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Text File | 1994-04-29 | 35KB | 698 lines

**** This is the manual to MechForceHQ Version 0.53ß **** **** NOTE **** If you are updating from an older version of MechForceHQ, please read at least the 'Getting started' section of the manual. Important information about what to watch when updating, are provided there. 0. Copyright and Distribution ***************************** The programm MechForceHQ and this manual are copyright © 1993,94 Stefan Hülswitt, but they are however freely distributable as long as both files are included in their original form without additions, deletions, or modifications of any kind. The archive may be uploaded to any BBS or FTP site, or included in public domain packages is the fee charged for its distribution is less or equal to the price Fred Fish charges for a single disk. Specialy Fred Fish is allowed to include MechForceHQ in his wonderfull library. The programm MechForce and the files in the subdirectories Mechs, Units, Warriors, Maps and Orders were taken from the Headquarters1.83 distribution which is copyright © 1993 Andreas Smigielski and was released under the GNU-Public-Licence. This means that these files are freely distributable and may be modified in any way. MechForce and BattleForce © 1989 Ralph H. Reed The BattleTech system © 1985-1989 FASA Corporation. GadToolsBox 2.0c © 1991-93 Jaba Development ReqTools.library V38+ © 1993,94 Nico François 1. Disclaimer ************* This software is provided *AS IS* without warranty of any kind, either expressed or implied. Stefan Hülswitt does not warrant, guarantee, or make any representations regarding the use of, or the results of the use of, the MechForceHQ program in terms of correctness, accuracy, reliability, currentness, or otherwise. In no event will Stefan Hülswitt be liable for direct, indirect, incidental, or consequential damages resulting from any defect in the MechForceHQ program even if he has been advised of the possibility of such damages. WARNING: This is a BETA release of MechForceHQ. Although the program was tested during several hundred combats and all known bugs from the previous releases have been fixed (hopefully), there still may occure programm failures. So always backup your Unit or Warrior files to a save place, before playing around with MechForceHQ. As stated above I can't be made liable for any damage this program may cause. However my brother and I were playing a lot with MechForceHQ and we never lost any data, to say the program seems to be stable and reliable. If you find any bugs, please let me know about (see end of the manual). 2. What is MechForceHQ ********************** MechForceHQ is a programm to create and update the Unit, Warrior and Mech files which are used with the MechForce program. This software is very similar to the BattleTech system which is copyright 1985-1989 © FASA Corporation. As said this is a BETA release. This implies the manual, because I really don't like to write docs. So don't expect to get so much information out of this text, if you aren't at least a bit familiar with MechForce. If you want additional informations, please refer to the MechForce documentation or wait for one of the next releases of MechForceHQ which will have probably better documentation. This programm was written after getting one of the Headquarters distributions. I found the programm running quite instable on my machine (don't know if it's the fault of the machine) and also I don't like the user interface and the missing multitasking. So I started to create my own headquarter. Let's have a quick view at some features: * All information (Unit, Character, Mech) display at a time. * Can start MechForce out of the program, thereby saving and reloading Unit. * Easy rearranging of the Unit. * Much more informative user messages and possibilities to interact with the program. * Very clear and easy to use Mech factory. * A real function for the Medics. * A function so sell and buy Mechs across different Units. * A Hall of Fame for dead Characters. * Full multitasking, pulldown menus, shortcuts. 3. Requirements *************** MechForceHQ was developed on a A2000 with 1MB Chip- and 6MB Fast-RAM and a 68030 25Mhz card running on a rekicked beta Kickstart 40.62. To run MechForceHQ on your machine you need at least Kickstart 2.04 (V37.175) and 512kB of memory. If you want to start MechForce out of MechForceHQ you should have about 1.5MB free memory available. In addition you must have installed the ReqTools.library V38+ in your LIBS: directory, the needed MechHQ/8 font in your FONTS: directory and the PAL-Monitor driver must be available. There is no special installation needed. Just create a new drawer and unarchive all files to this drawer. The subdirectory structure will be created thereby. If you was using MechForce before, you may unarchive all files to your old MechForce directory. 