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Frequently Asked Questions

This FAQ is under re-organization at the moment, and some questions and/or answers may be out of date. It will be updated as soon as possible.

General

Why is it called an organization now?

For a time, life on Terra-Xi was very desolate and had to be rebuilt. During this time, the wards on Terra-Xi gathered into clans which raged against each other for more power. However, after the third age of war, quite a few wards started a new type of organization: corporations. These are usually very active on the Black Market (which was created in the second age of war but very few individuals had access to it), and are also more focused on achieving direct power than just warring on other clans or corporations.

An organization is a lot more neutral than a clan or a corporation, or any other organization type. In the future, you will be able to select the organization type for your organization, and will also get different member roles (like CEO for corporations and Commander for clans) depending on what you choose.

Why is it called a KE now? or Where did the LCU go?

The LCU was always meant to indicate something that collected the resource that Terra-Xi is so dense of, and thus the Katai Extractor was created to succeed the Land Control Unit. The KE is both more effective and also is more sturdy than the LCU ever was.

What is the minimum KEs I can lose?

This depends on the number of KEs you have, the attackers have, and the total average on the entire planet. This means that as the game progresses, the average will most likely go up, and the minimum KEs you can lose will go up as well.

How long is an hour in real life?

One in-game hour amounts to 15 minutes in real life, however this is only during these beta tests. In proper seasons (e.g., non-beta) one in-game hour will amount to one hour in real life.

How do I get my organization on the Top Orgs list?

You will need 10 members to be listed. In a proper season, the requirement is 15 members. In addition, you need at least 1 score point. Other requirements may be introduced in the future.

Black Market

How do I buy units on the Black Market?

Select "Buy" and the unit type, then enter the amount of units you want and the maximum amount of credits you are willing to pay for each of them. This order will remain on the Black Market for 12 hours, and if you have not been able to buy your units by then, your order will be removed.

How do I sell units on the Black Market?

Before you can sell anything at all, you will need some technologies. For chassis 1 and 2 units, you need Barter. For chassis 3 and 4 units, you need Advanced Marketing (which also requires Barter). When you have these technologies, you are ready to sell units.

Select "Sell" and the unit type, then enter the amount of units you want to sell and the minimum amount of credits you are willing to sell each of them for. It will take your units 2 hours to arrive on the BM, and they will remain there for 12 hours, and if you have not been able to sell your units by then, your units will head back home.

What decides who gets which units on the Black Market?

Orders are filled on a first-come, first-serve basis — as long as the buyer's offer is higher than or equal to the price the seller is asking for.

What decides what the transaction value is on the Black Market?

The seller sets the price per unit, which is the value used in the transaction. Thus, the seller gets the price per unit he wanted, and the buyer pays what the seller wanted. There are no additional fees at the moment.

What are the Black Market travel times?

When you sell units, it takes 2 hours from your ward until they arrive at the Black Market. It takes them 2 hours to get back to your ward as well (if they could not be sold).

When you have bought units, it will take them 2 hours to get to your ward.

Both sell and buy orders stay on the Black Market for 12 hours.

Other

What is the difference between new and unread messages?

New messages is the number of messages that you have received since the last time you visited your Private Messages or Military Messages inboxes. Unread messages are the number of messages that you actually have no read yet.

The reason for this is so that it is easy to see how many actually new messages you have received, so you do not have to read every single message. This is very useful if you are doing lots of fighting but are not interested in reading every single combat report, or getting a lot of spy reports but cannot be bothered to open the failed spy reports.

What is the difference between the spydrones Echo and Puck?

At the time of this writing, there is no difference at all. Puck used to be able to steal credits from its targets, but due to a malfunction in the system core of Puck that made it shut down every time it tried to steal credits, this feature had to be disabled. A new and revised version of Puck is being designed by scientists somewhere on Terra-Xi.

I sent two squadrons but only got one combat report. What is wrong?

After each battle, all squadron commanders you have at any location collaborate on making one single combat report for the entire battle. This is to relieve you of too much unnecessary paper work.

I sent a squadron to defend somebody, but I never got a combat report. What went wrong?

A combat report is only made when there are attackers there. Without attackers, there cannot be a battle, so there is no need to write a combat report.

Where do I report bugs, and how should I do it?

Please report bugs to the Bug Discussions board only.

Before reporting a bug, you should be pretty sure that it actually is a bug. Make sure that you did not do something wrong. Try to reproduce the bug by doing exactly what you did to trigger the possible bug. If you cannot trigger the possible bug immediately, that does not mean the bug does not exist. However, the easier it is to reproduce, the faster a fix can be made.

