Fleets movements
Two different kinds of movement are available for the fleets: standard movement, explained below, and hypertravel, explained in the hypergates technology section.
In the standard mode, fleets can move from one planet to any other planet of the galaxy. The travel time is calculated as follows:
Travel time = 2 hours + distance * 1 hour
To get an idea of the distances, remember that:
- the graphical map's width and height are equivalent to 3 units of distance
- the distance between two planets of the same star is 0
- the distance between two planets of different stars is the same as the distance between the two stars
- the distance between two adjacent stars is 1.
If you intend to take control of an enemy planet by droping armies on it, you must load your armies from your planet into your fleet, before sending it (use the armies management form). Click here for details on ships carrying capacities.
While confirming your orders, you will be prompted for the drop mode of your armies: 'autodrop' means that your armies will be droped down to the planet as soon as possible after arrival; 'on order' means that no drop will be done without your order, even if the space battle turns out badly for your fleets.
Sending a fleet does not cost anything.
You can change the destination of a fleet at any time: the fleet will immediately steer towards the new destination.
Whenever the owner of the destination planet changes during the flight, all incoming fleets have their mission automatically inverted (from attack to defend, and inversely).
A fleet can not drop or load armies nor move to another planet during 2 hours after arrival. For the same reason, you can not merge a fleet that has just arrived with another fleet on the same planet that arrived more than 2 hours ago.
Army teleportation
Once the teleportation technology discovered, you can teleport armies from any planet of the galaxy to any other planet, either if the destination planet is one of your planets or if you know its teleportation password.
If you have not researched this technology yet, you should still define the teleportation password for your planet(s), so that your allies can teleport reinforcements to your planet(s) in case of attack.
Teleportation takes one energy unit per teleported army. You can use the energy either of the origin planet or of the destination planet, but you can not use the energy of a planet that you do not own. Thus, you can never teleport armies between two foreign planets.
The teleportation is immediate, but teleported armies are unable to fight or move during 2 hours after teleportation (although they still can get damaged by enemy fire).
The energy of a planet automatically increases by one unit every hour, until it reaches the limit of the storage capacity. You can increase the storage capacity of a planet after having researched the appropriate technology.
Space battles
A battle starts on/around a planet when one of the three following events happens:
- you already have armies or fleets around this planet in 'defence' (friendly) mode, and you switch your forces to 'attack' mode,
- one of your fleets in 'attack' mode arrives at this planet,
- one of your fleets in 'defence' mode arrives at this planet, but the planet owner has activated the paranoiac mode and you do not belong to a common alliance.
Our advice is to mix different kinds of ships and different kinds of races. Especially, do not let your big ships be overwhelmed by large numbers of scouts. Conversely, use your cruisers and destroyers to support your scouts.
Since your carrier ships may not be able to drop their armies before the first round of battle, they are targets of choice for all enemy ships; so, try to add more carriers ships than carried armies in your invading fleets.
When the attacking fleet gains full space control (ie: at least 3 times as powerful as the defending fleet), that causes the following effects:
- destroyers, cruisers and bombers automatically start to support their ground armies,
- a blockade of all trading relations is automatically started (at least 100 attacking ships must be present; the trading relations resume 4 hours after the blockade has ended).
All armies carried by ships that are destroyed are killed. Carried armies are supposed to be always evenly distributed among all carrying ships.
Ground battles
A ground battle starts when attacking ships drop armies to the ground, or when defending friendly armies are switched to attack mode (also called: treason). The battle ends when there are no more defending ground armies. Allied planets can teleport defending armies into the battle as long as the planet owner does not change. Conversely, if the defeat seems evident, it may be preferable to teleport the remaining armies to another planet.
As soon as the planet defenders have less armies on the ground than the attackers, the owner starts losing control over his planet:
- trading relations can not be dropped,
- infiltrations can not be cancelled,
- army generation and ship building are supended.
When allied armies win a ground battle, the new planet owner is the one who has the highest number of armies on the ground at the end of the battle. The new owner automatically gains control of the tradings relations, the factories (not the exploitations), and the following happens:
- the build pipes are cleared and refunded to the former planet owner.
- if he is not camouflaged, a message indicating the name of the new planet owner is sent to all players who have fleets or armies on this planet at this time.
- all infiltrations of the new planet owner to this planet are automatically cancelled.
- if the government system was Hyperiums Protectorate, it becomes Democratic.
- all civilization level investments being processed are lost.
If a planet is taken over by camouflaged armies, the new owner gets anonymous control of this planet (and possibly its exploitations) for 21 days. Anonymous control means that there is no way for any other player to know who is controlling the planet, even by infiltration. However, if, for any reason (fight, abandon...), the planet is lost during the anonymous control time, the former owner immediately loses any exploitation he was controlling on the planet.
Note that ground battles progress slower than space battles.
Unavailability delays
In a few situations, your military units become unavailable for a delay of 2 hours, with different consequences for the fleets and for the armies. Here is a review of these situations:
- fleet arrival (from standard travel or Hypergate jump),
- army teleportation,
- fleets and armies switched to attack or defence,
- fleets and armies forced to attack by foreign planet owner,
- fleets or armies bought.
Special case: when a planet is taken, all present forces are added 1 hour of unavailability (in the limit of 2 hours).
