Forced Withdrawal Rule Summary

SOME Operations/Tracks/Touchpoints make use of the Forced Withdrawal special rule. If that is the case it will be mentioned in their description.
If one of the factors listed below as "Crippling Damage" is valid, then a unit has to start to retreat, as described under "Withdrawal".


Withdrawal
- Unit moves to the nearest table edge and flees from the board.
- Specific Tracks may demand that the units retreat to a specific table edge
- Units choose the shortest way to the table edge
- Units use their full normal movement points
- Units may move backwards
- Units do not need to use Running MPs, Flanking MPs or Maximum Thrust MPs
- Units do not need to use special movement equipment (Jump Jets, MASC)
- Units may still fire as normal and may use physical attacks (except DFA, Charge etc that make use of movement points)
- Permanently immobilized units, who have no weapons of range 5 or more or cannot do 5 or more overall damage, eject


Crippling Damage
Mechs:
- All weapons with range 5 or more are inoperable.
- Overall possible damage of its weapons falls below 5.
- Complete loss of a side torso.
- Internal damage at three limbs.
- Internal damage at two torso locations.
- Two engine hits.
- One engine hit and one gyro hit.
- Two sensor hits.
- Pilot receives 4 hits.

Vehicles:
- All weapons with range 5 or more are inoperable.
- Overall possible damage of its weapons falls below 5.
- Vehicle looses all armor at any location.

Infantry:
- Infantry platoon looses 21 or more men
- Jump Infantry Platoon looses 16 or more men
- Infantry Squad looses 5 or more men

Aerospace:
- All weapons with range 5 or more are inoperable.
- Overall possible damage of its weapons falls below 5.
- Critical hit on fuel tank or engine.
- Looses more than half of its Structural Integrity.
- Pilot receives 4 hits.

Battlearmor:
- Battlearmour Squad looses 2 or more men.


Morale Rule Summary

Another possible rule to spicy up games is the courage factor on the field: morale. When those rules are used units may be asked to make morale checks, which are done through a 2d6 roll at the end phase of a turn.

While battling just write /roll and it will do one automatically informing all players (that is also a command that can be used on the Chat in MekWars). Check the result against the Morale rating of your unit to know if it will have to retreat (as per the rules above) or not. If the result is equal or higher, the unit passed the check.

Those rules are a slight simplication of the ones from Tactical Operations and Strategic Operations. If agreed between the players, they may refer to those sourcebooks for more details.

Morale ratings depend upon kind of unit and its skill.

A check is called for when
- a friendly unit from the same lance got destroyed that turn;
- the unit gets Crippled, as per the rules in Forced Withdrawal, as well as every time thereafter that it takes structural damage;
- a unit is hit by an inferno missile, this check is done at a -1 penalty to the roll (-3 for infantry);

Pilot Ratings
Green - Gunnery plus Piloting totals 10 or more
Regular - Gunnery plus Piloting totals 8 or 9
Veteran - Gunnery plus Piloting totals 6 or 7
Elite - Gunnery plus Piloting totals 5 or less

Morale Ratings
Important: if a unit is Crippled, it receives an automatic penalty of -3 on the roll to all checks!

Mechs
Green - 4
Regular - 2
Veteran - No check needed

Vehicles/Aero
Green - 6
Regular - 4
Veteran - 2
Elite - No check needed

Infantry
Green - 9
Regular - 6
Veteran - 4
Elite - 2

Example in play

During battle a Mackie MSK-6S with a 5/5 pilot gets his left torso completly destroyed. At the End Phase of this turn the player must make a morale check, as the unit is considered Crippled.

Looking at the table a pilot with a total skill of 10 is considered Green. As he pilots a mech it has a base check of 4.

The player write the /roll command and gets a 6. The mech is considered crippled though (as it has lost an entire Torso), giving a -3 penalty to the roll. The result is then a 3, failure! The pilot is now panicked, and must follow forced withdrawal rules and retreat from the map starting the following turn.