By Hammer

"Raven One, Bravo Six. Sitrep on that warehouse."

Static, then Sergeant Okafor, thin through the jamming. "Six, Raven One. Reading it now. Supplies, like we expected, hundreds of crates. But that's not all of it. There are 'Meks in there, ma'am. Gantries, a dozen chassis half stripped. They're refitting and repairing." A pause, then his voice jumped. "Ma'am, it's the yard. The one intel's been chasing for months. We found it."

Captain Reyes keyed the company net. "All Bravo, you heard that. This stopped being a supply raid the moment he said that. Plan's changed, people. Improvise, adapt, overcome. Kurita can't let that reading leave this valley. The jamming's too thick to send it, so it goes home in Okafor's Raven or not at all, and every gun they have is about to turn on him."

On her display, four red meeple-like icons had climbed onto the ridge above the river crossing the moment Okafor's sensors lit up, and stopped dead: a full Kurita lance, sitting right across his only way home. "Raven One, hold your position. Once that ridge is ours, you've got cover until you're clear. Nobody gets left behind."

"Raven One copies. Holding for your mark."

"They're not even firing, Captain," Lieutenant Hale said.

"They don't need to. They're a cork in a bottle, and every second they sit up there, that ridge gets a little more theirs." Behind the jamming, Kurita would already be calling for help. "Their relief column's three minutes out, maybe less. They want that yard kept secret. Fine. We make sure there's nothing left worth hiding."

"Orders?"

"Fire and Battle Lances, advance on that ridge. Push that lance off it and cover Raven One's withdrawal. Command Lance, on me. We're pushing to the yard. Sergeant Voss, get your battle armor mounted up on Command Lance. While we hold and engage their relief column, you get inside and finish it. Damage as much as you can. Your priority is the technicians and engineers. Nobody leaves that yard. Every second we've got anyone inside that wire, their grip on it slips." She finally looked up from the display. "Let's go earn it."

The Short Version

For most of MegaMek’s history, a game ended one way: somebody ran out of units. 0.51.01 starts to add objective-based play. You can place flags on the board, score victory points for holding them, scanning them, or taking them from the enemy, and let the points decide who won. And yes, you can mix them with the existing victory conditions. This post covers where victory conditions came from, how to set up and play an objectives game in 0.51.01, and what we’re building next.

Alpha

Objectives ship in 0.51.01 as an alpha. They're in active development, so expect rough edges, and expect things to change between releases. We're aiming to have the full set finished for 0.51.03 next spring.

Until then, your feedback is what polishes it. Play it, push it, and tell us what feels wrong as well as what breaks. Report a Bug builds a bundle with the objective log lines we need, and Discord is the place for everything else.

It's also why the deeper MekHQ link is still to come. MekHQ can only build on objectives once they're finished in MegaMek, so every game you play now brings that day closer.

Where We Started

MegaMek has had a victory phase since 2002. For a long time, though, “victory” meant one thing: the last side with units on the board wins.

Over the years we added more ways to end a game, each one a switch in Game Options:

• Destroy enemy BV (2006): win once you’ve destroyed a set percentage of the enemy’s Battle Value.
• Outnumber enemy (2006): win once your surviving BV is a set multiple of theirs.
• Enemy Commander Destroyed (2007): win by killing every enemy command unit.
• Kill count (2013): win at a set number of kills.
• Force game end at turn limit: stop the game after a set number of turns.

These all work, and plenty of people still play with them. What they share is that every one of them counts kills. None of them knows where anything is on the map. You couldn’t tell MegaMek “the bridge matters” or “hold the ridge until turn 8”. Players who wanted a mission had to agree the rules among themselves and keep score on paper.

Victory conditions before 0.51.01. Every one of them counts kills.

MekHQ got part of the way there in 2019, when 0.47.1 added scenario objectives: destroy 35% of the enemy, preserve your allies, reach a map edge. Those are checked after the battle, when you resolve the scenario in MekHQ. MegaMek itself still had no idea there was an objective while you were playing, and neither did Princess.

