How Battles Work

Types of Battle

Battles come in 2 primary types: autobattles and manual battles. Autobattles can be set up as a standalone battle or triggered as part of a campaign. Manual battles can be triggered as part of a Fortress Defense, Expedition, or as a standalone battle.

In autobattles, all units behave according to the behavior set in their brain. In manual battles, drones still follow their built-in behavior, but Icaroids must be given orders directly by a commander.

The shape of a round

Battles are turn-based and play out one round at a time. In manual battles you set your orders whenever you like; the round only resolves once everyone is ready. In autobattles every round of the battle is calculated in order. A single round goes through 3 stages:

1. Plan. You issue orders to each of your Icaroids, such as where to move, what to shoot, which ability to use, etc.
2. Commit. Each side locks in their orders for the round.
3. Resolve. Once both sides have committed, the engine resolves every order on the field at once, plays back the results, and advances the round counter.

There is no per-round time limit baked into the rules. A battle can be fought across days of real time, but within a single round everything an Icaroid does is decided up front and resolved together. You are planning a round, not reacting move by move.

All of this follows the setup phase, where both sides field a roster and place it on the map before round one (covered in Deployment & Setup).

Action Slots

Every round, each Icaroid has three independent action slots it can use:

• Move - spend your move-point budget to move to a (hopefully better) position. See Movement & Positioning.
• Fire - fire all equipped weapons that are not on cooldown at a target. See How Damage Works.
• Ability - perform a utility action. These are usually an ability that something on the unit grants.

Because the slots are independent, a normal round is move and fire - advancing into range and shooting in the same round. The ability slot is separate, so an ability that costs only the ability slot still allows for both. Some abilities also consume the move or fire slot as well as (or instead of) the ability one: a leap or dash ability may spend your move, or a terrain-shaping utility weapon may spend your fire action. The Abilities & Stances guide lays out exactly which slot each ability takes.

Committing orders

Giving an order in a manual battle is not permanent. Nothing on the field actually changes until you commit your orders. A round only resolves once both sides have committed:

• Two players. Whoever commits first waits; the round resolves the instant the second side commits. The order you commit in does not matter to the outcome.
• Versus an AI. The moment your commit lands, the AI generates and commits its own orders, and the round resolves immediately.

Committing should be your final act for that round. You can't pull an order back once the round resolves; in a 2-player manual battle you can cancel your committed orders until the other player commits their orders, but once the other player has committed, the instant you commit your orders are locked in. A committed order that can no longer be carried out (the target died, the ability's component was wrecked) doesn't waste your whole turn; the engine falls back sensibly, as described in target priority.

How a round resolves

When both sides commit, the engine resolves the whole field in a fixed phase order driven by each unit's initiative, not in the sequence orders were given. Every unit rolls initiative for each round. You can see the initiative for the round at the bottom of the screen before issuing your orders. Each unit goes through the following phases in order:

1. Attack. A fire command resolves using the unit's start-of-round position. Fire-slot abilities (like Raise Terrain) and autonomous weapons fire here too. Melee weapons are the exception - they hold their strike until after the unit moves (see below).
2. Move. A move order resolves after all ranged firing is done. Move-slot abilities (Jump, Deploy / Limber) resolve in this phase.
3. Melee. A unit's melee weapons swing after it has moved, so a frame can charge across the gap and land the blow on the same round it closes in. The strike uses the unit's end-of-move position and its committed fire order, so don't be shy about giving an attack order against an enemy that's not currently in range if you think you can close the gap this turn.
4. Ability. Abilities that cost only the independent ability slot resolve last.

Once all units have completed their actions, Status effects tick and decay, ammo replenishes, destroyed Icaroids are removed, the round counter ticks up, and the engine checks for a winner.

Initiative

Units act one at a time, highest initiative first. A unit takes its whole turn before the next unit in line. Initiative is rerolled every round from three things:

initiative = (brain thinking-rate × 20) + (movespeed × 2) + d20

A smarter brain and a faster frame both raise initiative, with a D20 roll as a tiebreaker. The Initiator effect adds a flat bonus to initiative as well. There is one deliberate exception to the ordering: a Guardian brain with a higher initiative than the ally it's guarding in an autobattle will delay its turn until immediately after the guarded ally, so an escort always walks towards its new position and won't get left behind.

Because turns run in order, every action reads the board as it stands at that moment - not a snapshot taken when the round begins. Three consequences are worth planning around:

• Death is immediate. If a high-initiative Icaroid destroys a lower one, the wreck forfeits its entire turn. It does not have the opportunity to fire, move, or act. Winning initiative can mean landing the killing blow before an enemy's weaponry ever fires.
• Movement is first-come, first-serve. When your turn comes round, every other unit is where it is based on the initiative order. If the tile you wanted is occupied or out of reach your unit will simply settle for the closest hex you can reach. A unit acting late in the round may have to path around wherever everyone before it has already ended up. Note that with some movement effects, this may be a good thing (such as mending trail) or a very bad thing (plasma trail).
• Avoiding incoming fire only works if you outroll the shooter. Stepping out of a firing line saves you from the units that fire after you have moved. Anything earlier than your unit in the queue still has the opportunity to hit you before you can escape.

Target priority

You can point an Icaroid at a target, but you can't always make it shoot. A lot can change between committing and firing. Rather than waste the shot, the engine resolves each fire order down a priority ladder:

1. Your ordered target, if it's still alive and within range and line of sight. Same-faction and self-targeting orders are rejected outright.
2. The nearest living enemy, if your ordered target is already dead when your shot resolves.
3. The nearest enemy in range of your ordered target's position, if the ordered target is alive but can't be hit, you fire on whatever you can actually reach near where you were aiming.

With these rules, an ordered shot rarely goes to waste. The same forgiveness applies to movement orders: you can tell an Icaroid to advance on a specific enemy and have it path toward that unit's current position, stopping on an adjacent tile. If the exact hex it wanted is taken or unreachable, it settles for the closest hex it can reach.

Winning the battle

At the end of every round the engine checks the battle's objective to see whether it's over. An Icaroid is out of the fight when its core is destroyed or all of its mobility parts are, and a faction only counts as still in the running while it has at least one Icaroid left with a working weapon. Three objectives decide the win:

Losing your last weapon is as good as losing the Icaroid as far as victory is concerned - a frame that can still move but can't shoot no longer keeps its faction "viable." Keep at least one working gun on the field, and read which part gets hit to understand how cores and components are struck.

Putting it together

A round, start to finish, involves filling some mix of the move, fire and ability slots on each Icaroid and committing your orders. The engine then works through the initiative queue, handing each unit its whole turn in order - ranged fire from where it stands, then its move, then a melee swing from its end-of-move position, then its ability - before the next unit acts. Once the queue is empty, end-of-round effects tick and the battle objective is checked. The combat loop should inform your tactics: fire before move means a unit plans around where the enemy is when its slot comes up, not where it is headed; destroyed units forfeit their turns; target priority means a shot rarely goes to waste; and the objective decides whether you're fighting to the last frame or just to break the other side.