BattleForce 3.0 (c) Copyright 1989 by Ralph H. Reed ALL RIGHTS RESERVED Mech Factory Documentation The Factory program is easy to use in the Amiga tradition. The design of your BattleMech is entirely up to you. Its design should be a compromise between weight, speed, armor and weapons. I wouldn't dream of telling you how to built your BattleMech, as long as you realize that 'mine' can beat 'yours'. In addition, if you Load a Warrior or Unit file, Factory can be used to repair mechs damaged in the BattleForce program and to Salvage badly damaged mechs. Display Screen The main Factory window will display the current mech in three areas. The top left area list all the major items that can be put in or on the mech along with the weight for that item. The top right area lists all the armor for the mech, the point value of its internal structure and where all the internal components are located. Each dot or letter represents one internal location. This is where your W)eapons, A)mmo and H)eat sinks will be installed. It also shows your where your E)ngine and G)yro are located in the center torso. J)ump J)ets and F)uel are located in the side torsos. The head contains the C)ockpit for the pilot, L)ife support systems and weapon S)ensors. An "x" indicates an arm or leg actuator and a "." indicates an empty location. The bottom area lists all weapons selected for your mech along with statistics for the weapons. The first two letters indicate where the weapon is mounted (if its mounted). So HD would be head, CT, center torso, etc. If there is an "*" in front of the name that indicates the the weapon is mounted to fire backwards. Program Menus Factory comes up ready to build mechs. There are three menus for mech construction, the Project Menu, the Frame Design Menu and the Weapons Menu. The "Project Menu" is similar to Project Menus on other Amiga programs. "Create" lets you start construction on a BattleMech from scratch. "Load" has a submenu to allow you to Load 'BattleMech', 'Warrior', 'Technician' or 'Unit' files. BattleMech files contain the data for one mech. Warrior files contain the data for a mechwarrior character and his personal mech. Technician files contain the data for a technician character. Unit files contain groups of warrior, technician and mech files all in one file with data to support the unit. The "Save" option will save to disk whatever type of file you are currently working on. "Delete" has submenus just like Load to allow you to delete various types of files. The "Select" option is only active when you are working with a Unit file. It will then have a submenu to allow you to Select BattleMechs, Warriors, and Technicians from within your Unit. The "Print" option will printout the whatever is currently loaded. If you have a Unit loaded it will ask if you want to print the unit. If you say "No" it will print the warrior/mech currently selected. In order for this option to work properly you must have your boot disk set up for your system printer. To setup the BattleForce disk as your boot disk, put 'printer.device' and either 'parallel.device' or 'serial.device' from your WorkBench DEVS directory into the BattleForce DEVS directory. Then make sure the proper printer driver for your printer is in the 'printers' subdirectory of your BattleForce disk. Finally, after booting from the BattleForce disk, run the Preferences program. The "About" option brings up a small window telling you a little about the person that wrote the Factory program, me. The "Quit" option allows you to Quit the Factory program. The "Frame Design Menu" is where you start your BattleMech. The first thing to do is decide on a "Frame Weight". This is not fixed. Anything can be changed at any time and the factory will recalculate. In fact if your actual weight goes more than five tons over your frame weight, your frame weight will be automatically increased by five tons. You can have a mech with a little extra weight. These tend to be a little unstable in combat with better piloting skill needed to control them on occasion. To give your BattleMech a name, select the "Name" menu item. You will get a small window with a gadget to enter the name. Type in the name that you want for your BattleMech and hit return. The "Image" menu brings up another small window with 12 mech images. You can select the image your mech will use during the game by clicking on the image you want. The image you selected will appear in the main window. Once you have your weight the next thing you should get is the "Engine". There are only certain engines available. The engine power determines the speed of your mech. The speed of a mech is the time,in seconds, that a mech will take to move one plain hex. The other pair of numbers tells you how many plain hexes you can walk or run in 100 seconds. "Jump Jets" allow your mech to jump into the air. This is a BIG advantage in combat at close range. If you add jet fuel the weight of the jets is automatically added. If you change the fuel to zero the jets are removed. Each unit of fuel gives 50 seconds of jump time. "Heat Sinks" get rid of the heat your mech generates. Heat is your worse enemy. All mechs have 10 heat sinks as part of the engine and you can add more. You can either "Change" the number of heat sinks or "Install" the heat sinks in your mech. When you choose install you will be asked if you want to pick the locations or if you want the computer to do it automatically for you. If you manually install the heat sinks you will be given a window showing all internal locations in your mech. Just click on any empty spot, ".", and a heat sink will be installed there. The gadget at the bottom of the window shows you how many heat sinks you have left to install. When they are all installed it will change to "Done" and you can exit. To remove a heat sink just click on it. "Armor" is critical to your mech. It protects your delicate weapons and other internal components from damage. The armor menu item will bring up a large window with 11 slider gadgets, one for each armor location. Play with them as much as you like. Click done when finished. There is a maximum amount of armor allowed for the head. One ton of armor gives 16 pts of protection. "Hands" is an optional item. This will bring up a window showing all internal locations with the hand and wrist actuators highlighted in blue. You can remove the hand and wrist actuators by clicking on them. This will give you two extra spaces in the arms for weapons, but you will not be able to pick up anything with that arm. "Classify" is