4. Getting started ****************** MechForceHQ may be started from WorkBench by double-clicking its icon, or from the CLI by typing its name. There are no ToolTypes or options. After loading, MechForceHQ tries to load a preferences file named MechForceHQ.prefs from the current directory. If this file is missing/damaged/ outdated, MechForceHQ defaults to some internal settings. NOTE : The file format of the Hall of Fame has changed since version 0.47ß. To convert your old Hall of Fame to the new format you must use the supplied 'convertfame' program. From workbench just double-click the ConvertFame icon. From shell, cd to your MechForceHQ directory and enter 'convertfame'. Your old Hall of Fame will be renamed to *.old, just in case. WARNING : If you are upgrading from version 0.50ß, please don't change anything at the Hall of Fame. The convertfame program is not smart enough to distinguish the different versions and may (will !) damage your Hall of Fame. NOTE : The file format of the preference file has changed various times since version 0.47ß. After starting MechForceHQ may complain it has found a damaged preferences file. Just ignore this message and resetup your preferences inside the program. If MechForceHQ fails to open it's screen, check if the ReqTools.library and the font are installed correctly. MechForceHQ defaults to opens a PAL overscanned screen, so you may have to adjust your OverScan-Preferences or you may select another screenmode (refer to the Preferences menu section). However MechForceHQ needs a screen of 704x282. On NTSC based machines the NTSC Highres-Lace screenmode should fit best. NOTE for 2.x based machines : There is a small incompatibility between 2.x and 3.x gadtools.library. As a result all listview-gadgets designed for 3.x look a bit weird under 2.x. This is not a bug inside MechForceHQ rather inside the kickstart image. On startup MechForceHQ asks you to load an Unit. If you don't have any Units you may hit CANCEL and MechForceHQ will ask you to create a new Unit. 5. What you see on screen ************************* The screen is divided into four display areas and one gadget area. In the upper left area there are two listgadgets which show you which Characters and Mechs are in the Unit and which Character uses which Mech. The name of the Unit is diplayed above this list. The names of the Characters and Mechs are preceeded by a special symbol to indicate their status. A '*' says that the Character or Mech is out on patrol or somewhere else outside the base. If you select such a Character you are notified this fact, and asked if you want to pay for bringing the Character back to base. A '#' says that the Character is injured resp. the Mech is damaged. A '+' says that the Character has died in combat. You may bring him back to life, if the Character has enough C-Bills (very expensive, of course). A '·' says that the Mech is not used by a Character. In the upper right area information about the Unit are displayed. Victories and Defeats denotes the number of battles your Unit has won resp. has lost. Reputation shows you, how the big houses think about your Unit. There are five reputations: Bandit, Poor, Average, Good and Elite. If your Unit has a high reputation you may get contracts with a higher fee and better salvage. The second block shows you some information about your current contract. If the name of the house is written in red, your contract has expired (remaining combat points are zero). Repair denotes how many percent of the repair costs do you have to pay, Salvage denotes how many percent of the obtained price you may keep when salvaging or offering a Mech. In the lower right area you can get information about the current Character. To make a Character current, you must click on his name in the left listgadget. The first line reports you the type, the name and the current hitpoints of the Charcter. The Charcter type may be Mech Warrior, Technician or Medic. Status informs you about the state of the Character. Wins and Losses show how many fights the Character has won and how many he has lost. Arena counts the number of arena challenges the Character has succeeded. Experience shows how many Experience Points the Character has collected. Mech Warriors gain experience during combat, Technicians gain experience by repairing or salvaging Mechs and Medics gain experience by healing Characters. C-Bills shows how many money a Character owns. This money is used to heal the Character or to bring him back to base. If a Character is dead or lost