War & Combat

Combat in Macrocosm is fought across the galaxy map. Fleets deploy to a planet, travel there in real time, and fight in orbit - against rival kingdoms or colonies. Battles are resolved over multiple rounds, one per tick, and both sides can act while the fight is underway. Everything is managed from the War page.

War Declarations

Attacking a kingdom directly is an act of war, and war must be declared first. Any kingdom can declare war on any other from the War page. The declaration opens a grace period that gives the defender warning of what is coming:

Once the grace period ends the war becomes active and hostilities can begin. Both kingdoms are notified at declaration and again when the war goes active.

An active war opens up direct attacks in both directions - it does not matter who declared: fleet attacks on the enemy kingdom, missile strikes on the enemy kingdom, and missile strikes on their deployed fleets. Colonies are the exception - colony combat and colony missile strikes are open to everyone at all times and never require a war declaration.

A war must run for at least 24 hours before peace can be proposed. After that, either side can propose peace from the War page; if the other side accepts, the war ends immediately. There is no limit on re-declaring later - a fresh declaration (with a fresh grace period) is required to resume hostilities.

The grace period cuts both ways: declaring war telegraphs your intent, giving the defender time to recall fleets, reinforce, or strike first the moment the war goes active.

War also embargoes trade in both directions from the moment of declaration: neither side's trade fleets are welcome at the other's colonies until peace. Think twice before declaring on the whole galaxy - every war closes part of your own trade map, and makes you a legal missile target for one more kingdom.

Getting to the Fight

There is no instant attack. To engage a target you deploy a fleet to its planet, wait out the travel time, and engage once the fleet arrives in orbit:

1. Deploy - choose a fleet, destination planet, and target from the Fleet Deploy or War page
2. Travel - travel time scales with distance between the planets
3. Orbit - the fleet arrives and holds position; it can engage, redeploy, or be recalled
4. Engage - the fleet closes to engagement range; combat begins 2 ticks after the order

An orbiting fleet is visible at its location, and while away from base it can be targeted by enemy missiles.

Fog of War

Enemy fleet and missile movement is only visible where you have sensor coverage. Your kingdom projects the largest radar range, and every colony and deployed fleet acts as a smaller sensor post - travelling fleets sweep their sensor bubble along their route, making scout fleets a real tactic. Sensors are your view of the neighbourhood: fleets staging nearby, attacks passing through your space at someone else, and missiles overflying your territory all light up inside the bubble even when none of them are coming for you. Planets, colonies, and kingdom home locations are always public; it is the military movement between them that hides in the dark.

Two more things cut through the fog. Approach scanners: every planet you hold watches its own sky - any enemy fleet bound for your kingdom or one of your colonies is detected once it is within 2 ticks of arrival, however far away it launched from, and stays visible while it holds position there. Trade convoys heading to a colony you own are always visible for their whole journey. And spy intel: you always see any missile you launched or that is targeting you, and a successful Spy probe (or redeemed Infiltrate backdoor) reveals a kingdom's entire fleet and missile activity for 6 hours - the galaxy map lists your active intel and how long each reveal has left.

Combat Rounds

Battles are fought in up to five rounds, one per tick - a full battle lasts around two and a half hours. Each round, every fleet deals damage based on its attack power against the enemy's defence, modified by research, stance, and fleet composition. Losses are applied to ships at the end of each round.

An attack never lands cold: an attack order always takes at least 2 ticks to reach its target, however close it starts. A long-range attack serves this out in transit and opens fire on arrival, but a fleet engaging from orbit, or attacking from the same planet, must close to engagement range first. Since approach scanners flag any fleet inbound on your holdings within 2 ticks of arrival, a defender watching their sky always gets the warning.

Fleets can join an engagement up to the moment fighting begins - reinforcements that reach the planet before the first shots merge into the defence. Once the first round is fought, the battle is locked to its participants.

Stances

Every engaged fleet has a stance, and you can change it between rounds - the new stance applies from the next round onwards:

Aggressive stance can swing a close fight but costs more ships. Evasive barely fights back and is for riding out rounds while you decide whether to flee.

Defenders get the choice too: a colony garrison fights with the stance of its defending fleets. A colony with no defending fleet, and a kingdom's home forces, always fight balanced.

A stance is a standing order: it can be set on any deployed fleet at any time from the fleet tables, and it persists for as long as the fleet stays deployed - including into its next battle. A fleet that returns home and redeploys resets to balanced. If you are going to be away for a few hours, set your deployed fleets' stances before you go.

Fleet Composition

The mix of fighters, warships, and battleships matters. Composition counters run in a triangle:

• Warships counter fighters
• Fighters counter battleships
• Battleships counter warships

A hard counter shifts losses by up to 30% in either direction. A balanced fleet is never badly countered; a tailored fleet built from spy intelligence can punch well above its raw power.

Fleeing

A fleet automatically flees when its losses reach 80%. You can also order a manual flee mid-battle, which takes effect at the next round, and an Evasive stance cuts your losses while you look for a way out. A fleet that flees returns home and takes no further part in the fight.

When combat resolves, defeat is a rout: fleets on the losing side always travel home, as do any fleets that took 50% or more losses. Only the victor's fleets in fighting shape hold position at the target on a 4-tick cooldown.

