represent supply drops. You can click on the minimap to move the camera to a specific position.
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Yellow: Inferior Enemy units White: Superior Friendly units Green: Units under construction Red: Units under demolition Light blue: Supply drop White X: Path exitLight Grey: path
5.2 Time
It can sometimes be a tad frantic in the middle of battle, with guns and lasers and godknows-what going bang and fizz and zap and arggh all at the same time. If it gets a bit too hectic, breathe deeply, focus and channel calm thoughts. If that still doesnt work for you, you can slow down time using the speed buttons above the minimap. But frankly hasnt this war gone on long enough. You can also freeze time entirely using the pause button, and all this can be done using the + or - keys with P to pause. Under no circumstances is this option to be used for listening to the football results. You can even advance the battle when paused by a single frame using the top-secret f key. In particular, do not to let that information fall into the wrong hands (i.e the lower ranks who complain that battles seem to go on for hours and leave passes in a flash).
5.4 Nightvision
After extensive research in the 20th century it was found that eating lots of carrots did not in fact improve vision but just turned you slightly orange. Sometimes it can be a right pain seeing where the enemy are during those sneaky night-time battles the Hun are so fond of. As a result, the boffins in our labs have developed night vision mode for these battles. There is a button to toggle it on and off underneath the minimap, or you can use the N key.
5.5 Screenshots
You can take a screen-grab at any point by hitting the button to the right of the minimap, or by simply pressing the PrintScreen key on your keyboard. You should try using P to pause and F to frame-advance to get really nice souvenir shots! The screenshots all get saved in \my documents\my games\gratuitous tank battles\screenshots. 12
PrtScrn
6 Aftermath
At the end of the battle, its no good crying into your beer or spending the whole evening singing bawdy songs in the officers club! You should be scanning the post-battle statistics to see how things went! The stats screen at the end of battle has 3 modes, and make sure you use them wisely. Know your enemy.
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7 Designing Units
Your army is started off with a few decent designs that the boffins at the Ministry of Creative Destruction devised, but there is plenty of scope for you to customise these units and come up with your own. There is no limit on the number of different unit designs you have, so feel free to experiment. Designing units is carried out outside of the battles, on the unit design screen, accessed from the main menu.
7.2.1 Cost:
This is the cost, in supplies, for a single unit of this type. Obviously better units cost more, so you might need to trade-off numbers against quality. Part of the cost comes from the basic hull, the rest from the selection of components added to that hull.
7.2.2 Speed:
This is how rapidly the unit will move, or zero for fixed emplacements. When defending, this is moot, but when you are attacking, you want your forces to be able to move at a decent speed. Apart from anything, you dont want our brave healthy fit young men queuing up behind a slow moving tank like a gaggle of nervous schoolboys! Faster moving units are harder to hit, and also get to their destination (and safety) better. Speed is a function of the engines / footwear, offset against total weight. 14
7.2.3 Armor:
Armor is the physical strength of all that metal strapped to the tank / individual. Armor is good against ballistic weapons like cannons and so on. Its not so good against energy beams, which tend to melt it, but our boffins are working on that.
7.2.4 Shields:
Shields are those prototype glowy energy-sphere thingies that some whizzkid at Cambridge no doubt invented one lunchtime. Damned fine invention! Great for reflecting enemy laser beams, which mostly bounce off them, but pretty useless for some reason against actual shells and bullets. They really must fix that one day.
7.2.5 Weight:
Weight is always a problem. Its no good having a tank thats totally indestructible if it takes forty minutes to get from one end of a cricket pitch to the other. You will need to trade-off defensive capability against weight to get the best compromise.
7.3 Components
The left hand window on the design screen shows the different components you can use to put together designs. You do this by dragging the ones you want onto the slots on the blueprint in the middle of the screen. They come in all different types, and can only go in the right slot, which you will see are visible when you try to drop them. Dropping a component replaces the previous one, if it exists. Every choice automatically updates the stats at the bottom of the screen, so you can compare a variety of combinations. The components you choose have no effect on the physical appearance of the unit. You may note at the start of your career, that some of the components are greyed out. We cant have you playing with those. Top secret stuff, dont-you-know! Maybe one day, when you are a bit more battle-hardened, we will let you play with the rarer, more specialist components. At the bottom left of the screen is a window showing details on the current selected component. You can click any component to see details on it here. There are a number of juicy statistics to cast your eye over here. You might want to join us in the officers mess for a game of laser cannon top trumps when you really get the hang of what all the stats mean. No pressure.
