Tank

Read before you deploy

Field manual

Everything a driver needs to know, in the order you will need it. Ten minutes here is worth an evening of finding it out the hard way.

1The mission

Four teams of three share one walled city: Red, Blue, Yellow and White. Each has a base in its own corner with its flag inside. Take an enemy flag and bring it back to your own base.

10
Capture a flag
3
Take a station
1
Destroy a tank
  1. Lift it. Drive over an enemy flag and it is yours. You are about a fifth slower while you carry it, and it shows on every map in the city.
  2. Bring it home. Drive onto the pad in your own base. The capture only counts while your own flag is on its stand, so if yours has been taken, get it back first.
  3. Cash it in. Ten points, and every tank on the team you took it from is destroyed on the spot.
  • Destroyed while carrying a flag, you drop it where you stood.
  • Drive over your own dropped flag and it goes straight back to its stand. Left alone, it goes home by itself after thirty seconds.
  • Destroyed, you are back at your base five seconds later, fully repaired and rearmed.

2The keys

The game is played on a keyboard, with a mouse or trackpad if you like one for aiming. Your left hand drives, your right hand fights.

Driving

W S
Forward and reverse
A D
Turn the hull left and right

Turret

J L
Swing the turret
I K
Raise and lower the gun
← ↑ ↓ →
The same, on the arrows
Click the battlefield, then move the mouse to aim. Hold the button to fire
T
Snap the gun back to dead ahead

Weapons

Space
Fire your main gun
Y U H N M
Fire gun one to five on its own. Hold two and both fire
X Z
Choose which gun Space fires

Modules and the rest

Shift
Rocket Booster: hold to fly
V
Turbo Boost: hold to sprint
C
Cloak: tap on, tap off
G
Remote Satellite
B
Change tank, inside your own base only
O
Settings, without leaving the match
  • Which key is which gun depends on your tank. Guns are numbered in the order they sit in the bays, and a gun welded to the hull is always number one. You do not have to remember: the key is printed on each gun's tile at the bottom right of the screen.
  • A module only has a key if you have fitted it. Shields, armour and Nano Repair work by themselves.
  • Every key can be changed on the Controls page, and both directions of aiming and steering can be flipped there.

3Your screen

You sit in the turret, looking along the gun. This is a real frame from the game with everything on it numbered.

The driver's view at dusk: your own gun barrel in the foreground, a blue tank and a red one ahead on a charging station, a warning across the top, and the instruments round the edge of the screen.
  1. The score. One chip a team. A chip also says when that team's flag has been taken or dropped.
  2. The battle log. Who destroyed whom and with what, flags, stations and warnings. It scrolls back fifty lines.
  3. Announcements. A station being taken, or a tank inside somebody's base. Everyone in the city sees these.
  4. The map. The whole city from above. See the next section.
  5. Settings. Opens over the match. The game keeps running behind it.
  6. The crosshair is where a laser lands. White means the gun is on it, amber means the turret is still coming round or the barrel is blocked, red means that gun is empty. Brackets snap onto an enemy you are nearly on. On a teammate it flashes red: hold your fire.
  7. Armour, shield, charge and speed. Armour is what keeps you alive, the shield takes the hit first, and charge is the battery that pays for everything.
  8. Your modules. What is fitted, what is running and what is cooling down. Change Tank appears here while you are inside your own base.
  9. Your guns. One tile each: its name, its key and the rounds left. The lit tile is the one Space fires.

4The map

Top right of your screen, and the most useful thing on it. It shows your whole team and every enemy that is not running Stealth, wherever they are.

A square is a base, in its team's colour.
A ring is a charging station. Its colour is the team that holds it. Grey belongs to nobody yet. A ring is not a tank, even when a tank is sitting in it.
A big dot is a flag. On its base it is at home. Anywhere else, somebody has it or has dropped it.
A small dot is a tank.
The arrow is you. It points the way your hull is facing, and the pale wedge in front of it is where your turret is looking.

