There's also a restart button, which discards your current ship, officers and wealth entirely and gives you a new position. This can be useful if everything goes wrong, or you're doing so well that you need a new challenge.
For a short pause such as a holiday, you can use the normal movement menu to jump to "The Holiday Planet", which is a safe but unexciting place to leave your ship when you can't run it.
After 50 turns without orders, you're moved to "The Mothball Planet". Being moved to the Mothball Planet is much like being at the Holiday Planet, but any resources or position you hold other players might want (rings, prophethoods, etc.) is automatically removed from you.
Note that ships are removed after long inactivity as they're assumed
to have dropped out without pressing the button: you normally have at least
three weeks real-time before this happens, unless your ship is very new.
Missing the first few turns gets a ship removed automatically.
The order of phases is:
Spell Casting (officers use up favour with the appropriate gods for very special actions).
Ship Interactions (starships in the same
starsystem may trade and/or fight).
Everything Else (in order of ship power within each starsystem, and
in order it's on the results within a single ship's actions).
New ships (starting players and replacement aliens) appear.
Movement (starships move to other stars).
Mercenary hiring and contract completion.
End of turn processing, paying salaries, modules breaking and most
favour effects.
Buy trade goods at factories and sell them
at colonies where the price is high (cargo
pods and warp drives).
Find Popcorn and sell it on turns when
other players don't sell much of it (impulse drives, sensors and
shields).
Collect asteroid ore and/or skim stars for fuel (impulse drives and
engineering skill).
Gain treasure by succeeding at adventures
(high skill levels and spare crew).
Capture treasure and/or trade goods from other players or non-player
aliens (weapons, shields and other combat gear).
Hunt and arrest non-player criminals (lots
of expendable security crew and weaponry skill).
Extract protection money from militarily
weak homeworlds (being the strongest ship around).
Extract protection money from other players, e.g. protect a trader
from other pirate players for a fee (diplomacy, and a big stick).
Find new medicines in oceans
and sell it to alien homeworlds.
Each starship has a power plant that provides $50 each turn. Working modules consume energy each turn. To avoid paying these costs it's possible to "shut down" modules. Turning them back on requires a repair action.
The number of each type of location in the game is:
These locations may also be entered for combat purposes, either to hide from an attacking enemy or to hunt down a fleeing target. Willingness to enter them is set on the Hide/Hunt menu, and requires that all officers use the Stand By order, i.e. do nothing else for the whole turn. Hiding or Hunting in a dangerous location risks damage to every module of the ship with a chance equal to the danger level of the location minus the ship's factor in the relevant module. The decision to hunt in a location implies willingness to hunt in other locations of the same or lesser danger, which the prey might hide in.
Officers have a specific skill (e.g. Engineering), a level of expertise in that skill, and may have crew under their command. An officer's skill will increase as they use it to solve problems and when they obtain specialised training in it.
Each officer may be given one standard major order per turn, such as having an adventure or attending an academy. Each officer may also execute one very special action, known as a spell, if they have sufficient favour with the appropriate god.
Basic unskilled crew can be recruited from hiring halls, and use of an appropriate spell allows recruiting of skilled crew from halls. Outlaw bands (rogues) with higher skill may be recruited, usually from badlands, at the cost of becoming an enemy of their government. Rogue recruitment produces a random number of randomly skilled crew, both number and skill limited to a maximum of the officer's skill. Skill is also limited by the tech level of the rogues' race, i.e. rogue ants tend to have lower skill than rogue elves.
The ship's crew as a whole have health, a single number which is the percentage chance of each one surviving the turn, normally kept very high (to a limit of 99.9%). Health decreases randomly each turn for general wear and tear (a larger amount the more crew that the ship has), and may decrease a lot during combat or adventures. It's also reduced by carrying popcorn on the ship, 0.5% for each unit. Health increases a small amount for the quality of life support modules the ship has (extra ones or higher tech help), and as a result of the medical officer devoting a turn to healing the crew. Health concerns do not affect officers, who live forever.
