Well, there is a bit of a manual...
Basic crap:
Shooting is done with the mouse. Primary fires, right mouse sets range, middle mouse reverts to autorange. Every vehicle is equipped with a range finder; when set to auto the gun will automatically elevate to the right height to hit your target. Right clicking locks the distance to whatever you're pointing at. With this you can right click on a fast moving vehicle and then lead him accordingly without worrying about your rangefinder adjusting to whatever is behind him. Try not to forget what you have the rangefinder set to, especially with a mortar vehicle.
Vehicles and other hostile objects spotted by your crew (radar?) will show up with red triangles and on all of your maps. There are jammers that will remove these triangles and markers (good teams use these extensively), so don't depend on them. Turrets always show up unless jammed.
E zooms. Don't forget to do this. Pressing G while holding E changes your zoom level, most vehicles have 2.
Enter types to team. CTRL-enter types to everybody.
Anyone with a * after thier name is a bot.
Driving is relatively straightforward now that it's been cleaned up a bit. There is a bit of a bug where packetloss causes your 'release' keystate not to be sent; resulting in input that sticks on occasion. Tap that direction if it happens to you. Connections are less than optimal sometimes, all of the servers are clustered somewhere in western USA.
Tab releases the camera from your craft. CTRL-click jumps you to a point on the map.
Spacebar is the tac map. This is important both for general information and for figuring where to spawn.
Spawning in this game is a science in itself. When you first join, you will soon be presented with an annoyingly persistant menu prompting you for a craft type. You can move this menu away, the cancel button won't make it go away for long if you haven't spawned. Once you've chosen a (legal) object, you click 'drop' and chose a place. You can click on either the map or on the terrain itself. I recommend dropping on flat uncrowded ground if you don't feel like an early introduction to "tumbling down a hill".
Using the spacebar map is important here. You can see the position of teammates(green), jammers(yellow with a lightning bolt), and unjammed enemy antiaircraft(red). Spawn out of the way behind teammates if you can, and in jammer radius whenever you can manage. Do not spawn in red territory unless you're sure you know what you're doing. Enemy automated AA can be hidden, so empty spaces are not always safe. When dropping on a jammer, you are safe from automated AA but not from the last defense line - alert players and bots.
Once you're down on the ground, the \ key calls for a ship to pick you up. It's not always possible for one to get to you, so if you're stuck, ctrl-k is for suicide.
There are various chassis and weapons to choose from, most with varying availibility. Treaded vehicles are the apollo, thor, cutter and mercury. The paladin and shrike are wheeled, and the tempest and hurricane are hovercraft, which are the most difficult to drive. Everything else on the list is either a turret or other deployable, or the Viper dropship. Right now the viper is only for sick mother****ers who snatch tanks off the battlefield and fling them thousands of meters - not normally part of combat.
Thors are the big tanks the bots default to and stumble around with. They are slow and difficult to keep alive at first, but are often tedious to completely destroy. In the right hands they are one of the best long-range fighters.
The paladin is the thing that looks like an oversized truck. It comes with the widest variety of weapon systems but is a little hard to keep in 100% condition. Even the lightest weapons can disable it's tires. It has a varient known as the Paladin EWV, or electronic warfare vehicle. Players will refer to it as the Hermes due to it's death message. The hermes has a jamming field that removes the red triangle around itself and other vehicles; it also has an autogun on it's tail that will fire at high flying mortar rounds, rockets, and unjammed aircraft. The craft does not jam friendly systems. This is probably the most useful vehicle in terms of utility in the game. The jam field allows teams to sneak around and basic immunity from turrets, and friendly dropships can often make it in even with hostile automated AA to locations that are jammed. You will find a use for this once you meet the AA tower that has a range of several kilometers. Due to the extra weight this craft is slower than other paladins. Note that while this craft has a jamming field, for some reason it does not currently show up on the map.
Apollos are the zippy little tracked craft. They carry the thor's 120mm and the 20mm weapon system found on light vehicles. They are only slightly more survivable than the paladin due to thier not having tires, thier armor is no greater. Main use for these is for fast deployment of the 120mm.
Shrikes are what look like small cars with a rocket launcher on the back. I do not recommend using them to start with, they have a tenth of the armor of other vehicles, although they sometimes can put up with way more fire than seems possible. The engines of shrikes and paladins are in the front.
Hovercraft are immediately apparent. The Hurricane is obviously the most overpowered vehicle in the game, due to it's weapon system. Hot topic right now. It carries 10 artillery shells fired
directly at the target, and is capable of one-shotting most vehicles given proper conditions. Beware of this thing and be prepared to get pounded a few times. It's dominant enough to completely shut down even the best of teams, try not to get discouraged if you get caught in a war.
