That's actually a ODT file, which is supposed to be usable with other things... I guess that doesn't mean text editors. Here are the manuals, though without pictures:
THANCS Ship Designer’s Manual
Overview
THANCS (Tactical Hex And Newtonian Combat Simulator) is a detailed tactical space combat simulation game. This manual describes how to use the ship designer application to design a ship to use in-game.
To launch the ship designer, simply run the thancs-perlgui.exe. Select a mod from the ship designer category, and then choose a ship design to modify or “<New Design>” to start with a blank design grid.
Components and Hexes
Ships in THANCS are made up of components, and these components are placed on a hex grid. Components can take up multiple hexes on the grid.
There are two types of hexes in a component: physical hexes and connector hexes. Physical hexes are hexes which take up space, while connector hexes do not take up space, and serve only as connection points for other components. Only one physical hex can occupy the same space on a ship’s design grid, but there can be an unlimited number of connector hexes in the same location. Connector hexes appear as a hexagonal outline, while physical hexes appear as filled hexagons.
Another aspect of components and hexes is the enabled state. Components can be enabled or disabled. Enabled components’ physical hexes will appear white, while disabled components’ physical hexes will appear yellow. Additionally, some hexes are only present when the associated component is enabled – for instance, shield hexes. These temporary physical hexes will be partially transparent.
Placing Components
To place a component, you first need to select which type of component you want to place. You can navigate through the component categories using the left and right arrow keys, and through the components within a category using the up and down arrow keys. The currently selected category and component are shown in the upper left, as are the ones adjacent in the lists, so you know what you can immediately navigate to. Categories are sorted alphabetically, and components are sorted based on the mod settings.
Once you have selected a component, a shadow of the component will appear under your mouse cursor. Move the mouse to the location at which you want to place the component, then click the left mouse button to place the component. If the component is blocked by another component, it won’t be placed.
If you want your component to be placed in a different orientation, you can press the [ and ] keys to rotate counterclockwise and clockwise respectively before you place the component. You can also click and drag the mouse to make the component face the direction of movement. You cannot rotate a component that has already been placed; remove it and place a new one.
If you want to remove a component that has already been placed, simply move the mouse over the component and press the Delete key. Hold down the delete key and sweep the mouse to delete many components quickly.
Connectivity
All components must be directly connected to one or more components that offer an appropriate connection, and all components groups must be contiguous – if you design a disconnected ship, it will fragment into multiple “ships” in-game!
Fortunately the ship designer will show you which components are connected and which are disconnected. Disconnected components will have hexagons shown in red, while connected components appear white or yellow.
The primary components you will use for connectivity are the hull components, found in the Structural category. Hull components offer different levels of structural connectivity, indicated by the number in the component’s name (e.g. “hull segment 2”). Smaller components can be connected to any hull components, but some of the larger components require a stronger connection, so they can only be connected to one of the larger hull components.
While many components can connect to the hull anywhere on their surface, some can connect only on specific hexes. The component you are placing will have some dark green hexes. When you line one of these up with a matching connector hex outline on your design, the hex will turn bright green to indicate a successful connection.
Some non-hull components also offer connections. For instance, reactors have prongs sticking out to which capacitors can be attached, and armor can be attached directly to other armor. Armor coatings can only be attached to armor, not to hull.
The various types of connection point will show up in different colors. For stock, Class 1 hull connections are green, Class 2 hull connections are cyan, Class 3 hull connections are blue, Armor-only connections are yellow, and Capacitor-only connections are in purple.
Design Essentials
Command & Control
All ships need command & control (C&C) components. Any ship that loses its C&C will lose the ability to receive commands. Ownership is lost when the C&C count reaches zero, and the ship will drift through space as mere debris.
There are several sizes of C&C components: computers, cockpits, and bridges. Each size provides a different number of C&C points – computers provide 1, cockpits provide 4, and bridges provide 10. C&C points are used to execute commands; if a ship receives more commands in a turn than it has C&C points, some commands will be ignored.
C&C components have diminishing returns, so you cannot simply place 10 computers on your ship to get the benefits of a bridge. The best C&C component on your ship counts at full value, but the second best counts at only half, and the rest provide one quarter effect. Thus if you have a ship with two bridges, you would get a total of 15 C&C points and each additional bridge gives 2.5 (rounded in game). A bridge, a cockpit and a computer gives 12 C&C points; the computer provides only ¼ which rounds down to zero.
A navigation order (includes both turning and any amount of acceleration) costs one C&C point.
Firing each weapon costs one C&C point, regardless of how many shots per turn that weapon takes.
Enabling a component costs one C&C point.
Disabling a component is free.