7.4 Augmentations
Components are just part of the fiendish puzzle of custom unit design. There are also augmentations. These are a way to tweak an existing unit design to give it more GRRRR or more VRRRRMMM, and so forth. Augmentations affect an entire design, and change a vital statistic about that design, such as boosting engine speed, or the damage done by the weapon. Augmentations do not weigh anything, but they do cost. Using augmentations gives you many more options for customisation than just components. You can transform an otherwise short-range weapon into a better-ranged variety by using an augmentation, for example.
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7.6 Variants
On the right hand side of this screen are the unit variants for this specific hull. Some hulls have very few, some have lots. They often differ in what turret or gun barrel is employed. You can select the variant of your choice simply by clicking it. When you do this, the blueprint image will reflect the change, and you will see the layers in the strip along the bottom change as well.
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8.2 Unlocks
When you first start out as an Officer, you dont really expect us to hand you Gatling lasers and nanotech-engineered super-Chobham armor do you? If you do, Im afraid you are woefully mistaken. You have to earn the right to get first pickings of the new technology coming out of the boffins labs. As you complete battles, you will unlock new equipment. One piece will be allocated to you for each battle you fight, and two pieces if you actually win it. You get some limited choice in which equipment becomes available, but not *too* much choice. This is the Kings army, not some department store in Oxford Street!
9 Editing Maps
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If you are observant, you might have noticed that as well as attack and defend buttons for every battle, there is also an edit button. This lets you design your very own battles, from scratch. This is not something for the feint-of-heart, but then, what are we doing recruiting feint-hearted commanding officers in any event eh? The edit screen may look complex but basically it can be split into three different modes. There are buttons at the very top of the screen to select which mode you want to be in.
When you right click a tile, or have a bunch selected and then right click, you get a whole host of buttons. These apply to all currently selected tiles. The different buttons do the following:
Arrow keys: These toggle that path direction on or off. They show the routes attacking
army can take; you can have more than one arrow per tile. Make sure every path is complete from entrance to exit. Be aware that paths can have multiple branches. When you use these arrows on defensive positions, they set the default facing for turrets placed on that tile.
Clear path icon: Resets the paths so there are no path settings for this tile. Deployment colors: Green denotes positions on the map where only defenders can be
placed, red is for positions where attackers enter the battle. The green stripes are for defending army support-structures such as hospitals. Grey clears the tile so nobody can deploy there.
Rotations: These turn the current emplacement through 90 degrees in either direction.
They are used for bunkers and for paths. You shouldnt have any need to use them for trenches.?????
variables that determine how frantic, fast, or well supplied the battle will be. If your ear drums havent been burst to smithereens yet and you care about such things you can and also pick the background music although Its a long way to Tipperary still isnt an option. Dust-type affects what dust is kicked up by tanks, and ambience changes the background sound effects. Time of day determines whether there will be night time effects and night-vision mode. Saving a map might take some time, as our super-clever technology assimilates an image of the map for later use.
10Recordings
10.1 Saving a recording of an attack
Once a battle ends, if you were the attacker, you have the option to save out a recording of the attack. You might do this for two reasons. One is so you can re-play the battle map as a defender against your own army (excellent for practice). Another is so you can include your well-honed attacking forces in a challenge game.
11 Challenges
Fighting against AI is all well and good, but far better to actually beat real people eh? Thats what gives you bragging rights in the Officers mess, after all.
designed yourself, or on a regular map. When posting a challenge, you can pick who to send it to, or choose all if you are happy for it to be an open challenge. Private challenges are only viewable by you and the person you challenged.
12 Online
Officers able to unwind from the stresses of war might well be thought of as the more gregarious types always at social events, glass of fine wine in one hand, and service revolver/laser-pistol in the other. Whats the point of glorious victories if you dont get to boast about them over port and cigars eh?
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12.3 Friends
In war, all men are brothers. Except the Hun, obviously. Should you wish to stay in touch with specific Officers, you can add their usernames using the add new friend button. This allows you to filter challenges by those friends. You also get charming little icons showing onfriends challenges and comments. You will see your friends listed in that window, and you can delete them (or just their name, depending on how badly they have fallen from favour), send them a message (we suggest something along the lines of tally ho old fruit!), or compare your career achievements to theirs.
12.4 Messaging
Just had an idea for a new top-secret weapon? Concerned that you havent bragged about your latest medals to your friends? You can send any fellow Officer a message, or read incoming messages from others using the buttons in the messages window. Its always good to stay in touch, although obviously remember that the patriotic chaps in the censorship department will blank out anything top-secret.
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