Manual of operations for the VGL 3.0 cockpit, or POD as we say

WITHOUT THIS INFORMATION YOU WILL NOT HAVE THE FULL EXPERIANCE THE PODS HAVE TO OFFER. WITHIN THE COCKPIT YOU WILL SEE SOME 90 BUTTONS, 2 FOOT PEDALS,2 SCREENS, MULTIPULL READOUTS, A THROTTLE, AND A JOYSTICK. ALL THESE ITEMS ARE IMPORTANT TOOLS WHEN PILOTING YOUR MECH; OTHERWISE IT'S NOTHING MORE THAN AN EXPENSIVE VIDEO GAME. I'LL LEAVE THE BASIC STUFF ALONE YOU'LL LEARN THAT IN YOUR FIRST BRIEFING.

click pic bellow for larger cockpit photos. Good learning tool.

FOOT PEDALS. These are used to steer the mech to activate them flip the first switch above your main view screen up. In order to move right you push the pedal right, left push left. This frees your joystick to move the crosshairs horizontally, and vertically. Now you have more room to choose your targets, but alsoknow your joystick is very sensitive.

TORSO ROTATION. You think you've got foot steering down, try this. Flip the second switch up above your main screen,now you can turn your torso 360 degrees. Your joystick now controls the direction you wish to point your upper body; push right you turn right, push left you turn left,pull back you look up, push foward you look down. This action is completely independant of your steering, still controled by foot pedals. Somtimes you will get disorianted, when this happens press the button with a dot on it to the left of the of your radar. This will spin you in a normal position, feet and torso facing the same direction. You will notice on your radar screen your V, or firing arc will spin with your torso. If your facing behind the direction you are moving then the V will be facing down on the radar. If you're facing right so will your V.

WEAPONS CONFIGURATION. You will notice the joystick has three buttons, trigger finger, left thumb, and right thumb. They are color coded red, blue, and green; in that order. On the left, and right of the main view screen are your weapons control systems. You will see three buttons under each LED readout (the readout lists your weapons, and ammo available) these buttons are blue, red, and green; they correspond to the buttons on your joystick. When the pod is on line all of your weapons are fired from your red center trigger button on your joystick. Now you can alter that, and save ammo. You can assign any weapon to any button on your joystick simply by pressing the lit red button under the readout of choice. Then press the blue or green button under the readout to assign that weapn to the corresponding button on the joystick. Each time you eject the system resets to the red button, which means you have to reconfigure each time you eject. I recomend short range weapons on my red, med  on blue, and long on green. At least untill you figure out what's right for you.

INFRARED/NIGHT VISION. Now if you find yourself in a night drop, or end up in some nasty fog you can use infrared. Cool huh? The third switch above the main view screen will turn this on, or off.(turn if off occassionaly to witness cool explosions at night. Besides you have a search light automaticly comes on) Now you can see! Now when looking for damage on an enemy mech, target the brighter areas instead of the darker ones.

PLAYING WITH HEAT. Your mech is powered by a nucular reactor; although it has heat sinks to aid in dissapating excess heat you still have to manage your heat buil up that willoccur. Everything that your mech does produces heat, moving, firing your weapons, ect...(another reason why you must configure your weapons HEAT!! If you fire all your weapons at once you will overheat !) If you fire wildly you are likely to enter heat distress, running the risk of an ammo bay fire, and auto shutdown. Your pod has two gauges to assist you in managing heat. The graduated LED readout to the far right of the radar screen will rise and fall with your heat level, watch this gauge. (Heat builds over five second periods.) The second readout is opposite of the graduated readout; located to the far left of the radar, under a key pad. This will give you a percentage of efficiency your engine is opperating at. Anything under 89% will cause problems, reduced speed, targeting problems, radar malfunction, and nasty ammo bay fires. In the event your mech goes into a shutdown countdown you will hear a loud alarm. Now under the key pad next to the numerical heat gauge you will see your shutdown abort code, you have 4 to 9 seconds to enter it correctly on the key pad to override shutdown. If you are successful run away to cool down, do not fire your weapons until you cool down! If you are not successful you shutdown completely until you cool down. Now you are a big stationary target, ouch! Now since you are running with heat you may have an AMMO BAY FIRE this only happens to expendable weapons, remember where they are. You must dump the burning ammo within 6 seconds by pushing all three of the buttons under the fashing ammo's name at the same time. When this is happening you'll hear another pesky alarm, and if you do'nt dump it in time your mech will go BOOM!!

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