Index -> Playing the Game -> Execution Phase -> Combat Phase

In this phase, combat takes place:

• At each system where two or more players have a force of at least one ship; and
• At each system where there is at least one neutral ship and one player-controlled ship.

All ships at a system participate in combat, even those that cannot fire weapons. (For example, a ship that is powering up.)

Combat does not take place at the Star Chamber.

Each combat is divided into 10 rounds. In each round, a specific weapon type is fired. (At present, no weapons are fired during round 10. Future expansion sets may change this.)

When combat begins, a single leader is designated for each force involved. That leader is the local friendly persona who has the highest Leadership value. (In the case of a tie among personae, the one who entered play earlier is chosen.) If there are no local friendly personae that have Leadership, the force enters combat without a leader.

In each round of combat, the ships led by the leader with the highest Leadership fire first, and so on in descending order of Leadership. (In the case of a tie for Leadership value - including 0 - the player with the Edge fires first, followed in a multi-player game by the other tied players in increasing order of Tie-breakers.)

Each time a ship's weapon is fired, two things can cause it to deal extra damage:

• If the ship has alert crew status, it deals +2 damage.
• If the ship has a leader in the combat, it deals extra damage equal to half that leader's Leadership value (rounded down).

For example: A scout with 4 beam fires its weapon. The ship has alert crew status, giving it a +2 bonus. It is being led in the combat by a leader who has 3 Leadership, giving it another +1 bonus (half of 3, rounded down). The scout's weapon ends up dealing 7 damage.

When a ship is dealt damage, that damage is first subtracted from its remaining shields. If a ship has (or is reduced to) 0 shields, further damage is subtracted from its hull. When a ship's hull is reduced to 0, that ship is destroyed.

Your ships will try to attack the most damaged enemies in the combat, but this may not always be possible due to the nimbleness of smaller ships and the general chaos of battle. To represent this uncertainty, weapons targeting is determined by the game server. For the purposes of weapons fire, each ship is assigned an "effective hull" number equal to its maximum possible hull plus the amount of hull damage it has taken. The server then randomly selects a target using the sum of all those effective hull numbers.

For example: You have a ship with two eligible targets, a cruiser (with 16 hull) and a scout (with 9 hull). Your ship has a 16 in 25 chance of firing on the cruiser, and a 9 in 25 chance of firing on the scout. But if the scout has taken 7 hull damage, its effective hull number now becomes 16 (9 maximum hull + 7 hull damage). Your ship has a 16 in 32 chance of firing on the cruiser, and a 16 in 32 chance of firing on the scout.

If all your ships in one combat are destroyed, the leader you have in the combat is also destroyed. If the effects of a card kill your leader before the end of the combat, your ships will carry on the combat without a leader.