The 32 skill levels are made up of the following types:
16 Types of adventure
2 Types of repairing ship modules
2 Types of maintaining ship modules
8 Levels of advanced training at the appropriate academy
(expensive and the officer needs a qualifying level of personal skill already:
0, 4, 8, 12, 16, 20, 24, 28)
2 Levels of basic training at appropriate schools
(cheap and no minimum qualification level)
1 "Enlightenment" type, gained by casting the spell
of the same name.
1 Starnet Hacking type, gained by using the correct password
at a Starnet Terminal.
Skills and main examples of use are:
Science: used to gain information, associated modules are sensors and cloaks.
Engineering: used for movement, associated modules are warp drives and impulse drives.
Weaponry: used both for ship-to-ship and creature-to-creature
fighting, associated modules are weapons and shields.
Medical: used to heal and maintain crew, associated modules are sickbays and life support.
An officer also has a role in leading landing parties for adventures in their own skill, and supporting landing parties attempting adventures in other skills.
For most purposes the effective skill of an officer is their personal skill plus the crew's contribution which is the square root of their total skill (their number times their average level). The effect of this is and other training constraints is that an officer can at most double their own skill by acquiring as many crew as possible and training them as fully as possible.
The modules in a player's initial starship are special "demo" components, which decay over time until becoming useless. They cannot be maintained or sold to shops, and lose 1% reliability per turn in addition to any other penalties. The intention is that players will use this first ship as a stepping stone, acquiring the modules to form their real ship before the demo expires. If not, they can always restart with a new demo ship and try again. Pods are a special case, and do not have reliability, repairs or maintenance. Standard pods always work, but "demo" pods are destroyed on being unloaded with a chance in percent equal to the value of all the non-demo modules in their ship, valued by their tech levels.
Warp Drive: used to move between star systems (Engineering).
Impulse Drive: used in asteroid mining and to
change range in combat (Engineering): gas giants.
Sensors: used to detect hidden adventure possibilities
and to overcome hostile cloaking (Science).
Cloaking: used to thwart hostile sensors, mainly
to open fire at shorter range (Science): minefields.
Life Support: maintains or even improves
crew health without special actions (Medical): badlands.
Sick Bay: improves crew health, fights planetary
plagues or researches new medicines, as special actions (Medical).
Shields: used in defence (Weaponry): coronas
and the popcorn source.
Weapons (various types): used to attack other ships (Weaponry).
Cargo Pods: used to carry trade
goods or mercenaries (none).
Artifacts: unique items with varying uses
and properties (Great One Favour)
A module has a tech level rating that reflects how well it performs,
on a scale of: Primitive (1), Basic (2), Mediocre (3), Advanced (4), Exotic
(5), Magic (6). In most cases a level X module is X times
as useful as a level 1 module (players start with only Primitive level
1 modules). But a weak or low-tech ship can still attempt most actions
with some chance of success or at high cost, e.g. a ship with small or
low-tech jump drives can still make large jumps, they merely cost an excessive
amount of energy.
The game includes many modules, with a random assortment of efficiency, reliability and energy cost. Initially they are scattered around the board in various place: shops (where they can be bought for energy), adventure finds (where they can be salvaged with appropriate skill) and both player and alien ships (which can be robbed in combat).
As a special case to prevent otherwise viable players becoming stranded
by accidental loss of their only engines, a primitive demo warp drive may
be bought anywhere for $500. This is a last resort deal not offered to
players who don't need it, in case they are unwise enough to accept it.
A module has a reliability factor of 1-99%, being the chance it will work each turn without going wrong and becoming unusable. Becoming unusable reduces reliability by 1%, but more significantly prevents the module being used again until it has been repaired. If reliability falls below 1% the module is destroyed. An unusable module can be repaired using the repair order, with a chance of success equal to the item's reliability factor plus the skill level of the character making repairs.
Reliability can be increased by successful use of the maintenance order, maintaining an item improves reliability by the skill level of the character doing the maintenance, less the square of its tech level (i.e. low skilled characters can't maintain high tech items at all). Note that even an unusable module can be maintained, it doesn't have to be repaired first.
For example, an old and battle-damaged but patched up module can be reliability 20% and usable, meaning that it will function but will probably break down at once. Or a new and well-maintained module with a minor blown fuse can be 99% reliable but unusable.
