Manual:Game Mechanics/Space Battles

Ship Combat
Combat takes place in the form of 'waves' that last 0.025 turn (so 4 waves take up 0.1 turn). Each wave is broken up into 4 passes. Craft are assumed to be at a starting distance of 4 'units', ship and defense weapons have a range of 4 units (though some tech can improve or decrease this range). Each wave, each craft may make an attack and/or move a number of units equal to their engine rank on a pass. These actions need not be in the same pass, for example a player could choose to have one of their ships move away from the enemy fleet on pass 1, and open fire on pass 3. Before each wave, each player decides what actions their fleet will take during each pass, including designating targets, and moving (privately and ahead of time). Note that ships can split their fire between multiple targets, dividing the damage as they choose between the targets, though each target beyond the first reduces the total damage value by 1. Then the wave resolves based on what actions were assigned. If ships lose targets (either by being destroyed, leaving range, etc), their attacks that pass are lost as they open fire on where their target was or simply are in too much shock to open fire right away. Waves continue until one side is either destroyed or flees (or until a ceasefire is declared of course).

If a fleet ambushes a foe, they get a free 'surprise pass' in which they may move and attack normally before normal combat begins. Any active defenses (such as point-defense modules) do not function during the surprise pass.

Ships with warp may attempt to jump during battle, doing such is declared as a pass 1 action and goes off at the completion of pass 4 of the next wave. While doing this, ships cannot take actions and lose all damage reduction granted by their engine value. Enemies can attempt to calculate your destination using their sensors in place of a move action. If your ship's destination is within the sensor range of the ship or one of their worlds or stations, they will know immediately what hex you are jumping to and when you will arrive. Jumping in battle is risky, but sometimes necessary. Note that when attempting to jump in-combat, craft with a sensor value of at least 1 automatically detect the jump prep.

Salvage
After great space battles, wreckage can often be salvaged for resources and sometimes, even for bits and pieces of alien technology. When a ship is destroyed, it leaves behind wreckage in resources equal to 1/4 of its cost, ships beyond size 4 leave wreckage equal to 1/2 their cost, as do stations (rounded down in all cases). Salvaging modules are required to recover wreckage, and supply modules required to store it (though not necessarily upon the same craft, as salvagers can simply load wreckage onto cargo ships for example). When wreckage is returned to a station or world, it is converted into resources the following turn for use during that turn. When this happens there is a small chance that your race will discover technology that is useful amongst the junk that you can study and possibly reverse engineer.

Wreckage often disperses quickly in space. Each full turn, the total wreckage of each craft is reduced by 1/10, until it completely disperses. If the wreckage is in orbit around a world, the wreckage disperses faster, losing 1/5 value each full turn.

Defenses
Space station and world defenses engage much in the way ships do, except they do not receive movement actions and have a base range of 6 units, and will begin combat at that range if aware of their foes (unless such defenses have modifiers that reduce or increase their range). Defenses leave wreckage behind in the same way ships and stations do.

Note that defenses without weapons can 'defend' other defenses and ships. Such defenses can be declared to take the damage from enemy attacks for smaller craft and defenses. A defense can take a hit for 1 craft of a size equal to it, 2 of 1 size smaller than it, 4 of craft 2 sizes smaller than it, etc (Example a size 4 defense shield could take attacks for a size 4, 2 size 3's, 4 size 2's, 8 size 1's or 16 size 0's or any combination thereof). To defend a craft, it must be at 0 units of distance from the defense, any craft that leave the area, lose the benefits of this cover.

Boarding Actions
Craft may attempt to board one another if they are at a distance of 0 units and the defender's shields are down. To determine a craft's total boarding strength, add total ship size (if multiple ships are engaged in the boarding attempt, add the total together) plus any bonuses from technology or race and your security ranks. If the attacker and defender are the same strength, each craft involved loses 1 strength (this lasts until the craft returns to a world or station to replace lost crewmen) that wave. If the defender has a higher strength, the attacking vessels each lose 2 strength that wave and the defender loses 1. If the attackers have a higher strength, the defender loses 2 strength and they each lose 1. If one has at least twice as much strength as the other, the loser(s) drop(s) by 2 strength instead and the winners lose none. Once a craft drops to 0 strength it can be captured by any craft with at least 1 boarding strength.

Ships at less than 1/2 normal boarding strength cease taking normal actions during waves while they remain locked in a boarding action. The attackers can choose to fallback during a wave, losing 1 strength on each of their craft involved in the boarding action that are falling back instead of the normal result. A defender that reduces attacking craft to 0 strength can counter-board and capture them.

Bonuses to boarding strength do not count as actual boarding strength in terms of the steady degrading of strength during boarding operations. Meaning for example, a size 2 ship with lots of racial and tech bonuses still gets captured after it loses 2 boarding strength (unless of course it had a combat module or similar thing boosting its BASE value).

Captured Ships
After you capture a ship it takes quite some time to get used to. Until the crew have returned to a friendly world or station and have been aboard the alien craft for a total of 2 full turns, they will remain inexperienced with the craft. They treat the craft as though all of its non hull systems were 2 ranks lower than normal. If this would cause a system to drop to 0, that system is non functional. Boarding strength of captured ships is always 1 until the ship returns to a friendly world or station to gather crewmen.

Ramming
As part of a move action that brings a ship into the same position as an enemy ship (brings it to a range of 0) you may initiate a ramming action. When a ship rams another both craft take damage according the collision strength of the enemy vessel.

Collision strength (determined for each craft) ramming craft (+1 for initiating) +2/size +1/2 speed +1/2 shields

targeted craft +3/size +1/2 shields

If both craft move during the wave of the collision, then adjust the Collision Strength as follows:

If both craft are moving towards one another, both craft are treated as initiating, and add 1/2 of their combined speed, instead of the normal speed bonus.

If the target is moving away, reduce the ramming craft's strength by 1/2 the target's speed. Ships take solid damage equal to the opposer's ramming strength.

If the rammed craft remains intact, the ramming craft's movement ends and it cannot move during the next wave, and it takes 1 additional solid damage. If the target is destroyed in one hit, the ramming craft only loses 1/2 of it's speed until after the next wave.

Bombardment
Certain weapons and/or craft can bombard worlds or stations, destroying structures and infrastructure in the process. When bombardment is used, determine the bombardment strength using the table below. This strength reduces structures by a number of levels equal to the strength (this is divided between targets). Most weapons will allow the attacker to decide where their damage is allocated, however disasters such as meteors or unrest such as riots determines targets at random. When a structure loses levels, any infrastructure assigned to those levels is permanently lost. Note that anything that is built as a structure can be targeted by bombardment (temples, terraforming, advanced mining, etc). Bombardment requires at least 0.25 of a turn to use, though things such as riots or meteors may have different effect times.

Bombardment Strength Ratings:

Weapons equipped with traits that allow bombardment: 1/3 weapon strength Unmanned/Monstrous craft of at least size 5: 1/4 weapon strength + 2

For comparison:

Average Meteor: Strength 12 (and also inflicts 1 bombardment to each structure prior to this) Extreme Earthquakes: Strength 4 Violent Riots: Strength 2

Note when a structure that provides infrastructure cap is struck (and the infrastructure cap is reduced), the world/station loses any infrastructure that exceeds its new cap at the end of the next turn. When bombarding stations, if their shields are up, only apply damage that exceeds their shield value to the bombardment strength (so 1/3 of that with weapons for example). When Monstrous/Unmanned craft use bombardment against a station with shields, the total bombardment strength is reduced by shielding in this way.