Chaos Front Combat Guide
Turn-based space tactics with motherships, mecha, and mean physics.
Combat in Chaos Front is a chessboard that pretends to be a Gundam episode. Units spend movement, fire, ram, seize, or hide. Then the other side answers. Animations are the reward; the grid is the game. This page is the mechanic sheet you want open beside controls and the unit overview.
The mid-article video is a real demo session that struggles through the first fights. Watch it for Sortie mistakes, not for a perfect clear.
Sortie before you theorycraft
Capital ships carry the roster. After you move the hull, select it again and Sortie boarded mecha, fighters, or artillery onto nearby tiles. A ship that never sorties is a ram battery with expensive passengers. A ship that dumps everyone on one hex is a gift to knockback.
Spread stacks. Two or three groups survive ram better than a clown car. Titans and battleships want space to fire; light mecha want angles. Builds that mix those jobs live on army builds.
Ram, seize, and the ugly physics
Ram is not a meme button. The mothership can smash an enemy and shove it. If another unit occupies the tile behind the shove, you get collision damage. Demo captains learn this by flattening their own gold mecha. Think one hex ahead, the way Advance Wars players think about rivers.
Seize is capture. Some missions want you to grab a hull or an officer instead of deleting HP. Stealing and seizing show up in the official behavior list next to stealth, mines, fog, shelling, shields, and defensive force fields. If a contract text says capture, stop firing the Blackhole-tier toys you do not have yet.
Morale, ammo, energy
Unit cards track HP, EN, movement, evasion, ammunition, and morale. High morale increases damage. Low morale cuts it. At zero, the sprite is still pretty and the unit is done being useful. Energy and ammo gate the weapons you actually clicked the shop for. A fighter that dumped EN on turn one will not hit-and-run on turn two.
Keep a cheap repair or resupply plan in the corps. Star rank on the ending checklist does not rise if you wipe elite pilots for a yellow explosion.
Melee, parry, and pilot stats
Chaos Front pushes pilot skill harder than Chaos Galaxy 2. A character’s melee stat feeds melee weapon damage on their mecha. When two melee frames clash, parry chance comes from the defender’s melee stat plus the mech’s agility.
Talents matter. Fencer, Kung Fu Master, and Lone Wolf raise parry. Skills named Still Water or Spirit can force a parry against any melee swing. Some melee chassis roll Kungfu or Deflecting Blow for crits or mid-air projectile slaps. Staff those frames with the character hub in mind, not with whoever is standing next to the shop.
Fighters and hit-and-run
You can mix mecha and fighters on the same team. After a fighter attacks, it disengages from the combat zone: if it struck first, it leaves the screen and is a poor counterattack target. That is stronger than the old Chaos Galaxy 2 hit-and-run, and it is also how new captains lose a fighter they thought was still on the hex. Plan the activation order. Details on chassis roles sit in fighters and ships.
Instakill and late toys
A few units can roll a vital hit. If the target is under 1,000 remaining HP, they may vanish. Assassin talent ranks raise that chance. Do not park a wounded ace next to an assassin just to “finish later.”
The Blackhole Gun is a Consortium closer, not a starter weapon. It plants a persistent miniature black hole. Anything in range loses 500 HP at the start of each turn. Ram can shove enemies in. You will not see it until the story is nearly done; do not rebuild your early mecha list around it.
A practical fight script
- Move the mothership to a tile that can sortie without overlapping rocks.
- Sortie light mecha first if you need vision or seize.
- Place artillery where they will not be rammed.
- Activate fighters only when the first strike actually removes a threat.
- Check morale before you send a routing unit into a titan.
- End Turn from the button, not by wandering the Battle Intel menu.
When a map is a story set-piece, read missions for the operational layer. When you are choosing frames, use builds. Combat is how you pay for both.
Frequently Asked Questions
Quick answers drawn from the launch build and official notes.
Why did my fighter disappear after shooting?
Hit-and-run. After an active attack the fighter leaves the combat zone. It is a feature, documented in the October developer log and the ships page.
Can I parry gunfire?
Parry is a melee-versus-melee rule. Some melee skills can slap projectiles, but that is a chassis talent, not a global block button. See talents.
What is a safe HP buffer against instakill?
Keep threatened units above 1,000 HP when assassins are on the field. The threshold comes from the official instakill write-up, not from a fan spreadsheet.
Should I ram every turn?
Only when the destination hex is empty or you want the collision. Friendly fire via knockback is the most common demo death. Practice in the beginner guide maps first.