HOW IT PLAYS
Mecha Asylum is a persistent strategy game in the tradition of the classic browser space empires, with mechs instead of starships. Everyone shares one universe that grows as players arrive, with up to 1,000 empires to a galaxy and 15 planets to a system. Planets and moons are never destroyed; they change hands.
FOUND YOUR HOMEWORLD
Pick a faction and land in the newest galaxy with room. Your homeworld has 163 fields to build on, and its moon is already hanging overhead, waiting to be taken.
BUILD THE ECONOMY
Raise extractors, power and storage. Resources flow in every few seconds, whether or not you are signed in, and every upgrade lands on time.
RESEARCH
Research belongs to you, not to one world: 63 shared lines in five branches plus your faction's own 49-tech tree, and every level improves something. Better weapons, shields and drives; more task forces; the right to hold more colonies and moons.
ROLL OUT MECHS
Queue mechs, craft and defenses in your foundries. Light and Medium mechs come from planets; the heavy machines only from a moon's Lunar Foundry. Every mech's pilot gains veterancy with the rest of its archetype as it fights, and named aces fly hero mechs of their own.
SEND TASK FORCES
Pick a slot on the sector map, set your waves, cargo and speed, and launch. Fuel is paid up front for the whole trip. Change your mind and a recall gets it home in half the time it has flown.
TAKE NEW GROUND
Win capture campaigns to claim colonies and moons. Each moon opens a Lunar Foundry and Helium-3, your way out to the rest of the galaxy.
HOMEWORLD, COLONIES, MOONS
The planet type follows the slot: scorched worlds close to the star, then arid, temperate and ice, with gas giants at the edge. Hot planets favor crystal and solar power, arid ones alloy, cold ones propellant. Moons are part of the map from the start, from none around scorched worlds to three around gas giants, and every one has to be won.
| RESOURCE | WHERE | WHAT FOR |
|---|---|---|
| Alloy | Planets | Everything you build. |
| Crystal | Planets | Everything you build. |
| Propellant | Planets, richest on cold ones | Flights inside a star system, and fission reactors. |
| Helium-3 | Moons, richest around ice planets and gas giants | Flights out of the star system. |
| Antimatter | Stations over gas giants | Warp gate jumps and the gates' upkeep. |
| Energy | Solar arrays, reactors, orbital grids | Runs your extractors. Short on energy, short on output. |
NINE WAYS TO LEAVE HOME
You start with one task force in the field at a time and earn more through Command Net research. Flights inside a star system burn Propellant; leaving it takes Helium-3, which is why your first moon changes everything.
ATTACK
Send your mechs against another player's world in waves. Win, and you plunder what your cargo holds. Open it as a joint attack and up to four more players can join.
RECON
Recon Drones report back. The more you send and the better your Recon Tech, the deeper they see: resources, then units, defenses, buildings and research.
TRANSPORT
Deliver resources to any world and fly home.
DEPLOY
Move units and cargo to another of your worlds for good.
SALVAGE
Every battle leaves wreckage in orbit. Salvage Rigs haul it home.
CAPTURE CAMPAIGN
Take an unclaimed planet or moon by beating its garrison, mission after mission.
DEFEND
Hold an alliance mate's or ally's world for the hours you choose, and fight every battle that lands there.
EXPEDITION
Fly into deep space for one to 24 hours. Longer trips bring back more, but space has storms and pirates too.
BOARD
Land on a pirate ship in your system and take it over deck by deck in a real-time mini-game.
WAVES AGAINST ZONES
Every world is defended in zones, one more for each level of Fortification. Its defenses spread across the zones and its mechs hold the outer one. The attacker sends the task force in waves; each wave fights the next standing zone, survivors push on, and the attacker wins only when every zone falls.
Most destroyed defenses are rebuilt after the fight. Wrecked mechs and craft, on both sides, leave a salvage field in orbit for whoever gets there first.
WIN THE WHOLE CAMPAIGN
Colonies and moons are taken with a capture campaign: 6 to 8 missions against a garrison that grows with each one. Your survivors carry from mission to mission, and losing any of them ends the attempt. A campaign holds its target for three days, so no one can start another there while yours runs.
Play each mission yourself on a large isometric battlefield: land a Field Command Post, send Salvage Rigs for salvage, build turrets, train your faction's mechs and hold out against the waves. Or let the missions resolve on their own.
Settling a planet takes a Colony Dropship in the task force. Every moon you hold adds a Lunar Foundry, Helium-3 and room for the heaviest mechs.
LAND TOGETHER
Open an attack as a joint attack and your alliance mates and allies can join it, up to five players with one task force each. Faster task forces leave later and slower ones are boosted, so everyone lands on the target at the same moment.
Each attacker risks only their own mechs, and the plunder is shared by the cargo room each one has left.
WARS FOUGHT WITH TASK FORCES
Alliances have chat, mail, roles, sibling alliances and shared objectives, and founding one is free. Declare a war and every attack between the two sides scores the units each one destroys. The side with the most points wins, and its fighters share the reward.
DEFEND IT YOUR WAY
Every world has its own defense map. Place your turrets and mechs zone by zone in the layout editor and save presets; the layout you pick fights attacks while you're away. Online when an attack lands, or attacking someone who is? Both sides get two minutes to join a live battle the server runs, and the computer plays any side nobody commands.
Much smaller empires are shielded from players many times their size, so new commanders get room to grow. More on the mini-games.
PILOTS WITH NAMES
Research the Ace Program to open a roster of named aces. Each one flies a hero mech and levels up on their own. Put an ace at the head of a task force to lift its attack, or station one on a world to lift its defenders' shields and hull. Aces who go down are back in action after a while, but every scar takes something off their hero mech.
EXPEDITIONS
Send a task force past the edge of your system for one to 24 hours. It might come back with resources, light mechs or nothing at all, or run into pirates or a storm on the way. Deep Space Survey research improves the finds and lets you run more expeditions at once, and on rare trips the crew brings back a free 3- or 7-day pass.
STATIONS AND GATES
Antimatter is made only on stations over gas giants. Players crowdfund a warp gate in a system, and everyone who chips in owns a share of its fees. Owners jump free, friends and neutrals pay, and enemies are blocked unless they can hack the gate past its encryption.
WHAT COMES NEXT
Mecha Asylum is still in development. This is what's being worked on now.
MORE ART
Faction crests and new battlefield pieces are on their way.
BALANCE
Every cost, time and stat is still a first guess, tuned as more players arrive.