in combat and has not enough money to pay the penalty, he is off the game. Title and Income increase if the Character has won many Arena challenges. Salary denotes the amount of money a Character gains, when recovering Mechs from the enemy. Available Exp. Pts shows how many experience points the Character has ready for modifying skill rolls or for converting into Character Points. Character Pts shows how may points the Character has ready to advance Skills or Attributes. You gain Character Points by converting availbale Experience Points. In the lower left area you may see details of the current Mech, if the current Character uses a Mech. 6. Rearranging the Unit *********************** You may have noticed that if you select a Character in the left listgadget and the Character owns a Mech, this Mech is highlighted in the right listgadget. The Character should use another Mech ? Very easy. Just click the desired Mech in the right list gadget and the Character changes to this Mech. If the new Mech is already used by another Character, you are asked if he should release the Mech. If you want a Character to stay without Mech, you may select Release Mech from the Character menu. The first Character in the list is called your Leader. When ever the Leader is removed from the Unit, you are asked to select a new Leader. 7. The Menus ************ 7.1 The Unit menu ***************** Load Unit - Opens a window to select a new Unit to load. If the current Unit was changed, you are asked if you want to save first. Save Unit - Saves the current Unit to disk Create Unit - Creates a new Unit. You are prompted to enter a name for the Unit. The currently loaded Unit will be lost, if not saved to disk. Contract - Gets a new contract for your Unit. If your old contract hasn't already expired, you have to pay a penalty for breaking the contract. The new contract is presented to you, and you may accept or reject it. If you hit reject another contract is presented to you. Buy Mech - Allows you to buy a new Mech. A window is opened, and the available Mechs are displayed. You may select the Mech class with the right listgadget. The selected Mech is displayed under the list, to give you a rough idea of what you are buying. You may hit BUY MECH to buy the selected Mech or CANCEL to abort the action. View Offers - Allows you to buy a Mech which was offered by another Unit. There is a global clipboard on which every Unit may pin offers for Mechs they want to sell. You will see a list of all offered Mechs, and if you select one of them, some information about this Mech, the offering Unit and the demanded price. If you hit Buy Mech the demanded price will be transfered to the offering Unit. If you try to buy a Mech offered by your own Unit, you are asked if you want to cancel the offer. In this case the Mech is removed from the global clipboard and reentered to your Unit. Fight - Saves the current Unit to disk, calls the MechForce program and reloads the Unit after returning. Show Hall of Fame - Shows the Hall of Fame. Up to 20 heroes may enter the Hall of Fame. The Hall of Fame is saved in a file called 'MechForceHQ.fame'. About - What could it be ?? Quit - Terminates MechForceHQ. If your Unit was changed you are asked to save it first. 7.2 The Character menu ********************** Heal Character - If a Character has lost Hitpoints during a combat you may heal him. First you are asked if you want to go to hospital (this means paying to get healed) or want to heal yourself. Healing yourself may be done by the Character itself or by a Medic. If you have a Medic in your Unit you have to select which Character should do the healing. The Character has to do a hidden skill roll against a value calculate of Dexterity, Medical First Aid, Interrogation, Survival of the Medic and Body and Athletics of the patient. If the Character fails the skill roll he inflicts damage to the patient and loses experience. If the Hitpoints of the patient drop below zero, the patient is killed. There is an additional requester to abort the action, which is shown only if the state of the patient is so bad, that failing the healing attempt would kill the patient. A Medic gains experience from a successful healing. Train Character - Allows the Character to advance his rang and to train his abilities and skills. A small window with four buttons is opened. Advance Rank allows a Character to achieve the next rank, if he has enough experience points. You need 2500 experience points for the regular rank, 15000 for the veteran rank, 100000 for the elite rank, 300000 for the elite 1 rank. The next elite rank is achived every 100000 points. Buy Attributs allows a Character to raise his basic attributs Body, Charisma, Dexterity