Sengoku Rance:Game mechanics

Title Screen

 * はじめから = New game
 * つづきから = Load
 * アリスの館 = Alice's Cottage (staff corner etc)
 * ゲーム終了 = Quit

General flow and the Phase screen
Each turn begins with the player's phase. At the beginning of the player's phase the player collects money based on territory holdings. Troop units that did not fight in the previous turn also recover a little bit at the beginning of the phase.

During the player's phase the player may perform commands from the command list on the Map screen, or go to the other screens.

The player's phase does not end until the player push the Big Red Button (tm) (or press "Esc" on the keyboard) on the Map screen to end the turn.

Once the player has pushed the "End Turn" button, the other houses go through their phases in random order.

The money collection and troop recovery at the beginning of each house's phase is announced on the Phase screen so you know how the other houses are doing (see image below).



The Status bar
The status bar is located at the bottom of the screen. It has 4 buttons and a few indicators:


 * The F1 button brings up the System （システム）screen.
 * The F2 button brings up the Items （アイテム）screen.
 * The F3 button brings up the Troops（兵力） screen.
 * The F4 button brings up the Captives（捕擄） screen.

To the right of the four buttons are two rows, the top is "Cost"（コスト） and the bottom is "Nation power"（国力）. The next cell to the right is "Satisfaction"（満足度）, then "Gold"（金）, and "Turn"（ターン）.

Map Screen


The box on the upper left are the commands available for the selected location.
 * Blue = Construction (increases local nation power or defense)
 * Yellow = Negeociation (recruiting)
 * Green = Exploration (dungeon)
 * Red = Battle
 * Purple = ???

The yellow war-fans underneath the commands box shows how many commands left you can perform. Max of 6 war-fans.

The Big Red Button (ターン終了) [ESC] ends the turn.

Under the main logo shows the amount of points you have.

Beneath the points is the System Info (シスタム情報) [F5] button which opens the System info window (not to be confused with the System screen).

System info window
The system info window shows you the overall status of the game.

On the top portion it calculates how many points you have based on objectives acheived and turns used.

In the middle it shows the Tehshiism seals' status. There are 8 seals total, spread over 8 different houses (Oda, Uesugi, Takeda, Mori, Hojo, Ika, Akashi, and Ashikaga). Once all the seals are broken, something will probably happen...

On the bottom of the window it shows your current situation (such as "Control the Oda house to conquer neighboring countries").

System screen
The System screen is where you save and load games.

It is divided into 4 subwindows:
 * The auto-save slot window
 * The Save slots window
 * The Load hole (blue)
 * The Delete hole (red)

To save the current game, drag'n'drop the auto-save slot from its window to an empty slot on the Save slots window.

To load a saved game, drag'n'drop the save slot from the Save slots window to the Load hole.

To delete a saved game, drag'n'drop the save slot from the Save slots window to the Delete hole.

Command screen


The command screen is divided into three subwindows. On the right side is the list of captains. On the upper left is the information on the currently selected captain. On the lower left are the captains picked to carry out the current command.

Captain list subwindow
The captain list window shows up for the Item screen, Troop screen, Captive screen (in which case it becomes the Captive list instead), and most commands where you need to select captain to do things.

In the title bar of the captain list window the Cost/Nation power is displayed. On the upper right corner is the "Close" (關) button.

Underneath the tital bar is usually three buttons:
 * Sort by required parameter (必要數值順) - only available for commands that requires a certain parameter. For exploration, this button becomes "Sort by strength" (強さ順), which sorts the captains by their level.
 * Switch lines (並び替え). This button does not appear for exploration.
 * Fire (解雇) - Removes the captain from your service. This button does not appear for exploration.

In the actual listing, after each captain's name, their main stats are listed in order.

Command subwindow
This subwindow varies greatly depending on the screen.

Some commands require the captains' parameters to add up to a certain value in order to succeed. For Construction (blue), Negeociation (yellow), and Exploration (green) commands, they use parameters of the same name, and the required value is listed in the command list on the map screen. For battles (red), the Negeociation parameter is used, and requires 10. Luckily, the column for the needed parameter is highlighted in the captian list subwindow for easy identification.

Battle screen


The above screenshot shows two forces both belonging to the Oda House fighting each other.

Compared to Kichikuou Rance, the concept of captain's HP has been removed, leaving only troop size (captain's HP is only used in dungeons). The number of units each side may bring to a fight has gone up from 4 in Kichikuou to 6. The individual abilities of the captain can be expected to play a much bigger role too, as the overall troop size is much smaller compared to Kichikuou.

Each captain has a number of rectangles corresponding to how many actions they can take. White indicates remaining actions, yellow for current, and red for used-up actions. The meter in the lower center of the screen is the number of actions until the battle is over. Each time a unit acts, the meter decreases by one. This greatly differs from the "round" system employed by Kichikuou Rance or the Dai series, where each round every unit gets to move once. Under this act-meter system, faster units can act multiple time before slower units ever get to move. At the bottom of the field section (upper half) of the screen, the order of units for the next 8 actions is displayed (it's hidden during the action, which is when the above screenshot is taken, but is displayed at command selection).

The top blue/red bar indicates which side is gaining the upperhand. Victory of the battle is decided by who has the upperhand at the end of the battle, or if one side eliminates the otherside completely.

Different units use different types of weapon, as expressed in the little tab for each troop. The ones visible in this screen are sword, spear, and crossbow. Spear and bow may attack from the backrow. If a troop uses weapons that are front-row only but are placed in the back row (such as the troop in the upper left), the "stop" sign is displayed instead of the weapon type.

There are four types of status boosts a unit may have, denotated by up-arrows under the captain-portrait area:
 * Red - (attack?)
 * Blue - (defense?)
 * Magenta - (intelligence?)
 * Green - (speed?)

Two units shown in the screenshot has a 50% "Guard" ability. It means there is a 50% chance when another ally is attacked, the unit with the ability will take the damage instead.

The Items, Troops, and Captives screen are all disabled during the battle.