The Admiral Help
Basic Usage
The application lists the cards available for the Pirates game, and lets you compile them into fleets.
It also lets you record which cards you own, so you can build fleets from your available resources. The application
isn't, however, a fully-fledged collection manager - it doesn't for instance differentiate between cards of the same
name
from different editions of the same set (e.g. PofSM/PofSMU).
Some conventions:
- The green checkmark icon represents how many copies of this card you own.
- The red exclamation mark represents how many of this card you want to get.
- These columns can be incremented and decremented by left or right clicking respectively.
- When using the search box, hitting enter will apply the filter. Search terms can be separated by commas -
for example, "cannot, fort" will find all cards with both words in their names and rules texts, but "english ships"
would only find cards with the exact phrase "english ships" on the card.
- Clicking on a column header sorts by that column. Clicking again reverses the order of the sort. To sort by
column A then column B, click B first, then A.
Ships
The ships tab lists all the ships in the game. Like other cards, the list can be filtered using the controls above.
The ship's rules text is visible as a "tool tip" if you hover the mouse over the rules column. If a fleet is open,
a ship can be added to the fleet by left clicking on its name.
The application "understands" how long a move distance is, and so can intelligently sort on this column.
Forts
Forts are treated as ships in the application. Their gold cost is listed instead of their move, and their
rules text is prefaced with "(FORT)".
Crew
The crew tab lists all the crew in the game. Some generic crew is included, some isn't - this is due to
anomalies in Wizkids own card lists. Generic crew can always be added to a fleet from the fleet tab.
Like other cards, the list can be filtered using the controls above. The crew's rules text is
visible as a "tool tip" if you hover the mouse over the rules column. If a fleet is open,
a crew member can be added to the fleet by left clicking on its name. It can be assigned directly to a ship already
in the fleet using the popup menu that is displayed.
Fleets
The Fleets tab lets you create and manage fleets, that is, lists of cards. To create a new fleet, enter a name
for the fleet and hit "new". Previously created fleets can be opened or deleted using the buttons provided.
Things to note:
- The skull-and-crossbones button deletes a card from the fleet.
- Crew can be reassigned between ships by dragging and dropping.
- After the ship's name, a summary of available cargo space and point-value of crew assigned is shown.
- If the ship is overloaded - with too much cargo or too high a value of crew points, the ship's name will be
displayed in red. The application tries to intelligently take into account the abilities of crew (Oarsmen, link
data,
The Stump, etc) but may not be perfect.
- If crew of an incorrect nationality are placed on the ship, it's name will be shown in blue. Againl the
application tries to take special abilities into consideration.
The print button will send a simple view of the fleet to your printer. The export fleet button will save the fleet
to a text file of your choosing.
Importing/Exporting
Several options for import and export are provided under the "File" menu.
Export
- Export my cards: Exports in verbose form all the cards you have or want to a tab-delimited text file.
- Export all cards: Exports in verbose form all cards in the database as text. They could be edited and
reimported.
- Export checklist: Exports the cards you own in a simplified format.
- Trading: Tries to exports in a format compatible with the site miniaturetrading.com.
- Haves: Cards where the have is greater than 1 (i.e. only dupes).
- Wants: Cards where the want value is greater than 0.
Import
- Import cards: Imports a list of cards in the verbose format.
- Import checklist: Imports cards in the simplified checklist format. This will only update the
owned and wanted quantities of existing cards.
Clear Cards
This deletes all cards in the database. I recommend backing up the file "cards.db" before doing this.
This option might be useful if you want to export all the cards, make changes, and import them all again.
File Formats
Here's a guide to the file formats used by the application. These should help you customize the cards in the set,
and add new cards, sets and factions.
Cards
A card file contails a list of cards, one per line. Each card is a tab-delimited record, that looks like this:
Ship[tab]78[tab]Asesino de la Nave[tab]0[tab]0[tab]Spanish[tab]Pirates of the Spanish Main[tab]12[tab]Uncommon[tab]When this ship hits an enemy ship, you may also eliminate one cargo from that ship.[tab]The "Ship Killer" is armed with huge bore cannons capable of devastating short-range damage. Capitan Gonzalo Mora first rose to prominence on her deck.[tab]SS-010[tab]3[tab]4[tab]L[tab]2S,2S,2S[tab]
All cards have the following values:
- Card type (Ship, Fort, Crew, Event or Treasure)
- Card number
- Card name
- Number owned
- Number wanted
- Faction (e.g. "American")
- Expansion (e.g. "Pirates of the South China Seas")
- Points (e.g. 10)
- Rarity (e.g. Common, Uncommon, Rare, Super Rare)
- Rules (card rule text)
- Flavor (card flavor text)
- Extra (extra information if needed)
In addition, some individual card types have extra fields:
Ships
- Masts (e.g. 4)
- Cargo (e.g. 6)
- Move (e.g. "L", "S,L", "S,S")
- Cannons (e.g. "3S,4S", "2L,2L,2L")
Crew
- Link (another card name)
- Rank (for flavor where appropriate)
Adding Sets
New sets can be added to the program by creating a file called "sets.txt" in the Admiral's
program directory. It should contain lines that look like this:
Pirates of the Mysterious Island,PofMI
Where the first value is the name of the set, and the second the abbreviation to use in the app.
New Factions
New factions can be added as above with a file called "factions.txt". It should look like this:
Mercenary,flag_me_16.png
Where the first token is the name of the Faction, and the second a 16x16 image to use in the interface, also located in the program directory.
Good luck and have fun. Please send bug reports to coljac@coljac.net.