The tabletop game has had objectives for a long time. The Core Rulebook has a whole section of Standard Missions built around objective counters, control zones, scanning and victory points. So this summer we started building them into MegaMek, properly, from the rules up.

Built a Piece at a Time

Objectives touch almost everything: the lobby, the map, the End Phase, the reports. Rather than drop it all on you at once, we built it a piece at a time and put each piece in front of players before starting the next. If you like reading the gory details, it’s all tracked on GitHub.

A lot of that playing was done by the Test Pilots QA group. They’ve had their heads down through every piece, playing the same games over and over and catching lots of small issues along the way. Each round of their feedback made what was already there a little better before the next piece arrived.

Playing an Objectives Game

The battle at the top of this post was built with objectives. The five steps below show you how to set up a game of your own, in the order you’ll meet it. Along the way, the yellow “In the story” lines and the scheme tabs point back to Reyes’s battle, to show how each piece of it was made. You don’t need to follow along: read it, then build your own. The first time you do, keep this page open in the lobby.

Objectives in action.

Step 1: Switch It On in the Lobby

In the story: Kurita's relief column, three minutes out, is the turn limit: 18 turns at ten seconds a turn. Leave Sudden death objectives off. This battle has several threads, and sudden death would end it the moment the first point is decided, before Okafor gets home. Scouts stay until turn 5.

Victory conditions used to be buried in the long Game Options list. Since July they’ve had their own Victory Conditions dialog in the lobby, and objectives have their own tab in it. You’ll use both tabs.

On the Victory Conditions tab, tick Force game end at turn limit and set the number of turns. That’s the most common way to end an objectives game: when the last turn ends, the side with the most victory points wins, and a tie is a draw.

The older conditions on that tab still work alongside objectives. Tick Destroy enemy BV, Kill count or Enemy Commander Destroyed as well, and whichever condition is met first ends the game. If one side is wiped out after points have been scored, the points decide the winner, not whoever is left standing.

Then switch to the Objectives tab:

Option	What it does
Use Objectives	The master switch. Victory points decide the winner when the game ends. Everything else on this tab is greyed out until it’s ticked.
Victory points needed to win immediately	A race. The first side to reach this many points, while leading on its own, wins on the spot. Leave it at 0 to turn it off.
Sudden death objectives	The game ends the moment any point is decided: a Hold point secured, a Defend point fallen, or a Capture point taken. Then the points decide the winner.
Scan Enemy Units mission	The Core Rulebook’s Sensor Check mission. Every successful scan of an enemy unit is a reading worth 1 point once the scout carries it home, and a destroyed scout takes its readings with it. To limit it to a few targets, such as a convoy’s trucks, a game master can right-click those units in the lobby and mark them Wanted for Scanning. How to scan is in the Scan tab in Step 3.
Scouts must stay on the battlefield until turn	How long scouts have to stay before they can leave with their readings. The rulebook says turn 5.

The Objectives tab in the lobby's Victory Conditions dialog.

The game needs a way to end, or the points never count. Use the turn limit, a points target, or sudden death. If you forget, MegaMek will warn you.

Close the dialog and start the game when everyone is ready.

Step 2: The New Victory Setup Phase

In the story: Kurita places the points it means to keep: the ridge, the refit yard and the river crossing. Reyes places what she came for: the warehouse crates and the Scan point on the yard. Each side adds its own Standard points at both ends of the valley.

Ticking Use Objectives gives your game a brand new phase: Victory Setup. It’s where every objectives game begins, and it’s where you place your points. Leave Use Objectives off and you’ll never see it. Your games play exactly as they always have.

Victory Setup comes straight after the lobby, before anything else happens on the map:

1. Victory Setup: place your objectives.
2. Artillery pre-sighting and minefields, if anyone has them. They come after Victory Setup on purpose, so you know where the objectives are before you pick your target hexes and lay your mines.
3. Deployment, and then the game.