Any additional C&C points will be put towards repairing (hp)/regenerating (sp) components on your ship. Note: Repair/regen only costs a C&C point if it does not cost energy instead.
EG: A shield field which requires 10energy per sp regenerated does not require C&C to do so, but repairing the hp of the shield generator itself after the shield is breached will cost one C&C point.
Hull
As described above, hull provides connectivity for most other components. Hull is fairly durable but slow to repair, and is the only thing holding your ship together so it must be protected. Making your ship's skeleton loop around in a ring shape will ensure that the loss of any one hull segment won't cause your ship to shatter.
Power
Power is produced by reactors, and stored in capacitors as energy. Reactors don’t store any energy on their own, but they do provide connection points for capacitors, and you can place additional capacitors on the hull if you need more storage.
Power is used by various components on the ship – primarily by weapons, engines, and shields, but also by C&C, gyros and other components. Engines and C&C use a constant amount of power all the time. Weapons use power in two situations: when they are firing, and when they are cooling down/recharging. (Weapons that are already fully cooled/charged do not generally use power.) Shields use power all the time to maintain the force field, but also use additional power when regenerating.
Components will be placed enabled by default unless they must be disabled to avoid a collision; you can enable them by hovering the mouse over them and pressing “e”, or disable them again by hovering and pressing “d”. You can also enable or disable all components by pressing capital “E” or “D” respectively.
If your ship runs out of energy, components will be disabled until the available energy is sufficient or the ship dies. Be sure to disable power intensive systems in a controlled manner if you face a sudden energy crisis due to combat damage. Uncontrolled shutdowns will affect energy generation, storage and CnC components last.
Note that capacitors are very volatile, so if a capacitor is damaged, any components behind it will take additional damage! It is highly recommended to place your capacitors in a well protected section of the ship. Alternatively, if you can keep the enemy in front of you, you can place the capacitors at the rear of your ship so that the additional damage will blast harmlessly into space.
This effect can also be used to amplify your own weapon shots, but it is cheaper to buy more weapons.
Propulsion
Engines and thrusters are used to accelerate your ship through space, and also to rotate it. Engines and thrusters will function only if they have a clear line of sight to space, without any other components in between. (Shield field hexes do not block line of sight. Gunports only block line of sight when they are closed)
Acceleration
In order to accelerate, you need thrust. In order to accelerate efficiently, the thrust must be balanced around your ship's center of mass so that it does not apply torque when in operation. The easiest way to guarantee this is to place one large drive along the centerline of your ship. You can also use multiple drives with at least one on each side of the center of mass so that they negate each other's torque. Drives with unbalanced torques will receive only partial credit for their thrust ability.
The total thrust for each of the six directions is divided by the ship's mass to get an acceleration per turn. Since acceleration can only be used in integer multiples of 1.0 units at a time, ships are allowed to “save up” an additional 1 point of acceleration beyond their design's acceleration per turn. A ship with 0.5 acceleration can thus save up to 1.5 points, allowing it to perform a one-unit acceleration every other turn on average.
Movement is Newtonian, so once you order your ship to accelerate once, it will continue drifting in the same direction and speed until you give another order. In order to stop, you must either have forward facing retro rockets, or turn the ship 180 degrees and fire the main engines again.
Turning
There are two ways to increase turn rate.
Gyros are the simplest, as they directly add torque to your ship. The upside is that they do not need a line of sight, so they can be placed in the protected center of your ship. The downside is that they are quite heavy, and suffer diminishing returns while slowing your ship's acceleration.
Drives with a net torque can also be used to increase turn rate. Only combinations of drives which add up to a net zero acceleration are counted towards turn rate. For example, a forward drive on the right side of your ship plus a reverse drive on the left side will allow you to turn to the left without accelerating forwards or back. Another option is a triangular arrangement with one engine pointing south which counters the combined acceleration of a northeast drive and a northwest drive.
You do not need to balance the clockwise and counterclockwise torques; they are treated independently, so it is quite possible to have a ship that can only turn left (whether due to design flaws or combat damage).
Total clockwise and counterclockwise torques are divided by your ship's angular momentum (the rotational equivalent of mass) to get a turn rate. This is non-Newtonian, since there are only 6 possible directions to face, which is too granular for realistic mechanics.
Angular momentum is a tally of each hex's mass multiplied by its distance from the center of mass. That means a heavy gyro near the center of your ship does not impact your angular momentum, and a light thruster has little effect unless it is on a long wing, while a shell of armor is both heavy and far away so it has a huge impact. Placing engines further out improves their torque while the placement of gyros does not affect their effectiveness. Thus, small ships can make better use of gyros while big ships are best off with navigational thrusters.
