Combat

In Old Light, a battle starts when a fleet carrying Marauders or Sentinels arrives at another player's system, and it lasts at most two rounds.

Your fleet fights whatever ships are parked there. Your Probes and Vanguards sit out the main battle.

Rounds and rolls

Combat isn't turn-based. A battle resolves the moment the fleet lands, in one round, or two when one side starts with more than 2.2 times as many ships as the other. Every shot rolls to hit first, with a 95% chance, then rolls to kill: the shooter's stat divided by the shooter's and the target's stats added together. Attackers always use offense and defenders always use defense. A ship killed during a round still fires its own shot that round. How combat works goes through every roll with worked examples.

How do you win a battle?

Bring more ships, and bring the right kind. Mass advantage compounds. A roughly even fight grinds both sides down, and even a 2-to-1 edge still leaves the smaller side standing while you pay real losses. Bring a bit more than 2-to-1 or steeper and your fleet presses a second wave that tends to wipe the smaller side cleanly. Whoever forces the second wave fights it with a small edge, attacker or defender.

Ship choice matters as much as numbers. Marauders hit hard but bruise easily, so they're the right pick for attacks. Sentinels hit softly but absorb a lot of damage, so they're best left at home as defenders. A Sentinel-led attack on a defended system is wasted resources.

Attackers aim most of their fire at the toughest ships, the Sentinels holding the system. Stuffing a garrison with cheap, fragile ships won't shield them. Soft ships draw almost no fire, so they live while the sentinels take the hits.

Outcomes are never fully deterministic and even decisive fights have some random spread.

Probes

Probes behave differently depending on the side.

• Attacking: probes don't fight. They tag along, sit out the main battle, and always fly home. Even if your whole combat escort is wiped.

• Defending: probes stay in the fight, but attackers ignore them to focus the sentinels, so they don't shield anything. Treat probes as recon, not as defensive padding.

Credit deficit

If your treasury is empty, your ships fight at reduced effectiveness, so they hit less hard AND less often. A broke side also loses its second wave: bring a 3-to-1 advantage with an empty treasury and the battle stops after one exchange. Keep income from Trade Hubs ahead of fleet upkeep before you commit to a fight.

When a much larger empire attacks a much smaller one, the attacker also fights at reduced strength, see Morale.

Rewards

Surviving attacker ships carry palladium and iridium home from the defender's stockpile, capped by your fleet's cargo capacity. Marauders have the largest hold, so a raiding fleet wants them for the loot as much as the offense.

Survivors also take credits. Each surviving marauder takes 20 credits and each surviving sentinel takes 6, moved from the defender's treasury straight into yours the moment the fleet arrives. Probes and vanguards take none. The only limit is what the defender holds, so a treasury can be emptied this way. It happens even when no ships were parked at the target, so leaving a system undefended still costs credits.

After the battle

Surviving defenders stay parked. Surviving attackers immediately turn around and fly home, carrying any plundered loot.