Some kinds of maintenance is easier to do than other kinds, and for badly damaged modules, there's an additional option, Priority Maintenance. When an officer elects to perform priority maintenance their crew can work on several modules at once. The maximum number of modules that can maintained at a time this way is one quarter of the officer's skill, and when an officer performs this action, they automatically maintain the lowest reliability modules (up to the number allowed by their skill level). Each is maintained just as it would be if the officer had maintained it individually, but cannot have it's reliability increased beyond the officer's skill level.
Blessings: each blessing gives a 50% bonus to the effects of one type of item, e.g. an artifact that blesses Impulse Drives has the same effect as increasing all the ship's Impulse Drives' tech level by 50%. Owning an artifact costs five favour per turn from the Great Old One concerned with the items it blesses: if the owner can't pay this favour, the artifact breaks.
Curses: each curse causes a 50% reduction in the effects of one type of item, e.g. an artifact that curses Warp Drives has the same effect as halving all the ship's Warp Drives' tech levels. Curses can be removed with a suitable spell, which also changes the name of the artifact because the name encodes its properties. An artifact is given an extra curse whenever it changes hands, whether in combat or peacefully.
Keys: each key allows the use of any stargate with the matching lock: there are 8 keys and locks.
Note that although a single artifact won't bless and curse the same items, a ship with multiple artifacts may have multiple blesses and curses on the same items. Duplicates produce no additional benefit or penalty, and the combination of bless and curse leads to a penalty down to 75% efficiency as the curse applies before the blessing.
Artifact cursing and blessing is the same process as spell
cursing and blessing, so there is no additional benefit to using both an
artifact and a spell to bless the same type of item.
Holding rings brings benefits and penalties. In combat with other players, the officers holding evil rings gain all the skills of their counterpart that they don't already have: the victim loses these skills. Ships with evil rings must move (at no cost) to the star where the most other ships are at the end of each turn. An officer who loses their evil ring loses all their skills, even ones they had before they picked up the ring. Evil rings provide an extra crew recruit every turn up the officer's command limit.
Good rings' cost is that the wearer gives 10 favour to each other player
at the same star at the end of the turn. The benefit is that they mutually
annihilate with evil rings of the same skill-type, before the evil
ring can steal any skills. Destroyed rings are recycled as new exploration finds.
Each mercenary unit is one of eight types with varying strengths in different types of battle: doubled in their best terrain and halved in their worst terrain. They are carried in standard cargo pods, they fit into any size pod but cannot share it with other units or regular cargo.
Each turn one unit is auctioned, in terms of rate of pay in energy per turn. The unit joins the winning ship after the movement phase. Depending on employment levels (ie very rarely at first) units already employed will demand pay rises to stay in service, awarded automatically as needed. Units cannot have their pay reduced, but can be demoblised (lost) at any time.
Demobilising a mercenary unit makes a player unpopular with mercenaries, and they can hire no more until forgiven. Forgiveness may occur with a 5% chance each turn.
The only use of mercenary units is to fulfil contracts, of which there is one per turn, at a random star and with a random terrain type, with a fee relating to how many contracts were fulfilled lately. Contracts are resolved after movement, so it's possible to get to them in time by jumping at once. Contracts are won by the strongest mercenary force in the right place, allowing for the terrain effects on their units. There are no losses in fulfilling contracts - mercenaries wouldn't fight if it was that dangerous.
Ties in bidding for new units and in combat strength at a contract site
are all resolved using total weaponry skill.
| Name | Strength | Best Terrain | Worst Terrain |
|---|---|---|---|
| Regular Infantry | 6 | Ruins | Badlands |
| Mobile Infantry | 12 | Ruins | Badlands |
| Hover Tanks | 8 | Ocean | Ruins |
| Cyber Tanks | 16 | Ocean | Ruins |
| Rocket Artillery | 10 | Badlands | Factory |
| Orbital Lasers | 20 | Badlands | Factory |
| Jump 'Mechs | 12 | Factory | Ocean |
| Assault 'Mechs | 24 | Factory | Ocean |
A player may carry only one type of medicine at a time, finding a new
one causes any old one to be discarded. Selling the medicine also removes
it, it cannot be sold again.
