GUIDES / COMBAT

Combat

The armor triangle decides who wins a fight; stances and positioning decide whether the fight ever happens on your terms.

Reading the armor math

Every weapon deals its base damage times a multiplier against the target's armor class — Infantry, Light, Heavy, or Structure. The units table prints the multipliers; the short version is the classic triangle: Marines shred infantry, Rocket Troopers crack armor, Tanks trample both infantry and light vehicles. A mixed force with the right counters beats a bigger pure one.

Stances

Aggressive — engages what it sees, chases farther, and when idle with nothing alive in reach, chews on nearby enemy structures.
Defensive — the default. Fights back, pursues a short distance, returns to post.
Hold — stands ground, fires only at what's already in weapon reach. For chokepoints and turret lines.

Two rules apply in every stance: units prefer enemy units over buildings — a building fight yields the moment a real threat walks in — and everything returns fire when a defense shoots it, including at the turret that fired. Plain-move orders stay deaf; attack-move is how you advance ready to fight — and it fans the group onto a formation grid at the destination, so your army arrives as a line instead of a pile.

Defenses

Gun Turrets hit ground only; AA Turrets hit air only. A base with one kind has a hole shaped like the other.
Walls are cheap time. Siege weapons out-range turrets — the Howitzer outshoots every static defense but is helpless inside its own dead zone. Rushing a howitzer line with fast light vehicles is the intended counter.
A firing turret reveals itself — muzzle flash is intel both ways.

The air war

Fixed-wing craft (Jets, Bombers) fly from an Airfield in sorties: fly out, spend ammo, come home, repair and rearm. Docked planes sit on the ground — raidable.
Rotor and thruster craft (Gunships, Skimmers) loiter freely and rearm at the pad when dry.
Answer air with layers: AA Turrets at home, Flak Tracks rolling with the army, Rocket Troopers as Earth's cheap shoulder-fired AA. On the Moon and Mars the same roles re-appear as vacuum craft — faster, on thrusters.
Skylifts and Cargo Lifters carry ground forces over terrain; an airlifted MCV is a whole expansion in one flight.

Vision wins fights

Scouts exist to die informed — and blindness is never permanent: the Barracks trains a replacement Scout for 150 credits. Radar widens your eyes and warns you of attacks on other worlds; the recon satellite removes fog over a whole world permanently. Fights you can see coming are fights you chose.

Late game: superweapons

Once Long Nines and Blackouts enter play, spread your base, keep an Aegis Umbrella funded over what matters, and read the superweapons reference — every program there has a counter printed next to it.

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REFERENCE GENERATED FROM LIVE GAME DATA — BALANCE v102 · 2026-08-27 · NUMBERS UPDATE WITH EVERY RELEASE