Each player takes a turn on the real map, clicking a hex to place a point. The status bar tells you whose turn it is.

Objectives are played on a single ground map. Several map sheets joined together in the lobby count as one map.

We put this on the real map on purpose. An early version let you pick hexes on a preview in the lobby. We dropped it, because a preview and a generated map can disagree about what’s in a hex, and nobody wants a flag on a mountain they thought was a field.

Your opponent doesn’t see your points while you’re placing them, but teammates and a game master do. Once setup ends, every point is on the map for everyone to see.

Clicking a hex opens a properties dialog for the new point. A description at the bottom explains, in plain words, what the point does with the settings you’ve chosen. It updates as you change them, so you always know what you’re making.

These settings are on every point:

Setting	What it does
Scoring scheme	How the point is won: Standard, Raid, Hold, Defend, Capture or Scan. Step 3 covers each one. The rest of the dialog changes to match.
Victory points	What the point is worth, from 1 to 99.
Control radius (hexes)	How big the zone is. 0 is just the flag’s hex, 1 adds the six hexes around it, and so on.
Starts controlled by	Lets a side start the game already holding the point, like a garrison. “No one” is the default.
Keep control when empty	When ticked, a side keeps the point after its units walk away, until the enemy takes it. An empty point still scores for its holder, but Hold and Capture progress waits until someone is standing in it again.

Then each scheme adds its own settings:

Scheme	Extra settings
Hold	Turns to secure: how many turns a side must hold the point. Turns counted: Consecutively means losing the point resets the count, and Cumulatively means the turns add up over the game.
Defend	Starting grip: how strong the owner’s hold is. Grip drained per turn: how much it drops for each turn an enemy stands in the zone. It never recovers.
Capture	Points to capture: the size of the progress meter. Progress per turn: how far a side moves it for each turn it controls the zone.
Scan	Belongs to: whose it is, which sets the flag’s colour; “Nobody” is a valid choice. Victory points are paid: On the scan, On the scan, lost if the scout is destroyed, or When the reading gets home. The scan reveals: what the scanning side reads when its scan succeeds; a game master’s field in 0.51.01. Scanned by, the side that scans it and scores it, arrives in 0.51.02. A Scan point is read, not held, so it has no zone and no control settings.

Press OK to place the point, or Remove Flag to take it back. Click one of your own points to change it. When you’re finished, press Done and the next player takes their turn. If you press Done without placing anything, MegaMek checks that you meant to.

Step 3: Choose How It Scores

Every point has a scoring scheme. Standard, Raid and Scan come straight from the rulebooks. Hold, Defend and Capture are MegaMek missions, there for players who want something different. Our plan has always been to capture the primary methods from the books, and also to offer players alternative ways to score.

Each tab follows one thread of Reyes’s battle from the story at the top: who places the point, how it scores, and how the fight for it plays out. Put together, they make the opening battle, and you can set it up yourself if you’d like to try it. The screenshot beside each one shows that scheme’s properties dialog.

Read This Before You Set Up the Story

Objectives are still an alpha, and not every part of this story can be played in MegaMek yet. Here's exactly where the line is.

• What works in 0.51.01: every value on the Set up lines below. The turn limit, the schemes, points, radius, Turns to secure, grip, the capture meter, Keep control when empty and the payouts are all real settings. So are the control rules the In play lines lean on: majorities, ties, and units that don't count.
• What's only story: the relief column is just the turn limit; nothing actually arrives. Wrecking the gantries and the technicians isn't scored; a Demolish scheme is on the roadmap. The half-stripped 'Meks on the gantries are only there if you add them as units yourself.
• What arrives in 0.51.02: Scanned by, and writing the scan note as a player. In 0.51.01, only a game master can write the note.
• Each point needs its own hex. The Scan point and the Defend point both sit in the yard, so put them on different hexes.
• The In play lines are one way the battle could go, not a promise. The dice decide the rest, and as an alpha, objectives may still surprise you.
• You'll need a human opponent or a game master. Princess doesn't play objectives yet.

