Mechanics
Game Overview
The Flow
Each Round takes 1 week.
Players submit their intentions through either a simple text order and/or, an image of their unit on the battlemap marked by a path when moving and a stated order type.
The Map
Currently the map is made in Table Top Simulator (TTS), with player and enemy units and intentions placed as tokens on top of a flat map. The flat map is made of a .png of terrain and major features (anything that would reasonably show in an orbital scan), overlaid with a coordinate system breaking the map into tiles. Note that Movement uses Euclidean geometry, nothing is bound to the grid except certain effects (See also: Artillery).
Base Order Types
Order Types represent the intention of the players as unit commanders working together under a single goal. Do you want your unit to dig in? Attack the Enemy or Support a Push? This is how you do it. Read your unit's description to understand its role and special behaviors on the battlefield. 5 Infantry players and 3 Main Battle Tank players all working under a single Assault order pointing to a hill for example, lets everyone know they intend on working together to assault a specific location from a specific direction and push the enemy presence off said hill.
A Medic attached to an assault order full of infantry lets us all know the medics will be providing aid after the battle and will keep in formation during the battle. Even if your non-combat. Add yourself to group efforts if you want to stick with friendly forces!
There are four base order types, Advance, Assault, Hold Position, and Maneuver. Assault is planned to be renamed to Take and Hold, Maneuver is planned to be renamed Rush to more accurately describe their mechanics.
Advance
Advance is the general purpose movement and attack order type, used to move at standard pace (See also: Movement), with no special interactions involving combat or friendly units.
Assault
Assault is used to push enemy units out of a location, it moves at standard pace, however it changes attack resolution. Assault alters attacking enemy units, it takes the damage rolled and halves it, dealing half damage to the targeted enemy, and pushing that enemy for the other half the damage. This push is calculated in inches for ground units, and full tiles for aerial units (See also: Movement).
Hold Position
Note that the c3 hold position mechanic is now an Infantry special order "Dig In"'
Hold Position is the way to pass on spending speed on movement.
Maneuver
Operating under the Maneuver order type doubles the speed to tile conversion, so for every speed you have you can gain two tiles of movement, or 24 inches (See also: Movement).
Specialized Order Types
Artillery - Bombard
Saturate a grid square worth area (as determined by the map) with constant bombardment, Each round of Bombardment lowers the enemy Defence by 1 for all units inside the targeted grid area. This effect stacks for each round of bombardment. Defence can be recovered by engineers if bombardment stops using repair order type. Great for weakening a heavily defended area. Enemy in a castle on a hill? Time to Bombard it.
Artillery - Defensive Fire
Fire at close range to friendly ground forces offering them some protection from ground based enemies. +1 Defence to all friendly forces in the targeted grid. Meaning this could save a unit from damage or keep casualties lower.
Bombers - Air Strike
Set a specific target to attack. This is the only unit that can target specific enemy units on the battlefield.
Engineer - Construct X
Build the indicated structure. Bridge to cross rivers, trenches for friendly forces, sandbag walls for artillery and infantry to shield from incoming fire. Razor wire to slow enemy infantry moving through or tank traps to slow vehicles. Specific effects will depend on the structure, see Structures #Player Built Structures for details.
Engineer - Repair X
Used to repair some kind of damage at the cost of Supply, Engineers must specify Hits or Subsystem repairs for vehicles. One use of repair fully repair mechanical FS units, such as the Aerospace assets, but will only repair one Hit.
Ground Crew - Repair Subsystem
The crew gets out of the vehicle and starts making repairs to the damaged subsystem. The armour value of the unit drops to zero while repairing, as the crew is outside the vehicle. A single crew can only repair 1 subsystem per round. Only Engineers can Repair Hits. Do note that Orbital Crew currently do not use this order type.
Medic - Aid
Heal up to two nearby infantry units by 1 FS, effect doubled by MASH. Can attempt to treat illness by biological or chemical warfare. Aid is able to target local civilian population. Aid's infantry healing effect does not stack with other medics.
Infantry - Dig In
Note: Formerly the C3 hold position order, that only gave benefits to infantry
Dig In removes the option to spend speed for movement, however it grants infantry +3 Defence stat after maintaining the Dig In Order for 1 Round.
Skirmish
Moving under this order keeps the unit mobile. -2 to attacks +3 to Defence. When endangered by enemy forces, skirmishing units will keep their distance and move away from enemy forces for a max distance of ½ of the unit's speed while maintaining max range. Great for scouting or pecking at the back line of the enemy. Only available for Light Mech and Light Vehicle Unit Types.
Movement
Movement is determined by your unit's speed, with one speed gaining you one tile of movement under all orders except Rush. Tiles are made up of 12 inch squares in TTS, so for every one tile of movement, you get 12 inches to spend in however you want. While moving, you will be subject to attack from the enemy and will engage in attacks if your order type allows.
Orbital Movement
Aerospace assets have access to three layers of height, landed, airborne, and (covered here) in orbit. Being in orbit means your unit is not displayed on the standard ground/air battle map. To get to orbit from being airborne (or in atmosphere as it is also known), specify such in your orders for the round, this will spend all of your speed, and you will remain in range of airborne enemy units during that turn. After spending the turn to head to orbit you will be counted as in orbit, and can redeploy anywhere on the battle map with zero speed remaining.
