The Sixteen Hulls
Every commander starts in a Runabout with 30 fighters loaded (not the hull's full capacity) and upgrades outright at StarDock's Shipyards — trade in your current ship for half its value toward the next one, or keep it flying and buy an additional hull outright to grow a real fleet. Offense and Defense below are each hull's own damage multiplier — see "How a Fight Actually Resolves" for exactly what that number does.
How a Fight Actually Resolves
Attacking commits a number of your own fighters to the fight — the instant you commit them, they're spent, whether you win or not. There's no dice roll on damage: damage is deterministic, not random — each committed fighter deals a fixed amount set by your hull's Offensive Odds (a Marauder's fighters hit harder than a Runabout's; a Sentinel's are weaker), absorbed by the target's shields first, then its fighters. Retaliation works the same way off the defender's own Defensive Odds.
If the target survives, it retaliates — for its full pre-attack fighter count, not whatever's left after your hit. Under-committing against a target that can survive your attack is the single worst way to pick a fight: you pay the fighters either way, and a survivor still hits you back at full strength. Attacking always breaks your own cloak, and attacking inside a safe zone destroys you outright before any fight even happens.
Losing a Fight
Destruction costs you exactly half your current credits and half your experience. You respawn at your home plane's home sector in a fresh starting ship with 30 fighters — the same place you began.
What You Get for Winning
- Killing another commander of the same alignment sign as you (both good, or both evil) pays a quarter of their XP; killing someone of the opposite sign pays half.
- Your own alignment shifts 10 points toward the opposite of your victim's — killing evil pulls you toward good, and vice versa.
- If your target carried a Corbomite Device, it retaliates from the grave — for a quarter of your current fighters, win or lose for you overall.
- Any bounty already posted on your victim's head is paid to you automatically, the instant they're destroyed — see Rank, Alignment & Corps for how bounties get posted.
Deployable Defenses
An armed planet (Citadel Military Reaction Level 2 or higher) automatically fires on any hostile, non-owning ship that enters its sector too — see Planets & Colonization. None of this applies inside a safe zone.
Attacking Structures Isn't Combat
The Combat menu's "Attack this Starport" and "Try to Destroy Planet" aren't fights — they're their own separate, riskier mechanics.
- Port robbery is alignment-gated to Shady, Very Evil, or Monstrous commanders only (see Rank, Alignment & Corps). It costs 1 turn and has only a small chance of success — the deeper your evil alignment, the better your odds, but it's never guaranteed. A bust costs you 5% of your XP, nudges your alignment toward good, and puts that specific port on a 14-day cooldown against you. A successful robbery pays real loot and XP, and pushes your alignment further evil.
- Destroying a planet requires the Sovereign Flagship's Atomic Detonator, consumed on use, and only actually works if the planet has zero colonists left in every role. If anyone's still living there, the detonator backfires and destroys your own ship instead. On an empty planet, it works: the planet is deleted, your alignment drops 50 points, and any other ship still landed there is destroyed along with it.
NPCs
Two kinds patrol the galaxy: Federation Patrol ships and pirates (Skarn Raiders, Skarn Traders, Alien Traders), in counts the host sets for each plane. Both are alignment-aware: a Federation Patrol only ever engages a commander whose alignment is Shady or worse; a pirate only ever engages one who's Good or better. Stay Neutral and both leave you alone — that's the actual point of the split, not an oversight.
If you're an eligible target sharing a sector with one, uncloaked, there's a real chance each tick of an encounter — and that encounter is one-sided: the NPC hits you for its own current fighter count, with no counter-attack from you and no reward, win or lose. It's a passive hazard, not a duel.
You can still deliberately attack a visible NPC yourself, the same way you'd attack another ship — that pays a flat reward: 50 XP, 25 alignment, and a 500cr bounty payout.
Collecting a Bounty
A bounty is posted by someone else, in advance, against a specific commander — see Rank, Alignment & Corps for exactly how and why. Collecting one isn't a separate action: whoever actually destroys the marked commander is paid automatically, at that exact moment. Police HQ's "Ten Most Wanted" board lists every open bounty in the galaxy, highest reward first.