Ship classes

Six ship classes. Each has a purpose. The skill is composing fleets — not just building the most expensive ship you can afford.

Scout Corvette

The eyes of your empire. Cheapest ship, fastest movement (3 hexes per turn), longest sensor range. Fragile in combat — a single Patrol Frigate kills two corvettes in one round.

Build when: Always. From turn 1, you should have at least one scout per direction you haven’t explored.

Don’t build for: Combat. A pure-corvette fleet loses to literally anything else.

Patrol Frigate

The backbone warship. Reliable, decent armour, decent damage. Movement 2. Affordable enough to mass.

Build when: Early-to-mid game pressure. Three frigates is a credible threat. Six frigates is a war.

Counter: Strike craft (Assault Destroyer) deal +50% damage to frigates. Don’t field pure-frigate fleets against opponents who can build destroyers.

Assault Destroyer

Fast strike craft. Movement 3 (matches scouts). Counters frigates and dreadnoughts (line ships). Vulnerable to itself — destroyer-on-destroyer is a coin flip.

Build when: You see your opponent massing frigates or capital ships. A fleet with a destroyer wing is hard to counter.

Don’t build for: Solo engagement. Destroyers want a parent fleet to escort.

Heavy Cruiser

Armoured capital ship. Movement 1 (slow). High damage, high health, expensive (400 energy / 200 minerals base). Counters nothing specific but is balanced against everything.

Build when: Mid-game, once your economy can sustain the upkeep. A heavy cruiser is the anchor of a fleet — surround it with frigates and destroyers.

Don’t build for: Mass production. You can’t afford ten of these. You can afford three. Make them count.

Battleship Dreadnought

The endgame capital. Movement 1. Massive damage, massive health, massive cost (600 energy / 350 minerals base). Counters nothing specific; counters by sheer presence.

Build when: Late game, after the Battleship Dreadnought tech unlocks. By this point you’ve either won or you’re gambling on a comeback.

Don’t build for: Quick wins. A dreadnought takes 5–8 turns to construct. If you build one when you needed five frigates, you’ve lost the war.

Fleet Carrier

Logistics support. Movement 2. Buffs adjacent friendly ships in combat (small but stacking). Doesn’t carry deployable fighters in current implementation — the strike-craft role belongs to destroyers.

Build when: Your fleets are large enough that the buff matters. A carrier with two cruisers and four frigates is dangerous in a way the same fleet without a carrier isn’t.

Don’t build for: Solo engagement. A carrier alone is a slow, expensive corvette.

Counter wheel

Class	Counters	Countered by
Scout Corvette	—	Anything
Patrol Frigate	Strike craft (Destroyer)	Strike craft (Destroyer) — wait, see note
Assault Destroyer	Line ships (Frigate, Dreadnought)	Line ships (mutual)
Heavy Cruiser	—	—
Battleship Dreadnought	—	Strike craft
Fleet Carrier	—	—

The counter relationship is bidirectional between line ships and strike craft. Line ship vs strike craft: both sides take +50% damage. The matchup favours whoever brings more total firepower; the counter is about amplifying an existing edge.

Capital ships and support vessels have no specific counter. They’re balanced against everything.

Composition rules

Three principles for a fleet:

1. Always include scouts. Even a war fleet wants one corvette ahead, scouting the next hex.
2. Mix line and strike. Frigates plus destroyers is the cheapest balanced fleet. The destroyers protect the frigates from enemy destroyers.
3. Anchor with capital. Once you can afford it, one cruiser per fleet stabilises everything else. Two cruisers is overkill on small maps; on large ones it’s necessary.

A typical mid-game fleet: 1 scout, 4 frigates, 2 destroyers, 1 cruiser. That’s a credible attacking force.

Reading fleets on the map

A fleet shows the silhouette of its strongest ship, tinted in the owner’s colour. Capital ships — destroyers, cruisers, and battleships — are drawn larger than scouts and frigates, so you can judge the weight of a fleet at a glance before you ever open it.

Faction notes

Each faction flies a visually distinct hull. Early-game scouts and frigates carry their faction’s silhouette and palette, so you can read ownership at a glance on the map.

• Orion Hegemony gets -15% fleet maintenance — they can field larger fleets than anyone else.
• Terran Directorate gets +5% mineral production and -10% colony maintenance — they build ships faster, indirectly.
• Nyx Collective unlocks ship tech earlier via cheaper exploration research.
• Vanguard Nomads can reposition fleets through nebulae the rest cannot use.