Hostile races always demand a gift from ships they meet, and will attack if it's not given. Chaotic aliens may be randomly friendly or hostile at each meeting, regardless of what's happened before: i.e. they demand a gift but will sometimes attack if it's not given, and other times will be bluffing and not attack. Aliens demand as gift the pod containing the least valuble trade good other than Scrap, or a random module if the player doesn't have any non-Scrap trade goods.
Aliens who attack will sometimes hunt in dangerous locations, and if at their homeworld will heroically self-destruct as close to the player's ship as possible in order to damage it.
The hostile aliens are Goblins, Rats, Snakes and Weasels. The chaotic aliens are Hamsters, Squirrels and Worms.
Aliens will also become a player's permanent enemy if the player is detected selling contraband to a colony of the race, or releases a criminal of that race for a bribe.
Enemy status can be removed by using the appropriate spell.
The Council consists of a President, elected every ten turns, a Vice President, a Tribune, plus six Ministers, appointed by the President as needed. Only certain players, "candidates", can be elected as President or appointed as Ministers. Candidates are players who have controlled at least 10 votes at some time since the previous election.
Members of the council may receive bonuses to their percentages under some circumstances, as well as recruiting benefits.
If no-one controls the location, or if the player already controls it, they gain influence equal to the sum of their ship's factors in the appropriate modules. I.e., a warlike homeworld is impressed by a ship with good shields and weapons.
If the location is already controlled by another player, then that player's influence must be removed before the campaigning player can take control: influences just cancel out one for one and only the surplus remains.
Influence decays each turn, 10% if the alien race is an enemy of the player, 5% if not (both rounded up).
They may appoint Ministers from the candidates (although no person may be appointed to more than one ministry).
The president's crew serves as their staff, and the government
picks up their crew salaries.
The Engineering, Science, Medical, and Weaponry ministers each have the power to propose modules of any tech level and the type they're responsible for to the Industry Minister.
The Industry minister may direct all shops to restock with modules of a specific type and tech level from the proposals made by the other ministers.
The Justice Minister may choose the race and skill type of new rogue bands, and decides the outcome of court cases between aliens.
Each minister's results include location reports from various aliens. Each alien reports to a particular minister, and makes a report during a random turn once every 30 turns.
Guessing the wrong password does no harm beyond using up an officer's
action for the turn, guessing the correct password gains the appropriate
officer one skill level the first time they do it. Subsequent successes
with the same officer gain one of a variety of special powers initially
undocumented. These powers last until the same power is offered again and
then lost (unless the officer guesses the correct password again).
The Fierce One, rewards players for having enemies and for scoring hits on enemy ships.
The Wise One, rewards players for success at accessing the ancient computers.
The Merciful One, rewards players for healing work, fighting plague amongst the various alien species.
The Mighty One, rewards players for having powerful starships (excluding weapons and cargo pods, which are not proper engineering) and lots of energy.
Favour should not be hoarded by most players: 5% of favour is lost when carried over to the next turn, except for Prophets, who suffer decay of favour in their own field of only 2.5%.
Charm Recruit (of a specific skill type), must be used in conjunction with recruiting from a hiring hall, and will attract a crewperson as skilled as the recruiting officer, rather than the zero-skill crew normally recruited from halls.
Bless (specific class of module), makes all the player's modules of that sort work at 50% higher efficiency for one turn.
Report from all Terminals, provides the player with star location reports from a random selection (based on their science skill level) of the stars where they've accessed Starnet Terminals and not been purged.
Report from Some Terminals, provides the player with a star report from a random selection (not based on science skill level) of the stars where they've accessed Starnet Terminals and not been purged. Generally, if you've got a good science officer skill, and a lot of terminals, Report from all Terminals will give you more information.
Purge Rivals, removes Starnet Terminal access for all other players to a terminal in the player's current starsystem.
Improvise Key (for a specific lock number, 0-7), must be used in conjunction with jumping through a stargate locked with the same number lock. It acts as a single-use key to allow use of an otherwise sealed stargate.