Standard: Both Ends of the Valley

"Landing zone's empty, Captain." "Then it stays ours until they come and take it. Keep a foot in their gate."

The rule (Core Rulebook): each End Phase, a side scores 1 victory point if it holds at least one of its own points and at least one of the enemy's. Hold them all and it's 2.

Set up: each side places two Standard points, 1 point each, radius 1. Reyes takes her landing zone and the valley road behind her. Kurita takes the yard gate and the ridge road. Tick Keep control when empty on the landing zone.

In play: every lance Reyes has is committed, so nobody is left at the landing zone. With Keep control when empty ticked, it stays hers until Kurita sends someone to take it. When the Command Lance pushes into the yard gate, she holds one of her own and one of theirs, and scores every End Phase from then on. Sitting on your own points earns nothing; it's the foot in their door that pays.

Raid: The Crates We Came For

"Refit yard or not, we came here for those crates. I still want the crates."

The rule (Core Rulebook): whoever holds the point scores it. In 0.51.01 it pays once, when the game ends. See What's Next for the change coming to this one.

Set up: Reyes places a Raid point on the supply warehouse at the yard's edge: 5 points, radius 0, so only the warehouse's own hex counts.

In play: before Okafor's reading, this was the whole job, and it still counts. Holding the warehouse the moment Voss gets inside is worth nothing. Whoever is standing in it when the relief column arrives and the game ends gets all 5. Voss's battle armor is already inside the wire. Leave one squad standing on the warehouse at the end, and the crates go home with Reyes.

Hold: The Cork in the Bottle

"Nobody moves. We don't have to win the fight. We just have to still be here."

The rule (MegaMek): the first side to hold the point for a set number of turns secures it. Either side can win it.

Set up: Kurita places a Hold point on the ridge above the river crossing: 5 points, radius 1, Turns to secure 10, counted Consecutively.

In play: Kurita's lance climbs onto the ridge the moment it sees Okafor's scan, and starts counting. Reyes's first two 'Meks reach the zone a few turns later. Four against two is still Kurita's, and the count keeps climbing. A turn later she has four up there: four against four is a tie, nobody holds it, and Kurita's count drops back to zero. The turn after that, her eighth 'Mek arrives and the ridge is hers. Count the turns Cumulatively instead, and that tie only pauses Kurita's count. If Kurita ever reached ten, the ridge would be theirs for good and Okafor would have no way home. Instead, Reyes starts a count of her own, and ten turns later the ridge is secured.

Defend: Inside the Wire

"Riding in on Command, ma'am. We drop off at the wire, and then we're inside."

The rule (MegaMek): the point belongs to its owner, and only the enemy can take it. Every turn an enemy unit stands in the zone, the owner's grip drops, even if the owner has more units there. At zero, the point falls.

Set up: Kurita places a Defend point on the refit yard: 5 points, radius 2, Starting grip 10, Grip drained per turn 1.

In play: the Command Lance pushes up to the wire, and Voss's battle armor climbs off and goes inside. Every End Phase anything of Reyes's is alive in the yard, Kurita's grip drops by one, even while Kurita's guards outnumber her. The half-stripped 'Meks on the gantries don't help them either: an immobile unit never counts. Ten turns sounds like plenty, but they don't have to come in a row, and the grip never comes back. Voss gets in early and stays in, so the grip runs out well before the relief column arrives, and the yard falls with Reyes scoring all 5. Nobody leaves that yard.

Capture: The River Crossing

"We've got the high ground. Fire Lance, take the ford below us and hold it until Raven One's across. We'll cover you."

