Control Panel



The control panel is where you view the current status of your robot, and program its moves.

It consists of a plethora of controls and status indicators, including:


Program Chips

Program Chips are used to program your robot moves, providing movement and rotational instructions.

At the start of a turn, each player is dealt nine program chips. Of the nine, you must select five to compile a program. Your program consists of the first five chips (from the left). Drag and drop the chips to position them in the desired order.

For example, the control panel above shows a program consisting of the following five instructions: move 3, move 2, move 3, rotate right, reverse 1.

Once your program is compiled, press your robot icon on the control panel to submit the program for execution.


Running Your Program

The Run button is used to submit your program to the robo runner server. Once all players have submitted their programs (hands) the board will be updated to show the results of all player movement.  

If all players have not yet submitted their programs, then the control panel will change to show you which players you're waiting for.
 
Players which have submitted programs display a green light
Players which have not submitted programs display a red light
Players which are currently rebooting display a yellow light


Health Meter

The robo health meter displays the damage status of your robot. Green is good, while red is bad.

In addition, clicking on the heath meter allows you to view the health and status of all players participating in the game.

Each time your robot is shot, it takes a point of damage. If you have 10 points of damage your robot looses a life.

Before death occurs, however, damage affects your programming ability:

  • For the first four points of damage, you get one less card for each point of damage taken
  • For five points of damage or more, your primary program chips get locked in place
Since you always have to submit a program consisting of five program chips, damage can take away four of your nine chips. Damage beyond four hits results in your remaining five chips getting locked into place (one at a time, right to left).

For example, if the control panel above displayed six points of damage, only the five chips from the left would be displayed, and the last two chips (uturn, and reverse 1) would be locked in place.

Chips locked in place cannot be moved. In addition, they persist across hands. So the next time your program card hand is dealt, the locked chips will be the same as the previous hand.
 
Damage can be repaired at designated Robo Repair Depots. To get repaired, you must end your hand on a repair depot.

Robo Repair Depots with one wrench repair one point of damage. Whereas, repair depots with two wrenches repair two points of damage.

If your robot should die, and it has lives remaining, it will be restored with two points of damage.

Robot damage can also be repaired by rebooting.


PLF Indicators

The PLF indicators show your robot's: Priority, Lives, and Fixed sites inspected.

Priority is used to determine which robot goes first when playing-out program instructions. This matters most when robots collide. Your robot's priority changes with each turn. To see all player priorities click on your robot's health meter.


Online Selector

Your robot is typically online, but you may choose to:

  • Reboot if your robot is severely damaged, or
  • Quit the game.
Rebooting repairs all damage, and replenishes your optional equipment, but you loose a turn during the reboot. To reboot, select it from the pull-down menu. Note that reboot is not instantaneous: your hand is played-out first, and the reboot commences during the following hand.

Note that when playing an Arena Game your robot is not allowed to reboot, and the option to do so is not available in the online selector.


Optional Equipment

If optional equipment is enabled for the game, each player is equipped with one additional weapon:

  • Twin Lasers
  • Shields
  • Repulsors
  • rear Lasers
  • Nitro Tanks
  • Cloak
  • Clamps
Optional equipment is activated using the pull-down menu. Activation can occur once per hand, by selecting which phase (1-5) to engage.

The usage of options is limited, as they eventually run out of ammunition. The amount of ammunition remaining is displayed in the activator menu (3 twin lasers remaining in this case).

Ammunition can be refilled at any repair depot. You must end your turn on a repair depot to reload.

Robo Locator

To easily locate your robot on the StarShip, press the robo locator button on your control panel:

Doing so will bring your robot into view, and surround it with a blinking location cursor.

RoboChat Bar

The RoboChat Bar is generally used for sending messages to all players involved in the game.

In addition, the chat bar can be used to send commands to Robo Control:

[QUIT]Quit the game
[LOGOUT]Same as [QUIT]
[EJECT] RoboName Vote to eject another player from the game

All of the above RoboChat commands are CASE sensitive, where the command in square brackets must contain all capitol letters, and the RoboName argument must contain appropriate capitalization (e.g., JoeBot not joebot).

Note: In Recon games, the Chat bar has additional options available:

[Squad]send a message to your squadmates.
[All]send a message to all players.

The Default option in Recon games is [Squad]... If you simply enter your message, then Robo Central will assume that you want your message to be seen Only by your Squadmates. If you want your opponents to be able to see your message, then you must include the [ALL] command somewhere in your message. (e.g., Good Game, [ALL]!)

Player Ejection

At times a player may seeming disappear from a game without quitting first, and never returning. This brings the game to a halt, but the remaining players may vote to eject inactive players from the game.

Each player can have one vote outstanding.

To cancel an outstanding vote, simply cast a second vote. This will act as a toggle, cancelling the previous vote, but not recasting it.

For a player to be ejected, votes are required from multiple players, as follows:

7 player game requires 4 votes
6 player game requires 4 votes
5 player game requires 3 votes
4 player game requires 2 votes
3 player game requires 2 votes

Players cannot be ejected from 1 or 2 player games.

All command activity is reported to other players via the RoboChat bar.


Game Logout

When a player logs out, he essentially disconnects from the game. If the game is not over, logout acts as if you quit, allowing others to continue playing. If the game is over, your game reference is dropped. When the last player logs out of a game, the game is removed from the server.

If you logout of a game, you cannot return to it later, and it will not show-up in your private game room.

To logout of a game, you can either use the [LOGOUT] command in the RoboChat bar, or press the per-game logout button in the game room .

Remember... logging out will only delete the game if you were the last player to logout. Also remember, this is the only way games get deleted. So logout of them when you're done with them.