Pacify (a specific enemy alien race), removes the player's enemy status with one race, so that their ships no longer attack the player at every opportunity. It gives no immunity from making an enemy of that race by annoying them again in the future.
Uncurse (of specific type), removes one part of an artifact's curse on all artifacts. This will also change the artifact's name, which has no additional effect.
Bless Ground Combat, gives a bonus to any kind of ground combat the player engages in on the same turn, whether for adventures or catching criminals.
Bless Away Team, reduces the chance of accidents to crew on adventures when the medical officer is present by giving a bonus to medical skill.
Enlightenment (in a specific skill type), gains the skill of the same name for the casting officer, and may provide clues on various subjects from the appropriate Great One.
Become Prophet (of a specific Great One), only successful when there isn't already a Prophet for the specific Great One, or if the casting player has more favour than the current Prophet and can therefore displace them. It provides various benefits and allows other players to give or take favour with the spells below. Casting this when there's already a prophet with more favour in office is taken as a schismatic attempt to undermine the current prophet and costs them 100 favour too.
Praise Prophet (of a specific Great One), provides favour to the Prophet player.
Denounce Prophet (of a specific Great One), takes favour from the Prophet for the casting player (the only spell that yields favour rather than costing some, though players must have at least 15 favour to cast the spell anyway). This spell is modified for heretics, who pay favour to cast it instead of gaining favour by it.
Retire as Prophet, (of a specific Great One), only available to the Prophet player, ends their term of being Prophet.
Trace (ship in the same starsystem), gives reports on where the target ship is each turn, and allows the View Trace spell. Only one ship can be the target of a player's active Trace spell at a time.
View Trace, gives a location report on the star where the traced ship is.
Remove Trace, removes any trace spells which have been put on the casting ship, not that they're detectable.
Hide System, prevents players not in the star system where the ship ends its turn from being able to get reports on that system, by spells, political office or other means.
Deploy Probe, places a mechanical device or live agent at the current starsystem to report on it later. Each player can have only one probe active at a time, deploying another removes the first.
View Probe, gets a report on the system containing a previously deployed probe.
Destroy Probes, removes all other players' probes in the current system, if any.
Micro-jump Flee, attempts to avoid combat by unprepared and very short warp jump, with chance of success equal to warp factor and even then can be cancelled by the counter spell.
Counter Micro-jump, cancels enemy attempt to avoid combat with the micro-jump flee spell.
Discover Adventure, reveals an adventure at random which the player has the skill to tackle, but doesn't exclude adventures already done or already known.
Power-Up, increases ship's rating for power sorting by 25%, so it tends to meet stronger opponents and have priority on order of actions.
Power-Down, decreases ship's rating for power sorting by 25%.
Lucky Module, usable only on a module that's the only one of its type in the ship, it makes that module act as tech level 0 for repair and maintenance that turn and prevents it being targetted in combat. An officer on standby (and not involved in hunt/hide actions) will automatically repair or maintain a lucky module (useful for modules they cannot otherwise repair/maintain).
Atone, allows you to atone for past misdeeds. Specifically, some actions/spells make the Great Old Ones unhappy with you, which can cause some problems. Casting this spell will make them less unhappy with you. It can be cast by all of the officers, and is more effective the more officers that cast it in a given turn. As a hint, most of the spells/actions that make the Great Old Ones unhappy are not documented here in the rules.
Prophets may designate other players (in the same starsystem at the time) as Chosen for their Great Old One. Chosen players may use the Commune action with the appropriate officer to gain favour equal to that officer's skill (including crew bonus). Chosen players get a bonus of +16 in the effective (officer + crew) skill, and are automatically "demiblessed" in the two areas governed by the appropriate Great Old One (e.g. warps and impulses for Mighty chosen). A demiblessing works like a normal blessing, but only half as much. Demiblessings don't add to other blessings. Chosen players gain other undocumented benefits too.
Prophets may remove Chosen status from other players at any time, they do not need to be in the same starsystem. Prophets pay favour each turn for their Chosen, equal to the square of the number of Chosen (counting the Prophet too). Chosen players may always cast any spells in their field, using their Prophet's favour if they don't have enough of their own.
