TACTICAL MECH
COMMANDER

The World You Inherit

Tactical Mech Commander places you in command of a small mercenary lance operating in a collapsed interstellar civilization. The great powers have fallen. Replacement parts are not manufactured — they are found, stripped from battlefield wreckage, and jury-rigged into machines that were never designed to accept them.

Every component on your mech has a provenance. That medium laser was pulled from a dead Falcon outside a settlement that doesn't exist anymore. The gyro in your heavy mech is running on borrowed time because the last spare was used two contracts ago. Your best pilot's nerve damage from a cockpit breach means her hands shake when the temperature drops. This is your world. Make it work.

Three Pillars

The game draws from three traditions, taking the strongest element from each:

• From tabletop tactical wargaming — deep mechanical customization with meaningful trade-offs. Slot puzzles, heat management, weight distribution. The machines matter.
• From classic party-based CRPGs — risk versus reward over long campaigns. Resource management, persistent stakes, choices that compound. Your decisions haunt you.
• From modern squad tactics games — cover, positioning, and line-of-sight creating squad synergy. Environments that reward smart play over raw stats. Permadeath tension.

The Dice of War

The Combat Authority Model Decided

All combat resolution follows three layers, each with a distinct responsibility. If a modifier doesn't fit cleanly into one of these, it's bloat.

3d6 Resolution Decided

All combat checks use three six-sided dice, summed. The range is 3–18, with a bell curve centered on 10–11. This curve means competent outcomes are common and extremes are genuinely rare — a roll of 3 or 18 occurs less than half a percent of the time.

The 3d6 curve was chosen over 2d6 and d20 for a specific reason: modifier headroom. A +1 bonus on 3d6 shifts probability by roughly 10–12% in the middle of the curve, compared to ~17% on 2d6 or a flat 5% on d20. This means small bonuses from positioning, pilot skill, and equipment feel meaningful without becoming dominant when stacked.

To-Hit Modifiers Decided

The to-hit target number is assembled from positional and situational modifiers. The roll must equal or exceed the target number to hit. A lower target is easier to hit.

Severity Bands Decided

A single 3d6 roll determines both whether you hit and how well. The margin between the roll and the target number determines severity:

The Rhythm of Battle

WEGO Simultaneous Resolution Decided

Tactical Mech Commander uses WEGO (We-Go) turn resolution. Both sides plan their orders simultaneously during the Planning Phase, then all orders execute together during the Execution Phase. There is no first-mover advantage. The tension lives in prediction — not reaction.

Initiative Order Decided

Initiative is determined by weight class: Light mechs move and fire first, followed by Medium, then Heavy. Within each weight class, order is randomized at battle start and locked for the duration. This means light mechs can reposition before heavies fire — speed has tactical value beyond mere movement points.

Available Orders Decided

• Move — Plot a path through the hex grid. Movement cost varies by terrain. Path is shown as a persistent line during planning.
• Attack — Select a weapon and target. Attack line is drawn on the battlefield during planning. Multiple weapons can target different enemies. Weapons are constrained by firing arcs — arm weapons have a narrow forward arc, torso weapons cover a wider frontal arc. You cannot fire out your back.
• Guard — Hunker in position. Defensive bonus against incoming fire.
• Reload — Spend the turn reloading depleted ammunition stores.

Anatomy of a Mech

Hit Locations Decided

Every mech has eight hit locations, each with independent armor and internal structure values. When a location is struck, damage depletes armor first. Once armor is gone, subsequent hits damage internal structure — and once structure is gone, the location is destroyed.

Armor & Structure Decided

Each location has two health pools:

• Armor — the outer layer. Absorbs damage first. When armor is depleted, the location is exposed.
• Internal Structure — the skeleton beneath. When structure hits zero, the location is destroyed. Any hit to exposed structure triggers a critical hit check.

Sample Chassis — The Grizzly (Heavy, 70 tons)

Weapons of the Reclamation

Weapon Categories Decided

Missile Cluster Resolution Decided

Missile weapons fire volleys. If the initial to-hit roll succeeds, a separate 3d6 roll determines what percentage of the volley actually connects. Each individual missile that hits rolls a separate hit location, spreading damage across the target.

