Additional Military Rules

Aircraft in Action

Aerospace strike craft - both conventional aircraft and mecha - are a cornerstone of modern space combat. They can fill many roles and have various specific rules and actions they can undertake. Following is a short list of the most important/common of these.

Ammunition
All atrike craft have limited ammunition, be it charges for their beam rifles or bombs in their internal bays. During standard naval combat, they have three 'rounds' of ammunition. Combat against ground targets tends to be less ammunition-intensive and they will have enough ammunition for 5-7 rounds. Once a craft's ammunition is exhausted, it will be forced to rely only on melee weapons or internal guns (functionally treated as + Melee)

Alpha Strike order
All Aircraft (Fighters and bombers) may perform an Alpha Strike; this expends all their (remaining) ammunition at once but drastically boosts firepower. A craft running low on ammunition may find itself unable to Alpha Strike effectively or at all.
By default, Mecha may not Alpha Strike, as you can only fire bullets out of your 120mm machinegun so fast.

Go Guns order
By contrast, Aerospace craft can also 'go guns', closing with the enemy to use their fixed weapons. This can be gatling guns or even melee weapons like beam sabers and the like. It reduces firepower and range but does not require ammunition.

Mecha do not lose as much firepower while Going Guns, and in their case is generally called 'closing for melee'.