Combat Basics

This article aims to give an understanding how combat works in Tacticus.

### Units

Two teams face off against each other. The player team consists of up to 5 characters. Some characters can create additional units, called Summons, to aid you in battle. Summons are AI-controlled and act at the start of the player's turn in the order in which they were summoned.

The enemy team can vary depending on which mode you are playing. The objective in a majority of the modes is to kill the enemy team to win. Any unit on your side still alive means the battle is not over yet; this includes Summons. It is possible to win after your characters have died if you still have summons alive; and, vice versa, you usually need to defeat all enemy summons to secure victory.

Each unit has a unique stat block consisting of Health, Armour, Damage, Attacks (noting a number of hits, a damage type, and the range) and Movement. In addition, units can have Traits which further shape their effectiveness in battle. All characters and some enemies and summons also have special abilities: Active and Passive Abilities. An active ability can be used once per battle; a passive ability is effective all the time or when/if its individual conditions are met.

### Health

Each unit starts with their health at maximum. If their health reaches zero, they die. If they lose health but are still alive, they can be healed up to their maximum health (or repaired if mechanical). Their health can not go over their starting health (unless an effect specifically states otherwise). Also, some unit Traits, such as Swarm or Two-Man Team, place limitations on healing.

### Armour

Most units have an Armour value. This armour reduces incoming damage by a flat amount: Attacker damage - Defender armour value = Damage dealt (simplified version; see pierce ratio under Damage below). Armor can be reduced as a debuff from certain sources.

### Damage and Hits

When attacking, a unit deals damage according to its damage stat, multiplied with the number of hits the attack has. Additional modifiers come into play like Terrain and Armour. Each attack has a certain damage type with a pierce ratio. The damage dealt is always at least a minimum based on the pierce ratio of the attack; for example, an attack that deals 100 damage with 50% pierce does not get stopped completely if the defender has 200 armor. Instead, it deals 50 damage (50% of its 100 damage).

### Crit

Regarding attacks with multiple hits and crits.
Each hit is rolled against the crit chance separately - until one of them fails.
So if you're using Bellator, and the first hit rolls and succeeds so it scores a crit, the next hit gets rolled. The second hit rolls and succeeds, another crit! Then the third hit gets rolled, and fails - the remaining three hits are not rolled.

### Range

There are two types of attacks: Melee and Ranged. All units have a melee attack, not all units have a ranged attack. Ranged attacks can be used at a distance, the range is indicated in the unit infobox - most commonly 2 or 3 range, although 4 is also possible. Ranged attacks can not be used if an enemy is adjacent to the unit; it will be forced to use its melee attack instead.

### Movement

All units have a movement stat. This shows the number of hexes they can traverse in their turn. Movement can not be split up. Any leftover movement is lost (if you have a unit with 4 movement and only move 2 hexes, you are stuck there until next turn). You can not move after attacking (see Actions below).

### Actions

A unit can only take one Action per turn (unless another effect allows them to do an additional action). An Action is either Attack, Heal, or Active ability. After taking an action the unit's turn is over; it can not move after taking an action, even if it has not moved that turn. You do not have to take an action; sometimes no action is possible because of your positioning. You can also choose not to take an action and use the "Skip turn" option instead.