Mecha Game Type

Reference for the mecha game type — designer configuration and player rules.

For platform-level configuration shared across all game types, see Shared Game Configuration.

Game Parameter

Designer Configuration

How the Game Fits Together

Game
  ├── Chassis (mech body blueprints)
  ├── Weapons (weapon definitions)
  ├── Equipment (mountable equipment definitions)
  ├── Sectors (battlefield map areas)
  │     └── Sector links (adjacency between sectors)
  ├── Computer opponents (AI behaviour profiles)
  └── Squads (groups of mechs)
        └── Squad mechs (specific mechs assigned to a squad)

Chassis

Blueprint stats for a mech body type. All mechs in the game are based on a chassis definition.

A chassis must have at least one slot in total. See Loadout slots below for how slots are consumed.

Chassis class values:

The class defaults are applied whenever a new chassis is created without explicit slot values (designer UI, API, and test harness all share the same defaults). Designers are free to override them.

Loadout slots:

Every mounted item — both weapons and equipment — consumes one slot on the chassis. The two are placed against the same shared slot budget and are packed with upward spillover:

• A large item can only use a large slot.
• A medium item prefers a medium slot, spilling into a large slot if mediums are full.
• A small item prefers a small slot, spilling into medium, then large.

This keeps the slot model forgiving (generous medium/large counts accommodate small items naturally) while still preventing a light chassis from carrying a large weapon or a bulky piece of equipment. The fit check runs when a squad mech is created or updated, and again on every in-game weapon swap — swaps that would overflow the chassis are refused and reported back to the player.

Requirement: at least one chassis must exist before a run can be created.

Weapon

Weapon definitions used in mech loadouts and refit orders.

Range band values — determines whether a weapon can fire at a given distance:

Long-range weapons are standoff weapons — they cannot fire into the same sector but can engage targets up to 2 hops away.

Mount size values:

Equipment

Mountable equipment that augments a mech. Equipment consumes chassis slots on the same budget as weapons (see the Loadout slots subsection under Chassis) and applies strictly additive enhancements — it never gates existing capabilities. When a mech enters a refit state at the end of a turn, all equipment effects go offline for the next turn (the mech is considered powered down for refitting); only ammo refill at a depot still runs, because refilling is a crew action rather than an equipment effect.

Effect kinds:

Additive principle: equipment never prevents a weapon from firing or a mech from moving. Ammo bins are purely additive — a mech with no ammo bins can still fire ammo-consuming weapons as long as the weapons themselves contribute to the shared ammo pool. Targeting computers add to hit chance but do not cap an already-high pilot. Jump jets raise the movement ceiling but do not force longer moves.

Sector

Map areas that make up the battlefield. The map is a graph of sectors connected by sector links. Mechs occupy one sector at a time and move across connected sectors each turn.

Terrain type values:

Requirement: at least one sector must exist and at least one must be marked as a starting sector before a run can be created.

Sector Link

Directed connections between sectors that define which moves are legal. A link from sector A to sector B does not automatically create a link from B to A — both must be added separately for two-way movement.

Cover is now a property of the destination sector, not the link. See the Sector section above.

Squad

A design-time squad template. There are two squad types.

Squad types:

• Starter (starter) — the loadout cloned for every player who joins a run. Its mechs are copied into player-specific squad instances at game start. At most one starter squad is allowed per game.
• Opponent (opponent) — a template randomly assigned to a computer opponent when a run starts. If there are more opponents than templates the templates are reused. No player ever owns an opponent squad directly.

Player-owned squads only exist as runtime squad instances — they are never stored in the design-time squad table.

Requirement: a starter squad with at least one mech must exist before a run can be created.

Squad Mech

A specific mech assigned to a squad — combining a chassis with a callsign and combined weapon + equipment loadout.

Computer Opponent

AI behaviour profiles for computer-controlled squads. Each profile controls how aggressively the AI plays and how tactically sophisticated its decisions are.

Computer opponents are managed through the game designers under Computer Opponents.

Turn Sheets

Each turn a squad receives a set of turn sheets. Sheets are presented to the player in a specific order, and processed by the game engine in a different order.

Turn Sheet Background Images

When uploading a background image for a mecha game, select the sheet type the image should apply to.

Player Rules

Orders Sheet

Each operational mech receives its own orders sheet. This gives every mech a full page for movement and attack orders instead of cramming the whole squad onto one dense roster, mirroring the layout of the management sheets.

Every sheet carries a compact Squad Header ribbon at the top showing the owning squad's name, remaining supply points, and the roster count (operational / total). Below the ribbon is a Squad Roster list of every mech in the squad — including squadmates that are not getting a sheet this turn — so the player has whole-squad awareness on every page. The current mech is highlighted on the roster; refitting, shutdown, and destroyed mechs are dimmed with a status tag.