and LearnAbility. The higher an ability is the more Character points are needed to increase this ability further. The maximum level is 12 for all abilities. You may hit Undo to discard all changes made. Buy Skills allows a Character to train his skills. Skills can not be raised beyond the level of the LearnAbility. Just click the desired skill to train the Character. You may hit Undo to discard all changes made. Convert Experience Points is needed to convert Available Experience Points to Character Points. A Character must have more than 500 Available Experience Points to convert them. You gain one Character Point for eight Experience Points. Release Mech - The current Character releases his Mech. A Character without a Mech can not go to combat. Advance Rank - Buy Attributs - Buy Skills - Convert Exp. Points - see Train Character. Add Character - Adds a Character from the Warrior directory to your Unit. If the Warrior has a Mech, the Mech is added too, of course. Remove Character - Removes the current Character from the Unit and saves him to the Warrior directory. If the Character was your Leader you must select a new Leader. If there is already another Warrior with the same name and the same Mech in the Warriors directory, you must rename the Character before you can remove him. Create Character - Creates a new Character. The basic abilities, the Character Points and the money are determined randomly. You should enter a name for this Character and choose a Character type and the sex. The choose of the Character type should be done with a look to the abilities displayed above. MechWarriors need Body and Charisma, Technicians and Medics need Dexterity. Rename Character - You may enter a new name for the current Character. Drop Character - Use this option, if you want to discard the current Character. But be warned: the Character will not be saved to disk, cannot enter the Hall of Fame and cannot be restored in anyway. 7.3 The Mech menu ***************** Repair Mech - A Mech which was damaged in combat may be repaired here. A repair may be done by the Character itself or by a Technician. After selecting the Character has to pass a hidden skill roll against a value calculated from Dexterity, Technician, Mechanical and Engineering. If the Character fails the roll, you must pay for the damage and the Character loses experience. If the roll succeeds you have to pay your part of the costs, according to your current contract (Repair %). If the Technician only has to reload ammo, the skill roll never fails. Salvage Mech - If you want to get rid of an old Mech or a Mech recovered from the emeny, you may select this menu. One of your Characters, probably a Technician, will try to dismount all parts from the Mech and sell them to the best price he can obtain. The price a Character can obtain depends on his ability to dismount the parts (Dexterity, Technician, Mechanical) and on his ability to sell the parts (Diplomacy, Rogue). You first get a rough estimate of how much C-Bills you will obtain. If you hit Salvage there is no return. The Mech is take to pieces and will be gone. The price you actually obtain may vary from the displayed estimate. The better a Character is the better he estimates, or at least he doesn't estimates to much. And of course your Unit get the part of the price according to your current contract (Salvage %). Offer Mech - Sometimes you may not be satisfied with the price obtained by salvaging a Mech. Another way to get rid of a Mech is to offer him to other Units. First you have to enter the price which you want to demand for the Mech, then the Mech is removed from your Unit and entered to the global clipboard. If another Unit decides to buy your Mech, the money is transfered to your Unit. But remember your Unit only get the part of the price according to your current contract. Mech Factory - Sends the current Mech to the factory. You may mount/remove weapons, add jumpjets or heatsinks or modify your bodyarmor. Please refer to the Mech Factory section of the manual for more information. The proceeding is equal to creating a new Mech, but remember changing an existing Mech can be very expensive. 7.4 The Factory menu ******************** There are two types of Mech in the MechForce concept. The Mech in your Unit are real build Mech, you can use them. The Mechs in the Mech subdirectory are different. They must be seen as plans how to build a Mech, I call them prototypes. A prototyp Mech is nothing than paper until you give an order to build him (Buy Mech). The Factory is used to create this prototyp Mechs. Create new Mech - Use this to create a completely new Mech. Enter a name for this Mech and you get a basic Mech structure with engine, gyros, cockpit, arm and leg actuators and some other things. You may (better must) modify and enhance this Mech at will. Please refer to the Mech Factory section to see how to do this. Clone Mech - If you have an enhanced Mech in your Unit and you want to create a new prototyp Mech with the same power and structure, you may select this menu. After entering a new name for the Mech, you may alter the structure. 