id: objectives title: What winning means, and what to do when it stops being available status: blocked dependsOn: [tactics] exitCriterion: > A losing force switches to preserving what it has, does so on a stated threshold rather than a guess, and does not oscillate across that threshold. #

objectives #

An objective is what the side is currently trying to do. It is the utility function, not a constraint list: under WinOnBattleValue a withdrawal is terrible, and under PreserveByRouting an advance is. The same tactics are legal either way; what changes is what they are worth.

That distinction is load-bearing. A TaskOverride removes options from a set after they are scored. An objective changes the scoring. Collapsing the two loses the difference between "forbidden" and "bad".

Absent objectives, Engage is the whole game and half the tactic vocabulary is unreachable - which is the state today.

Two to start #

• WinOnBattleValue - the current victory rule. Makes Retreat unreachable, Reposition nearly so, and Screen unavailable to a side with only one force.
• PreserveByRouting - reached when the match is lost. Admits Retreat, Reposition, Screen above one force, and Break, which is how a disengagement survives: losing line of sight is what buys the turn in which withdrawing is not fatal.

Break sits in both sets, which is right - breaking contact serves winning and losing equally.

• The transition is a threshold, not a judgement: remaining battle value, or a count of crippled units. A threshold can be stated, tested and shown to a player; a learned judgement cannot yet
• Verify it does not oscillate. Flip at 30% and check the behaviour at 31% is stable. This is the cheapest available test of the hysteresis in plan/tactics.md, and losing is easy to produce on demand
• An objective may also bias rather than only constrain, including by which side of the scenario we are on - an attacker and a defender have different utility, not different legal moves

Scenario-derived objectives, later #

MegaMek already carries this. MMS V2 has per-player victory: conditions and composable triggers, and UnitPositionTrigger is literally an extraction objective. None of our maps declare one yet, so the objective layer cannot be exercised beyond the two above.

• Read objectives from the scenario rather than inventing a vocabulary
• Objectives decompose by assignment - first lance screens while second exits - which is the coordinator's relational assignment, not a blend