The rule (MegaMek): attackers fill a progress meter by controlling the zone, and the owner pushes it back by retaking it. A tie freezes it.

Set up: Kurita places a Capture point on the river crossing below the ridge: 5 points, radius 1, Points to capture 6, Progress per turn 1. It has to be Kurita's. The side that places a Capture point owns it, and only its enemies can fill the meter, so Reyes can only take the crossing if Kurita sets it up.

In play: nobody can hold the ford while Kurita owns the ridge above it, so the ridge comes first. Once it's Reyes's, Fire Lance comes down and holds the ford for four turns, and the meter climbs to 4 of 6. Then the two survivors of the ridge lance fall back into the crossing. Fire Lance lost two 'Meks taking the ridge, so it's two against two, a tie, and the meter freezes. Battle Lance picks them off from above, and two more clean turns fill the meter, with the crossing open for Okafor.

Scan: Okafor's Run

"Six, Raven One. I've got the reading. Now I just have to get it home."

The rule (Core Rulebook): the point isn't held, it's read. A scout scans it, and the points are paid the moment the scan succeeds, paid but taken back if the scout dies, or paid only once the scout gets home. Scanned by picks the side that scans and scores it: your own, or the other side, when you hide something for them to find. Belongs to is whose it is, and sets the flag's colour.

Scanned by, and writing the note as a player rather than a game master, arrive in 0.51.02.

1. Set up

Low along the riverbank, ECM up, keeping to the trees. A Raven is small and hard to pin down on their screens, and that's all the armor it really has. If they see me before I see them, this is a very short night.

Scouts stay until turn 5. Reyes places a Scan point on the warehouse at the heart of the yard for her own side to read: 3 points, paid When the reading gets home. In The scan reveals goes what Okafor will find: "It's the yard. A dozen 'Meks on the gantries." Nobody else can read that until his scan succeeds. The screenshots show the same steps with a Raven scanning a building in a test game.

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2. The scan

There's no way to look without being seen. The second the probe goes active, every Kurita display in the valley knows exactly where I am, ECM or not. Here we go... Energize.

In the pre-End declarations phase, select your scout, press Scan and click the flag. Labels go on the scout and the flag, and a sensor sweep is drawn between them, so your opponent can see where you're looking. That's how Kurita knew to put a lance on the ridge.

3. The reveal

Supplies, fine, that's what we came for. But those shapes on the gantries aren't crates. Months of rumours, and it's sitting right in front of me. Hands steady. Make the call.

The sensor check is rolled in the End Phase against Piloting skill +3, and range, line of sight, probes, ECM and stealth all apply, so Kurita's jamming makes Okafor's job harder. He passes, and only his side reads what the scan reveals. If your table prefers the Tactical Operations: Advanced Rules version, tick TacOps Scanning in Game Options.

4. Getting home

Four of them up there, sitting on the only way out. The Captain says hold, so I hold. When Fire Lance comes down to that ford, I go, and I don't look back.

Paid When the reading gets home, nothing is scored yet, and each round the standings remind both sides the reading is still out. Okafor's Raven is free to leave once the scouts' stay is up, but the only way out runs past the ridge and over the ford. He crosses the moment the ford opens, and leaves over his home edge a couple of turns later. If he dies first, the reading dies with him. Nobody gets left behind. Choose On the scan, lost if the scout is destroyed to pay at once but take the point back if the scout dies before it leaves, or On the scan to pay for good.

Click a tab to see each scoring scheme. Hold and Scan have more buttons under the picture: Hold shows both ways of counting turns, and Scan walks through a scan from start to finish.

Step 4: Fight for Control

In the story: eight against four takes the ridge, but two against four doesn't even slow Kurita's count. And Voss's battle armor only counts in the yard once it climbs off the Command Lance's 'Meks, because units being carried never count.

Once everyone has pressed Done, deploy and play as normal. Points are decided in each End Phase. A side controls a point when it has more eligible units inside the zone than anyone else. Two ‘Meks against one is control. One against one is a tie, and a tie means nobody holds it.

