How does a "battle" end?

#1

One of my issues with the game is about how often it feels like combat doesn’t really move the needle towards overall victory. I’ve been thinking about this for a while now and one thing I’m realizing is that I actually don’t understand how each battle works.

I thought I’d reach out to clarify how the game treats each battle and learn more. Here’s my current understanding:

  1. The game currently seems to announce 2 types of battles, Critical and Non-critical.

  2. A timer is set and once it reaches zero AI fleets from both sides spawn in at the specified location. Ship to ship fighting ensues, but I very rarely see the AI directly attacking the base/station that is at the heart of the battle.

  3. At some point the battle is either won or lost.

I’ve only seen a “win” once where a base was actually damaged enough to turn white (which is called Conquered I believe?) and end the battle. Otherwise, the battle just seems to end for no clear reason.

Is there a timer involved? Does a certain percent of a fleet need to be destroyed? What are the criteria that determine whether a battle is won or lost? The game seems to declare battles constantly, yet only rarely does it seem to matter. I seem to be reading an endless stream of messages about “Battle X was won” or “Battle Y was lost” yet nothing changes on the starmap and the red/blue line at the top of the starmap hasn’t moved an inch. Hours into a game it does seem like bases/stations start to be removed from play and then things change, but how it gets there isn’t obvious. At least to me.

I’d love to hear some details on what’s going on to determine these wins and losses as I think it’s a key part of the meta game.
Thanks!

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#2

It’s actually pretty simple. The reward for non-critical battles is extra credits given to the team that won. The team that lost, obviously, gets nothing.

The reward for critical battles is the destruction of the objective if the team on attack won. Otherwise, nothing.

In addition to the battle system, a team can also manually destroy an objective( even if there are no battles happening around it ).

NPCs do not aim at buildings / modules specifically, but during a battle some projectiles can damage them accidentally. Once most of the strategical modules are destroyed, the entire objective glows up and becomes destroyed and no longer generates battles.

The probability for battles being critical is based on the balance between team scores. The team that is losing has a higher chance of having a critical attack battle against the enemy, allowing natural come-backs. That’s also why there are few critical battles at the beginning of a match, since the team scores are initially balanced.

Keep in mind this system was designed for matches with dozens of players, so of course under low population the matches are going to drag a bit. With 20+ active players, a match in theory should only last a few hours.

#3

Hi Flavien,

Thanks for the quick response! This is great to see spelled out like this, especially how critical battles are queued up.

I think I’m still confused about how a battle ends if an objective isn’t destroyed. For example, how does a team win a defensive battle? What determines when that battle is over?
Thank you.

#4

Team credits accumulate ( both for the attacker and defenders ) at each objective. Once a certain threshold ( dependent on the strategical score of the location: bigger station = big battles ) is reached, the battle starts. Ships are spawned and “consume” some of the allocated credits for that battle. Same for reinforcements waves, until all credits allocated for that battle are exhausted. At that point, no more ships are spawning for that team.

The battle ends when a side no longer has allocated credits for that battle, and the number of ships on the battlefield is much lower than the opponent’s.

The “victory odds” ( displayed at the bottom-right of the HUD, or in the missions menu ) is an estimation for these 2 variables. Typically, the battle will end when a team has < 25% of victory odds compared to the enemy.

#5

Ah, that explains so much! Thank you for breaking that down for me. I wondered if it had something to do with some kind of credit or ticket style system.

I would love to see this system at work with higher player counts to see how different it feels. Thanks again for your time.