5Your base

Red's base from above at dusk: a walled deck marked out in red light, the flag on its stand with a beam of light above it, and a gun on stilts in the far corner.
Red's base. The flag on its stand, the pad in the foreground, a gun on its stilts at the back.

Inside your own walls

  • You are recharged, repaired and rearmed, and your shield is restored. You do not press anything. Just be there.
  • It is the only place you can change tank: B, or the Change Tank button that appears by your guns.
  • The pad is where you bring a captured flag.
  • There is a gate in each of the two walls that face the city.

Inside somebody else's

  • Your battery drains, as fast as your own base would fill it.
  • Four guns on stilts open fire on you, one in each corner. They can be destroyed, and they rebuild themselves three minutes later. They never fire at anyone outside the walls.
  • Everyone is told. A warning with your name on it goes up on every screen. A cloaked tank is the one exception, until it fires.

6Stations and the battery

Two blue tanks on a charging station that is turning from yellow to blue around them, with a column of blue light rising from its middle.
Two Blue tanks taking the Central station from Yellow. The floor turns their colour as the clock runs down.

One battery pays for everything

  • Driving, turning, every shot and every module you run all come out of the same cell. Lasers have no ammunition at all. The battery is their magazine.
  • A flat battery leaves you crawling at a fifth of your speed, and your guns will not fire. Get home, or onto a station your team holds.
  • The charge gauge moves when you are being charged and runs red when something is draining you.

The five stations

  • One in the middle of the city and one at the middle of each wall. A station charges only the team that holds it. The middle of the disc is three times as fast as the rim.
  • To take one, stand on it with no other team there. One tank takes nine seconds, two take half that, three a third. A second team on the disc stops the clock.
  • Worth three points, and the whole city is told who is taking which station and with how many tanks.

7Hiding and finding

Stealth

Takes you off the enemy's map for as long as it is fitted, for a slow trickle of charge. They can still see you with their own eyes.

Cloak

Tap C and the enemy cannot see you at all, on screen or on the map. Your own team sees a glassy outline. It drops the moment you fire, a blast lands near you or the battery runs flat.

Remote Satellite

Press G for six seconds of everything on your map, Stealth or not. Then it rests for forty seconds.

8The city

Buildings

They stop shells, lasers and lines of sight. Use them. Your shots leave holes in them, which does nothing but look right.

Tunnels

The biggest buildings have a tunnel driven straight through them. A way across the city that nobody can shoot down into.

Ramps and rooftops

Some buildings have a ramp up to the roof, and a Rocket Booster will put you on any of them. Every tank climbs every slope. The heavy ones are slower about it.

9The tanks

Four hulls. Each trades armour, speed and room differently, and what you drive matters more than how you drive it. A bigger hull has more bays to fill and a bigger battery, and turns its turret more slowly.

Reading the catalogue…

10Weapons

Fit as many guns as you have bays for. Lasers hit the instant you fire and run off the battery. Shells and rockets take time to arrive and have to be led, and a mortar comes down over the top of whatever is in the way.

Reading the catalogue…

11Support modules

Everything in a bay that is not a gun. Most work by themselves the moment they are fitted. The ones you switch on have their key beside them.

Reading the catalogue…

12Your first match

  1. Start from a ready made tank. Line, on a Vanguard, is the all rounder. Change one thing at a time once you know what you miss.
  2. Look at the map before you leave the gate. Find your own arrow, then the nearest ring. A station your team holds is a second home.
  3. Watch your charge, not just your armour. More tanks are lost to a flat battery in the wrong street than to any gun.
  4. Do not drive into an enemy base alone. The battery drain, four guns and a warning on every screen are three good reasons.
  5. Go home to mend. Your own base puts everything back in seconds, and it is where you change a tank that is not working.
  6. The flag is the game. One capture is worth ten kills, and it takes their whole team off the field while you do it.

Deploy Set your keys

Something wrong, or something missing? Tell tank@tektology.com.