Sengoku Rance:Game mechanics

Title Screen

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

General Flow of the Game
Every turn in the game consists of your actions, denoted by the number of war fans at the top left of the screen (行動回数) followed by the actions of all other nations currently active. To end your turn, you must press the red button (or the ESC key) and select yes (はい).

Before your actual turn begins, you will have several notes scrolling along the bottom of the screen while the player collects money from lands under its control. Units that didn't participate in battle in the previous turn will also recover some of its units.

In general, this is how the main screen will look to you.

After your turn is done, all other nations currently active will cycle through their actions in random order before the action switches back to you.

Status Bar and Other Counters
At the bottom of the map is the status bar.

In the System button you can find the following options:
 * LOAD (Load a game.)
 * 専用HPへ (Opens your browser at AliceSoft Rance 7's page.)
 * CGモード (Opens up the CG collection.)
 * 音楽モード (Opens up the Music collection.)
 * 環境設定 (Set message options.)
 * タイトル画面へ (Go to the Title screen.)
 * ゲーム終了 (Close the game.)
 * SAVE (Saves the game.)

The next three buttons are the Items, Troops and Captives. The two cells on the right are Cost （コスト） at the top and National Power (国力）. To the right is the Satisfaction （満足度） of Rance, followed by the Gold （金） you have and the current turn （ターン）.

In the Items screen you can see all the Items under your posession, for use or for equip.

In the Troops screen you can find all your Captains and other troops, along with their Skills and main stats. Though in this screen you can only see the left side of the status of a captain, at the top is the life (体力) for when exploring dungeons, followed by the LV and occupation of the unit. Along the left side are the skills, offensive, defensive and passive. The green bar displays the number of soldiers in the unit, current and max and the red button is similar to an "accept" used when working with the sliders at the bottom. The top one (補充) will refill your units. Directly below is the cost rate, in this case for each unit you need 4 gold. The middle one (増員) will increase the max number of soldiers in the unit at the price shown below per unit. There are limits to the max which increase with the flow of the game or other events. The last one (解雇) will fire troops, in this case giving you the money shown below per unit you fire. At the bottom is the total cost in gold (金) for the changes to the sliders and the cost in national power (コスト) to the right. Do note you can change the sorting by using the top buttons.
 * 必要數值順: Will sort the captains by parameters. For example, if you are doing a search and press this button, your captains will be ordered from top to bottom by who has the highest search points.
 * 並び替え: Modify the lineup by hand.
 * 解雇: Select a captain to remove him/her from your lineup.

In the Captives screen you can see all the units in your prison. By selection one and pressing the button whereas the three sliders would be, you can use units to convice the captive into joining your army. Simply select units until the number of your negotiation points goes over what the captive requires.

The Cost is the added sum of the cost of all your units compared to your National Power. If the former exceeds the latter, you will be receiving only half of your normal income until you can regulate the cost. Satisfaction is used for Rance to obtain certain bonuses, among others. Your current gold is just that, the gold you have on hand, and the turn is at what turn you currently are.

If you noticed in any of the previous screenshots a counter at the top of the map, near the System (システム) button, those are the current points you have. Each turn the counter decreases by one and certain actions increase them. They are used for 2nd and further games to obtain bonuses.

Also, in the System screen you can see your current objective (in Japanese obviously) and the current seals that have been broken. After five have been broken something might just happen...

Actions
What you can do in a turn is in general limited to the number of action fans you have (found directly below the action list you can see below, right by the word: 行動回数) and of course, what you can do with them. Here's a picture showcasing some simple commands:

Generally, commands can be broken down int 5 types, all types will be further explained below.
 * Blue Commands (建設): Construction or Expansion
 * Yellow Commands (交渉): Negotiations of any kind
 * Red Commands (合戦): Battles and Dungeons
 * Green Commands (探索): Exploration
 * Purple Commands (???): Events
 * Blank Commands (No tag): All sorts of misc. stuff.

For Blue, Yellow and Green commands, you must gather up a certain amount of points from your units. Each character has three different stats for this, one for construction, another for negotiation and the last one for scouting/searching. Purple, Red and Misc. events can be done instantly provided you have a war fan.

'Blue Commands' have two uses for the most part.
 * 尾張の開発 (国力UP): Increases the National Power of the territory by 1.
 * 次の合戦の準備 (#%): Gives you an advantage shown by the percentage during the next battle fought in that territory.

'Yellow Commands' can vary a bit, but overall you'll see only see three options.
 * に宜戦布告: Declare war on the selected city.
 * (Missing name): Makes the city your vassal.
 * 人材発掘: Unit name (Class): Recruits an unit of the specified class.

'Red Commands' are generally brought down to four types, though two are basically the same.
 * と合戦 (攻め込む): Attacks a sub-location of a territory under control of a particular house. Example: The Demon Army is: 魔軍と合戦 (攻め込む).
 * と合戦 (#い返し): Missing a Kanji in the name, but you can get the gist. It's the same as fighting, except the sub-location is in a territory you control.
 * Dungeons: The name of each dungeon is at the beginning and only the end changes a bit, but they are easy to recognize.
 * Aditionally, there are also some fixed battles in some territories that will always spawn the same enemies for you to fight in captain battles.

'Green Commands' have two types:
 * 迷宮を探す: Used to find a dungeon in that territory.
 * 秘宝 Item Name: Used to explore for a particular item.

'Purple Commands' are all "???" and are usually for scenes, similar to Blank Commands. Some might be H-scenes, some aren't. Or other random stuff, such as Rance bonuses, etc. For example, under most circumstances, any of the options to speak with a person of your troops is usually under a blank command, but if an event can happen, a "???" tag will show up besides it instead.

Battle System
There are actually two types of battles, though by far troop battles will be the most you'll be seeing.

What matters in these battles are the unit's size of your troops, which in a sense acts as the HP of the captain. Once it goes down to 0, the unit is taken out of combat.

Directly below the unit's size is the number of actions it can take represented by small war banners. White banners are unused, red banners are action points already spent and yellow banners show how many points the current action will take (see screen below).

Along the center of the screen is a number of bars, each one of them will disappear when an unit takes action and when they are over, the battle will finalize, the winner being the one who was most control of the blue/red bar at the top. As long as the indicator is on the right side, you'll win the battle even if all enemy units are still alive. Alternatively, defeating every unit will grant you the victory in that moment.

There are different types of troops, each with its own skillset that they can use during battle. The general type of an unit can be found by looking in the small tab by the unit's indicator. Some units, such as Bushi, Foot Soldiers and Musketeers can only attack while they are on the front row of battle, while ranged units can act from both rows.

There are several arrows along the portraits of the units of the Oda House, they are status boosts granted either by a skill they own, or from Tacticians.
 * Red: Attack Boost
 * Blue: Defense Boost
 * Magenta: Intelligence Boost
 * Green: Speed Boost

As a general note, Foot Soldiers (The shield-type) have the ability to take cover for other units. Whenever an unit in that row is attacked (or in the whole group is the Foot Soldier has the All Guard skill), the percentage shown in the unit's portrait is the chance that the Foot Soldier will take the hit instead.

To attack you must simply hover your mouse over an enemy portrait and your attacks will show up. Hovering the cursor over one of them will display on your side the number of action points the action will take. The same goes for defensive and support actions, you just instead hold the cursor over an ally portrait.