Kit assembly and melee prototype
The Workshop and Play tabs now use the same catalog and engine as CLI games and batches.
Open the kit builder. Open Play and the melee trials.
Review the builder
- Open Workshop. Choose a named core box.
- Click an empty component outline or its labeled button. Choose parts in any order.
- Browse manufacturers within each component. Arms and held equipment are independent choices.
- Choose a pilot. Select equipment or an empty hand for each hand. A two-handed item occupies both hands and replaces conflicting equipment.
- Complete all components. Save into a roster slot. The build and roster must meet all hard limits.
- Reassign pilots in the roster. Selecting a teammate’s pilot swaps their assignments.
Drafts and rosters persist in this browser. Existing saved builds import their old arm loadouts through an explicit catalog mapping. Each old combined arm’s Weight was split between a structural arm and its suggested held item. Its body Size, Armor, and Durability remain unchanged. Default kit weights and the ranged worked example remain unchanged.
Core boxes retain the existing named kit identities. Foreman, Reaver, and Lantern currently share the Medium core stats. The box shows its core family; this pass does not invent distinct performance for those cores. Structural arm IDs retain their old names for saved-build compatibility. Display names describe the separate arm.
Review melee
Play includes three hotseat trials: twin melee weapons against a two-handed weapon, twin weapons against a shield, and a two-handed weapon with its carrying arm disabled. Each trial starts adjacent. Select Melee, then the enemy on the board.
Both pools appear before decisions. Select a successful weapon die and a body part. Declare the strike. The defender can select enough successful dice to parry, or take the hit. The same sequence pauses for human decisions when a bot initiates an exchange. The log records pools, declarations, responses, and damage.
Every exchange costs its initiator a Full action. The defender retains its activation. Both receive fresh pools for each new action. If one pool is exhausted, the other mech continues attacking. Damaged arms affect usable dice and equipment. A two-handed weapon remains usable with one working arm.
Workshop, Play, Battle and Batch remain mounted after first use, so switching tabs preserves the current session. Changes to a roster apply when starting a new game.
Explicit prototype defaults
These values are implementation choices for review. They are not owner-approved balance conclusions.
| Item | First value |
|---|---|
| Arm Capacity | Printed carrying weight; sum both arms for two-handed equipment |
| Arm Handling | Adds the printed number of dice to that arm’s melee weapon |
| Dedicated weapon pool | Printed Melee dice; both weapons contribute |
| Class bonus | Light +2 dice; Medium +1; Heavy +0 |
| Pilot bonus | +1 die per 2 Piloting, distributed across melee weapons |
| Success | d20 + Piloting + Head Acc + weapon Acc meets opponent Evasion; natural 1 fails, 20 succeeds |
| Shared resource | Successful dice fund attacks or parries; attack dice stay attached to their source |
| Improvised pool | 2 dice plus class and pilot bonus; existing punch/kick profiles |
| Heavy parry cost | Greatblade and Ram cost 2; other current strikes cost 1 |
| Shield | 2 defense-only dice, d20 + Piloting vs 8; reduce parry cost by 1, minimum 1 |
| One disabled arm with two-handed weapon | −1 Pen; −2 Accuracy on fresh pools |
| Damage | Existing penetration, overflow, critical and heat rules; Mass Pen retained |
| Charge | Full action: move up to Speed, gain 1 Heat, start exchange; no push or recoil |
| Knockdown | No automatic class knockdown inside exchanges |
| Other reactions | Existing single Disengage/riposte attacks remain; normal limits apply only to those reactions |
Existing damage-condition modifier dice are rolled once per weapon pool, before its d20s. Their penalty applies to each die in that pool. Positional hit modifiers do not apply.
The selected hit is not rolled again after declaration. Penetration, damage, critical and heat dice are rolled when a strike is accepted. Mid-exchange damage does not reroll existing successes. A disabled source loses its remaining dice; a usable two-handed weapon retains its dice. Defense-only leftovers do not prolong an exchange once both mechs lack attacks.
The defaults are stored in data/melee.json and in the equipment and arm entries of data/parts.json. The Tuner edits the separate arm and equipment catalogs. Weapons remain absent from the hit table. Hard build limits apply even when a scenario disables team composition checks.
What this pass does not establish
The bot uses a deterministic baseline: target Core and parry when enough dice remain, spending defense-only dice first. This policy tests the shared engine and human decision windows. It is not evidence that Core attacks, light specialists, or the three equipment styles are balanced. The old power score does not model interactive exchanges and is labeled as a legacy estimate.
The playable roster remains up to three deployed mechs per side. Four-mech reserve selection remains separate work.
Site and parry interface
The packet now uses shared navigation, colors, and typography across the home page, Workshop, Play, World registry, rules, and development pages. The illustrated rulebook is the main rules page. Existing rule links still work. The Evidence page groups dated reports and links to Battle, Batch, and Tuner. pnpm dev serves the complete site, with the bench at /bench/.
The melee panel labels the defending pool and each selectable die. It states when too few successful dice remain to parry. Pointer and keyboard checks cover one-die, two-die, and shield parries. Workshop and Play navigation preserves a pending exchange and its selected dice.
Verification
The ranged worked example, seeded game reproducibility, and controller/CLI parity remain checked. New checks cover incomplete drafts, independent equipment, hard limits, two-handed impairment, targeted strikes, shared-pool defense, fresh exchanges, and human responses during bot activations. Browser checks cover complete assembly and saving, hard-cap rejection, two-handed hand reservation, a mobile viewport, hotseat melee responses, and persistence while switching tabs.