Player Combat

Player combat resolves an attacking fleet against the defending ships and available stationary defenses. This guide describes the current local combat rules. Void Boss Combat uses a separate encounter system.

Firing order and rounds

Ships fight in blueprint stacks: ships in one fleet entry share a ship count, weapon output, shields and hull pool. They do not take individual turns.

1. Both sides' stacks enter one firing order, sorted by reaction speed. The fastest stack acts first; the entire attacking fleet does not fire before the defender.
2. The firing stack's surviving ship count determines its weapon output. Its damage is distributed across surviving enemy stacks.
3. Shields and hull damage are applied immediately, and destroyed ships are deducted before the next stack acts.
4. The next stack fires with its remaining ships. A destroyed stack cannot take its turn.

Each surviving stack can act once per round, subject to its weapons and battery endurance. Equal reaction speeds receive a random tie-break each round, with no fixed attacker advantage. Combat lasts at most five rounds and ends earlier if either side is wiped out. If both sides remain after the fifth round, the result is a draw.

Damage distribution

A volley is divided using 80% of the enemy's total mass and 20% of its ship count. Heavier or more numerous stacks therefore receive a larger share. Dividing identical ships between more blueprints does not increase their combined targeting share, though turn order and rounding can still affect a battle.

Energy damage reaches shields first. A precision portion of both weapon types bypasses shields; research can affect this portion. Tactical modules, chassis matchups and civilian targets can modify damage. Bombers prioritize surviving stationary defenses or drones when those are available.

Destroyed ships immediately reduce a stack's maximum shield capacity. Between rounds, surviving stacks can recharge 12–25% of their current maximum shields; a defending planetary shield emitter can supply additional recharge. Hull damage does not regenerate between rounds.

Critical survival

Hull damage first determines the number of would-be casualties. Those ships are divided into at most twenty-five nearly equal groups, and each group receives a 5% chance to survive critically damaged. Smaller casualty counts use fewer groups; uneven counts are distributed so no ships disappear through rounding.

For example, 500 would-be casualties form twenty-five groups of 20. A successful roll can preserve that group, rather than rolling separately for each of the 500 ships. This makes survival happen in batches: 5% is a chance per group, not a guaranteed surviving share.

Damage is still deducted from the total hull pool. Critical survivors do not receive fresh hull, and every retained ship needs at least one remaining hull point. Excess damage can reduce the number of survivors even after a successful roll. If the stack's remaining hull pool is exhausted, it is destroyed regardless of survival chances.

Critically damaged ships still fire at full weapon strength. On a later hull-damaging hit, eligible would-be casualties can receive another survival roll. Merely advancing to the next round, or taking no hull damage, does not trigger another roll or restore hull. Hull is tracked as a shared pool, rather than a separate health bar for each ship.

Reports and losses

Reports records the result, participating stacks, round-by-round ship counts, shield and hull pools, damage exchanges and actual losses. Only ships actually destroyed count toward losses, combat debris and destruction-based rewards; a critically surviving ship is still alive.

An incoming volley's raw damage is not necessarily its hull damage. Shields, distribution between targets, precision and damage modifiers all affect the result. Battle reports retain the original combat inputs and random seed so the same battle can be reproduced without using later fleet changes.

See Fleet Operations for launching an attack, Ship Assembly for ship designs and Debris Fields for collecting combat debris.