Mech Squad Manager

Design Overview

The player takes the role of an engineer and requisitions officer for a squadron of mech pilots in an endless war. The game uses a minimalist web interface. The player will have to make decisions on how to outfit and repair their squad of mechs, and deal with damages, pilot performance, and other unforeseen events.

Game Loop Overview

The game will have one main phase, where the player is presented their management interface. From here they can order parts, that will be delivered in a certain amount of turns. They can outfit mechs with the store of parts they own. They can view damage and battle reports on mechs, and repair them accordingly. They can see their pilot dossier with performance statistics (however pilot recruiting and deployment will be handled by the AI Commanding Officer).

The game flow will go between the management interface, and a simulated battle which either ends in a game over or returns to the management screen with a battle report.

Points of Interaction

• Purchasing Equipment
• Equipment purchased has a price and delivery time, represented in turns.
• Outfitting mechs
• Equip and remove parts from storeroom
• Repairing mechs
• Repairs cost money but happen instantly
• Destroyed parts may not be repairable and must be replaced or not used.
• View pilot dossier
• See the following
• Pilot name
• Portrait (stretch goal)
• Missions completed
• Combat stats
• Kills
• Total repair costs
• Accuracy
• Objective completion rate
• Requests to the player
• Notes (user defined)
• View battle reports
• C.O. Orders
• Shows results of the last battle
• Objective completed?
• Reward
• Kills
• Losses
• Resistance deployed
• Some fluff
• Terrain
• Weather conditions
• Intel on next battle
• Objective
• Terrain
• Expected weather conditions
• Expected resistance
• Complete turn
• Goes to battle simulation

Battle Simulation

Displays a live readout of radio transmissions that appear chatbox style on screen. Can be skipped.

Types of radio transmisson

• Pep talk
• Target sighted
• Target destroyed
• Damage taken
• Mech disabled
• Mech destroyed
• Objective started
• Objective completed
• Objective lost
• Pilot issues
• defective equipment (may or may not be true)
• out of ammo
• inadequate equipment (may or may not be true)
• kill streak
• trash talk

Win and Loss condition

Win condition is to make it X turns (TBD based on playtesting) There should be some kind of set piece boss mission that the game is building up to.

Loss condition is when the player either manually retires, or can not afford to field any moving mechs, or no pilots are available for a mission (due to them dying).