another optional item. This will display a small window with combat classification information about your mech. You can use it as a relative measure of the strength of a mech. The "Weapons Menu" allows you to arm your BattleMech. The "Add" weapon menu will bring up a list of all weapons available along with their weight, damage, heat generated and ammo rounds/ton. Add a weapon by clicking on the weapon. Click done when finished. Once you have selected your weapons you need to "Mount" them in the BattleMech. Pull the Weapons Menu down to Mount. You will get a sub-menu of all the weapons you selected. Pick the weapon you want to mount. A picture of a BattleMech will appear on the screen with the name of the weapon. There are seven circles on the mech, one for each of the internal locations. If the circle is green, the weapon you want to mount will fit in that location. If it is yellow, the weapon is too big to fit. Click on any green circle. It will turn red to indicate the one you have chosen. In the upper-left corner is a gadget marked 'Front'. If you want your weapon to fire backward click this gadget and it will change to 'Back'. Now click the 'Mount' gadget. When a weapon is mounted the location is shown on the main weapon list before the name. An asterick '*' indicates that the weapon is pointed backward. If ammo is required for your weapon the title will change to 'Ammo'. Again select a green location and click the 'Mount' or 'Ammo' gadget. The 'Cancel' gadget will get you out of the Mount window at any time. The 'UnMount' gadget will unmount a weapon that has been mounted in case you want to change its location. The "Remove" weapon menu will remove a weapon from your weapons list and unmount it if necessary. The "Ammo" menu will allow you to change the amount of ammo for any weapon. That's all there is too it. Make sure you give your BattleMech a name and make sure you Save it before you Quit. It will be save with the mechs name plus its weight. You will be given a warning if you have forgotten to mount any of your weapons. BattleMech Repair The Factory program can also be used to Repair mechs damaged in the BattleForce game. Whenever a Warrior or Unit file is loaded the program automatically switches over to repair mode. In Repair mode the "Frame Design" and "Weapons" menus disappear and are replaced with the "Update" menu. The "Update" menu has four options, "Repair Shop", "Unit Stores", "Re-Arm/Re-Fuel" and "Salvage Mech". "Repair Shop is where all of the repairs are made. This item brings up a window with a display of all the major areas of your mech. Any damaged areas will appear in Red. At the top of the window is a box with the stats of your Technician. If you want a different technician just click in the box and you will get a requestor to select another technician. If you do not have a technician loaded you will be asked if you want to use your mech warrior as the technician. At the bottom of the window is another box with the stats of your mech warrior. If you want to use your mech warrior as your technician just click in the warrior box. Above the warrior box is the main repair box. To repair a damaged item, click on any Red item. A description of that item will appear in the Repair box. The computer will check with your technician to see if the item is repairable. If it is not repairable you will have take a replacement part out of Unit Stores or, if you are using a Warrior file, buy a new part. Replacement is guaranteed to work, but cost 10 times as much as repair. Repair is a lot cheaper than replacement, but it may not work the first time. You can try to repair as often as you want as long as you don't damage the part beyond repair. Depending on how good your technician is, there is a small chance that a repaired item may fail during combat. When you have repaired your mech, click "Done" to exit from the repair mode. The Technician gets experience for each successful repair. For Units the cost to repair and re-arm your mech may be paid in part or in full by your employer, depending on you units contract. "Unit Stores" will only work if you are using a Unit file. This item allows you to buy replacement parts for your mechs. The purpose is to provide a system for campaignes. You can buy units stores for a campaign and then worry about running out of the parts you need to keep your mechs in working condition. The menu item brings up the first of three windows. Each window has a list of parts, weapons, ammo or engines. Each part has the number that the unit owns and the cost to buy more. To buy more of any item, click on the number with the RIGHT mouse button. To reduce the number of any item, click on the number with the LEFT mouse button. The first page has all of the normal parts, gyros and actuators. The second window has all the weapons and ammo. The third window has a list of all engines your unit mechs might need for replacement. "Re-Arm/Re_Fuel" checks the current mech and replaces all ammo and fuel used in combat. It is an all or nothing item. You can't partially re-fuel. For Unit files, the correct ammo and fuel must be available in Unit Stores. "Salvage Mech" strips a BattleMech down to its component parts and gives the Unit or Warrior C-Bills in return. It is designed to get rid of mechs that have been too badly damaged in combat to be worth repairing. This is the main way to get rid of a mech so that the warrior can try for a new mech. It is also the main way to get rid of extra mechs captured in combat. Character Mech Modifications With time you may want to modify your personal mech. To do this, load your mech as though you were going to repair it. In the Select submenu you will find an option "Modify". This throws the whole program over into the Build mode. You can modify your current mech to your hearts content. When you are done the Select submenu now has a "Repair" option. When you go back to repair mode your proposed modification is evaluated. If the modification if good you will be given the cost and asked if you want to proceed. If you do not have enough personal C-Bills you will not be able to make the modification unless your Unit agrees to pay the difference. At this point the modification is made on your actual mech. You can not modify Armor, Heat Sinks or Jump Jets that are damaged. As a general rule everything should be repaired before you modify. If you modify a damaged mech your total weight may be too heavy when you finally repair the damage. Make sure you save your Warrior or Unit file after you have made your repairs.