7.5 The Preferences menu ************************ Screenmode - Opens a requester, which allows you to select the screenmode used for MechForceHQ's screen. You may select every mode which provides atleast 640 pixels width and 8 colors. However MechForceHQ opens a 704x282 screen. If the choosen screenmode doesn't allows this size, an autoscroll screen is opened. NOTE : If MechForceHQ fails to reopen its display, the program is terminated without any possibility to save the current Unit. To avoid losing data always save your Unit before messing with the screenmode. Colors - Opens a palette requester in which you may adjust the screen colors. Paths - A small windows popup and you may changed the default paths in which MechForceHQ looks for Units, Warriors, Mechs and Offers. Also you may changed the commandline call for the MechForce program. Autosave on Exit/Fight - If you turn the AutoSave-Option ON your Unit is saved to disk without any request when you quit the program or somehow would destroy your Unit (e.g. Load, Create New, Fight). Mech Sabotage - Weapon Sabotage - These two sabotage options where taken from the Headquarters program. I have very few information about sabotage, and I suggest you leave both options OFF for the moment. If you want to test this options, here is what I know about : If Mech sabotage is on, some internal parts of your Mech may be damaged if you enter combat. You have to make a skill roll and if you succeeds you managed to repair the part. If Weapon sabotage is on you have to do a skill roll every time you fire the weapon (Sorry, I may be false). Save Preferences - Saves the preferences to the 'MechForceHQ.prefs' file which is loaded on startup. 8. The Gadgets ************** Fight - Same as selecting Fight from the Unit menu. Quit - Same as selecting Quit from the Unit menu. Factory - Same as selecting Mech Factory from the Mech menu. Heal - Same as selecting Heal Character from the Character menu. Train - Same as selecting Train Character from the Character menu. Repair - Same as selecting Repair Mech from the Mech menu. Buy Mech - Same as selecting Buy Mech from the Unit menu. 9. The Mech Factory ******************* The Factory is used to create prototyp Mechs and to enhance or modify existing Mechs. The main difference between creating a prototyp and enhancing is, that create a prototyp is entirely free of costs. This is because you are actually only creating a plan. On the other side is enhancing, where you must pay for every modification made to the Mech. Before starting, a special warning: In enhancing mode every thing you add to the Mech costs, but things you remove from the Mech bring you back nothing. This is because most components have to be taken to small pieces to bring them out of the relatively small Mech body and they can't be brought back to function in a reasonably way. This is the reason why removed parts can not be brought back in any way. If you want the same part back, you have to pay for it. So think before acting. Now, how to use the Factory? The Factory window has a display area and a gadget area. In the display area you see how much C-Bills your Unit has left (only enhancing mode) and you see the structure af the Mech you are working on. You must click on the gadgets to modify the different parts of the Mech. So, what does all these gadgets do ? Mount Weapons - You may mount up to 10 Weapons in each Mech. You are requested which weapon to mount and then in which body part the weapon should be mounted. You may only select body parts which have enough space to carry the weapon. Some weapons (AutoCannons, Missiles, MachineGun) need ammo, so you are ask where to put this ammo. If you mount a weapon to the head or to the torso, the weapon may also be mounted facing backwards. Remove Weapons - You are prompted for which weapon to remove. Remember remove means really remove. Enhance Weapon - Here you may enhance a weapon to obtain a higher damage, more ammo, less heat or a longer range. The properties of a weapon can not be lowered below the start value and they can not be raised beyond a certain level which depends on the weapon type. First you must select the weapon to enhance, then you may change the properties with these nice +/- buttons. Notice the reverse logic of the heat buttons, the lower the heat the better. You