Weapons
Weapons are used to attack other ships. Direct fire weapons can fire at any target within range in a 60 degree arc. AoE weapons will hit every target within range, but at diminishing damage levels with distance. Different weapons have different damage, reload rates, cooling rates, power usage, range, and inaccuracy. Inaccuracy affects the chance to hit a target – when a weapon fires, a random ship in the targeted combat hex (which contains zero or more ships, and is distinct from a design hex) is chosen, and weapons with high inaccuracy are more likely to miss the target, though larger targets are easier to hit. If a shot misses its target or pierces entirely through, it may still hit another ship in the same hex or in hexes beyond.
Note: Weapons which are buried inside your ship are allowed to fire, but the beam or blast will have to travel through your ship and may do damage along the way. Shields do not block outgoing shots, but components, hull and armor will. Explosive warheads can be used as a self-destruct system, and lasers (carefully placed in a clamp or dock presumably) can be used to slice off components you don't want.
The current weapons fall into three categories:
Lasers – These have a long range, rapid firing, and their accuracy does not degrade with distance. However, they use up a huge amount of energy to fire. Be sure to include large reactors and a lot of capacitors in your design to feed the lasers.
Disruptors – These are medium ranged, and will start to overheat after the first few shots, but have wide, high damage bolts with some shield piercing and are very energy efficient. They cost more to build, and take up a larger surface area, but do not require as much power infrastructure to support.
Warheads – These weapons are extremely short ranged, but damage targets in all directions. They will also deal extremely heavy damage to the ship carrying it, so they are best placed on missiles which can be separated from the main ship with explosive bolts. EMP warheads will deal extra damage to shields and almost none to hull and components.
Defenses
Armor
Armor is very massive, but is cheap and has a lot of hit points. Extra abilities can be added with the application of coatings, such as emissive which reduces the damage from every hit, or absorb which turns some of the impact damage into energy, or ablative which completely negates the first three hits.
Armor can be connected directly to other armor components, in addition to hull. This makes it possible to make armored shells for engines or weapons, or even for the entire ship. If you are making a thin shell, be aware that when the armor is damaged, large chunks of it may become separated from your ship. Use extra hull struts or segments to provide support in multiple places so that the armor is more reliable.
Due to the weight of armor, you will likely find yourself requiring bigger engines to compensate. If you plan to make an armored ship, be sure to start with lots of excess engine power.
Shields
Shields have a number of options for different sizes and shapes, but come in two main types; Solid and Deflector shields.
Solid shields will block the first points of damage, up to a maximum of their current strength. These shields will continue to block small hits completely until they shield is nearly depleted to zero, but will leak large hits.
Deflectors will block a percentage of the damage depending on their strength, with the percentage dropping towards zero as the shield is depleted. Some damage will leak through even from small hits. Deflectors make an excellent outer layer of defense, since they will reduce the damage but still share the load. Small amounts of leaked damage can be easily handled by inner shield layers, armor coatings or by repair crews.
It is generally a good idea to save your design with the shields disabled to save power, waiting until you are approaching weapons range before powering them up.
Be sure that all of the angles from which shots can come in are blocked by at least one layer of armor and/or shields, so as to avoid a critical hit on vulnerable external components. Weapons and engines don’t have too many hitpoints and can a lot of time to repair, or a lot of money to replace!
When laying out your defenses, remember that your shields and armor do not need to form completely sealed bubbles. Incoming damage will only be travel in one of the six cardinal directions, so feel free to leave a gap if damage flowing through that gap will miss your ship entirely!
Special Components
There are also a growing number of special components:
Explosive bolts allow you to permanently detach pieces of your ship, for instance to launch a docked fighter or missile. Disabling the bolt causes the physical hex to vanish, breaking connectivity between the two pieces of the hull and destroying the bolt.
Docking clamps are similar to explosive bolts, but they are reversible. When disabled, they will release whatever they were holding, but they can also attempt to grab debris or other ships you own. If successful, the target will become part of your ship, sharing control, energy and acceleration. Drone bays and Drydocks are similar to docking clamps, but can grab much larger objects or multiple objects at once, as long as they fit inside the ring. Spacedocks are similar to clamps and drydocks, but are open to space so they can hold items of unlimited size, but they will cost a significant amount of energy each turn to hold the parts in place.
Disassemblers are similar to docking clamps and operate in a similar way, however any components which are grabbed by the disassembler will break apart into individual loose components. This is ideal for recycling debris in order to build a new ship from the parts in a drydock, or for detaching damaged armor from a ship so you can weld on fresh plating.