Each turn a Prophet may excommunicate one of the players who denounced them or tried to replace them on the previous turn. This makes that player a heretic, and penalises them with a "demicurse" on the modules associated with the Prophet's skill area, and prevents them from gaining favour using the denounce spell again (instead it costs both the caster and the prophet 15 favour).
The Prophet gains favour each turn equal to about 6% of the basic and adventure favour gains of all players except for Chosen (doubled and added) and Heretics (subtracted).
If a Prophet's own favour score falls below zero they stop being Prophet.
Prophets are always blessed in the two areas associated with their Great Old One, e.g. the Mighty One's Prophet is blessed in warp drives and impulse drives.
On any change of Prophet (replacement, retirement of lack of favour
dismissal), all players lose their Chosen and Heretic status in that field.
When a colony buys a trade good, the price there is reduced by 35% of the basic value, and increased at all other colonies which buy that type of good by 5% of the basic value. So the average price of each good remains constant, but demand varies and prices tend to rise where there are no sellers.
Scrap and Chocolate are special trade goods.
For reasons which aren't yet clear, Popcorn can be collected only from
a single unusual place that moves around the cluster, settling in near
or deep space locations for a while. It can be detected at long range (i.e.,
from a different starsystem) by ships with good enough sensors (as a science
officer option). Harvesting popcorn needs good impulse drive, sensor and
shield factors, and tends to get harder with each successful harvesting.
Weaponry officers can attempt police work as a standard action in any location with a visible criminal, as long as they have some crew (who may be needed as casualties - the officer must survive). This is an attempt to capture the visible criminal, with risk of combat and casualties relating to the criminal's level and the weaponry officer's skill and crew numbers. Success takes the criminal into the player's ship as a prisoner. Each player may have only one prisoner at a time - the previous one escapes to make room if necessary.
A player with a prisoner has extra options for the weaponry officer, interrogation and various releases. Interrogation may reveal the location of the prisoner's boss, or of a low ranking criminal of another race, or it may reveal nothing. After a player learns the location of a new criminal in this way, they will be able to see that criminal when in the same star system.
Releases are either: releasing for bribery, which gains cash but makes the player an enemy of the criminal race's government, or releasing for information, which identifies the prisoner's boss as if by interrogation.
A prisoner may be delivered to a prison location
for a cash reward. Criminals who are delivered to prison or are released
for bribery or information immediately escape and/or change identity so
that they will no longer be visible to the player until identified all over again.
Each adventure is of a specific skill type (science, weaponry, medical, engineering), determining which officer can attempt it, and needs some level of that skill for success. As well as the officer primarily concerned with the adventure, any or all of the other three officers may be assigned to the landing party in support. For any adventure, there is a 50% chance that each supporting officer will have some useful effect as hinted at below.
An adventure has a concealment level, which depends on the skill level of the adventure. Low-level adventures suitable for newbies will have concealment levels that are fairly low, while the most difficult adventures have concealment levels of 300-600 or more. Players can detect and attempt an adventure if their Sensor Factor is at least as high as the adventure's concealment level. An adventure may also be discovered, regardless of concealment, by exploring the location it's in. Once a player finds an adventure, they will be able to see it afterwards even if they leave the system and return later.
Players may also learn of adventures' locations as the result of success in other adventures: this makes the adventure visible to that player without exploration and regardless of concealment level. (Informally, a player may also learn the location of an adventure from another player, but that helps only to guide exploration: the adventure must still be visible in game turns before the player can attempt it).
Successful completion of an adventure may need victory in combat (with success much more likely if the weaponry officer joins the away team). Success gives a skill increase (if the officer has not already succeeded at an adventure of the same sort), a module as treasure (often in poor condition, better if the engineering officer is in the away team) and possibly some information about where other adventures can be found (especially if the science officer is in the away team). Some crew may be lost to accidents (less likely if the medical officer is in the away team).
Some adventures are of particular interest to a specific Great Old One, and success brings extra favour in their area.
Each ship may have up to one other as its ally, selected from the alliance menu which shows all other ships in the same star system. An ally can be replaced by a new one, or simply declassified at any time, leaving the ship with no ally.
