***READ THIS FIRST*** Control & Quick start guide (updated)

[Boss Tweed]

Controls:

• WASD + mouse for movement
  
• 'Shift' or 'C' to crouch if in a mech, low fly in an anti-grav, or lock orientation in a grav-tank
  
• 'Spacebar' to stomp when in a mech, bull-rush in a tank (hold), or belly-dive in an anti-grav
  
• LMB & RMB fire primary and secondary weapons
  
• middle mouse button to fire the defensive ability (hold to show trajectory)
  
• 'R' to reload at an ammo depot or to scavenge ammo from a weapon pickup
  
• 'Ctrl' to toggle extension camera
  
• 'ESC' to pause game and open menu
  
• 'F1' opens the debug menu which can be used to change volume levels and toggle cheats

Gameplay:

• there are 3 ways to beat any level: kill all captains (skull & laurels icon), destroy all defensive batteries, or kill 75% of the enemy garrison; all progress shown at the top right screen corner
  
• when a win condition is met available exit gates will lower-- to complete a map you must drive through one of the exit points
  
• to complete a run and bank earned money you must finish a spaceport map, usually available after the first level is completed
  
• ammo depots (the Great leader statues) resupply a single ammo type (press or hold 'R') when the player is within the lit radius; depots have limited ammo, empty depots go dark and do not explode
  
• all vehicles have armor (green) and shielding (blue); armor cannot be repaired, shielding is replenished by collecting the colored orbs that drop from enemies (shielding value of orbs decays with time)
  
• ammo is limited while defensive abilities are unlimited use with a cooldown
  
• the tower icon means the unit is radioing in an alarm-- kill them before they finish to prevent nearby units from being called in to support
  
• all weapons have a noise level at firing and at projectile impact-- enemies within earshot of either of these will immediately aggro to the player's position

Other info:

• to change any keybindings simply go to the root directory and open the 'cfg' folder and edit 'binds.txt'
  
• to set gameplay defaults add the desired console commands to the 'autoexec.cfg' file also located in root/cfg

If you have any bugs / technical issues please post in our livechat[www.hipchat.com] (we're there during work hours but the chat is archived) or post in the "Technical Issues" forum to search for potential solutions or make a new post describing the problem and we'll try to get a fix as soon as possible.

Weapons & Combat Guide

How Damage Works - All weapons have a raw damage output per projectile/beam but with 3 damage modifiers: shield, hull, environment. Only vehicles have shielding-- you can tell you're hitting shields if you get the repelling flash on impact, and we'll be adding additional effects so you can tell when shields are up and when a unit's shield 'pops'. Besides the damage modifier shields have no other effect on gameplay as of now. 'Hull' refers to non-shielding HP for any unit, while all non-units (props) have 'environment' class HP.

Generally speaking, laser weapons are better against shielding but worse against hull and environment. Ballistic weapons are usually the other way around; if there's an explosive component or a high rate of fire then those weapons will suffer less of a penalty against shielding, while flechette and high penetration rounds will have a more severe penalty against shield HP. The 'Drillbit' (cannon, main, type 2) weapon for example is very effective against hull and will go through most anything, but is relatively ineffective against even weak shielding. Weapons with a 'disruption' descriptor on the other hand extremely effective at dropping shielding, but deal next to no damage against hull or environment.

Noise and Spotting - This system is still a bit of a mess currently, but the main points won't change. There are 4 main components to sound: firing, impact, unit, explosion. These values all have a radial effect, and enemies either hear you or they don't-- no middle ground there. Each element can have different sizes for the radii (if you're curious about this you can type r_messages 1 into the console). Currently those values are all over the place and aren't visualized so you'll just have to get a feel for them for now, but as part of a future pass I'll be condensing those down into a few standardized sizes. More on that later.

Sound radii will occur:
1) centered on the player when firing
2) at every point of impact
3) continuously around the player (representing how loud your vehicle is)
4) centered on any explosive environment props when it's destroyed (defensive batteries, ammo depots etc)

Any enemy units that fall within these radii or are shot by the player are immediately aggroed to the player's position. So with artillery/indirect fire style weapons, on the projectile's impact targets within the sound radius will move to the player's current position, regardless of line of sight. Once the alarm system is further resolved I'll elaborate more on how all this ties together.

Godspeed Brigador.

[CyraxPT]

I'm curious, does the crossair/mouse pointer have something different from usual? It has two colours and it "stretches" so that's why i'm asking.

[Boss Tweed]

In Brigador the cursor distance from your vehicle matters as much as the direction-- you have control of both the direction and declination of the guns, so it's possible to overshoot or undershoot targets. There's a lot more precision to aiming than what you'd get with say a twin-stick shooter.

[CyraxPT]

Heh, figured that it had to do something, hope that it doesn't complicate too much the combat. Thanks for the answer.

[Boss Tweed]

Sure thing. We think we've hit the sweet spot with it-- Brigador is slower than most twin-stick shooters but there's a fine-ness to the aiming that sets it apart among other things.

We've also got a new version of the aiming reticles in the pipe right now that illustrate trajectories much better.