Space Combat Sequence

A space combat lasts up to 8 combat turns.

Before the first turn: craft launch

All craft selected in Embarkation leave the hangars before the first turn. They join the attacking forces and fight with their own statistics, weapons, shields, and evasion, just like autonomous ships. They can fire, be targeted, and suffer losses.

Carriers remain combat units too. If a carrier is destroyed after launching its craft, the craft are not destroyed with it: they have already left. However, losing the carrier reduces the available capacity to bring them back after combat.

To prepare this loadout, see embarkation before departure.

During the turns

Each turn always follows the same order:

1. shields are recalculated;
2. units alive at the start of the turn are fixed as the basis for resolving the turn;
3. living Weave Aegises receive their cover charges;
4. the attacker fires: each shot selects its target, applies any cover provided by an Aegis, then checks whether the final target evades before dealing damage;
5. the defender fires in the same order, then applies any critical hits from defenses only if the shot was not evaded;
6. neutralized units are removed from the operational forces.

Both sides therefore fire based on the state at the start of the turn. A unit neutralized during the turn still fires if it was operational when that turn began.

Combat ends as soon as one side has no units left, or at the end of the 8th turn if both sides still have survivors. The breakdown of neutralized ships into light damage, heavy damage, and destroyed hulls, as well as their returns, is detailed in returns after combat. Only destroyed hulls are permanent losses and contribute to Debris fields, according to the rates described in Debris field formation.

After the last turn

The game assigns survivors to the applicable return paths. Craft on the normal return are re-embarked within the remaining capacity; those that no longer fit have an autonomous fallback. The rules, including the case of damaged craft, are detailed in re-embarkation after combat.

The report counts the craft among the forces committed and records their outcomes. When a fallback is formed, it lists the craft evacuated without a hangar; see reading mission reports.

Example

Two fleets can destroy each other during the same turn and still both fire before being removed.

When the attacker loses a space combat in the first turn, their copy of the report hides defender details: fleet, defenses, losses, survivors, defender crew, and turn log. The defender keeps a complete report.

If this report is shared in chat, readers see the same version as the owner of the shared copy: an attacker copy stays hidden, while a defender copy stays complete.

The generated Debris field remains a world element that can be viewed from the galaxy; this masking applies to the combat report, not to the mechanics of Debris fields.