Alliances, in this sense, only have an effect when both ships have selected the other as their ally and they are in the same starsystem. The ships are then treated as a pair for interaction purposes, with the stronger having an encounter and the weaker meeting no other ship, i.e., it is protected from any kind of attack.
Allies may also give up to 10% of their current energy to their ally, when in the same starsystem.
The list of interactions is determined at the end of each turn, and the interactions occur at the start of the next turn, so orders can be issued for the specific interaction desired, or feared. An interaction can include trade, diplomacy and/or combat, according to the players' orders.
The orders which control an interaction are diplomatic at the highest level: economic and military elements may come into play according to the result of diplomacy. The diplomatic option is one of: Attack regardless, Make demands and attack if demands not met, Make demands but don't attack, Retaliate if Attacked, Flee.
Retaliate if Attacked and Flee both mean don't start a battle if the other ship doesn't. The difference is that "Flee" means start trying to break off from combat at once, even if there's no immediate danger. Note that all options involve fighting back if attacked.
Demands consist of asking for one module of the other ship. On the other side, orders can be given to hand over any or all modules if the other ship demands them. If demands are made and met, the items are transferred and there is no combat.
If demands are made but not met, or one side orders Attack regardless, combat occurs. Players should set combat orders even if they don't expect to have to fight, in case the enemy is unreasonable, though default orders will apply if none are given. (Because outguessing the opponent is a significant element of combat, it may be fatal to rely on default orders that can be predicted, or it could be brilliant if your opponent doesn't think that's what you'll do...)
Hide/Hunt actions affect whether the combat occurs at all (as can certain spells). If either ship selects a Hide option, combat is cancelled unless the other ship selects a Hunt option of equal or higher risk. The cost of Hide/Hunt options is that all of the ship's officers can do nothing else for the turn, and the risk is for each module being damaged (minimum 1% for any hide/hunt option).
Combat is fought in a series of rounds (each divided into 7 phases), each at a specific range. After each round, ships attempt to change or maintain the range using their Impulse Drives to manoeuvre closer to, or remain at, their ideal range - i.e., the one where their weapons will be proportionally more effective than their enemy's weapons. Changing range is somewhat easier at the shorter ranges.
Initial range is determined by comparing each ship's sensor strength with the other's cloaking strength, to find the range at which each detects the other. Sensor and cloaking strengths are calculated as the proportion of a ship's mass that is sensor/cloaking modules, weighted by their tech level, plus effective skill levels of science officers and crews. Sensor conditions in different star systems may allow detection at different ranges. The sensor conditions are called the "terrain" of the star system. There are seven different terrains, corresponding to the seven possible ranges:
| Terrain | Default Range |
|---|---|
| Impenetrable | Adjacent |
| Busy | Close |
| Noisy | Short |
| Mixed | Medium |
| Open | Long |
| Clear | Distant |
| Empty | Remote |
| Cloak/Sensor | Range |
|---|---|
| Advantage | Change |
| 10% | 1 |
| 30% | 2 |
| 60% | 3 |
| 100% | 4 |
| 150% | 5 |
If only one ship is hostile to the other, the other's ideal range is treated as Remote, i.e. the ship that doesn't want to fight will begin attempting to break off combat as soon as it detects the other ship - even before the attacker is close enough to open fire.
If both ships meet conditions for opening fire simultaneously, the tie is split by favouring the one with larger minimum of its ideal range and the range at which it detects the other. So one ship always fires first and it has to be one that's declared hostile to the other.
Every weapon has a maximum range, and fires during some phases in the round. The strength of a ship's attack in a given phase is the sum of all its in-range functional weapons' strengths that fire in that phase, each weapon doing 5 points of damage per tech level. The whole attack is applied to one module of the enemy ship, chosen randomly from the target set in the player's strategy (except that any module that is both demanded as a gift and included in the target set will be targetted first). If that set is empty or all hit already, targets are chosen randomly from the remaining modules.
