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Movement

Movement into a cell is easy to request--interfaces let you do this with a keystroke or mouse click--but each game design will have many rules constraining possible moves, depending both on the unit and the terrain it is moving over. Certain kinds of terrain cost extra time to enter, leave, or cross. The destination must usually be adjacent to the unit's current location, and may be at any altitude.

The other kind of movement action is to enter/leave a transport. The only argument is the unit to enter, but again the constraints are complicated. The transport must have sufficient space, both the entering unit and the transport must have sufficient mp and acp to complete the move, and the entering unit must be able to cross the intervening terrain. The transport may be able to ferry the would-be occupant over any barriers; possibilities include no ferrying, ferrying only over the transport's terrain, ferrying over any borders, and ferrying over all terrain between the would-be occupant and the transport.

Although as with other actions, you use up action points to move, the cost of movement is based on movement points or mp. A unit's speed determines the relationship between acp and mp; most of unit have a speed of 1.00, so for them acp and mp are the same. However, a unit with a speed of 4.50 and 2 acp will be able to do moves costing up to 4.50 * 2 = 9 mp.

In some games, you may be able to make one of your units leave the world entirely. Sometimes this will seem like a good idea, perhaps to keep a trapped unit from falling into enemy hands, or because you win the game by leaving through a designated place. To do this, you just direct your unit (which must already be at the edge of the world) to move into one of the cells along the edge. If the departure is allowed, then the unit will simply vanish and be out of the game permanently.

In other games, you may be able to do a border slide. This is where a unit can jump to a non-adjacent cell if the two cells have a border whose endpoints touch the starting and ending cell. This is typically allowed in games so that ships can go through narrow straits without having to be "between cells" at any time.


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