Fire & Steel

Damage Resolution Decided

Transfer Damage Paths Decided

Critical Hits Decided

Whenever internal structure takes damage (armor fully breached), roll 3d6 for critical hits:

Critical Hit Targets

Each critical hit strikes a random piece of equipment in the damaged location:

Heat Management

The Heat Economy Decided

Every weapon generates heat when fired. Every mech has heatsinks that dissipate heat at the end of each turn. The difference between heat generated and heat dissipated is your thermal debt — and like all debts, it compounds.

Heatsinks dissipate heat at a rate of 1 heat per heatsink per turn. A mech with 10 heatsinks can sustain 10 heat per turn indefinitely. Anything above that accumulates. Engine critical hits add +5 heat per turn per crit, directly eroding your thermal margin.

The Pilots Who Endure

Core Pilot Stats Decided

Pilots have two primary statistics that modify the rolls the player is already making. They do not create parallel systems — they adjust existing mechanics.

Morale, Suppression & Fear Open — Needs Design

Pilots are not automatons. Sustained fire, nearby mech destruction, critical damage, and accumulated stress erode a pilot's composure. When a pilot breaks, they may act against orders — cowering, retreating, or panic-firing at random targets.

Pilot Portraits Open — Needs Implementation

Each pilot has a base portrait with expression variants reflecting their current mental state. Rather than reading "Stress: 74%" on a stat bar, the commander glances at the portrait and sees the pilot's face shift from focused to worried to afraid. States include: Calm, Focused, Aggressive, Stressed, Afraid, Injured, Critical, and Unconscious.

The Scavenger's Workshop

The Core Loop Decided

Slot-Based Customization Decided

Each mech location has a slot capacity. Weapons and equipment consume slots. A location's slot count is the hard limit on what it can carry. You cannot exceed it — if you want to mount a larger weapon, something else has to come out.

Component Condition Decided

Salvaged components have a condition rating that affects their reliability:

• Pristine — Functions at full capacity. Rare find.
• Damaged — Functions at reduced capacity. The default state of most battlefield salvage.
• Jury-Rigged — Technically works. Technically. Don't ask questions about long-term reliability.

Component Combining Decided

Destroyed components are not worthless. Five destroyed modules of the same type can be combined into one jury-rigged module. This makes even scrap-quality salvage worth carrying if you accumulate enough. Combined components can never exceed damaged quality — manufactured precision cannot be rebuilt from battlefield debris.

Time as a Resource Open — Needs Design

Repairs and refits don't happen instantly. Time passes between missions, and time has costs:

Reading the Ground

Hex Grid Decided

The battlefield is a hexagonal grid using pointy-top orientation with cube coordinates (x + y + z = 0). Hexes provide six uniform directions of movement and clean line-of-sight calculations without the diagonal ambiguity of square grids.

Terrain Effects Decided

• Movement cost — Each terrain type has a movement point cost. Dense terrain slows advance. Pathfinding (A*) respects these costs.
• Defense modifier — Terrain provides cover bonuses. Forest, rubble, and partial cover increase the attacker's target number.
• Elevation — High ground grants an accuracy bonus to the occupying unit. Looking down is easier than looking up.
• Line of sight — Calculated per-hex between attacker and target. Blocking terrain (buildings, cliff faces) prevents targeting entirely.

Reference Tables

3d6 Cumulative Probability (Roll ≥ Target)

Hit Location Table (Front Aspect)

Critical Hit Table (3d6)

Heat Bands

Modding & Data Files

Data Architecture Decided

All game data is stored as JSON in the StreamingAssets/ directory. The mod system uses filename-matching overrides — any file in /mods/ with the same name as a file in /data/ replaces it at load time.

What You Can Mod

• Add new weapons — Create a JSON file in data/weapons/ following the weapon schema.
• Add new mechs — Define a chassis with all 8 locations, armor, structure, slot counts, and default loadout.
• Add new maps — Create map JSON or use Tiled to export compatible formats.
• Change game rules — Edit heat thresholds, hit location weights, critical hit tables, and combat resolution parameters.
• Total conversion — Replace all data files to create an entirely different game feel using the same engine.