The cutter is the engineering craft. It looks like a bulldozer, and carries some interesting abilities. It's capable of capturing automated towers (not turrets) by touching them and remaining next to them for a time period. Capturing the giant AA missile launcher is often cause for attacker celebration. It's invulnerable to EMP (which is commander launched) and also un-emp's vehicles within a radius. It can also be used to dig in some areas - pressing b while standing still and then driving forwards will displace the terrain. Dirt piles up on the left. Some players have figured out interesting fortifications.
The mercury is the command craft. It is poorly armored and armed only with a 20mm. Unless you are commanding and calling assets, I don't recommend taking it. It's rare that you'll find the enemy one, but if you do, treat it like an apollo with worse armor.
As an introduction, stay with kinetic cannons or mortars. The kinetic cannons come with multiple flavors of ammo that you can switch between using the - and = keys. 120mm is the most diverse with AP, HEAT and HE rounds. Most of the lower calibers carry only AP and HE. In this game, where and how you hit the tank is just as important as if you hit it or not. Vehicles can have more than double the amount of armor in the front then they have in the sides. The most armored surface is the front of the turret in most vehicles; an optimal firing position is where your hull is out of sight and the turret looks over obstructions.
The most optimal shot is one that hits armor square; that is as close to a 90 degree angle to the armor surface as possible. Diagonal slopes are to be avoided if possible. AP is easiest to penetrate; it is just a solid slug fired at the highest velocity possible. Due to it's dependancy on velocity, it's effectiveness varies by map atmosphere. On the "ice map" it can penentrate the side of a thor at a fairly poor angle from four kilometers away. On the "green map" it could easily have less than half this range. Weapons fire has a visibly different sprite triggered if something penetrates or not.
HEAT is found on the 120mm and rockets. It is a directed explosive charge fired at a lower velocity to preserve shell integrity. The charge generally penetrates less than AP, with the exception of when AP effectiveness starts dropping off from velocity. This is generally too far a range to be expecting consistant hits from the lower velocity HEAT anyway. Although more sensitive to armor angle, HEAT has a dramatically higher effect once it does penetrate, it is the preferred munition against lightly armored targets such as apollo, paladin, shrikes and dropships.
HE is basically a generic artillery shell, and is fired at very low velocities. On the small calibers (120mm and below) it is only useful for attacking the defense towers, tires, and slow moving shrikes.
If you get into a mortar vehicle, try to use the highest caliber you can, the thor has the highest right now. It fires at large parabolic arcs, but it still uses the same rangefinder and firing principal. It can take up to 15 seconds for a shell to land, but the shells are exceedingly powerful and often leave large disruptive craters in the ground. The ammo types are H and L, high and low, and are autoselected for range. Hitting ctrl-m allows you to target with the minimap, but set your rangefinder to auto first.
There is a supply ship availible to the team every 2 minutes, but generally it is easier at first to just extract if you need more ammo.
Vitals are usually located in the rear hull of the craft. Completely destroying the engine has a 25% chance of killing the entire vehicle, destroying the nuclear battery usually located near the engine will always destroy the craft. Turrets are easily penetrated from the side, so sometimes it's easier to destroy the ammo storage and render the craft harmless first.
Your subsystem readout is located at the upper left. If you can't do something, chances are something is red up there. The gunner is required to shoot and to see enemies, the driver is obviously needed to drive. The jammer, engines and ammo subsystem can be knocked out, as can each individual tire.
Steer away from ion cannons, ATGMs (rockets) and possibly the 76mm weapon. The 20mm fires in bursts and is only good close up (and only the side or rear or thor) but at least it's good somewhere. 76mm is only for those who are really "in the know" about vehicle internals. Ions don't penetrate, they only permanently burn away armor. They can kill a target through great persistance, but generally it's a teamwork weapon.
I'm only going to discuss the objective gametype right now, CTF is mainly similar with the exception of neutral towers in the center for capture. Points are awarded/taken away for whatever team has the center, to a maximum of 1000. Defenders start with possession and a free deployment (2-5 mins) phase where they can instadrop anything anywhere on the map. It's possible to virtually bottle up the map sometimes, so it's often better waiting to see where other players go if you're attacking.
There's two maps right now, icemap and greenmap. icemap has, well, ice. It's insanely thick and insanely slippery. Don't go in it, especially if you don't want to stay in there. Icemap also has a prominent base wall around the central objective; in this wall is a long range ATGM launcher. The AA circle for it covers around a third of the map and greatly limits attacker deployment. For attackers to be sucessful on this map requires them to either capture or destroy the tower, and usually set up several jammed stations for drop along the way.
The greenmap has three antiprojectile towers and some very high hills. The antiprojectiles serve as both AA and as point defense for whomever owns them. They can shoot down anything that lingers in thier space for long enough, including full auto fire from 20mm and artillery. The supply ship also carries this point defense. To get around them you have to either fire from close up or from very low. The atmosphere is thick on this map, and alternatives to kinetic cannons are often prefered at range.
Other work calls. I can answer specific questions later.