Usually, aerospace units begin a campaign in orbit, and are allowed to deploy to anywhere on the map with full movement for the first turn.
Conflict Resolution
Every unit follows the same template for Conflict Resolution, with any specific changes with that unit being noted in the unit description, and any orders that change conflict resolution will be noted in either Base or Specialty Order Types. All combat is always resolved by the Game Master, who first moves all the units in any given combat according to the Orders they were given, determines the target of highest priority for all the involved combatants, then rolls their damage, removes any casualties and resolves any final movement, if any.
Targeting Priority
Players do not pick the individual unit that theirs shoots at. There are simply too many units involved in a campaign for individual targeting to be feasible. Instead, the GM determines the target of highest priority the unit shoots at based on the attacking unit’s equipment, role on the battlefield, (e.g. a unit specialized in hunting tanks would not prioritize shooting at infantry), contextual elements such as fortifications, and whatever Order the unit was issued. Upgrade or sidegrade options and Orders that alter the targeting priorities of a unit do state so in their description.
"Targeting works like this at the moment ---- Going from Top to bottom, Tanks fire at tank, because Armour and AP, followed by the next armoured target till they run out of armoured targets in range and start shooting at infantry. Infantry work bottom to top. Firing at non-armoured targets closest that are available. Available being, that they haven't already been targeted by an attack role of the last unit. Remember, we spread targeting around if players or enemies are operating in a group."
Damage
Damage dealt by a unit is listed under their unit description, using dice notation (detailed below). With units that use Hits for health, they will always roll the same die no matter how injured they are. With infantry units that have a Force Strength (FS), as they take damage and their FS depletes, so does their maximum damage. FS units will always roll the same die, results over their FS are instead ignored, and the current FS is used instead (e.g. An FS 3 infantry unit rolling a 5 for attack will deal only three damage).
Dice Syntax For Beginners
Dice notation is commonly found in TTRPGs such as D&D, in-depth board games (like this one), war games such as Warhammer 40k, and elsewhere. The syntax is as follows, a six-sided die will be written as a d6, the "d" indicating that it is a die that we are talking about the 6 being the number of sides to use. Common dice sizes are d4, d6, d8, d10, d12, and d20. However, in this game you can expect to only really see d2, d4, d6, and perhaps d8. To indicate the rolling of multiple dice, a number is placed before the d, such as 3d8 indicating the rolling of three eight-sided dice.
Defence and Armour
Defence and Armour refer to mostly the same thing, defence is what is granted by various effects (e.g. Defensive fire, Trenches, Dig In) and cannot be lowered by AP, whereas armour is an innate Vehicle stat that can be lowered by AP. When damage is being calculated, the formula is as follows:
- (Attacker's Roll) - (Defence + (Armour - AP)) = Damage
If Damage is greater than 0 you take that amount of damage, or 1 hit. If Damage is less than zero, you are unharmed.
Armour Piercing
Armour Piercing (AP) works to provide certain attacks a bonus against armoured and/or entrenched targets. Attacks with the Armour Piercing X tag ignore up to X of their target’s Armour score, if any. Therefore, a unit with armour 2 being targeted by an armour piercing 1 attack would only apply 1 armour as additional defence, instead of 2, while an attack with the armour piercing tag of 2 or more would ignore its armour score entirely. Any armour piercing amount in excess of the target’s armour score is ignored.
Line of Sight
Unless otherwise specified, the standard line of sight range of a unit is 3 grids/hexes.
Order Formatting
Orders you intend to give your unit on the field have to make their way to the GM in a readable format. In the battlegroup specific discord channel you will interface with your Battlegroup’s Tac-Com (Tactical Communications officer), who will then convey all the Orders of the players in the Battlegroup to the Game Master. Orders can be given in two formats, with the custom being that orders are done in text, with an optional visual to clarify complexity.
Text Orders
If you prefer to send text Orders to your Tac-Com, keep them simple and, importantly, precise, mentioning the Order from the [LIST] that you are issuing to your unit, the grid coordinates your unit is moving from, those it is moving to and of any units or elements your unit is interacting with along its path. Some previous Tac-Com's have placed order templates at the beginnings of their battlegoup's orders channel, however a generic one would look similar to this:
**Unit Callsign:**
**Unit Type:**
**Current Location:**
**Movement:**
**Action:**
**RP:**
With the *'s adding bold formatting to differentiate headers, they will disappear automatically upon posting.
Visual Orders
Alternatively to text, you can send an image of the map marking your intentions on it, according to the following key.
- Advance: a red line or arrow, with notes on the final facing of the unit at its destination.
- Assault: a yellow zig-zag line ending with an arrow
- Bombardments: a bold orange, arcing arrow
- Landing/Taking Off: an X with an up or down arrow
- Hold: circle the Holding units and mark them with “HOLD”
- Maneuver: a white dashed line to the location the unit is Rushing to
Supply