After the mechanics clicked, the scales fell from my eyes. Plays a bit like chess and reminds me of some squad level tactics tabletop war game I once played. Bought Battle Brothers which I can also recommend, and game opened up a bit more, similar mechanics and rules are explored there as well. BB very much feels like a labor of love, so faith in MENACE receiving the attention it deserves is high.
The core loop involves completing missions, which have a primary objective and a bunch of optional objectives. Optional objectives might inform mission planning – if secondary objective says to eliminate _less than_ % of enemies, one might consider a stealthy approach.
To accomplish this, you use one or more squads, commanded by a character with active and passive perks and stats, who also wields the squad's assigned special weapon, if any, so a hero unit of sorts. The squad leader is accompanied by squaddies, who carry the squad weapon, usually an assault rifle, like the R10A6 K-PAC, and if you wonder how it performs, if it looks like Eugene Stoner had their hand in the design, it's probably something like an M16. Completing mission objectives gives promotion points, which can be used to level up squad leaders. Destroyed enemy units might drop items and some might be picked up from the battlefield.
Squad leaders have action points, not sure what the avg is but let's say ~95. Moving to a tile costs ~3 AP depending on type. Deploying to a defensive firing position costs 20 AP, and firing the squad weapon costs 40 AP, so getting down and getting back up costs almost half a turn. Perks can reduce AP costs for actions. When starting out, I tended to move a little and spend a lot of time doing that 20+20 AP rumba. Assaulting and moving through open areas, stopping to fire is deadly, attrition rates are high for unprotected squads. The game really shines in forcing you to think.
Above that layer, missions are chained together in operations like "thwart pirate invasion" in a branching "choose your own adventure" fashion. The briefing, difficulty and reward for each mission is visible, so player can plan how to best tackle the operation at large with current resources – a mission might reward player with a random vehicle or item, some might affect enemy morale, and so forth. A "black market" store is available where player can barter items. Squad leaders can be leveled up and their equipment adjusted between missions.
After an operation is completed, a multi-choice random event might be resolved, player gains favor with the faction who the operation was for, and OCI components. "Operational Capacity Improvements" are upgrades and perks to the player ship, which again provide passive bonuses and/or active off-map abilities. The black market is refreshed, vehicles are repaired, and after upgrades here are done, the player selects next operation, rinse and repeat.
Regarding presentation, things look good and are constantly improving, my brain is drawing comparisons to the turn-based Battletech game. The characters and storytelling is cartoonish but not too cheesy (looking at you, Renegade Ops.) A lot of science fiction tropes and familiar-looking things are abound.
A free camera does not come out of the box, and the default camera is fairly restricted, however you can get down low with a camera mod. The seams start to show then, though: skybox, horizon, objects in fog of war and so on aren't really set up for ground level horizontal viewpoints.
Reason I wanted to get down low to scope things out was to try and figure out ridges and geography and lines of sight, which I enjoyed doing in Combat Mission series. However, currently line of sight and cover work using the playfield grid, and with the 3D presentation there's a disconnect – it might seem like unit can shoot from position A to position B with mark 1 eyeball, and it's difficult to figure out if the squares align.
The game is played on a square grid, and the little computer people running around and taking cover is Battlechess. Hopefully we'll see some improvement here, maybe raycasting in engine to resolve line of sight which can override the good honest raw tabletop rules underneath.
This summer has seen two larger updates adding new characters and reworking & fleshing out the base building progression perk system. If military sci-fi and grognardy turn-based tactics sounds interesting, you should bite, I did and it's pretty tasty.
