Player Combat

Player combat occurs between the player flagship, and one or more races, pirates, or anti-federation rebels/assassins.

Mechanics

• We-go style (parallel execution) turn-based action in a top down space shooter.

• Power management between shields, weapons, and engines

• Special abilities from Hydral tech

• Objectives, including 1 or more of:
  • Destroy all flagships
  • Destroy at least X flagships
  • Destroy all freighters
  • Destroy all enemies
  • Destroy all orbital barracks
  • Deliver plans to beacon
  • Escort troop transports to beacon
  • Dock with station for X turns

Weapons

The player ship can equip 3 different main weapons. Additional weapons can be gained through ??? missions and can be swapped out with the starting 3 weapons. Different enemies have strengths and weaknesses to different weapons which show on their tool-tip when moused over in battle.

• Spreadshot: Sprays bullets in a wide arc. Excellent for hosing down ranges of smaller ships, but won't make a dent in larger ships.

• Minigun: Rapid-fire bullets make short work of most small craft, but won't make a dent in larger armored ships.

• Armor Piercing: Able to be auto-dodged by the maneuvering jets on most smaller craft, but very powerful and travels through entire lines of ships and obstacles.

• Energy Blaster: High-range energy weapon that does 4x damage to the shields of any enemy ships, but very little damage to the hulls of most large ships. Many large structures and turrets take 3x normal damage from Energy attacks, however.

• Gravity Lance: Gravity weapon that fires a lance-like beam that damages any ships or debris in its path, including carving through most large ships. Not too effective against most midsize ships, however. Only 25% effective against ship shields.

• MassDriver: Hurls concussive ordnance that does excellent damage and also blocks incoming shots. However, does only 10% of its normal damage when impacting shields.

• DisruptorShot: Not the strongest weapon by any stretch, but its laser bursts are able to strike straight through enemy shields, damaging both the shields and the hull at the same time. Some shielded ships have laser refractors that make this still largely ineffective, though, so know your target.

Special abilities

The player flagship has different abilities that can be used in combat instead of moving and attacking. They come in three types:

• Offensive (usually directly damages enemies, although some have specialised effects)
• Operations (deploy smaller ships to assist you)
• Special (augments your flagship in some way)

The number of slots for each type of ability varies based on the flagship of the starting race (Acutians by default).

Auto-resolve

Combat can largely be avoided through using dispatches, but can also be skipped (for a price) during the battle (except the first battle) at any time by clicking the auto-resolve button in the lower left corner.

• Strength for auto-resolve counts all techs, abilities, and allies in the battle vs the strength of all foes to determine how the battle is resolved
• For each ability that you have in your posession, you get a multiplier to either your hull strength or attack strength, and then also to your autoresolve power. They are broken out by category:
  • Direct Weapons: 1.01 to attack, 1.1 to autoresolve.
  • Offensive: 1.005 to attack, 1.05 to autoresolve.
  • Operations: 1.005 to hull, 1.05 to autoresolve.
  • Specialty: 1.004 to hull, 1.04 to autoresolve.
  • These apply whether or not you have them actually equipped.

• Notes on specific mission types:
  • If you auto-resolve the deliver-spacefaring-tech mission, it treats it as if you alerted ALL of the spy probes.

• The following scenario types have max turn caps for auto-resolve that makes them always winnable, even if they do take a really long time:
  • Freighter Convoy: 999
  • Destroy Pirate Base: 999
  • Smuggle In Resistance Fighters: 999
  • Raid Pirate Convoy: 999
  • Raid Hydral Technology Lab: 999
  • Capture Civilian Outpost: 999
  • Capture Technology: 999
  • Quest: Scientist Defection: 999
  • Quest: Attack Detention Facility: 999
  • Quest: Bring Something To Race While Blocked By Another Race: 999
  • Deliver Spacefaring Tech: 500
  • Quest: Deliver Technical Documents: 500
  • First Encounter: 100

The Last Federation