Defenders hold to different thresholds. A kingdom's home force retreats at 30% losses in round one, 60% in round two, and 80% from round three. A bare colony garrison breaks at 50% losses; with fleets defending it holds to the full 80% - defending fleets stiffen a garrison, never soften it.

Winning and Losing

The defender wins by holding. If the defending force survives all five rounds without routing, the defence succeeds regardless of how much strength remains. Attackers must break the defender, not outlast them.

If the defender routs, the strongest surviving attacker wins. In battles with several attackers, the win goes to the most powerful fleet still standing - your rivals at the same fight are competition, not allies.

You can also commit more than one of your own fleets to the same battle. The two sides fight differently: defending fleets bunch up with the garrison into a single combined force, while each attacking fleet fights as its own battle group - its own commander, stance, losses, and line in the report. Think of it as a pincer assault: two commanders coming in from different vectors against one dug-in defence. Each commander earns combat XP on the usual terms (see Commander Experience below), so multi-fleet assaults are a legitimate way to train several commanders at once - though a token escort riding along with a real fleet earns nothing. In combat reports and the live battle view, rows sharing a colour are fleets from the same kingdom fighting together.

After combat, surviving fleets that took less than 50% losses hold position at the planet on a 4-tick cooldown. Fleets that fled, or took 50% or more, return home automatically.

The cooldown belongs to the fleet, not the planet: redeploying or recalling a cooling fleet does not reset it. A fleet that hops to a nearby planet mid-cooldown arrives and waits in orbit until its crews have regrouped before it can engage anything. Returning home does not shake it off either - a recalled or auto-recalled fleet lands still regrouping, and cannot take a new attack order or defend until the cooldown runs out.

Attack deploys can be flagged auto-recall: instead of a winning fleet holding position at the target, it turns for home the moment combat resolves. Set it at deploy time for hit-and-run strikes when you know you will not want to hold the field - a fleet en route home is a much harder missile target than one parked in enemy orbit.

Kingdom Combat

A defending kingdom fights with its home garrison: all fleets at home, plus two static structures.

Shield Generators absorb incoming damage. Shields degrade round by round under fleet fire and from missile strikes, so a kingdom that has been shelled recently is soft.

Defence Emplacements add direct firepower to the defence each round.

Fleets that are deployed, on missions, or in transit do not defend the kingdom - an away fleet leaves home weaker, and spy reports will show it.

Attacking a kingdom that outscores you earns a punch-up bonus on your attack score. The bonus scales with the score gap - up to 3x for a target with triple your score or more - and is locked in when the battle resolves, so later score changes do not affect it. Opportunistic strikes against the giants are one of the best scoring plays a smaller kingdom can make.

If the attacker breaks the defence, they steal land from the target - a percentage of the defender's land, with structures destroyed in proportion. Two mechanics reduce the spoils:

Score disparity - if the target's score is below 65% of your own, the reward scales down, to a floor of 20%. Farming weak kingdoms does not pay for long.

Repeat raiding - wins against the same target within a 48 hour window diminish sharply:

Both penalties stack. A beaten defender also gains temporary protection that reduces what subsequent raids can take - it builds with every rapid loss and fades over time, so hammering the same kingdom pays less with each strike no matter how weak they are.

Colony Combat

Colonies defend themselves with a garrison that scales steeply with level, and any of your fleets orbiting the colony's planet join the garrison automatically when it is attacked - they merge with the colony defences into one combined force, named after the colony and every fleet standing with it. A defended colony is a genuinely hard target.

The garrison can be softened first: missile chip damage burns the defensive half of the colony's strength, and a fleet that engages while the colony is damaged faces a weaker garrison. The damage regenerates within a few ticks, so the missile-then-invade combo needs tight timing (see the Missiles guide).

If the attacker breaks the garrison:

• The winning fleet loots the colony's trade cache (mass, energy, and research, up to fleet capacity) plus a land and credit reward scaled to the colony's level. If several of the winner's fleets fought, the cargo is shared across their combined capacity - the land and credit reward is per victory, not per fleet
• There is a 40% chance the colony downgrades by one level (a level 1 colony cannot downgrade)
• The colony enters a 6 hour lockdown and cannot be attacked again until it ends

A successful defence against a stronger attacker also triggers the lockdown, giving the defender breathing room. The lockdown blocks engagement entirely - fleets can still orbit the planet and wait for it to open.

Land rewards from colony combat are amplified early in the round - roughly triple for the first two days, fading to standard rates by tick 192.

Commander Experience

Fleet commanders earn combat XP with rules that reward real fights:

• Kingdom combat: winner only, +2 XP, and only if the winning fleet took at least 10% losses - no XP for stomping helpless targets
• Colony combat: +2 XP for a win, +1 for a loss, provided the fleet was at least half the strength of the strongest participant
• Defending a colony: orbiting fleets that fought in a garrison earn XP too, provided the garrison took at least 10% losses

Missile Combat

Missiles complement fleet warfare and are launched from the same War page. They can target enemy kingdoms and deployed fleets (war required), or colonies (open to all), travel across the map in real time, and track their target if it moves. See the Missiles guide for build mechanics, yields, and full targeting rules.

Combat Reports

Every battle produces a full report: each participant's starting strength, stance, composition, round by round losses, who fled and when, and the final outcome with any land or loot taken. Battles in progress can be watched live from the colony or war pages, round by round.

Reports are logged to your Operations Log. Read them - they show what countered what, and what to bring next time.