Not everything counts. Crippled, prone, immobile and transported units don’t. Neither do aircraft in flight, and a VTOL never counts, even on the ground. That’s how the rulebook works, and it means a lance of hovering VTOLs won’t hold the depot for you.

The board keeps you up to date:

• The flag and its zone take the colour of whoever holds it, and stay white while nobody does.
• Hover over a flag to see what it needs and who’s winning it.
• Each End Phase report says who controls each point and what was scored. Each round opens with every side’s running total.

A Capture point being taken. The zone takes the colour of whoever holds it, and the report counts each turn of control until the point falls.

Step 5: The End of the Game

In the story: the fight runs until the relief column arrives at the turn limit. By then the yard has fallen, the ford is taken, Okafor is clear, the ridge is secured, and Voss is still standing on the warehouse when the column rolls in.

With objectives on, the game no longer has to end when one side is wiped out. It ends at the turn limit, when a side reaches the points target, or at sudden death, whichever you set in Step 1. Then the victory points decide the winner, and the victory page lists every scan made during the game.

Scenario files can go further. A scenario can place its own points, give a side a head start in victory points, lock the options that make up its mission, and set graded results, like a marginal or a decisive victory at set point totals.

One reading carried home, one victory point, one win.

Game Masters

A game master can set up any side's points, take a setup turn without any units, and place, edit or remove points in the middle of a game. Running a campaign night? Move the objective when the story calls for it. If a player joins a scenario late, they still get their setup turn.

A game master also sees one extra field on Scan points: The scan reveals. Write what the scout discovers there, and only the scanning player reads it when the scan succeeds. "The warehouse is full of PPC capacitors" is a lot more fun than "+2 VP". From 0.51.02, the player placing a Scan point can write it too, as in the Scan tab in Step 3.

Important: The Bots Don't Play Objectives Yet

Princess will fight on an objectives map, but she doesn't know the flags are there. She won't contest a zone, garrison a point or scan anything.

For now, objectives are for games between human players, or with a game master running things. Teaching the bots is on the list below, and it's last on purpose.

What’s Next

Everything above is the foundation. Here’s what comes next, in the order we plan to bring it to you. The first three are already built and are waiting for 0.51.02; the variants and the Raid change have been through QA, and the scanning change is being tested now. The rest are planned. As always, plans can change.

Objective Variants: Coming Soon

The Core Rulebook has four variants for objective counters, and all four are already built and tested:

• Potential. A candidate, not yet a confirmed objective. It scores nothing until a unit confirms it with a scan.
• False. A decoy. Scan it and it’s exposed and removed. Never scan it, and you find out at the end of the game that you spent a whole battle guarding nothing.
• Fragile. Damage in its hex, from fire, artillery or a building collapse, can destroy it.
• Mobile. A ‘Mek with a working hand can pick it up and carry it, and drops it if it falls. Carry it off the map and it goes with you.

QA has already played every one of these. They finished too late to go into a release this size, so they’ll arrive in 0.51.02.

Walk onto the flag and pick it up, choosing the hand to carry it in.

Coming soon: the Phoenix Hawk makes off with the objective.

The Objective Raid Mission

In the Core Rulebook’s Objective Raid mission, each side scores for every objective it holds, every End Phase, not just once at the end. 0.51.02 brings our Raid in line with the book, and QA has already played it. Raid points will pay every End Phase by default, as printed. A new setting, “Victory points are paid: Once at game end”, keeps today’s behaviour for anyone who prefers it, and saved games keep paying the way they were set up. It’s the same principle again: the book’s method first, with alternatives available.

The next step after that is a mission preset that sets up an Objective Raid for you: rolling the number of counters, enforcing the spacing, and rolling their variants.

