Notes on ship peculiarities

An ordinary hull carries cargo, mounts a shield and fires its weapons. This guide covers the hulls with special traits: some move differently, some hide, and some are lost in unusual ways. Their caliber, mass and speed are listed on each ship card. Only the distinguishing features are described here.

A2
It cannot be built at a colony. It appears as a flash within an anomaly, strikes once, and vanishes. Boarding is impossible because the hull is already gone.

A3
It has no guns. Its shield of one hundred thousand units protects the fleet behind it. In battle, the enemy hits this hull first, treating it as the fleet’s foremost target.

Carriers
The Aircraft carrier and the Stranger aircraft carrier take living ships into the hold: they are folded into preservation and laid beside the cargo. They are not combat drones. Drones sleep in the hold on their own and launch only when battle begins.

Autonomous stations
An autonomous station cannot be moved: no hydrogen for system travel, no uranium for a jump. Ships dock with it as with a berth. From orbit and from a planet its salvo almost dies - about one percent of the power reaches the target. So stand the laser, plasma, quantum, missile and scout stations.

Bomber
It is the only ship that can fire missiles at the surface of a planet. One salvo looses 24 missiles. The laser does little harm: it is used to aim the missiles.

Babylon
It is not a ship in the usual sense, but a flying structure. Set it on an asteroid, and the rock becomes a base that can already be grown.

Hyper gate
These ships always work as a pair. They open a hyperspace tunnel and swap any two planets. They can be used to resettle somewhere more favorable in the galaxy.

Hyper interceptor
Pirates use it to intercept ships passing through a system. In peacetime it is used to stabilize the hyperspace exit closer to a trade station. It often works together with an attack fleet at the same point in space.

Hot Trail
It sees where ships recently left by hyper jump: foreign trails remain as vectors on the map.

Drones
Combat drones are stored in the hold in preservation. When battle begins, they deploy and fight as ships. Their number is limited by the lower of the carrier capacity and the drone operator’s skill. Two drones deploy without the skill, and each skill level adds two more. Destroyed drones are lost; survivors return to the hold. Drones have no anti-gravity, so ten percent of their damage reaches a planet.

Wings
These hulls combine several guns into a wing, so a single salvo contains many shots. Battleships, frigates, destroyers, assault ships, and heavy fighters fire this way. Each shot is weaker than one from a single gun, but there are more of them.

Corsairs
Corsair hulls cannot be captured by boarding because an assault party cannot secure a foothold aboard. They are built for raiding rather than service in a colonial fleet. This includes the Corsair corvette and the other corsair hulls.

Radar detector
It hides a ship from radar. To spot such a hull the radar must be stronger than the radar detector; equal strength leaves the ship invisible. The Escort ship carries a radar detector and has no guns: its task is to stay unseen. The Spy ship is also under a radar detector and never joins a fleet, so it does not expose the other ships. The Stranger stealth ship carries a tenth-level radar detector and stays hidden even from a strong radar. The Stranger spy carries the same radar detector as an ordinary spy.

Spy ship
From orbit it lands on a planet and takes a full picture: which buildings stand on the surface and in orbit, their levels, shields, stores, guns and the ships nearby. After the report the hull is already gone.

Stranger spy
It takes the same report, then goes further. Agents wreck one random building on the surface, except the capsule. The owner of the planet is told that workers themselves pulled the structure apart at the urging of outsiders. If there is nothing to wreck, the landing is wasted. After the mission this hull is gone as well.

Mines
A mine attacks once and is destroyed. Boarding cannot capture it, because its hull is gone after the strike. The Quantum mine attacks with a quantum burst, the Plasma mine fires several guns, and the Gluon mine also carries a radar detector. A2 behaves similarly, but is an anomaly rather than a shipyard product.

Mobile stations
Unlike an autonomous station, the Mobile space station can move and still accept docking. The stranger station also can intercept and carries a tenth-level radar detector.

Missile cruiser
It launches its missiles in a fan. The weaker the missile type, the more missiles it fires and the less damage each one deals. Enemy missiles lose their target lock and cannot damage it.

Terraformer
It is built in orbit. It can compress a gas giant or turn a dead world into an asteroid, then destroys itself.

Tritites
A Tritite is a creature of open space. It needs neither hydrogen for travel nor uranium for a jump; after leaving hyperspace, it is already in the system.

Remote control
A Remote control ship can direct work on a planet and in orbit without approaching the site.

Destroyers
A Destroyer splits each missile salvo into ten separate hits. The Stranger destroyer and the Destroyer-T work the same way.

Harvester
It collects debris left by a shattered asteroid and loads it into its hold. The debris field is visible on the map only from this ship, or from a fleet that includes it. Debris is loaded into every hold of the ships in the fleet.

Guns
This section lists who fires each weapon and who is protected from it. Shield and movement values are not covered here. For combat in waves, see Notes course "Warfare".

Plasma weapons
Plasma is fired by the Battleship, Battleship-M, Battleship-S and Corsair battleship, the Frigate, destroyers, the Assault ship, heavy fighters, the Hyper interceptor, Hot Trail, the heavy drone, the Plasma mine. The Battleship-T already bears a quantum gun, not plasma.

Protection from plasma
A Corvette is almost immune to plasma: only about one percent of a salvo reaches its shield. The Corsair corvette holds it the same way. The Battleship, Battleship-M, Battleship-T and Corsair battleship halve the damage from any gun hit. The Battleship-S and the Destroyer-T reduce it to one third.

Laser weapons
Laser is fired by the Fighter and light wings, the Corvette, the Bomber, the Missile cruiser, light drones, a plain Assault ship, autonomous stations, tritites, the stranger hunter, the patrol cutter.

Protection from laser
The Frigate, Hyper interceptor, and Hot Trail are highly resistant to laser fire: only about one percent reaches their shields. Battleships reduce laser damage as they do plasma damage.

Quantum and maser
Quantum is fired by the Battleship-T, A2 and the Quantum mine. From a planet and from orbit the Short-wave maser and the Quantum Generator strike every ship of that side at once.

Protection from quantum
Fighters and light wings are completely immune to quantum weapons, even when an attack strikes the whole fleet. Combat autonomous stations take about one percent of the damage. Battleships reduce quantum damage by one half or two thirds.

Missiles
Missiles are launched by the Bomber (only its missiles reach a planet), the Missile cruiser in a fan, destroyers in a spray of ten, the autonomous missile station in a queue of ten.

Protection from missiles
Laser and plasma armour does not stop missiles. Only the Missile cruiser can break enemy missile locks.