Armored irises and gunports are very similar to each other (they vary only in size and durability). Enabling the component causes the iris/gunport to close, blocking any engines/weapons you install inside, but protecting them from harm, while disabling it opens the iris/gunport, allowing the weapons to fire and the engines to thrust, but exposes them to enemy weapons fire in return.
It should be noted that component disable commands happen before firing. This means that you can open (disable) a gun port and fire the weapon on the same turn. Enable happens after firing, so you can fire through a gun port that you have ordered to close on the same turn.
File Operations
When you want to save your design, press shift-S. This will create a file in the same directory as the exe, with the name specified at the top of the designer. Bear in mind that any existing saved design will overwritten, so if you want to keep your old design, you should rename or copy it first!
If you want to load an old design to make changes to it, press Shift-L. This will load the named file if it exists.
To change the name of the design you are working with, press F2 and edit the name. Press enter to finish typing.
THANCS Perl-GUI’s Manual
Overview
THANCS (Tactical Hex And Newtonian Combat Simulator) is a detailed tactical space combat simulation game. This manual describes how to use the perl based gui to play the game.
Savegame file names are composed of the game name, the turn number, and the player number, with an extension of .GAM. EG: “BattleRoyale_10_0001.gam” is the file for player #1, on turn #10 in a game called BattleRoyale.
When playing you will receive a new .GAM file from the host for each turn you play.
Typically this will be by downloading the file from the game hosting site pbw.spaceempires.net
To launch the gui, simply run the THANCS-perlgui.exe
The gui will proceed to list the set of games found in the savegame folder. Click to choose the game you want to play, and then click to choose the turn you want to view from that game. If you forget what the controls are for a particular screen, press F1 to get a list of available commands.
When you have finished giving orders, press F4 on any screen. This will save your orders to a PLR file in your savegame directory. Upload the PLR file to the host.
If you wish to save the game and continue playing later, press F3 on any screen. Your .GAM file will be updated to include all the commands you have entered so far.
Map Screen
The map view gives an overall view of the universe and the location of ships placed within it.
Roll the mouse wheel to zoom the map in and out, and click-drag with your right or middle mouse buttons to scroll the map around.
The solid dots are ships, and the hollow hexes show the grid on which the ships move. The color of the hollow hexes does not have any major significance; its color matches that of the nearest ship and fades with distance, helping to draw the eye towards ships.
Colors are used to indicate:
Blue : Ships personally owned by you.
Green : Allied ships owned by a friendly player
Yellow : Debris / Dead ships which are not controlled by anybody.
Red : Hostile ships owned by one of your opponents.
The lines that come out of the dots indicate a ship's speed, and indicate the location the ship will be in at the end of the turn. The arrowheads drawn at the end of the line indicate which direction the ship is facing. Most ships have the majority of their weapons pointing forwards, so beware the ones pointing at you! The lines and arrowheads can be toggled on and off by pressing the 'M' key.
The two numbers visible on top of some of the ships indicate the amount of damage they have sustained in the previous turn. The upper, pale blue number tallies shield damage, and the lower pale red number tallies hull damage.
Click on a ship to open up the Ship View and see its details.
Controls Summary:
Left Click on a ship to view details and give orders.
Right Click-drag to scroll the view.
Mousewheel to zoom
'M' To toggle the movement lines on and off
Ship View
The ship view will look a lot like the ship designer, however now you give the ship orders instead of adding and removing components.
The left side of the view is populated by a list of statistics about your ship, including a budget list for both energy and the Command & Control (CnC) points available.
Energy has the obvious uses, keeping your engines, shields, weapons, and lifesupport functioning. If you happen to run completely out of stored energy, then random components will be disabled by 'brownouts'. Avoid this if at all possible! Random includes your bridge, and you will need that powered up in order to re-enable your components once the crisis is over. To help with budgeting, the number of turns remaining until your batteries are (F)ull or (E)mpty is listed.
CnC points represent the amount of crew control you have over your ship, and directly relate to how many actions you can perform each turn. CnC points cannot be saved up for later, but are refreshed completely at the beginning of each turn.
Most actions cost 1 CnC point to perform, including:
Giving a navigational order (accelerate and/or turn)
Firing a weapon (multiple shots from one gun cost 1 for the whole volley)
Enabling a component (such as raising shields, or closing gunports)
Repairing a component by 1HP (unused points will automatically be spent on repairs)
Disabling a component is free (such as lowering shields or detonating explosive bolts)
In combat, you will inevitably take damage. If you hover your mouse over a component you will see details about the hitpoints remaining on it, as well as the repair rate for it. To see large-scale damage, press 'V' to toggle the view to 'Damage' mode (press 'g' to return to normal). In damage mode, components will be colored Bright Green if they are undamaged. This will change to dark green if damaged, and fade to yellow when they are at 50% health. As they approach 0% health they will fade to red. Once a component reaches 0 HP, it will be destroyed, and permanently removed from your ship.
