Alpha build 47 - the first fight: attack the Tide, and keep a report of every battle

Alpha build 47 is live, and fleet combat is in. This is a client and server update and the two must match: the server restarted at 13:29 UTC, nothing was wiped, and an older copy of the game is told it is out of date. Exit Steam completely and start it again to get the update.

Attack the Tide

The alien fleets drifting around your sector can now be fought.

• Deploy a fleet, select it, and right-click a Tide fleet. Your fleet gives chase, even from another view, and the battle starts when it catches its target.
• The battle is fought for you on the server, both sides on autopilot, for up to five minutes. All enemy ships destroyed is a victory, all of yours is a defeat, and the clock running out is a draw.
• Damage is real. Ships keep the damage they took until you repair them. A destroyed ship is not lost: it comes home as a wreck you can repair.
• Fit weapons first. A fleet without weapons cannot win.

The battle result

When a battle ends, a result screen opens by itself: the verdict, the battle time, every ship of both fleets with the health it came out with, and a repair estimate. REPAIR FLEET starts the repairs from there once your fleet is home.

Battle reports

Every battle is kept.

• The crossed-swords button at the bottom right of the HUD opens your last 50 reports, with tabs to narrow the list and a ship-by-ship preview of each one.
• If a battle ends while you are offline, your next login tells you what happened, and the button counts the reports you have not read.
• SHARE TO CHAT puts a report in your message. It arrives as a chip showing the result, and anyone can open it to read.

Also in this build

• DEPLOY no longer pulls your view to the fleet.
• A fleet's row says what the fleet is doing: MOVING, IN BATTLE, FLEET DESTROYED.
• REPAIR on a fleet can be pressed again as the repair queue empties, and says how many ships it started and why it stopped.
• The first click on the HUD after closing a screen now lands. It used to be swallowed by the map.

What is not in yet

• Only fleets of the Tide can be attacked. Battles between commanders come later, so nobody can attack your fleets or your base.
• Battles pay no XP and no loot yet. The REWARDS strip on the result screen reads zero.
• You cannot watch or steer a battle yet. WATCH REPLAY is on the screens, switched off.

Alpha Round 10 on the playtest page walks through all of it, and we most want to hear whether the battles feel fair. The Player's Guide has a rewritten Combat chapter, and the full list is on the changelog.