How battles work: combat in phases

In OGame and the games that followed it, a battle is over the moment the fleets arrive, and a report tells you how it went. In AstroExpanse the fight plays out over several minutes of real time, phase by phase, and while it lasts you can still act: pull your fleet out, send help, or change its orders.

Want to see one before reading on? Watch a demo battle in your browser, no signup.

A battle, phase by phase

When an attack fleet reaches a planet, a battle opens. It runs on a clock: each phase resolves at a fixed time, whether you are watching or not, and the screen shows a countdown to the next one.

• Approach. Nobody fires yet. The sides measure each other’s sensors (see electronic warfare below).
• Then the battle runs in rounds, and each round has three phases:
  1. Long range. Battleships and defences open fire; cruisers and bombers join in at reduced strength. Fighters and cargo ships are out of reach.
  2. Fighter screen. Light and heavy fighters fight at full strength. Battleships stay out of it. Bombers and cargo ships can be hit here but can’t fire back.
  3. Line. Everyone fires at everyone.

So composition matters: a fleet of nothing but battleships does its work at long range and sits out the fighter screen, and a swarm of fighters is safe at long range but has to survive the line.

A battle ends when one side has nothing left, when a side’s morale breaks, when the defender surrenders, or when the last round is over. If both sides are still standing at the end, it is a draw.

Watching it live

Open the battle and you watch it in 3D: the formations, the fire of whichever ships the current phase lets shoot, the losses as they land. Beside it, both sides’ ships and morale, a strip of every phase so far, and the battle log. You can step back through the phases already fought.

Only the players in the battle and the owner of the planet can watch it.

Retreat

From the second round on, you can press Retreat. The first round is always fought.

Your fleet spends the next phase disengaging: it still fires, but it takes extra damage while it turns, and it can be hit even in a phase it would normally sit out. Then it leaves.

• An attacker flies home, and gives up its share of any plunder.
• A defender’s fleet scatters and comes back to the planet later, at a time the enemy can’t see.

Retreating early saves ships. Retreating late may save nothing.

Reinforce

The Reinforce mission sends a fleet to hold at your own planet or at a planet of someone in your alliance. A fleet already holding there fights on the defender’s side the moment an attack lands.

You can also reinforce a battle that is already running: a fleet that arrives in time joins at the next phase. Late arrivals are turned away and fly home. The window for defenders stays open longer than for attackers, so a fast ally can turn a fight.

Standing orders

You don’t have to watch every battle. Give a fleet a standing order when you send it (or during the battle with Set order), and it acts on it by itself:

A standing order kicks in at the end of a phase, so it is one phase slower than pressing Retreat yourself.

Morale

Every side starts a battle at full morale. It drops a little every round, and a lot when the side takes heavy losses.

• A side whose morale runs low hits less hard.
• A side whose morale breaks is out: its fleets leave at once, and if it is the defender, the planet’s garrison surrenders.

Time alone rarely breaks a side. Losses do.

Electronic warfare

During the approach each side’s sensor strength is compared: your best Espionage Technology, plus every Espionage Probe you brought along. The side that is clearly ahead gets an edge for the whole first round:

• Sensor edge: its shots land first.
• Jamming: part of the enemy’s shots hit decoys.
• Ambush: the enemy’s defences stay silent.

Plunder, debris and what is left

• Plunder is taken only when the attacker wins. Part of every resource on the planet is protected and can’t be taken; the rest can, up to the cargo space of the winning ships still in the fight. Loading takes a few minutes in orbit, then the fleet flies home.
• Debris: part of the metal and crystal of every destroyed ship and defence becomes a debris field over the planet. Recyclers can harvest it, and the planet’s owner gets the first chance. A big enough debris field may form a moon.
• Defences: some of the defences destroyed in a battle are rebuilt afterwards, whoever won. Ships are not.
• The planet’s owner can also surrender: the garrison stops fighting at the next phase.

If two attackers who are not allied both survive, the battle doesn’t end there: they fight each other for the spoils.

When it is over, everyone in the battle gets a report. How much it tells you depends on how long your fleet lasted: a fleet wiped out in the first round sends back little more than a lost signal.

Simulate before you commit

The game has a battle simulator built in, so you don’t need an outside calculator. It runs the same fight many times and shows the range of likely outcomes: how often each side wins or draws, and what each side tends to lose.

• Open it from Simulator in the menu.
• From an espionage report, Simulate attack fills in what your probe saw.
• From a battle report, Replay with changes lets you try the same fight with a different fleet.

Every battle is seeded and recorded on the server, so the same fight with the same seed always ends the same way.

Where to next

• Getting started: from the first mine to the first fleet.
• FAQ: the test universe, phones, and what testers get.
• Watch a demo battle: no signup.