“A ship is a weapon. A fleet is an argument.”
— Fleet Admiral Selene Voss
Your fleets
You start with two fleet slots, and a higher-Mark Shipyard building gives you more, up to eight. Each fleet holds up to six ships, worth up to your command points. Add ships to a fleet while it is at base; you can only remove ships while the fleet is docked (not deployed, moving or fighting). A destroyed ship can't join a fleet until it is repaired.
Command points. Every ship costs command points by its class, the same for every role and faction, and a fleet's ships may not cost more together than your command points. You have 100 up to level 10, rising evenly to 450 at level 50 (about 9 more for every level); every one of your fleets has the same. The fleet's row shows what it holds (CMD 64/100), the ship picker's header shows the fleet's points and what the ship you picked costs, and refuses a ship that does not fit in what is left. The Shipyard's FULL SPECS show each hull's COMMAND COST.
| Class | Command points |
|---|---|
| Fighter | 4 |
| Cutter | 7 |
| Corvette | 8 |
| Frigate | 10 |
| Destroyer | 14 |
| Cruiser | 19 |
| Battlecruiser | 38 |
| Battleship | 50 |
| Carrier | 62 |
| Dreadnought | 90 |
At 100 points a fleet can hold two Battleships, a Dreadnought and a Frigate, or five Cruisers. At 450 (level 50) it can hold five Dreadnoughts, or six Carriers, but never six Dreadnoughts (540). These are starting values and may change as the fleets are tested.
A fleet's row shows its state at a glance: in its bay, deployed, moving, IN BATTLE, in repair, or FLEET DESTROYED when no ship in it can fight. The row's buttons and the command bar always agree on what the fleet may do, and when something is refused the game says why.
Once you have officers (from commander level 10), each row also carries the fleet's bridge crew: three faces and the captain's name. Click it to change the crew. See Bridge Officers.
On the map a fleet is labelled with its commander's name, and with their alliance's [TAG] in front when they are in one. If you are in an alliance yourself, your allies' fleets are green and other alliances' are red. See Alliances.
Deploying and giving orders
- Select a fleet with at least one ship able to fight and deploy it. It launches near your home outpost. Deploying does not move your view: you stay where you were looking. A fleet with a ship still in repair can't launch until the repair is done.
- Right-click on the map to give an order straight away, or use the command bar at the bottom of the screen:
| Right-click on… | Order |
|---|---|
| A fleet of the Tide | Engage: your fleet closes in, gives chase and attacks. See Combat |
| Your own outpost | Dock: the fleet returns home and guards the station |
| Inside an asteroid field | Mine: the fleet flies to the field and starts mining. See Mining below |
| Anywhere else | Move to that point |
A fleet travels at the speed of its slowest ship. It keeps flying while you are offline. Fleets can travel between views: ordered to a place outside its planet's view, a fleet warps out, crosses the sector and warps in at the other end. That goes for an attack too: order a fleet at your planet onto a Tide fleet out in the sector and it crosses over already giving chase. Double-click a fleet's row to jump the camera to it.
RECALL sends a fleet home. It is a flight, not an instant return: the fleet travels back to your base and docks, however far that is, and it can be attacked on the way. A fleet in combat can't be recalled. A fleet that is destroyed in a battle still comes straight home as wrecks.
Mining
Asteroid fields stand round some planets and out on the sector map. A field has a dashed edge and a plate that names its resource (minerals, helium-3 or antimatter), its tier from 1 to 5, how many asteroids it has and how rich it still is. A planet with fields has a small rock marker beside it on the sector map. Point at an asteroid to see what it has left.
- Deploy a fleet and right-click inside a field's edge. From another view the fleet crosses over first.
- On arrival it starts mining by itself, with beams on as many as three asteroids at a time. Its plate shows what is in its hold and how long until the hold is full.
- Mining stops when the hold is full. RECALL the fleet: it flies home, docks and unloads into your stores.
| Resource | Time to fill a hold |
|---|---|
| Minerals | About 15 minutes |
| Helium-3 | About 30 minutes |
| Antimatter | About 3 hours 45 minutes |
Those times are the same for every fleet. One unit of anything takes one space in the hold, and a fleet's hold is the cargo space of its ships added up, so a bigger fleet brings home more in the same time.
Cargo modules make a ship's hold bigger. These are special modules such as the Generic Cargo Module, the Cargo Expander and the Cargo Arrays. Each one fitted adds its percentage of the hull's own cargo bay: three modules of +45% on a hold of 165 make it 388. A Mark on the module makes it add more, and a ship's hold can be at most three times its hull's. The ship's card shows the result as CARGO BAY. Because the time to fill a hold does not change, a fleet with bigger holds also mines faster.
The cargo is yours only once the fleet is back in its bay. Until then it is in the hold, and a hold can be lost:
| What happens | The cargo |
|---|---|
| The fleet docks at home | Unloaded into your stores. What your stores cannot take stays in the hold until there is room |
| Another commander beats the fleet | Goes into the winner's hold, as much as fits. The rest is left behind. The battle result says what was taken |
| The Tide beats the fleet | Lost |
| The server restarts | Kept, and unloaded when you next sign in |
Guards. A field of tier 2 or more is guarded by the Tide, and its plate says so. An order to mine there is refused until the guards are beaten. They are back about 30 minutes later.
Asteroids run out. A mined-out asteroid turns to a dark husk with a countdown and comes back when it reaches zero: sooner in a poor field, later in a rich one. A richer tier has more in every asteroid.
A fleet mining out in the sector can be attacked by anyone: sector space is free for all. A field round a planet follows that planet's rules for battles between commanders. See Combat.
A fleet that has fought does not go back to mining by itself. Order it onto the field again.
Starting values. How much an asteroid holds, how long a husk takes to come back, the guards and their 30 minutes may all change. There are six fields to start with: three on the sector map and three round planet 102.
Formations
Every fleet has a deployment formation: a 5x3 grid of stations that you arrange from the FORMATION button on the fleet's row. Pick a hull, pick a station, and they swap. Five set formations (Screen, Line Abreast, Column, Dispersed and Standoff) lay the fleet out for you, or arrange it yourself. Every ship has a station of its own, destroyed ships included, and a ship you add is given a free one. The formation is how your ships are placed when a battle starts.
Fleet level
A fleet's level comes from the XP value of the hulls in it, so bigger hulls make a higher-level fleet. The level decides the icon other commanders see on the map (Fleet Icons).
Level 10 hull XP
Level 2450 hull XP
Level 31,250 hull XP
Level 42,300 hull XP
Level 53,550 hull XPRepairs
A fleet is repaired at your base. The REPAIR button on a fleet's row shows only when the fleet is home and has a damaged ship, so recall a deployed fleet first. One click repairs the whole fleet as one item in the repair queue, at the ships' prices and times added up. Short of resources, it repairs the cheapest ships you can pay for and tells you how many were left out; press REPAIR again later for the rest. REPAIR FLEET on a battle result does the same.
The time and cost depend on how badly each ship is damaged, including its fitted modules. Your player level raises how many repairs run at once and how fast they go. To repair one ship on its own, or to finish a repair instantly, use MY SHIPS in the Shipyard; every running repair is listed under its REPAIR counter.
A repair restores the ship to full health. A destroyed ship is not lost: it stays yours and can be repaired like any other. When a whole fleet is wiped out, it is brought back to its bay at your base, where REPAIR FLEET on the battle result screen or REPAIR on its row puts it right.