TITANS OF STEEL TUTORIAL

v1.2.3 11/9/2000

Contents

  1. Getting Started
  2. Controlling your Titans of Tin...oops I mean Steel.
  3. Combat. . .or was that 'My' leg that just got ripped off by a missile?
  4. Wait On. . .My Engine just Melted what do I do now besides die horribly?
  5. Headquarters
  6. Factory
  7. Acknowledgments

1. Getting Started

You may wish to print this tutorial before getting started.
  1. Enter Titans of Steel by double-clicking on the battleW.exe file in your Titans progs folder. Later, you will want to build your own teams and design your own titans; the other modules make that possible. Team members gain experience just like any other role-playing system and you can design titans to augment your team members(we call the jocks) particular skills. More on this later.
  2. Choose Hot Seat game.
  3. Now pick a map. I recommend choosing a small map for your first battle.
  4. Choose Random Player Team. This will be your team for the battle.
  5. Now pick the skill level. To make this battle a little easier go ahead and choose Superior [Patriarch]. Your jocks will all be elite veterans.
  6. Click on Choose Next Team.
  7. Now pick your enemy's team by choosing Random AI Team. These guys are the scum of the universe. You'll be doing us all a favor by wiping them out.
  8. Choose the enemy team's ability level. I recommend choosing Inferior for this tutorial or they just might wind up wiping you out.
  9. ***(Optional)*** If you want to play against a friend, just pick a Random player Team at step #7. Its only fair that both players pick the same skill level as well. Unless your friend has never played before and you wish to be cruel. :-) Adjust the skill level according to your ability levels.
  10. Now you're ready to start the game. Click on Start game.
  11. In the step you can pick the size by tonnage of both teams. I recommend choosing tiny (80t-200t) just to get the hang of the controls. You can always go back and try a larger attack force in your next game.
  12. The game will now start and you can hear the strains of the beautiful music of the American Wild West.
  13. On your keypad press the F1 button to bring up a list of all the keypad controls. These will come in handy. If you need to quit the game remember to press Shift-Q during your turn. But why would you want to do that? Press F1 to return to the game.

2. Controlling your Titans

At this point, you want to be able to move your titans around and shoot weapons and generally wreak havoc upon the evil guys. Unless you're the evil guys; then you'll want to wreak havoc on the good guys.
  1. Look at the lower left of the screen. There is a picture of a titan. That is the current titan that you control. All systems should show green. To its right is a dark circle with a grid. Enemy titans on which you are locked will show up here. It's best when they show up with lots of red:

    Green= no damage
    Yellow= mild damage
    Red= serious damage

    When your titan starts to lose body parts, it may be prudent to bravely run away.

  2. To the right of this graphic, there is series of command buttons. Place the mouse cursor over each button and each button's purpose and keyboard shortcut will appear in yellow to the right of the buttons. The current set of buttons are the Call Move buttons. Click on the Show Status button. It's the last button lower-right. A window will pop up, and you can view the status of the active titan.The yellow arrows on the bottom of the window let you scroll through each page of information, such as general status, weapons systems, jock information, etc. Keep scrolling in either direction and you'll eventually get back to the first screen. Click on the yellow ok button to close this window.

  3. To get the titan moving, you'll use these move buttons. Some of the buttons are green and some are red. Green means the action is available; red means your titan is currently unable to perform the action. If possible, choose walk forward. If this button is red, you're probably blocked by a mountain, so just go around it by choosing turn left or turn right according to your preference. Sit back and watch those titans go!!

  4. Continue moving your titans around until a dreaded enemy titan appears.

3. Combat

Once you've detected an enemy titan, you'd probably like to shoot it. Read this section to find out what to do.
  1. When you finally detect an enemy, choose the Call Attack button.
  2. You should now have an entirely new set of buttons for your titan to choose from. Great Cthulhu's Ghost!!
  3. Take a moment to find out what each button does by placing the mouse cursor over each button as you did previously.
  4. Choose the Lock Target button (top row, far left). Your titan will begin targetting the enemy.
  5. Eventually your titan will get a lock on the target. Select the nearest enemy and right click on its hex.
  6. Now you've locked onto a target and hopefully they are in range of your weapon systems. Choose Fire Weapon (the button to the right of the lock target button). Another window will pop-up. This displays your weapon systems. Weapons the target is within range of will show in green. The target is outside the range of weapons in red. White indicates the weapon is still recycling or reloading. If all weapons are red, then you'll need to go back to move mode and move closer to the enemy.

    ***Note***An exception to this would be if you're too close to fire your long range missiles. In that case, you'll want to get farther away from the target.

