Active
A player who is merely logged into the server cannot fight, aside from tutorial battles with players in the Solaris Training Company. In order to fight real battles, a player must activate their armies, to show that they are willing to fight. To activate your armies, press the big red button at the bottom left of the MekWars window.
When a player activates their armies, they will move towards the front lines. At this point, they can be attacked immediately by any active player who has an army in the right BV range(+- 150 BV from any of their armies). After a small delay(roughly one minute), they will reach the front lines, and can launch attacks of their own. Once a player has reached the front lines, they will begin to count towards production for their faction, and they will begin getting occasional events(about every 5-10 minutes) that give them free influence for being on the front lines defending their faction. These bonuses to production and influence scale with the number of armies that the player has active, as long as those armies are all at least 150 BV apart from each other. A player with half a dozen active armies, all at different BV, can easily triple their faction's production per tick.
A player who is active is making a commitment to defend their faction, and if they refuse to do so within a reasonable period of time(roughly 5 minutes) after their faction is attacked, they will take substantial penalties for themselves and their faction. As such, active players should always be close enough to their computer to receive attack notifications and have enough free time to defend against them if needed. The defending player does not have the choice of which planet the battle is fought on or which BV the attacker uses, though if they have multiple armies that can legally defend, they can choose which one they wish to use.
As a point of etiquette, if two players have announced in main chat that they intend to fight each other, respect that decision and do not attack either of them when they activate. The game rules do not enforce this, but it is generally considered to be very poor sportsmanship.
It is possible to see who is active at any given time. Go to Campaign > Status > Players Status, and a list of all online players will appear, and the names of those who are active will appear in italics.
An active player will always have the first chance to attack a player who is in the middle of activating if their armies are within 150 BV of each other, but if they choose not to for any reason, the newly-activated player can attack them as soon as they reach the front lines. A player can deactivate their armies at any time if they no longer wish to risk combat. Simply click the big red button again, and your armies will instantly leave the front lines.