will find that enhancing a weapon is one of the most expensive adds for a Mech. Modify Engine Size - The engine size of a Mech determines how fast a Mech can move (together with the weight). The engine size can't be raised over 600MW. This is because of an limitation in the MechForce program. You may notice that increasing the engine size makes your Mech faster in most cases, but remember it makes your Mech also heavier, which makes him slower. So there is a point where increasing engine size doesn't have much effect. Modify Engine Speed - If modifying the engine size tends to bring poor results, try engine speed. Every modification brings one second of walk time. You may modify your speed with negative values, but there is no good reason to do so. The maximum modify value is determined by the walk time with modifycation zero. Modify Heatsinks - You may mount additional Heatsinks in your Mech. A plain Mech has a Heatsink of 12 degrees per second by the thermal radiation of the Mech surface. Modify Jumpjets - Do you ever want to jump up in the air and than down on your enemies, crushing them into the ground? Then you need JumpJets. The displayed jumptime may be somewhat inacurate because I have very few information about this. Modify BodyArmor - The BodyArmor protect your Mech against damage cause by hits from your enemies. The maximum value for all body parts is 76 armor points, except the head, which have a maximum value base on the Mech class. And because nothing is for free, BodyArmor adds to the Mechs weight. Ask Confirmation - To prevent accidental changes to a Mech in the enhancing mode, there are several security requests. This may be nerving if you try to change a lot of things (e.g. BodyArmor). So if you uncheck this gadget, all requests are surpressed. But beware you know what you are doing !! Undo/Cancel - As I said, there is no way to bring back removed parts in enhanced mode. False! There is one, this button. You are asked to discard all changes and to get your money back. This was implemented here because in most cases you can not know about the results before starting an action. For example you wants to exchange a small laser with a medium laser. Of course the medium laser has more weight than a small laser, but makes this the Mech jump to the next weight class, and how much speed he would lose then? There is no way to say this from the beginning (at least if you don't have detailed information about the internal processings of the program). This button is here, let's say as a test. If you don't like him, write to me and maybe in the next release he is gone. Done/Save - In prototype mode this save the Mech in appropriate drawer and quits the factory. In enhancing mode you returns to main program. 10. The Author ************** After owning my Amiga over 6 years and writing many small and bigger programs, this is the first project which I release to the public. I'm very curious to the reactions from the Amiga commUnity and especially from the MechForce community. This program is distributed for free, although it took many working hours and uncounted mech-battles to put it together. To justify this efforts in the future, there must be at least some response from people using/loving this piece of work. The future depends on you: write your opinion/suggestions to me. The more mails I receive, the faster the next version will be released. If you find any bugs, have suggestions about options to include or remove or any other comments (positive or negative, positive prefered) please write to me. If you are reporting a bug or problem, try to discribe the bug/problem as good as possible and include information about your machine and other programs running while the problems arise. Please include at least information about version of kickstart, workbench, reqtools.library and about your machine (CPU, Memory). It is also very useful to include output from the enforce and mungwall tools for diagnostic. If possible give hunk number and offset of the hits. If bugs arrise just after an combat or when using Units created with another program, please immediately leave MechForceHQ WITHOUT saving the Unit. Then copy the Unit to a different place, uuencode the file and include it with your bug report. If a bug shows up inside the MechForce program, you may report this also to me. But keep in mind, that the MechForce program was written by Ralph H. Reed and I don't have any source codes available at the moment. So my possiblities to change MechForce are very limited. I'm also VERY interested to get more information about the internal structures and processings of the MechForce program, and I would like to have contact with other MechForce enthusiastic guys. Or perhaps