When reporting the bug, remember to make a step-by-step description of what you did, what you expected it to do, and what actually happened, as well as how easy it is to reproduce (e.g., if it happens every time, or if you only noticed it once). Also tell us the name and version of the browser you are using (this can in most cases be found by selecting About in the Help menu of your browser), and which operating system you are using (MacOS, Linux, Windows).

After you have reported the bug, you should be available to give us help in locating the bug, and verifying if the bug has been fixed if a fix can be made.

Where do I suggest new features, and what is the likelihood of them being implemented?

Please post suggestions to the Suggestions board only.

As for the likelihood of them being implemented, this depends a lot on the suggestion and how it affects the gameplay, how it fits with the design of the game, and how much work it would be to implement with the current codebase. Some features will not be implemented because they were intentionally left out for some reason or another. Other features will not be implemented immediately, but may be implemented in the future.

To achieve the best likelihood of the feature being implemented, present your suggestion thoroughly on the Suggestions board, receive the necessary feedback, and revise the suggestion until it has been "perfected" — meaning that you do not have a lot of people against you with your suggestion. No feedback does not necessarily mean that no people like it or that no people does not like it, so try to get feedback whenever you can.

In the end, the Terra-Xi High Council will have the final say.

What are the system requirements?

Any computer running either MacOS, Linux, or Windows using either of the Mozilla, Netscape, Safari, Internet Explorer, or Opera browsers should run the game fine. You will also need an Internet connection.

Recommended versions are as follows:

Mozilla 1.5 or Mozilla Firefox 0.7
Netscape 7.0
Safari 1.0
Internet Explorer 6.0
Opera 7.0

Mozilla browsers released before version 1.0, Netscape before 6.0, Safari before 1.0, Internet Explorer before 5.0, and Opera before 7.0 are not supported and highly discouraged for both Mech Wars and general Web usage.

I am not receiving any credits, or I am losing credits. What is wrong?

Make sure that you do not have a too high upkeep. Your squadrons require pay and if your income is lower than the total upkeep requirements, you will start losing credits. To find out how much upkeep you are currently paying, and how much your net profit currently is, go to the Terra Center. See next question for more information.

What happens when my upkeep is higher than my income?

When your upkeep become higher than your income, you will start losing credits. How much you lose will be listed on the Terra Center in the Credits section. After a while, you will hit the bottom, and you will have 0 credits left. Nothing else will happen however, so you will not risk losing any units, technologies, facilities, or other property. However, you will never be able to buy any new units, research new technologies, build new facilities, or build new KEs/SGs. See the next question for help on getting positive income again.

How do I get rid of my upkeep?

If your upkeep is too high for your liking, and you would like to remove some of it, there are a few possible solutions. The first, and probably best solution if you don't want lose too much for the effort of building them, is to suicide them into another player. Using this solution, you do risk the player retaliating on you, and might start a full on war between your organization and the target's organization in the worst case. The other (and much easier) solution is to sell the unneeded units on the Black Market. To get them to sell quickly, you should lower the price as low as you are willing to go, though you should probably try to keep yourself around or above the build costs, depending on how quickly you need the money.

How can I change my handle or ward name?

The simple answer is: you cannot.

The long answer is that this feature has been removed for a number of reasons. Most importantly, perhaps, is that a lot of players used this as disguise during the beginning of a season, and renamed to their proper handles later on. Others used it to spy on other organizations or to impersonate other players. In reality, the ability to change your handle or ward name really is not needed. Choose a handle and ward name and stick with it.

How can I change my organization's name or tag?

The simple answer is: you cannot.

There was a time when this was possible, and a lot of organizations did this for a number of reasons. Some had valid reasons, like they decided that their organization did not have as good a name as it could have, and then changed their organization's identity accordingly. Most reasons, however, were invalid. For example, they would change their name and tag to deliver messages like "we need members" or other, more annoying, messages. Others used it to impersonate and deceive the public by changing their organization's name and tag, some on a daily basis for periods.

How long does it take for stolen KEs to arrive at my ward?

The stolen KEs travel in light-weight high-speed "capsules", which needs 4 hours to get to your ward no matter how far away it is. Each Beholder and Looter carry 3 capsules each.

How do I obtain score?

You receive score from combat and combat only — and it is performance-based. That means you will need to keep fighting to prove to the game that you are worthy of your score.

What are those flags that I see on the Country Overview and Org Overview?

There are 4 flags available in the game, 1 of which is not being used at the moment. The flags are:

O (Online): This flag indicates that the player is currently online, however the flag will remain for quite a bit of time after the last action the player did, so unless the player logged out directly by clicking on the 'Log off' button, the player may seem to be online for a little while when in fact the player has closed his browser window.

