Combat: How Battles Are Decided
When one of your squads arrives at an enemy colony or outpost with an attack order, a battle happens on that tick. Combat is where territory changes hands, so understanding how it resolves is one of the most valuable things you can learn. There is no luck involved: the same forces meeting under the same conditions always produce the same result.
Attacking a colony or outpost
You attack by sending a squad with an attack order to an enemy target. When the squad arrives, it fights whatever is defending. A colony is defended by its stationed units; an outpost is defended by whatever squads are sitting on it. If you defeat the defender of a colony, you can conquer it. If you defeat the defender of an outpost, you take the outpost.
How a round resolves
A battle plays out in rounds, and units act in a strict order based on range:
- Range-upgraded units fire first, because they reach the enemy from farther away.
- Damage-upgraded units join next.
- Armor-upgraded units join last and soak hits.
When a unit fires, it picks its target by weapon effectiveness first. Each weapon is strong against one chassis, weaker against another, and weak against the third, so units go after the chassis they hurt most. Within that chassis, damage lands on armor units first, then damage units, then range units. When several groups are still valid targets, the lowest-HP group is hit first, with stable tie-breakers after that. Because every step follows fixed rules, the outcome is fully deterministic and reproducible.
Casualties and survivors
Units that take more damage than they have hit points are destroyed and removed. Whatever survives the battle remains, carrying any remaining damage on its hit points. Surviving units that sit still afterward heal 1 hit point per tick, so a battered squad recovers over time if left to garrison. Survivors also earn experience for the fight, and with enough experience a unit climbs through levels, up to 12 levels, gaining hit points, damage, and eventually range as it ranks up.
Salvage and spoils
Destroyed units are not a total loss for the defender's side. Salvage returns Metal for casualties, with roughly a 50% chance per destroyed soldier of recovering value on the Classic ruleset, paid to the target owner.
Spoils go to the strongest surviving attacker. Strength is measured by surviving soldier value first, then by build quality as a tie-breaker. Any crystals on the target are split among the winning attacker's surviving soldiers.
Ownership transfer
If the defender is wiped out and an attacker survives, ownership of the target changes hands: an outpost is captured, and a colony can be conquered. If both sides are completely destroyed, no attacker survives to take the target, so the defender keeps it.
See also
Read Unit Types to understand chassis and weapon matchups, Squads for how forces are grouped, and Battle Reports to see what a fight tells you afterward. For what happens to the target, see Outposts and Camps and Conquest, Tax, and Rebellion, and check Unit Experience for how survivors grow stronger.