The body of the sheet is dedicated to a single mech: its stats, weapon and equipment loadout, current sector, available movement destinations, and available attack targets. Each attack-target entry inlines the enemy's callsign, sector, chassis, and a coarse damage descriptor so the sheet is self-contained — there is no squad-wide enemy reference panel.

Players submit one order per sheet: an optional destination sector to move to, and an optional target mech to attack.

Who gets a sheet:

• Every operational mech (not destroyed, not shutdown, not currently refitting) in a player-controlled squad gets its own sheet
• Refitting mechs (undergoing repairs or weapon swaps from the previous turn's management sheet) do not receive a sheet this turn
• Shutdown mechs do not receive a sheet this turn
• Destroyed mechs do not receive a sheet
• A squad whose mechs are all non-operational receives zero sheets this turn; any pending turn events are preserved and deferred to the next turn that issues at least one sheet

Movement rules:

• Mechs may move up to a number of sector hops equal to their chassis Speed — the sheet shows all sectors reachable within that many hops
• Destroyed mechs receive no movement orders
• Mechs currently refitting are excluded from movement and combat
• The server validates that the chosen destination is reachable within the mech's speed; invalid moves are ignored

Attack rules:

• Attack declarations are collected from all squads and resolved simultaneously after all movement is applied
• Any non-destroyed enemy mech in the run is a valid attack target
• Targets must be within weapon range after movement (see range bands in the Designer Configuration section)
• The Attack Target dropdown inlines each enemy's callsign, sector, chassis, and a coarse damage descriptor alongside a hop count — unreachable enemies are flagged OUT OF RANGE at selection time

Turn events ("What Happened"):

• The squad-wide turn event log is duplicated verbatim at the top of every per-mech sheet issued to that squad, so the player sees the same recap on every page
• Events accumulated during a turn where no sheet is issued (a squad with zero operational mechs) are preserved — they will appear on the next turn's sheets rather than being silently dropped

Depot labelling:

• Sectors configured as starting sectors are flagged as depots on this sheet
• The Move-To dropdown marks depot destinations inline with [DEPOT] so players can plan supply stops at a glance

Mech Management Sheet

Each mech currently at a depot sector (a starting sector) receives its own management sheet. This gives each mech a full page for repair and refit orders instead of cramming the whole squad onto one dense roster. Management sheets are only issued to player-controlled squads; AI squads do not receive them.

Every sheet carries a compact Squad Header ribbon at the top showing the owning squad's name, remaining supply points, and the roster count (operational / total). The details section below is dedicated to a single mech's repair and equipment orders.

Roster awareness for mechs that are not at a depot lives on the Orders sheet — the management sheet intentionally never mentions non-depot mechs.

Supply Point Economy

Squads start a run with 0 SP and receive 1 SP per turn in passive income from turn 1 onwards. Objective completions may award additional SP. Spending is entirely voluntary — unspent SP carry over. Supply is shared across the whole squad, so each mech's management sheet draws from the same pool.

Depot service costs:

Order Rules

• A sheet is issued for every mech currently in a depot sector at the start of the turn
• Mechs already refitting from a previous turn still receive a sheet, but the form is read-only (no new orders apply)
• Armor repair restores the mech to its effective max armor (chassis base + armor upgrade bonuses); costs 1 SP; does not cause a refit — the mech is still combat-ready next turn
• Ammo refill tops up the mech's shared ammo pool to full capacity; costs 1 SP; does not cause a refit
• Structure repair restores the mech to full structure; costs at least 2 SP (scaled by damage — 1 SP per 25% block of max structure); the mech enters a refitting state for the following turn
• Weapon swaps install a new weapon into the specified slot; each swap costs 2 SP; the mech enters a refitting state for the following turn
• Equipment swaps install a new equipment item into the specified slot; each swap costs 3 SP; the mech enters a refitting state for the following turn
• Supply points are deducted from the squad's shared total (cannot go below 0). Because supply is shared, the order in which you fill in per-mech sheets does not matter — the server resolves them against the same pool
• Refitting effect: a mech that receives any heavy-maintenance order (structure repair, weapon swap, equipment swap) is excluded from movement and combat that turn

Combat Resolution

Combat is resolved simultaneously — all attack orders from all squads are collected first, then resolved together.

All attacks use the positions and hit points from before any combat damage is applied.

