My planet was attacked by another player, which resulted in a tie. We both lost some units, but both survived the battle.. I belive there was about 3 or 4 attacks/counter attacks between us. How does this work? is there a set amount of attacks between the 2 opponents, or does the attacker set the amount of attacks for the battle? I did notice that the weapon on both sides were down to zero at the end of 3 or 4th attack in that battle.

Each exchange of fire ("The attacker fires ..." followed by "The defender fires..." bit) is a round. Combat lasts until one side is destroyed or until the end of six rounds of combat, at which point the remaining attack force (if any) withdraws back to its launch coordinates.

The number of ships and defenses firing will dwindle as casualties are removed. If you were both down to near-zero, sounds like a pretty even battle.

After a fight has ended, approximately 70% of the planetary defenses can be repaired; this happens instantly. So if I had 2 attacks 1 second apart, hitting the same planet, my second attack would face 70% of the defenses that the first attack faced - even if the first attack "destroyed" everything.

For this reason cargo-only follow-ups are only a good idea if the planet has little to no planetary defenses to begin with.

I should say "70% of the "destroyed" defenses can be repaired."

If you attack a planet with several hundred heavy lasers with a light fighter, you're not destroying anything.

Coolhand wrote:If you attack a planet with several hundred heavy lasers with a light fighter, you're not destroying anything.

...except for a perfectly good light fighter and any pride left in your body.

how do you insure that your cargo ships dont get destroyed by the defenses first? do you have to destroy all of the defences before you can loot?

Launching cargo ships alone against any amount of defense will most likely result in a loss, so of course it would be much better to remove those defenses first.

i understand that i mean how do you look a planet before attacking it 10 times with you fleet and disabling all the defenses?

is there a way to make sure that the cargos get hit last if you send them with your fleet? or do you simply have to overwhelm your opponent with a force 100x bigger then the defense?

You send your fleet at the planet in waves (no more than 5 attacks within 24 hours).

The first attacking fleet should be nothing but combat ships.

If you're positive that first wave will knock out the defenses before you launch it, then immediately launch a second wave of cargo ships to pick up the resources.

If you're NOT positive the first wave has done it's job, then probe the planet between attacks.

I believe that during combat targets are selected depending on how many of each type are in the fleet, so if you want your cargos to survive longer send large amounts of lower end ships with your attack force. The more of a ship type you have the more likely it is that they will be chosen to receive the damage. This is called "fodder". There are several topics on fodder if you wish to read up on it more.

Example of a fleet with "fodder":

15 Large Cargo Ships
250 Light Fighters
25 Battleships
10 Destroyers

In this fleet set up it is most likely that the Light Fighters will be chosen to receive the hits as there are a lot more of them than the other ship types. If you wish you could send "back-up" fodder with larger fleets to further preserve your more valuable vessels. An example of this would be to add 100 Heavy Fighters to the fleet above.

-Istalris-

Istralis is part way right about the fodder part but it's because of the Structural Strength of a Light Fighter is only 3000 while the Large Cargo is 15000. It's Shield Strength is 25 while a Light Fighter's is only 10.

That's the reason the LFs will die before the LCs will. Its not the number of LFs, just their inherent weakness to sustain damage.