Combat

Who Fights

Side 0 — the attacker: the ATTACK fleet you dispatched, composed of whatever ships you chose.

Side 1 — the defender: any ships stationed on the target planet, plus the planet's entire DROID workforce (idle and assigned DROIDs both fight). If the planet has no ships and no DROIDs, the attacker auto-wins with no combat.

Ships and the Combat Engine

Ships have different combat roles that interact with each other through a counter system, and who targets whom is re-evaluated as the rounds play out rather than decided once at the start. Shields recover between rounds, but any hull damage taken is permanent and carries forward — a fleet that takes a beating early fights the rest of the engagement at reduced strength. How roles counter each other, and exactly how the engine targets and resolves damage round by round, is something you discover by running battles and reading your combat reports closely. What you bring to a fight matters — composition is as important as raw numbers, and it matters for the whole engagement, not just the opening exchange.

DROIDs as Defenders

Every DROID on the defending planet fights — idle and assigned alike. A large DROID garrison represents a substantial defensive wall before any stationed ships are even considered.

The 50% loss cap: Regardless of how lopsided the battle is, a defending planet always retains at least half of its DROIDs. Even after a devastating loss, the attacker can strip at most half the workforce. This protects the planet's economic recovery.

Deciding the Battle

A clear-cut attacker victory requires the defense to be thoroughly broken: every defending ship destroyed, and the planet's DROID garrison driven all the way down to its protected floor (the 50% cap above). Anything short of that — a surviving defending ship, or DROIDs that never got pushed past their floor — is a repelled attack, even if the attacker inflicted heavy losses along the way.

If the attacker is repelled, the engagement ends without a declared winner: the attacker's surviving ships turn back, and no resources change hands. If the attacker's fleet is wiped out instead, the defender wins outright. And if the target planet has no ships and no DROIDs to begin with, there's no battle to decide — the attacker simply lands and loots what's there.

This makes a half-hearted attack against a defended planet a pure loss — you spend ships and gain nothing — while a decisive, well-composed assault both wins and pays for itself.

Loot

When the attacker wins decisively against an occupied planet, they loot a fraction of each resource stockpile on the planet, capped by the fleet's total cargo capacity. Available cargo is divided across metal, carbon, and hydrogen. Bring adequate hauling capacity alongside your combat ships, or you leave wealth behind. A repelled attack loots nothing, no matter how much damage was done along the way.

Reading a Combat Report

After a battle resolves, both sides receive a combat report. The report shows:

• Winner (attacker, defender, or a repelled engagement with no declared winner)
• Losses per side — how many of each ship type were destroyed
• DROID losses — droids lost on the defending planet
• Loot — resources transferred to the attacker's cargo bays, if any
• Ended reason — a decisive win, the attacking fleet wiped out, a repelled engagement, or an auto-win against an empty planet

Study your combat reports carefully — they are the best teacher for how the combat engine actually works.