someone has the source codes of the MechForce program available for me ?? However send your mail to: Stefan Hülswitt Birtener Straße 5a 46487 Wesel GERMANY or via E-Mail (absolutly prefered) to: Internet : huels@ftl.uni-duisburg.de (university) Z-NET : nathan@MOUNTAIN.zer.sub.org (home) FIDO : Stefan Huelswitt 2:2440/315 (home) 11. To do in the future *********************** - Rework des display. Perhaps open a own window for each Character and/or Mech. But this would be a hard piece of work, so don't expect it for the next releases. - Add an orders editor, to create or changed orders. - Rework the calculation of the Mech price, which seems to be somewhat inaccurate (e.g adding a AutoCannon20 to a 100 tons Mech may increase its price by 2,000,000 C-Bills, but adding the same weapon to a 20 tons Mech increases its price only by 500,000 C-Bills) - Do some rework of the Mechforce program, if I can get the source codes. 12. History *********** V0.47ß (first public release) V0.48ß (not released) - Cleaned up the code a bit, fixed some small bugs. - Fixed a small bug in Mech status report. If only the right leg or an internal component were damaged, the Mech doesn't got reported as damaged. - Fixed a bug which caused sometimes a Character to get 0 C-Bills of Salary on advance rank. - Fixed price calculation for enhanced weapons. Price was wrong for Mechs with weapons enhanced beyond max. values (e.g. TOA-IX-900). - Added a double-click feature to the filerequester. - Added a date to the entries of the Hall of Fame. Thereby the format of the MechForceHQ.fame file has changed. Use the ConvertFame program to convert your old file. To do this cd to your MechForce directory and enter 'convertfame', or double-click the ConvertFame icon. - Now displays the jumptime rather than the number of jumpjets, which seems to be more informative. - Fixed the generation of the Warrior-filename. The size extension for the Mech was missing, which caused problems with MechForce. - Fixed loading of Warrior-files with a destroyed Mech. V0.50ß (second BETA release) - Browse Mechs is gone. Was not very usefull at all. You can use Buy Mech to browse around and then hit cancel. - New feature: Offers. Units may put Mechs to a global clipboard and demand a price for selling the Mech. Other Units may look at the clipboard and may buy these Mechs. - Fixed a bug in loading/saving Warrior-files. The Character Status was lost in space. V0.51ß (third BETA release) - Fixed some typos. - Small rework of the manual. - Hopefully fixed the 'repair-failed-all-money-lost' bug. - Created a extra menu for preferences. This simplifies future expan- sions. - Added preferences for screenmode and colors. Hopefully this will fix display problems (scrolling screen) on NTSC based machines. - Reworked the enhancement of weapons. It's now harder to enhance weapons. The prices climb faster if you enhance already good weapons. - Added a retry button to the repair/healing requester. So you don't have to click heal->hospital->character on every try. - The calculation of the Mech weight tends to be more accurate in the factory when adding/removing parts. - New Units start with 5 millions to 10 millions c-bills. - Fixed mech repair. Strange mech could cause huge (or even negative) values to pay. - Added an undo button to the skills/attributes requester. If you hit undo, all actions are canceled and the Character gets back his Character Points. - Added a menu item to drop a Character without saving to disk, just in case you create a Character with TO BAD attributes to keep him. - Characters may now be killed, if a healing fails. There is a re- quester to abort healing, if the Character is in a very bad state. V0.52ß (last BETA release) - Each Character gets at least 10000 C-Bills on startup. - When selecting an new Character the Mechlist jumps to the appropriate Mech, rather than leaving the Mech outside the display area. This is available only under 3.x, because there is no easy way to do it under 2.x, sorry. - Fixed handling of the arrow buttons in the weapon/skills list under 2.x. It was a missing GA_Immediate. - Fixed bad rendering of listview gadgets under 2.x. V0.53ß (hopefully really the last BETA) - In some cases not all libraries were closed on program exit. - Now requesting for diskfont.library V36 instat of V37. - Characters could be killed while healing without the appropriate requester shown up. - Fixed strange behavior when character was killed by a healing attempt. - Character gets 1 HitPoint when resurrected. - Added an option to do a partial healing, if the character has not enough C-Bills for a complete healing in the hospital. Origin ****** There are no bugs in this program, only unrecognized features !!