Battles

A battle occurs in UltraCorps whenever Combat or Auto Fleets arrive at a world owned by another player, or at a neutral world (one owned by Nobody). Each turn's battles are all resolved at the same time, during the tick.

Battle Rounds

A battle is played out in rounds. Each round in a battle involves five steps:

1. All units at the world are evaluated for conditions called X-Factors. These are variables outside the regular combat stats. They can strengthen or weaken defense, offense, or other stats. (An example of an X-Factor is the bonus that X-5 Raiders get when at the same world with a friendly HC-4 Space Runway.)
2. Each combat unit (a unit with an offense rating greater than zero) randomly chooses an enemy combat unit to target for each of its attacks. All combat units owned by other players, or by Nobody, are considered enemies.
3. All units fire simultaneously. A unit's offense rating determines the probability an attack has of hitting its target. For example, an offense rating of 25 means the unit has a 25% chance of hitting its target.
4. Units hit during Step 3 have a chance to defend themselves based on their defense rating. For example, a unit with a defense rating of 60 has a 60% chance of surviving a hit, and therefore a 40% chance of being destroyed. This means that units with low defense numbers will survive only by luck . . . but a unit with a defense rating of 98, for instance, can get hit an average of 50 times before it dies.
5. Population is killed according to the population damage ratings of the units in battle. For example, a unit with a population damage rating of 10 kills one enemy population unit, and a unit with a rating of 25 kills 2.5 enemy population units. Note that your units don't attack friendly population!

Rounds continue until only one player has combat units remaining. The winner gets the world and all surviving non-combat units (Ultranium, population, scanners, upgrades, etc.). Newly acquired worlds will be flagged next turn with asterisks * in your Player News report.

It is possible that all combat units will be destroyed in the same round of battle. In this case, the defender keeps control of the world.

The results may be seen, round by round, in the Battle Reports. These reports will remain visible for the whole game, linked from the bottom of the World Information Page. Anyone who looks at a world can see, round by round, every battle that ever took place there.

Multiplayer Battles

Players can make diplomatic agreements to avoid each others' worlds or send gift fleets . . . but on the tactical level, all players are enemies. Any number of players can be involved in a battle. When two or more players arrive at a Nobody world, they will fight each other as well as Nobody. When two or more players arrive at another player's world, they will all fight each other until only one remains.

Combat works the same as in a normal battle. Every unit picks its target randomly from all enemy units at the world. The last Commander standing is the winner . . . or if all units are destroyed in the same round, the defender keeps the world.

This can lead to some tactically interesting results. If one player has a lot of "fodder" units, for instance, that will tend to protect the capital units of all players there, until the fodder is used up.

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