Combat is split into Ground and Naval although the two may occur at the same time and positions may actively be involved in both.
The difference is largely based on range of weapon systems although there are mechanics that deal with capturing positions when in close proximity (dealt with in the ground battle section).

Conflict is an important part of Phoenix: Beyond the Stellar Empire. Battles can occur anywhere, from the colds wastes of space on the edge of a remote star system, to right in the heart of an empire, around the capital starbase. It is generally the location that determines the types of positions that become involved in the battle. Platforms are always controlled by starbases and outposts so protect worlds, while ships are used to mount attacks in enemy space or patrol home territories. Ground parties, are incapable of using naval weaponry designed for space combat and have very little defence so should avoid it if possible. There is an entire branch of combat designed around close combat (i.e. generally fought on the ground.)

All combat, whether it is in the depths of space or conducted on the ground occurs simultaneously. This means that while ships may be engaging each other over a planet, ground parties may be invading starbases or outposts on the ground, attempting to wrest control from the enemy.

Due to the differences between ground combat and space combat, they are dealt with separately in this document, even though they will be occurring at the same time in the game. Where there are differences in how the combat program treats position types, they also will be given their own section.

One final point, this library entries are designed to give an insight into how the combat system operates, they do not give the definitive method of designing ships or the strategies and tactics required to run a successful military campaign. Simply put, throwing everything you own into combat on the opening day does not guarantee victory. The biggest ships are not always the best option and it is not always about delivering the most damage.

Like every aspect of Phoenix: Beyond the Stellar Empire, knowledge is everything. Knowing the vulnerabilities of the enemy and the tactics they use is the key in deciding the methodology for their defeat.

Conflict can be triggered by any action that results in the flagging of a position as an enemy target. Entering orbit of a hostile starbase is one example, moving a patrol fleet into a location containing an enemy spaceship is another.

The procedure is straightforward to determine if a battle is to take place. First there is a scan to determine if a position has been detected, then there is an enemy list check. This is a two-way check so that the aggressor must detect the potential target. A stealthy position may scan ships that would attack it, but a battle would not be triggered unless they in turn successfully scan the stealthy position.

Fixed Facility Triggers
As changing standing orders does not necessarily cause an enemy list check, some position types have the ‘Trigger Battle’ order. This will immediately run list checks against all scanned positions to determine whether a battle should be triggered. Orders can be specifically given to attack a specified position although these will obviously only work if the target is in striking distance.

Lists
There are five lists, enemy, support, defend, ground and autoboarding. Each is designed to fulfill a specific role and use of these will determine if a position becomes involved in combat. Each list can have positions or groups of positions added to it:-

• Individual positions
  
• Entire Affiliations
  
• Affiliation Posted Lists
  
• Everybody
  

When a GP enters a location and there is the standard check for hostile positions if a hostile GP is detected a skirmish will occur instead of the moving GP being stopped for battle.

A skirmish is a round of exchange of fire. If this results in the destruction of the blocking GP, the moving GP will continue its movement. If the blocking GP survives, the turn is stopped for battle and a full battle will be held at the end of the run as per normal combat mechanics.

The skirmish mechanic prevents the seeding of sectors around a base with small GP's with the purpose of interrupting the movement of the would-be significantly larger attacker by forcing to undergo days of fighting the intervening GP's.

Blockading a celestial body (gas giants, planets, moons, asteroids, wormholes and stargates) is the tactic of holding a fleet in the orbital quadrant and continuously scanning positions attempting to move to or from the orbital quadrant into or out from the orbit of the celestial body. When doing so there is an automatic scan check though based on orbital scan parameters rather than the orbital quad parameters. This makes a significant difference where the orbital quad is in the outer rings of the system.

Only one celestial body can be blockaded at a time. Where moons exist around a world, the blockading fleet should blockade all the worlds to prevent the fleet sneaking through one of the orbits.

Combat occurs at the end of each day's main turn run, before special actions are processed. Combat is broken down into 4 rounds (plus extra round for platforms - see below). This is to allow for a more detailed account of actions within combat.

Each position has parameters that can be defined by the player, detailing the preferred actions to take during combat. These include flee parameters, preferred targeting instructions and even who to attack.

Combat will continue as long as there are active participants and can span days or even weeks. Each day however only has four rounds of combat. All the parameters at the end of the day are stored so that the next day combat effectively carries on from where it left off. Ships that attacked a specific position will continue to do so on the next day and the day after until they have been destroyed, destroyed the target or an order to stop targeting the specific enemy is received.

While combat may continue from day to day, other positions can become involved simply by arriving at the scene of the battle. Further, if a position is capable of leaving, it can do so if the owner orders such a move.

A battle may therefore last indefinitely, spanning weeks or even months (although it is very doubtful that any position present at the beginning will still be there at the end).

Change in circumstances
Combat will only be checked as a result of an action. This means that unless a position performs an activity, there will be no combat checks. Two positions may be in the same location and not hostile to each other. Sometime in the future there may be a political shift such that both parties become hostile. They will not immediately engage until one of the positions performs an action, or a third party enters the scene and triggers a battle.

Triggering
A position will attempt to run all orders in a turn until it either completes them or runs out of TU�s. After each order there is an enemy list check. This will flag positive for a potential battle. If flagged there will then be speed checks so that positions attempting to flee will do so before combat and thereby prevent a battle from occurring. In this case, the turn will continue.

