the field manual
How to play TANKS
Everything you need in one page: the orders, the money, the power rule and the order to build things in. If you have played a 1990s real-time strategy game you can skim it.
The orders
Two mouse buttons do almost everything, in the arrangement every base-building RTS has used since the mid-1990s: left selects, right commands.
| Input | What it does |
|---|---|
| Left-click | Select a unit or a building |
| Left-drag | Box-select every unit inside the box |
| Right-click ground | Move there |
| Right-click an enemy | Attack it |
| Right-click ore | Harvest it (harvesters only) |
| Right-click with a building selected | Set that building’s rally point |
A then click | Attack-move — advance, but engage what you meet (needs radar) |
S | Stop, and cancel the current order |
Ctrl + 1–9 | Assign the selection to a control group |
1–9 | Recall that control group |
| WASD, arrows, or push the screen edge | Pan the camera |
Space | Jump to whatever is being shot at, or pause |
Stances
Select anything armed and you get four stances. They matter more than they look like they do — most losses to a raid are a stance problem, not a numbers problem.
- Aggro — chase and kill anything it can see. Good for a push, terrible for anything guarding a refinery, because it will follow one scout off the map.
- Guard — hold this ground, chase a short way, come back. The correct default for everything defending anything.
- Hold — never move, but fire on anything in range. For units in a choke you do not want walking out of it.
- Cease — never fire unless ordered. For sneaking a commando past a sentry he would otherwise pick a fight with.
The economy
Credits are the only currency, and ore is the only source of them.
- Ore fields are scribbled clusters on the map, and each one holds a finite amount.
- A harvester drives to the nearest field on its own, mines for about six seconds, drives back to the refinery and unloads. A full load is 500 credits.
- A round trip to a mid-map field takes about 22 seconds, so one harvester is roughly 1,400 credits a minute, minus the walk.
- You start with one harvester. Build a second one early. It is the highest-return 700 credits in the game and almost every loss traces back to not having done it.
Harvesters are unarmed and they are the softest valuable thing on the map. Killing one costs the other side 700 credits plus every trip it would have made. Protecting yours is worth two tanks parked at the refinery on guard.
The power rule
This is the mechanic people forget, and the one the campaign is built around.
Every power plant supplies 100 power. Every other building draws some. If demand exceeds supply, everything you build is produced at (supply ÷ demand) speed, down to a floor of 25% — and the radar minimap goes dark.
Two consequences. First, put a power plant up before the thing that needs it, not after. Second, the enemy power plants are a legitimate primary target: take enough of them out and their whole base slows to a quarter speed and their defences stop working, without you having to fight the defences at all. Mission 4 and mission 11 are both entirely about this.
The tech tree
Each building unlocks the next. There are no side branches to get lost in.
| Building | Cost | Power | Needs | Unlocks |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Construction Yard | — | −20 | you start with it | everything |
| Power Plant | 300 | +100 | Construction Yard | Refinery, Barracks |
| Refinery | — | −30 | Power Plant | Harvester |
| Barracks | 400 | −20 | Power Plant | Rifleman, Rocket Soldier |
| Tank Factory | 800 | −40 | Barracks | Light Tank, Heavy Tank |
| Radar Dome | 600 | −40 | Tank Factory | minimap, attack-move |
The full list, with every unit’s cost, hit points, damage and what it beats, is on the units and buildings page.
Placing buildings
A finished structure does not appear where you clicked the icon — it goes to a READY state, and you then click a tile to put it down. Two rules:
- It must be within six tiles of a building you already own, so bases grow outward rather than teleporting across the map.
- You must have a construction yard. Lose it and you cannot put up any structure at all, though barracks and factories keep turning out units. That is why the yard is the building to kill and the building to defend.
Winning
In skirmish, destroy every enemy structure. In the campaign, do whatever the mission’s objective list in the sidebar says — which might be to survive four minutes, bank 6,000 credits, escort an MCV to a town, or walk one man through a door with the plans under his arm.
Reading about it is slower than playing it.
TANKS runs in this browser tab. No download, no account, no launcher.
Questions people actually ask
How do I select more than one unit?
Hold the left mouse button and drag a box around them. Then press Ctrl and a number from 1 to 9 to save that group, and the number on its own to call it back.
Why is everything building so slowly?
You are short of power. Check the power bar in the sidebar — if it is red, your buildings are drawing more than your plants supply, and production speed scales down with the shortfall, to as low as a quarter speed. Build another power plant.
What does attack-move do?
Press A and then click a destination. The group walks there but stops to engage anything it meets on the way, instead of politely ignoring an enemy tank while it shoots them in the back. Attack-move needs a radar dome.
How do I win a match?
Destroy every enemy structure. Units on their own do not keep a side alive — but a side that still has a construction yard can rebuild, so the yard is the thing to kill.
Read next
A beginner’s guide to real-time strategy
Starting from nothing: economy first, what to build, when to attack, and the five mistakes everybody makes.
RTS build orders explained
What a build order is, why the first four minutes decide the match, and an opening you can copy.
TANKS units and buildings
Every unit and building in TANKS with cost, hit points, damage and what counters what. Riflemen, rocket soldiers, light and heavy tanks, V2 launchers, tesla coils and the commando.