  7. O.k, your weapons systems are finally locked on your target, the enemy titan is in range of your weapon systems and you're ready to blast them to the bad place. Just for fun, choose Scan Target Active to get more info on your target. A window will appear and you can find out more about who you're about to send a little present. This is very much like the information you would find about your own titan by pressing the Show Status button. Now you're ready to give it to them. Choose Fire Weapon and watch the fireworks. Repeat until the enemy is dead. Go back to Lock Target and choose a new enemy. Rinse and Repeat.

4. Wait on?

This is a nice addition to the other two menus. This allows you to wait on different battle conditions. If you like the place you're located, waiting for your weapons to recycle, need your temperature to drop out of the critical zone etc., choose the Wait On command. You'll find yourself going from Lock Target, Scan Target Active, Fire Weapons, Wait On, Recycle, Any, Fire Weapons, Wait On, Recycle, Any, etc,. . . Intersperse: Wait on, Temperature, Zero, throughout the previous list. When you've killed all the enemy or all your titans are killed the game will be over and you can view the final statistics then quit the game. You'll find yourself back at your desktop.

5. Headquarters

  1. Now that you've fought your 1st battle you might want to build your own team of Elite warriors(Jocks) and Design your Own Titans.
  2. Choose Headquarters. You will find yourself with several options. Choose Team1.
  3. You'll see that the Teams Name is: Vicious Witches. If you like this name go ahead and Keep it. I usually change it to The Missle Magnets but feel free to call your team anything you want.
  4. Choose the State Prison Database
  5. Give your Jock a name, a callsign, choose its race and sex, Clicking on the word race will cycle you through the available options. Clicking on sex with toggle between male and female unless otherwise specified.
  6. When you're happy with your choices go ahead and look and the database to the right of the screen. It shows you the current statistics of your team.
  7. Now click on the arrow pointing right at the bottom of the screen.
  8. This is your team members statistics. You can adjust his abilities by right clicking on the statistic. Your team members will get more development points after each battle that they fight in and survive. Eventually, with luck, they might even become Patriarchs!
  9. 1st build up the jocks reaction and dexterity. You can increase these by 3. I highly recommend it with this first jock.
  10. Now go down to Pilot skills and increase recon/light as high as it will go. Use the extra points to increase jump.
  11. Now go to Combat skills. Pick two combat skills and increase them as high as they will go. I recommend Cannons and Energy weapons. Go back to step #4 and repeat except this time give your second pilot/jock skills in Guided and unguided missiles. He/She/It will be part of the support team for your 1st pilot/jock. You may want to buy one more pilot/jock. I recommend 3 because you can only afford about three titans to put them in.
  12. Now get return to the Team main menu and choose Titan Factory Database. Its time to buy a Titan. Choose Light.
  13. Now you have a list of available Titans. If you want a longer list You will have to go back to the Titans of Steel Main Menu and design your very own titans! (I always name my first Titan 'Yo Mama!' For now I recommend that you choose Spear but you can choose anyone you want but remember that your pilot/jock will be piloting it and you want to maximize their skills. If your pilot is good at energy weapons give them a titan with Lasers and so forth. Your first pilot should have been given Cannon and Energy weapons Skills so lets go ahead and buy the Revolver. It has two 4cm Autocannons and a Medium Laser. This a pretty good all around short-medium range titan and should serve you well. Now go ahead and buy two recon Titans for your other two pilots respectively augmenting their particular combat skills.
  14. When this is completed and you're happy with your purchases; Go back to the teams main menu (the same menu as the State Prison Database). This time go ahead and choose Team Jock List.
  15. Choose your top jock and his data file will load. Go to the bottom of this file and choose Allocate Titan. DON'T CHOOSE DISMISS JOCK!
  16. Click on the REVOLVER titan and then choose accept Titan.
  17. Repeat until all your titans have pilots/jocks. You've just built your first Team. Next time you BATTLE IT OUT; Pick Random Player team and you'll see your team is available. Pick and choose which ones you want to be in the battle. I recommend you choose all of them. Remember that when the battle is over to go back and increase your pilots/jocks skills with the new development points you've earned.

6. Factory

This is the place to go when you want to design, repair, or modify your TITANS OF STEEL.
  1. After your first battle you'll notice that some of your poor Titans got hammered pretty badly. How do you repair them? Click control-F1 to get help in the factory.
  2. To repair your Titans after the first battle choose Modify.
  3. Choose Team Blue (Thats your team)
  4. This will bring up a list of our team and you'll find out what condition your Titans are in. Click on the Titan you want to repair and go ahead and start fixing it. If you need any help remember to just press ctrl-F1.

7. Acknowledgments

This Tutorial was written by Eric Petersen. Any suggestions or comments should be sent to: rosary@viciousbyte.de Many thanks to Kai, Henrik, and Steffan for making such a great game.