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Movement & the Lancer Ruler

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Lancer Automations ships its own token and canvas ruler, built around Lancer's speed tiers and elevation. Boost detection, the movement cap, and the debug toggles are in Movement Advanced.

Settings

Ruler & Measures → Lancer Automations Ruler. The path colors live in the Colors tab, under Ruler Colors.

The Lancer ruler

Lancer ruler (enableBuiltinSpeedProvider) is on by default. Changing it needs a reload. It conflicts with the standalone lancer-speed-provider module: with both active, the compatibility check offers to disable my ruler, so uninstall or disable lancer-speed-provider if you want to keep mine.

While you drag a token, the ruler shows the movement cost and colors the path by speed tier: standard, boost, and over-boost (mechs with Overcharge, or NPCs with Limitless). Free and forced moves get their own colors. All five colors are set in Ruler Colors, in the Colors tab.

Each waypoint label shows the running cost, the delta from your last click, an ↑/↓ elevation change, and a ⚠ marker on cells that cross difficult terrain. Per-step Ruler Path (rulerPerStepRender, on by default) draws the path through each grid cell instead of a straight line.

Status effects shape the tiers: prone halves speed, slow removes boost and over-boost, and stunned, immobilized, shut down, down and out or dazed stop movement entirely.


How movement cost is figured

Each step costs:

  • its horizontal distance,
  • its vertical distance,
  • the worst difficult-terrain penalty on the cells it crosses (from Terrain Height Tools, Grid-Aware Auras, TemplateMacro zones, or Foundry region Modify Movement Cost behaviors).

By movement type:

  • Walking adds a climb surcharge: the first unit of a climb is free, each unit after it costs 1 more. A 3-unit climb costs 5 (3 height + 2 surcharge). Flying, the climber status and an elevation immunity bonus remove the surcharge.
  • Flying follows the highest terrain it crosses and holds altitude over dips. No surcharge.
  • Jumping one cell across, rising no more than the token's SIZE, costs double the horizontal distance. The climb is free and only the landing cell's terrain counts. A longer or higher jump costs the same as walking.

Pathfinding and reach colors use the same costs. Gridless scenes work too, sampling penalties along the line.

Low walls

With Step Over Low Walls (enableObstructionStepOver, on by default), a SIZE 2+ token stands on the lowest hex under its body:

  • Terrain under it lower than its SIZE doesn't lift it or cost anything to cross.
  • Ending a move on that terrain puts the token on top.
  • Terrain as tall as its SIZE or taller is climbed as usual.

It only applies in Ground mode. Flying tokens, SIZE 1 tokens and pilots always climb. The No Step-over toggles add NPC templates that always climb too (vehicles, squads, humans and specialists by default), and the noObstructionPass flag opts out any token. Both are in Ruler & Measures → Lancer Automations Ruler.

Elevation also feeds combat range checks (overwatch, engagement, range) through Count Elevation in Combat Distance (count3DDistance, on by default), in Combat & Movement → Movement & Boost.

The ruler works with my forks of Grid-Aware Auras and Terrain Height Tools, plus my TemplateMacro: set difficult terrain by painting it with THT, dropping a GAA aura, or placing a TemplateMacro zone, and the ruler bills the penalty as you cross it.

Elevation

During a drag, E raises the token's elevation and Q lowers it, by one grid unit per press (the offset resets when the drag starts).

With Terrain Height Tools, the token also auto-elevates as you drag, on drop, and when you first place it. It has two modes, picked by the movement action:

  • Ground - the token stands on a surface. It climbs what it must, goes under overhangs and bridges it fits beneath, and comes down off ledges. Walk, climb, crawl and jump use it. E/Q add on top of the surface.
  • Hold - the elevation at drag start is a floor. The token rises only where terrain fills its space, comes back to the floor once clear, and never goes below it. Fly uses it. E/Q move the floor.

Press Z to swap them for the session. The badge on the last waypoint shows which one is active. You can turn auto-elevation off three ways:

  • Globally - Terrain auto-elevation (terrainElevationMode) set to Off.
  • Measure ruler only - the same setting set to Move only.
  • One token - its own disableAutoTerrainElevation flag, or Terrain Height Tools' own ignoreAutoElevation.

Auto-insert Climb Waypoints (enableClimbWaypoints, on by default) splits the path with climb steps wherever terrain height changes, so the cost is billed at each climb. Fly only splits where it rises.


Movement types and the wheel

A token moves with a movement type: walk, fly, jump, crawl (only while prone), forced, teleport, or ignore-elevation (skips auto-elevation). Gaining a flying or hover status switches the token to fly automatically, and back to walk when it's removed.

Press M outside a drag for the movement wheel, a radial picker. During a drag, Foundry's own Tab cycles the active type without moving the token (Shift+Tab goes backwards).


Keybinds

V, B, M, X and Z are rebindable under Configure Controls → Lancer Automations. E and Q are Foundry's own zoom-in / zoom-out keys, so you rebind them under Core.

Key What it does
V (hold) Free movement - the next move doesn't spend the movement cap and ignores terrain penalties.
B (hold) Debug movement - the next move is recorded by Foundry but skips automation (no onMove, no history, no engagement update).
M Movement wheel - open the picker (outside a drag).
Tab Cycle the movement type mid-drag. Foundry core key, rebind it under Core.
X Toggle Pathfinding - flips drag pathfinding on or off for this session. Needs Pathfind Drag Movement on.
Z Swap Elevation Mode - swaps Ground and Hold for this session.
E / Q During a drag, raise / lower elevation by one.

Tactical distance

While you drag a token, Tactical Distance Labels (enableTacticalDistance) show the distance and elevation delta to every other visible token, right under each one. Set it to off, only in combat, or always.


History and revert

Each token's moves are recorded during combat (distance, cost, whether dragged, free, or forced). From the HUD combat bar you can revert the last move (retraces the token back along the path it took) or clear the history.

History clears on combat start. Two extra world settings clear it at the end of each turn (historyClearOnTurn) or the start of each round (historyClearOnRound). Neither has a UI row, so set them from the console with game.settings.set('lancer-automations', 'historyClearOnTurn', true).


Notable options

Option What it does
Split Movement at Speed Tiers Split a drag into sub-movements where the ruler speed tier changes.
Tactical Label Position Draws the distance label above or below the token. Defaults to below.
Minimum Label Zoom Scale Below this zoom level the label keeps a constant screen size. 0 = disabled.
Elevation rounding Round the label elevation delta to the nearest multiple of this. Ignored on gridless scenes.