Programming

The way you control your robot is by programming it. Every round you use the cards you have been dealt to program the 5 next moves for your robot. You program your robot by reordering the program cards you have been dealt. Only the 5 first cards matter. When you are happy with your program, you press "Done programming". Your robot will now try to complete its program as best it can, but there are many board elements and other robots to disrupt your intentions.

Program cards

Health

A healthy robot gets 9 programming cards every draw-phase. Using these 9 cards the player has to program the next 5 moves. The rest of the cards will be discarded, so the only cards you care about are the 5 cards you will use the coming resolution phase.

The first 4 points of damage that a robot receives will reduce the number of programming cards available to the player by 1 for each point of damage. This means that if the robot has 2 damage, then the player will receive 7 cards to make a program with, instead of 9.

Every point of damage that the robot receives after the first 4 points of damage will result in the locking of one of his 5 active program cards, starting with the last one. The locking of a card means that it cannot be replaced or reordered, and the player will be able to reorder even fewer cards.

When a robot has received a total of 9 damage, all the active cards are locked and no cards will be replaced in the next draw-phase, and no cards can be reordered.

When a robot has received a total of 10 damage, it is destroyed. A copy of your robot will be hastily constructed (resulting in 2 damage) at or close to the last checkpoint visited by the robot. A checkpoint is a repair/option location or a race checkpoint.

Shutdown

Keeping your robot healthy is important to secure victory and thus it is sometimes advisable to declare shutdown. Unfortunately - like a modern-day computer - your robot spends some time shutting down, so you have to program your robot before shutdown is declared. Your robot will execute the program to the best of its abilities before shutdown takes effect.

The effect of shutdown is that your robot will power completely down. It can still be pushed or transported by conveyor belts, but it will not move on its own or fire any weapon system. The upside is that your robot will completely repair itself during that round. Unfortunately your robot still takes damage during that round, so if you have ended up in laser-fire on the board or if you have "friends" that prefers to kick you when you are down, then you are a sitting duck. All the existing damage will be repaired at the start of the round of a shutdown, but any damage you receive during your shutdown will not go away.

Weapons (to make things more interesting)

All the robots are equipped with a laser, and they are incredibly trigger-happy as well. Robots are very immature and cannot resist the tempation of shooting at any target in front of them. If the robot has several weapon systems installed, then the most you can do as their controller is to decide what flavour of pain to inflict.

Laser

"The (laser)pen is mightier than the sword" or in this case the heavy-duty mining laser is mightier than a sharpened piece of metal. Especially at a distance. The laser still only inflicts 1 point of damage by indiscriminately melting parts of the competition.