Combat

Combat is what happens when two or more opposing fleets meet at a planet. Each combat lasts one tick. The fleets will fight each other, most probably for possession of the planet's roids. Hostile fleets may attempt to steal asteroids or destroy Structures with Structure Killers. Defending fleets will attempt to stop this from happening.

Combat works based upon the ship stats. Initiative determines the order in which the ships fire. All ships with the same initiative fire at the same time, then ships with one higher and so on. For example, ships with initiate 1 will all fire at the same time, followed by all the ships with initiative 2. Targetting is based upon ship class. The number of ships destroyed is based on the 'damage' stat of the firing ship vs the 'armour' stat of the ship under fire, and on the number of ships involved in the combat. Ships may do different forms of damage. Ship stats usually change from round to round (they may also change for speedgames).

NOTE: In pre-PAX rounds, there were other stats such as firepower, weapon speed and agility. These were removed to simplify the combat engine. Also, attacking fleets could attack for one, two or three consecutive ticks, rather than just one tick at a time.

At their initiative, any surviving and unfrozen Pods will attempt to steal roids. At their initiative, Structure Killers will bomb structures. Pods must do 50 damage to capture a roid, limited to 25% of the planet's total in each tick; for example a planet which has 100 Metal, 200 Crystal and 100 Eonium asteroids can lose a maximum of 25 metal, 50 crystal and 25 eonium asteroids (requiring 5000 damage). Since numbers in Planetarion are usually rounded down, one often gains just under 25%. If insufficent pods have been sent, or have survived the combat, the 'roidcap' will be lower. Captured roids are shared out among each attacker which sent pods, depending on the value of their fleet as compared to the total value of the attacking fleet. An attacker who has not sent pods will decrease other attackers' shares, but will not gain any roids. These roids are lost forever. For example, if two people attacked one planet, and Attacker A sent 2/3 of the fleet value, while Attacker B sent 1/3, then 2/3 of the roids will go to Attacker A, and 1/3 to B.

Following a battle, each defender will collect Salvage, if there have been any ships killed in the battle.

Special for Round 13 is that some Zikonian ships fire after Astropods, but in return steal ships rather than killing them. Unlike many previous rounds, the Zik ships are not destroyed in this process.

External Links

The Official Manual