Range:

• Mechs can engage targets up to 2 sector hops away if they have long-range weapons
• Targets more than 2 hops away cannot be hit by any weapon

Weapon firing and range:

Heat:

• Each weapon fired adds heat to the mech — even on a miss
• All weapons in the mech's loadout fire together in a single attack
• Equipment whose heat cost is tied to a combat action — targeting_computer when the mech declares an attack, ammo_bin when an ammo-consuming weapon fires — adds its heat cost in this step (see Equipment in the Designer Configuration section)

Ammo:

• Each fired weapon with a positive Ammo capacity draws that many rounds from the mech's shared ammo pool before firing
• When the pool cannot cover the draw the weapon simply does not fire — it will fire again once the pool is refilled at a depot
• The pool is sized by summing every equipped weapon's ammo capacity plus the effect value of every ammo_bin piece of equipment; both contributions are strictly additive

Hit chance:

• Base hit chance is 50%, plus 5% per point of pilot skill, modified by the attacker's targeting bonus and the effective cover on the target, capped between 0% and 95%
• Formula: hit_chance = clamp(50 + pilot_skill × 5 + attacker_hit_bonus + effective_cover, 0, 95)
• attacker_hit_bonus is the sum of the attacker's targeting_computer effect values
• effective_cover is the target sector's cover modifier plus the defender's ecm effect value — sector cover and ECM stack
• A negative effective cover (heavy cover, ECM) reduces hit chance; a positive modifier makes targets easier to hit

Damage:

• Armour absorbs damage first
• Any damage exceeding current armour carries over into structure
• The mech is destroyed when structure reaches 0

Overheat:

• After combat damage is applied, accumulated heat is added to the mech
• If heat exceeds the chassis heat capacity the mech shuts down (unless already destroyed)

Mech status:

End-of-Turn Lifecycle

After combat is resolved, the engine applies the following in order:

1. Always-on equipment heat — mechs that are not refitting add the heat cost of any always-on equipment (heat_sink, armor_upgrade, ecm) for the turn. This is applied once per turn regardless of whether the mech entered combat or moved.
2. Heat dissipation and shutdown recovery — heat is reduced for all non-shutdown mechs. A mech's dissipation per turn is: floor(HeatCapacity / 3) + heat_sink bonus. Shutdown mechs skip normal dissipation: their heat resets to 0 and their status returns to Operational at this step, so a shutdown mech is back in action the very next turn.
3. Supply point accrual — player squads each receive 1 SP per turn (used for management orders; see Mech Management Sheet). Objective grants are applied separately and stack with passive income.
4. Pilot XP and skill advancement (see below)

Note: Armor repair and ammo refill are no longer applied automatically at end-of-turn. Players must submit explicit management sheet orders to restore armor or ammo at a depot, and both actions cost supply points.

Jump-jet heat is a movement cost and is applied during order processing rather than here: any mech moving more hops than its chassis base speed pays the sum of its jump_jets heat costs on top of its end-of-turn heat total.

Pilot Progression

Pilots earn experience points (XP) through combat each turn:

XP accumulates across turns. When a pilot's total XP crosses a threshold, their pilot skill increases by 1. Higher pilot skill directly improves hit chance (see Hit chance above).

Pilot skill thresholds:

All pilots start at skill level 0.

Computer Opponent AI

The AI makes decisions for all computer-controlled squads each turn, after player orders have been submitted.

Movement behaviour:

• Destroyed or shutdown mechs receive no orders
• The AI uses BFS pathfinding and moves up to the mech's effective speed each turn (chassis base speed plus any jump_jets effect value)
• High-aggression opponents (7 or above) advance toward the nearest enemy; tactically skilled (high IQ) opponents prefer routes through high-elevation or high-cover sectors
• Low-aggression opponents (3 or below) fall back toward high-elevation, high-cover positions
• Mid-aggression opponents hold position or move to the best available defensive sector

Targeting behaviour:

• High-aggression opponents prefer to finish off weakened mechs (lowest structure)
• Low-aggression opponents prefer to deter the strongest threats (highest structure)
• When two candidates are tied on structure, the AI breaks the tie using effective cover: it prefers attacking targets where the attacker's targeting_computer bonus outweighs the defender's ecm cover
• The AI can engage targets up to 2 hops away (matching long-range weapon capability)
• If no enemies are in range, no attack is issued

When configured, the AI can use an advanced reasoning mode to make more sophisticated decisions based on the full battlefield situation.

Objectives and Win Conditions

Objectives are designer-authored goals that the engine evaluates each turn. The shared objective framework (conditions, rewards, terminal flags) is described in the Shared Game Configuration. This section covers the mecha-specific condition and reward types.

Mecha-Specific Condition Types

Mecha-Specific Reward Types

Ending a Run

A run ends when any of the following occur:

• An objective with is_terminal_success = true is completed
• An objective with is_terminal_failure = true is failed
• A complete_game_instance or fail_game_instance reward fires
• A clock threshold effect of type complete_game_instance or fail_game_instance fires (see Clocks below)

Clocks

Clocks are designer-authored pressure timers that advance automatically each turn and/or when objective rewards fire. The shared clock framework is described in the Shared Game Configuration. This section covers mecha-specific threshold effect types.

Mecha-Specific Threshold Effect Types