Components with shield hitpoints will be colored blue when at 100% and fade to black at 0%.
Repair priorities are signified by the green outlines on the hexes. Bright green is top priority, black is last priority, and red indicates that the component should not be repaired/recharged at all. The latter is useful to stop shields from recharging when a ship is critically low on energy.
Most components do not suffer any loss of functionality until they are completely destroyed. The exceptions to this are shields and armor, which tend to allow more damage to leak through to the hull as they become damaged.
In order to fly your ship, press 'M' anywhere in the Ship View window to open the Nav View and give Movement orders.
For shooting back at enemies, hover your mouse over the gun you wish to fire, and press 'A' to attack. This will open the Gun View to allow you to select targets.
To manage your power and defenses, you will want to enable and disable components as they are needed. Hover over a component and press 'E' to enable it, or 'D' to disable it. Note that if you do not have enough CnC points, the component may not be enabled. If the “enable” category of the CnC budget shows as yellow or red, you do not have enough points to enable all the things you are trying to enable at once.
As in the Map View, you may use the mouse wheel to zoom, and right click-drag to move the view around.
If you wish to give your ship a unique name, hover your mouse over a component and press 'R' to enter rename mode. The name at the top of the screen will turn orange and allow you to type. Press enter or escape to finish typing. If you delete the name, the ship will revert to using an ID number. The component you hover over will get a name tag attached along with a priority number. While renaming, you can press + or - to increase or decrease the value (/ and * will halve or double the number respectively). Whichever name has the highest priority number will be the name shown on the map for this ship.
Once you are done giving orders to the ship, press escape to close the Ship View.
Gun View
The Gun View shows a modified version of the Map View, and starts out focused on the firing arc of your selected weapon. The hexes that are within range of your selected weapon are highlighted, and an grey-white shot path indicator will follow your mouse.
The grey-white path shows which hexes your shot will cross if you click to fire at the hex you are currently hovering over. The brightness of the line shows how likely the shot is to cross into the hex and damage ships there. White is 100%, black is 0%.
Wherever a ship is located, the exact percentage will be shown. It should be noted that even if the percentage show in 100%, that is not a guarantee that the shot will be completely stopped by the target ship. It is also not a guarantee that the shot will even physically hit the target if it is a tiny fighter or missile.
Shots which are not completely absorbed by a target will continue on with their remaining energy and can damage ships further away. Try to line up multiple enemies if you can, while keeping your own ships from getting into the line of fire!
Once you have your aim chosen, click once for each shot you wish to take. If you use up all of the allowed shots per turn, clicking again will replace your oldest shot order with the new shot. If you wish to cancel the most recent shot, press backspace or delete.
Once you are satisfied with your shot selections, press escape to close the Gun View.
Navigation View
Like the Gun View, the Nav View shows a modified version of the map view, focused on your ship.
The white hex marks your ship's current location. The line from that white hex to the blue hex in the middle shows your current speed. The bright hexes show the locations which you have the thruster power available to move to. The large arrows indicate which directions you have the steering power to turn your ship to face.
The currently selected navigation orders will blink white.
Click on one of the illuminated hexes to give an order to accelerate to that location. Press '[' to turn one notch counterclockwise and ']' to turn one notch clockwise. Clicking and dragging will change the turn order to the direction you dragged if possible. The lines indicating the future location of your ship on the map will update accordingly.
You will be charged one CnC point if you make either a turn or an acceleration move. To cancel the move order and get your CnC point refunded, click on the blue hex and turn your ship to face the blue arrow, which is equivalent to drifting.
The colors of the arrows and illuminated hexes indicate:
Blue (Cyan) : No thrust needed – Does not cost CnC points.
Green : Always available – This move recharges in one turn or less.
Yellow : Available next turn – This move can be done again next turn.
Orange : One turn delay – This move will take one turn to recharge.
Red : Long Delay – This move takes a long time to recharge.
Be careful when ordering high acceleration. In order to stop you will need to either using braking thrusters or turn around and accelerate back the way you came for just as long as you spent speeding up. If the enemy is moving towards you at the same time, you will often find yourself moving much to fast and end up sailing off into the deep black.
If the movement lines from other ships are getting in your way, press 'M' to toggle them off.
Once you are done giving navigation orders, press escape to close the Nav View.
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Topic: THANCS - a Newtonian space TBT (Read 56811 times)