Weapon details are:
| Weapon | Maximum Range | Phases |
| Ram | Adjacent | 1-7 |
| Gun | Close | 2-7 |
| Disruptor | Short | 3-7 |
| Laser | Medium | 4-7 |
| Missile | Long | 5-7 |
| Drone | Distant | 6-7 |
| Fighter | Remote | 7 |
Photon Torpedoes can attack at any range, but what phases they fire in depends on the range. 1-7 at Adjacent, 2-7 at Close, etc. When using more than 1 torpedo per phase, damage is related to the square root of the number used, i.e. 4 torpedoes do twice as much damage as 1, and 9 do three times as much as 1.
Alien ships defending their homeworlds may self-destruct to harm their opponents, doing damage of 10-70 points (according to range) for each Primitive module they have left, multiplied by tech level for more advanced modules. They will delay exploding if they are either giving more damage than they're taking, or closing the range with a view to doing more damage when they do blow up.
All modules have a basic defence capability of 25 points per tech level, but shield modules increase this basic defence by 360 points per tech level of the shield. Shield strength is allocated to any number of modules using the shields menu. Any modules selected for this extra protection are also defended by having the shield bonus shared between them. (Note that the more modules selected for extra defence, the less bonus shield strength they each receive: applying shields to all modules is the same as applying it to none, they're shared equally either way.) The module's defence is reduced by the enemy attack, and if reduced to less than zero the module is hit directly and removed from the ship, then kept aside as loot until after the battle. Half the remaining damage points are passed on to the next module to be targeted.
After each phase, the ship that was attacked is checked for whether the number of lost modules match or exceed the ship's retreat threshold. A ship will also try to retreat after losing all its weapons, or at once if its diplomatic option was Flee. Note that an alien ship defending its homeworld will self-destruct rather than flee, possibly doing a great deal of damage to its opponent. Player ships cannot self-destruct.
A ship attempting to retreat from combat needs a combination of time (to prepare a micro-jump away) and distance from the enemy ship. Specifically, it scores "escape" points equal to the range number plus 4 each round, and escapes when it has collected enough (and there is an additional bonus of escape points to a ship whenever it loses a module). The number of escape points needed is set by the relative masses of the ships, and is equal to 50 for ships of the same mass, with a limit of 10 for a ship fighting a much larger opponent, or 90 for a ship fighting a much smaller opponent. After escape, all lost modules from both ships become unusable and more damaged (i.e. less reliable) and are split between the combatants. Each ship gets loot approximately proportional to the number of modules they shot off (doubled for the ship that didn't flee). Which modules each ship gets is determined in part by what modules each ship demanded targeted or shielded. Damage is applied to each lost module in turn, starting as a small percentage reduction in reliability and increasing for each extra module on the loot list.
Combat is further modified by each player's strategy in that they can
"favour" one of weapons, shields, engines, sensors, cloaks or fleeing.
The favoured equipment or activity is 50% more effective then it would
be otherwise. Spells can also increase a ship's combat
effectiveness.
The distance a ship can move is affected by its warp drives and total mass, it can move further if it has a high proportion of its mass made up of warp drives, and even further if they are high technology modules. The cost of a jump increases exponentially with the distance divided by what fraction of the ship is warp drive modules (weighted up by tech levels) with a bonus for the skill level of the engineering officer and crew. The starmap included with your turn shows jump costs to different systems.
A special type of movement is to "chase" another ship in the same star system, meaning jump to wherever that ship jumps. It succeeds if the other ship's destination is one that the chaser can legally jump to. Chasing is possible where the chased ship is itself chasing another ship, as long as the chain ends with a ship using normal movement: mutual chasers don't move. (Remedies for being chased by a stronger ship include discarding modules until your ship can jump beyond the hunter's range, or jumping into a group of friends waiting to ambush the chaser.)
Movement is also possible via stargates, which costs no energy but needs an artifact with the specific type of key that matches the stargate being used (there are 8 types of key), or a suitable spell. Stargates connect pairs of stars with the distance between them having no effect.
A very special case of movement is a free jump to or from "The
Holiday Planet", which is more of an administrative feature to make a
ship inactive while the player is absent from the game. Being at the
Holiday Planet does not completely freeze a ship (but almost), the
single big plus of being there is that no combat is possible. Once
there, any orders submitted by the player will automatically return
the ship to the star from which it originally jumped to the Holiday
Planet. Most, however, will not be executed.