Combat Avoidance
Only successful enemy checks followed by unsuccessful flee checks cause the suspension of a turn. As such, having a very low sensor profile may mean that a position is not scanned in the first place so that no enemy check is run. Also having a very fast combat speed will often allow a ship to escape combat before it occurs.

Combat Assurance
The best way to ensure combat is to have a very high sensor power and a very fast combat speed. The role of a specialised ship may be solely to prevent the target from getting away before combat starts.

Flee Checks
A position will attempt to flee combat if it has elected to do so, or if it is incapable of combat.

In order to flee the position needs to be capable of escaping. A position is only capable of fleeing if it has a positive combat speed and is not pinned.

There is a detailed article on Fleeing in IGN.

Combat Speed
ISR drives use field theory and as such cannot be used when the ship is manoeuvring. This means that ships require a secondary form of movement to operate in space battles; this is the combat speed of the ship and is given by various thruster types. ISR and jump drives cannot be used to escape from combat and if a ship is in orbit, manoeuvre speed cannot be used to land. A ship has to first successfully leave combat before initiating any other action.

Thrust types
Combat requires swift changes of direction, rapid bursts of acceleration and powerful impulses to give the required changes of momentum. For this short hot bursts from reaction drives are required. Manoeuvring on the other hand is a series of regulated bursts, most of these resulting in predictable changes of momentum in order to put the least strain on the hull of the ship. In Phoenix: beyond the Stellar Empire, there three different engines representing these two forms of thrust.

Standard thrust engines provide both combat thrust and manoeuvring thrust. Combat engines cannot maintain long bursts and have thrusts placed across the entire surface of the ship, allowing it to change face and accelerate in any direction. The third type is landing engines. These have a few auxiliary thrusters but the main thrusters are set in one location allowing for slow sustained manoeuvring. In combat only factors for combat engines and standard thrust engines are used to determine combat speed. It is not about moving fast but being out of direct line of sensor and weapon sight long enough to produce an ISR field or plot a course down onto the surface of a world.

Dump Cargo
This option throws out all non-living equipment from the back of the ship at an accelerated velocity, in order to propel the ship forwards. This effectively increases the combat speed of the ship but sacrifices the cargo to do so.
The chance of escaping combat through the use of a chaff cloud is based on the relative mass being ejected to the surface area of the ship. A factor of 20 is sufficient to guarantee success.

Example
A barge has a surface area of 90, therefore ejecting at least 1,800mu’s of cargo is sufficient for them to escape. If insufficient mass is available, the chance of escaping through the use of the chaff cloud is based linearly on the ratio of amount to amount needed. In the case of the barge for example, having 450mu’s of cargo to dump gives the ship a 25% chance of escaping.

As a heavy hull ship has a relatively low install space compared to other hulls they rarely have sufficient cargo space to effect automatic success at escaping through this means.

Sticky Situation
As all positions other than ships have free use of lists, including enemy lists, very dangerous and chaotic situations can occur in a combat. All it takes is a large faction to have an entire affiliation on their support and defend lists and a single attack can lead to all kinds of mayhem. A position is therefore encouraged to use lists with the utmost caution. Further complications to this will occur when changing enemy lists during combat. In the situation where a position has allies on both sides of a combat, virtually anyone could end up being added to enemy lists.

Random Targets
It is often the case that the fastest target is not the first choice of a captain with hindsight. As such, careful use of the lists will ensure that only a few positions will be designated as potential targets. Further, once combat has begun targets can be changed by alteration of the enemy lists so that only the desired target remains on the enemy list.

Platforms
Platforms are always on alert and have much greater weapons range allowing them to fire round zero, i.e. before another ships or bases. This includes all weapon systems capable of being launched and even includes space fighters and bombers (though they are still out of action for round one as they regroup/refuel).This gives them a significant advantage, possibly even destroying the enemy before it is able to fire.

Boarding is a special type of ground combat (as it utilises troops, even when conducted in space) that occurs during turn processing as opposed to standard combat at the end of the day. The mechanics and example can be found under ground combat. There are two types of boarding action, for control of the target position (ship or platform), or simply to try to grab the cargo. The latter is termed Raiding:

• Raiding is a lower casualty version of boarding that steals the cargo rather than the ship.
  
• Auto boarding has been added to board any ships that you pass on an active turn, that are on your auto board list.
  
• Boarding Orders Lists have been added to transfer to a set of orders to a freshly boarded ship.
  
• You can now use an installed boarding craft from a slower ship to board faster ones (added mainly to allow raiding of cargo).

Positions in Ground Combat

• Other positions can only deliver / have things picked up from them
  
• Hiports will be disabled if control is < 100%
  
• The following orders will be disabled on all starbases in ground combat (in a control battle):
  
• Untool Tech
  
• Scrap complex
  
• Scrap Item
  
• Sack Personnel
  
• Deliver
  
• Deliver item type
  
• Change Spread
  
• Gps in ground combat will not be able to jettison
  
• Ships and GPs can pickup from the starbase if they are docked.

• If you deliver to a position that is in combat you will be fired on for 1 round by any position that is targeting the position you are approaching. It does not matter if you are in combat or not. If you are cloaked for the first delivery then you will not be fired at.
  
• Delivering consecutive sets of items will not result in more combat but delivering to a second target will.
  
• Starbase can not deliver/pickup from GPs/Ships/Platforms/Starbases/Outposts that are in space combat.