Scanning: Hide Something for Them to Find

Scanning gets the same treatment as everything else in this post: we keep playing it, and we keep polishing it. 0.51.02 adds a way to hide something for the other side to find. Choose who will scan it, write what they’ll discover, and it stays a secret until they do. You’ve already had a glimpse of it in the Scan tab in Step 3.

What About Capture the Flag?

Yes, we’ll get there, and once the variants and the Raid change arrive, you’re closer than you might think. You can already play a rough version: put a Mobile Raid flag in each side’s deployment zone, set to pay Once at game end. A ‘Mek with a working hand can grab the enemy’s flag. It may drop it if it takes a beating, and the enemy can pick it straight back up. Carry it off the map over your own home edge, and it counts for your side when the game ends.

What’s missing to make it the real thing:

• A base to bring it home to. Scoring when the flag reaches your own zone, not only when it leaves the map.
• Flags that go home. A dropped flag that its owners recover goes back to its base, instead of lying where it fell.
• More than one capture. Score, reset, and play on to three captures.

Those are on the list, after the pieces below.

Setting the Stakes

We’re also taking a fresh look at how victory points are set, and bringing it closer to the Core Rulebook. In the book, the mission decides what each objective is worth, and when a mission doesn’t say, you can roll for it. So that’s where we’re heading:

• Use Objectives stays the switch in the lobby, and the side with the most points when the game ends still wins.
• A new Objective value choice in the lobby. Let each player set their own flags, as now. Make every flag worth the same, which locks the value in the flag dialog. Or roll on the Core Rulebook’s random value table once setup is done.
• The points needed to win immediately target is either retired, or tied to the points actually on the board.

This is the next thing we’re working on.

Name Your Flags

Every flag a player places is currently called “Objective” and its hex number, so a busy game reads like a list of map coordinates. Scenario files can already give their flags real names, and players will be able to as well: “Hidden Supply Depot” instead of “Objective 0907”, in every report, tooltip and the end-of-game page.

Behind the scenes, every flag also gets an identity of its own, so two flags with the same name, or a Mobile flag that’s been carried halfway across the map, can never be mixed up.

Further Out

The rest of the plan for 0.51.03, the release where we aim to have the whole set finished:

On the Roadmap

• Demolish. A point you win by flattening what's in it, not by holding it. Drop the bridge, level the depot. The owner scores if it survives, and the attacker scores if it doesn't.
• One flag, several objectives. Scan the depot to find out what's inside, and only then can you take it. One point, with each objective unlocking the next.
• Hidden objectives. Points placed in secret, and full double-blind support on the board.
• A custom scheme editor. Build your own scoring rules and victory conditions, instead of choosing from presets.
• MekHQ. MekHQ can already hand MegaMek objectives before a battle. What's missing is the return trip: sending the results back so a StratCon scenario can read them.
• The bots. Teaching the bots to plan around objectives the way a company commander would: send a lance to take the hill, hold the depot, hunt the scout.

Strategic Targets in Bot Settings. Once the objectives work is complete, the Hex targets list at the bottom goes: Princess will take her targets from the objectives on the map instead.

The bots come last for a reason. Every one of the items above changes what an objective can be. A bot taught today would have to be taught again each time one of them lands. So we'll teach it once, against the finished set. It means objectives stay a human-versus-human game a while longer, and we think that's the better trade. One small piece is already in 0.51.01. In Bot Settings you can mark enemy units as priority targets, such as the scouts in a scanning game or the trucks in a convoy, and the bot will favour shooting them. It still won't go after the flags themselves.

Thanks

A feature this size doesn’t happen without a lot of people. Thanks to the developers who reviewed every piece of it, to the Test Pilots QA group who played the same eight turns more times than anyone should have to, and to everyone who sent us a report when a flag did something strange.

Next week Illiani will be back to talk about the economic changes coming to MekHQ in 0.51.01.

If you’ve got questions or feedback, come find us on Discord.

Run those ammo bins dry and your PPCs hot!