Hide

When you Hide, you obscure the position of your mech in order to reposition, avoid incoming fire, repair, or ambush.

To Hide, you must not be Engaged and you must either be outside of any enemies’ line of sight, obscured by sufficient cover, or invisible. If you Hide while meeting one of these criteria, you gain the Hidden status.

Hard Cover is sufficient to Hide as long as it is large enough to totally conceal you, but soft cover is only sufficient if you are completely inside an area or zone that grants soft cover – many systems and talents that grant soft cover or plain old obscurement just don’t provide enough to hide behind!

If you are Invisible, you can always Hide, regardless of cover, unless you’re Engaged.

The exact location of Hidden targets cannot be identified and they cannot be targeted directly by attacks or hostile actions, but they can still be hit by attacks that affect an area. Although NPCs cannot perfectly locate a Hidden character, they might still know an approximate location. Thus, an NPC could flush an area with a flamethrower even if they don’t know exactly where a Hidden player is lurking.

Additionally, other characters ignore Engagement with you while you are Hidden – it’s assumed you’re trying to stay stealthy. You cease to be Hidden if you make an attack (melee, ranged, or tech) or if your mech takes a hostile action (such as forcing a target to make a save). Using Boost or taking reactions with your mech also causes you to lose Hidden. Other actions can be taken as normal.

You also immediately lose Hidden if your cover disappears or is destroyed, or if you lose cover due to line of sight (e.g., if a mech jumps over a wall and can now draw unbroken line of sight to you). If you’re hiding while Invisible, you lose Hidden when you cease to be Invisible unless you are in cover.