We'll keep it short, promised.

Tinker Tanks is a browser-based war strategy game played against the computer or other human players.

The goal is (obviously) to destroy your opponents. You can use your army of tiny units for that.


Tinker Tanks is not turn-based. Instead, a game proceeds in rounds. In each round, the players of each color simultaneously place and submit their moves for that round.

What happens with 'conflicting' moves? For example: you move a tank away from a tile while somebody tries to attack it. In this case, and it is central to gameplay: only the move of the player that submitted faster gets executed.

How to play

Start a new game by (duh) clicking start new game. You end up straight in the first round. Here's what you can do within a round:

1. Drag units of your color across the grid to place move and attack orders. The circles you see while dragging indicate move range (green) and attack range (red).
   
2. Buy units and buildings by clicking the war factory or home base:
   
3. You get money each round based on your number of ore refineries. Drive a truck on an ore field to construct them:
   + = =$$$
4. Click the END TURN button to submit your moves for this round. The faster the better (or your moves may not get executed).
   
   
   
5. The round advances once all players checked in their orders.
   
   
6. Still with us? There's also naval ports, boats, towers, engineers, nuclear missile attacks, attack bonuses... But just go play to discover them!
   
   ...

The longer version

There is no 'persistent universe': games are played one at a time, and can take anywhere from 5 minutes to an hour or so. Games are automatically saved on the server, so you can always pause a game and come back later to continue playing.

Also, games are NOT turn-based, but rather 'round-based'.
Players place their moves simultaneously (without seeing the other player's moves), after which the game calculates the outcome and proceeds to the next round. I like to think this makes it cooler than just some digitalized board game :-)

Gameplay

All action takes place on a grid with tiles. Say you are the blue player, then the grid looks something like this:



As said, the game is NOT turn-based. Instead, it proceeds in rounds, as follows.

In each round all players do the following:

1. Drag tiles with units of your color to nearby tiles to place moves and attacks.
2. Hit the big ATTACK button to check in your placed moves for this round:

Once all players checked in their moves, the game calculates the outcome of all the submitted moves, and advances to the next round. Typically, in the next round more units are dead/wounded than in the previous one :-)


Now here's something very important: hitting that attack button fast is crucial in battle situations:

if two units attack each other, only the fastest attack of the two will get executed.
So you better hit that ATTACK button fast if you don't want to get beaten up without doing any damage yourself. And if you wonder why your moves don't seem to get executed, it's probably because you checked them in too slowly.

When dragging a unit, the green circle indicates its speed (how far it can move), the red one its range (how far it can attack). Artillery typically has a far range but low speed, and for tanks it's the other way around:


Oh, by the way: the last man standing wins.

Economy - Earn, buy and construct!

You earn money each round based on the number of ore mines you own. Get more mines by occupying ore fields with a truck:
+ =
Your current amount of money is displayed in the pane on the left (e.g. 300$ in the image). Clicking your war factory on the grid will bring up a dialog to purchase new units:

Only one unit per round and per war factory can be bought. Buying a unit creates it instantly, but it will only be usable starting from the next round.

Similarly, clicking your home base on the grid will bring up a dialog to construct buildings:

Construct extra ore mines and war factories to speed up your economy and army-building.

Game units

Introducing our tiny heroes...

The different units each have their strengths and weaknesses. Typically, units are very good against one type, and weak against another.
Warning: list and prices not up to date

	Name	p0wns	fears	Costs
	Soldier	Artillery	Tanks	$100
	Tank	Soldiers	Artillery	$200
	Artillery	Tanks	Soldiers	$150
... Starting to get it? Wait, there's more!
	Destroyer	All that moves	Nothin'	$800
	War factory	Creates new units		N/A
	Ore Mine	Keeps money coming in		N/A
For more mines, occupy ore fields with these:
	Ore truck	Builds ore mines		$1500

Setting up or joining a game

This happens in the portal, where you end up right after logging in.

In the create a game section, select the map you want to play on (note the # of players!).
You can also set the following options for your game:

• Timer - if enabled, all player's check in their moves automatically after XXX secs (see below).
• Fog of war - if enabled, players can only see the parts of the map near their units.

About

This game was built by me, Wouter (my player name is wauter) as a fun project to shape up my JS and PHP skills. Feel free to mail me at wouter@tinkertanks.com with remarks, or you can also use the forum for that.