P (Protected): Every player starts with this flag, and it basically means that nobody can launch a new squadron mission against you. This includes both attacking and defending you. Intelligence operations may be launched however.

V (Vacation): You used to be able to set your account into a vacation mode, used to indicate that you are not currently playing the game. When in this mode, you would not get any income, and you would not need to pay any upkeep. No technologies, facilities, or units would continue production. However, you would not need to fear incoming squadrons, so you were in essence protected until the next time you logged in. Note: This mode is not being used at the moment.

C (Leader): This is just to indicate who the Country Commander (for countries) or the Organization Overseer (for organizations) is. Since this is already indicated with [cc] and [oo], this flag is likely to be removed.

What is a tick?

A tick is essentially a unit of time. Most actions like building and attacking take so much time (measured in ticks) to finish and each 'tick' means more credits given to you (depending on how many powered KEs you have). Also the game will end and the winner will be chosen after a certain amount of ticks have gone by (the 'Time' value in the header of every scren shows how many have passed so far).

One tick usually equates to 1 hour of real life time, however in this beta, it is set to 15 minutes.

Military

How do I set up and organize my military force?

You can set up two squadrons. Go to 'Squadron Management' in your menu. There you can find a long list of pull down menus, where you can choose the units you want to move between your HQ (Head Quarter), Alpha, and Beta squadrons.

In 'Unit' you can choose which units you want to transfer to a squadron. If you want to move all the units in a squadron to another squadron you find the menu 'all' in the first pulldown menu. This feature moves all units and you do not have to enter the amount of units you want to move.

Next is enter the amount of units you wanna move (in case you have not chosen the 'all' case). If you have 20 Striders in your HQ squadron and you want only 10 to move, the fill in 10. There is also a special condition, where if you enter '*' instead of a number, the amount is set to the number you have in the 'From' squadron.

Next is from where to where you want to move your units. You move the units from the squadron in the 'From' column to the squadron in the 'To' column.

To finish the whole process, hit the 'Initiate Transfer' button.

Please note that you can only move units between your squadrons while both squadrons are at your ward. Thus if you want to move units to a squadron that is in the field (or from a squadron that is in the field), then you have to wait for it (or both if they are both in the field) to get back to your ward.

How can I send my military force on a mission?

Go to 'Squad Missions'. Here you will see your Alpha and Beta squadrons, what mission they are currently on, their current location, and their current target. In addition, a squadron overview is provided below. To give either squad a new mission, select what you want to do from the 'Operation' dropdown menu and hit the 'Update Missions' button. You might also need to enter a new set of targets.

No change: Do nothing, that is, leave the squadron alone and make it just continue carrying out what it is currently doing.

Retreat: You can retreat your units at any time. However, they will need as much time to get back to your ward as they had been on their way before. So if they have been travelling for 4 hours, it will take them 4 hours to get back if you choose to retreat it.

Raid: Attack for 1 hour at your target's ward, then your units will retreat automatically.

Assault: Attack for 2 hours.

Heavy Assault: Attack for 3 hours.

Support: Defend for 1 hour at the target's ward, then your units will retreat automatically.

Patrol: Defend for 2 hours.

Guard: Defend for 3 hours.

Hold Position: Defend for 4 hours.

Defend: Defend for 5 hours.

Fortify: Defend for 6 hours.

Messages

How can I format my messages?

Mech Wars employs a system called StyleMark, and it provides a means of formatting your messages by marking it up with some special tags.

[quote]text[/quote] - Use this to quote another user (or quote something in general). This is automatically used when replying to a private message, as well as when using the quote function on the country, organization, and community boards.

[b]text[/b] - Makes the text appear in bold face.

[i]text[/i] - Makes the text appear in italic face.

[u]text[/u] - Makes the text underlined.

[center]text[/center] - Aligns the text to the center of the screen, horizontally.

[url]http://www.example.com/[/url] - Makes a clickable link to the url specified (http://www.example.com/ in our example).

[url=http://www.example.com]text[/url] - Another variant of the above StyleMark, this will let you make a clickable link to the URL specified (http://www.example.com/ in our example) and the text itself will be what you specify ('text' in our example).

[email]user@domain.tld[/email] - Yet another variant of the URL BB-code, this makes a clickable link to the e-mail specified (user@domain.tld in our example).

[list]...[/list] - This is a special StyleMark tag. It lets you make unordered lists. Between the [list] and [/list] you enter [*] to make a new bullet. You can enter as many bullets as you wish.

I received a military message about a new org application, but it is not there. What is wrong?

There are two possible reasons:

The applicant had applied to several orgs and was accepted to another org before you had a chance to see the application to your org. All applications are removed when you are accepted into an org.

The applicant was made the OO of another org and thus all his applications was removed.