INITIATIVE | SHIP VS. SHIP | SHIP VS. PLANET | PLANET VS. SHIP | PLANET VS. MISSILE
Combat
Combat plays a major role in any game of TERRITORIES 3069: Star Siege. Your ships engaging your enemies' fleets, firing missiles at their home worlds and stars, and defending your own systems from invasion - these are all things that ultimately are resolved by combat.INITIATIVE
Initiative determines who moves first. Because of the targeting handicap that is imposed on planets (because they're firing at targets in space) planets always get first initiative. With respect to combat, it means that ships will be fired-upon first by the planets they are in orbit of before they will have a chance to fire back.
Ships, on the other hand, receive a random initiative assignment at the beginning of each turn. Your ships turns will be randomly mixed with the turns of your enemy fleets. Since it is random and changes each turn, this makes it balanced and fair. Ships that are destroyed forfeit any action they would perform that turn if they have not already acted prior to their destruction.
One ship attacking another ship is the most common type of combat. For the purposes of this documentation, missiles are a simplified ship class and so a ship firing at a missile follows this same process.
Ships always attack the closest enemy ship. This is important because it can offer tactical advantage during battle. Positioning heavily armed ships behind heavily shielded ships allows your gunships to fire freely while your enemies unleash their fury on the protected ships in front of them.
When a ship attacks another ship, it sequentially fires each of its turrets that are active. Each turret uses a specific amount of energy that reduces the total remaining energy for that weapon class. If the energy available for that weapon type runs out before all of the turrets have fired, the remaining turrets of that type do not fire that round.
Each turret that fires has a chance of hitting or missing its target based on the maneuverability of the target and the weapon's targeting capability.
If the hit is successful, damage is applied first to the target's shields - if applicable. Different weapons do different amounts of damage based on the type of shield they hit. Damage is distributed equally across all of the shields currently active on the target ship simultaneously.
Once the target's shields are drained, the remaining damage is applied to the hull of the ship. Different weapons do different amounts of damage to the armor installed on the target ship. Once a ship's hull strength is depleted, the ship is immediately destroyed.
Ships can attack planets only if they are in orbit of the planet. This means they must be in a square adjacent to the planet in order to attack it. Engaging a planet is the only time that a ship will move on its own initiative away from a preset course you have set. When engaging a planet, a ship will move to the closest open coordinate in orbit of the planet from where they were. This opens them up to attack from ground-based turrets on the planet (see below). The ship's turrets are sequentially fired at the planet. There is a considerable bonus to targeting - it is very hard for something from space to miss something on the ground, especially if it is not moving. The vast majority of weapons on the ship will always hit their expected targets on the surface of the planet.
Habitable worlds always take priority over all other planets in a solar system. You have no control over this at this time. Your ship will ignore all other planets until the habitable world is either under your control or destroyed.
As the planet takes damage, buildings and land are destroyed. When a building is destroyed by enemy forces, the land it occupied becomes unusable due to the ruins and debris.
After all structures have been destroyed, the planet's remaining land takes the damage and is slowly destroyed. Once a planet has no usable land left, it is considered destroyed becomes a nuclear wasteland.
To conquer a planet (rather than destroy it), your ship must only fight through defenses if they are installed. Once a planet's defenses are eliminated, it can be conquered by your race. If you ship's Initiative toward planets is set to Conquer, it will engage a planet only until its defenses are gone and then it will immediately conquer the planet, bringing it under your control.
On the turn following an enemy ship entering orbit, a planet outfitted with turrets will immediately begin to shoot at the enemy ship. Not all planet turrets are available to fire on the enemy ship. Because there are eight possible coordinates around the planet, the number of installed turrets is equally divided among them. So, only 1/8 of the total number of turrets installed on a planet will engage a given ship in orbit.
The benefit of this approach is that if there are multiple ships in orbit, each ship is engaged by the planet. All the ships take damage. Previous versions of TERRITORIES used a sequential approach where all turrets would focus on a single ship until it was destroyed. While a single ship took damage, the other ships in orbit could lay siege to the planet. The equal distribution of turrets is more realistic and allows the planet to better defend itself against enemy ships.
As mentioned earlier, missiles are, for the purposes of combat, a simplified ship design. Missiles approach a planet and if they land in immediate orbit of the planet, they will be attacked by the allocated turrets on the planet.
However, all planets always have a last opportunity to shoot down a missile as it collides with the planet. When the missile's turn comes to impact with the planet, 1/8th of the planet's turrets will have the opportunity to fire upon the missile. This ensures that no matter how fast the enemy missile is, the planet can attempt to protect itself at the last second.
If a missile is not shot down, however, it will always impact and, assuming it has an effect on the type of planet it impacts with, its effects and damage will be immediately felt.
Nuclear missiles cause physical damage to the planet which is applied different from ships firing from space. A nuclear missiles can damage any type of structure during a given round and the damage is applied across the board.
COMBAT | INITIATIVE | SHIP VS. SHIP | SHIP VS. PLANET | PLANET VS. SHIP | PLANET VS. MISSILE