Unavailable fleets fully participate in the fight (if any), dealing and getting damage, but are not able to:
- load and drop armies,
- move to another planet,
- prevent a blockade.
Unavailable armies:
- do not deal damage in a fight (although they can get damage),
- can not be loaded,
- can not be teleported,
- can not be sold,
- can not take a planet,
- can not prevent a planet from being taken,
- do not count in ground superiority computation.
Plundering
When controlling a planet under dictatorial regime, and as long as there is no battle raging, you have the possibility to plunder (and stop plundering) the planet at any time. The button to start the plundering is located in the 'Fleets & armies' page of the planet, tab 'Planetary orders'.
As long as your planet is being plundered, the following happens:
- this icon is displayed: 
- a percentage of the planet's civilization investments is leeched (a part of it is added to your cash reserves, another part is lost),
- the population tends to flee the planet (which may be compensated by other positive growth parameters),
- armies are raised from the population by force, dramatically increasing the overall generation rate,
- the economic health of the plundered planet and, to a lesser extent, of the surrounding planets, deteriorates at a moderate pace,
- all your other planets suffer a deduction on their population growth, which can even turn negative; the more planets you are plundering at the same time, the greater the negatige impact on your other planets' population.
Note that planet plundering is subject to stasis field the same way as battles.
Fortification
The armies stationed on a planet always fortify their positions with time. The fortification process automatically starts 7 days after the planet has been taken. The fortification level is materialized in a defense bonus given to all defending armies on the planet; this bonus applies to both ground-to-ground and ground-to-space power.
After the first week of planet control, the fortification process starts, speeds up progressively and reaches +120% after two months; then, it increases slowlier and slowlier, until it reaches its maximum level of 190%, three months later (five months total).
If, at any time, a battle ends up with a new planet controller, all existing fortifications on this planet become useless and must be rebuilt from scratch (the defense bonus falls to zero). Conversely, a planet taken by infiltration keeps all its fortifications intact, to the benefit of the new owner.
When hit by an Energy Blast, fortifications are destroyed down to the 30% bonus level.
The symbols        are used to display the current fortification level (ie, defense bonus) of the planet.
Control limit
The control limit defines the maximum number of planets a single player can own without income deduction. If you exceed the control limit, your income (before fleets and factories upkeeps, and only if positive) suffers a cumulative deduction of 10% per planet you control above this limit, and all your planets suffer a reduced population growth (which can even become negative).
The control limit in this game is set to 14, and the absolute control limit, which is the limit above which no planet can be taken, is set to 24.
Neutral planets
At anytime, you have the possibility (a button in the planet overview page) to abandon one or several of your planets. The process of abandoning a planet takes 8 hours and can be started at the following conditions:
- the planet is not being restored to Hyperiums,
- the population is not migrating to another planet.
At the time a planet becomes neutral, the following happens:
- the former owner is kicked out, but the planet has no new owner, until someone comes and takes it,
- all infiltrations from this planet are lost,
- all trading relations and exploitations remain and continue to bring income as usual.
You can know if a planet is neutral by having either armies on its ground or an infiltration level of at least 30%.
Abandoning a planet increases the delay to get a new planet from Hyperiums up to 7 (non cumulative) days for the concerned player.
The abandoning process can not be started by a Backup buddy if the planet has been controlled for over 10 days.
Superclusters
At the begining of a game, all planets belong to the same group of planets, also called Supercluster 1, or SC1. As the number of players and the number of planets grow, the day comes when the first Supercluster becomes completely filled: SC1 is closed for new players, and a new Supercluster (SC2) opens for colonization. When SC2 is in turn full, it is closed and SC3 is spawned and opened for new players and new planets to colonize, and so on...
When a new Supercluster is spawned, it is protected, which means no planet of this Protected Supercluster (PSC) can be attacked by a player located in another SC. It also implies no relation of any kind between players/planets of the PSC and players/planets of any other SC. In any case, this protection time can not exceed 3 months. A warning is issued in the "News from the Galaxy" public forum 15 days before the opening (end of protection) of the PSC.
Just after its opening, the formerly protected Supercluster is surrounded by a Quantum Storm that causes the following effects:
- space fleets suffer damages when entering the SC, coming from the outside (ships leaving the SC are not impacted by the Quantum Storm).
- teleportation of armies across the Quantum Storm (to or from the newly opened SC) is impossible.
The Quantum Storm lasts 120 days. The first day, any fleet entering the SC will suffer damages of 50%, which means 50% of the ships will be destroyed at the time they reach their destination planet. The effects of the Quantum Storm will decrease day by day, until they become null 120 days later.
All non protected Superclusters are also named Open Superclusters, or OSC.
Besides the Quantum Storm, which is an occasional and temporary phenomenon, the space between Superclusters is permanently exposed to Quantum Winds that are also dealing damages to fleets travelling from one SC to a lower/newer SC (for instance, from SC1 to SC2). These damages amount to 5% per crossed inter-SC space (arithmetically cumulative). For instance, a fleet moving from SC1 to SC10 will suffer, at arrival, about 36% losses on its ships and armies. Beware: if the destination Supercluster is under Quantum Storm, the damages increase accordingly.
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