Ships provide both offense and defense. You can give orders to your
ships, and they will follow them. Ships fight enemy ships where they
find them, and take over undefended planets.
As the game progresses, you will most likely gather enough new
technology to construct several different kinds of ships. Some of
these ships will fight more effectively than others, and others will
have special abilities.
Whenever possible, ships are grouped into fleets. If you have
different types of ships, or ships performing different duties, they
will remain separate.
You can give a particular order to all or part of a fleet by
specifying the number of ships from each fleet that must obey the
order. The ships will divide into smaller fleets to meet your demands
when the server processes the next turn. On a planet page, click any
of the ship command links to open up a ship control panel.
As long as a fleet remains in orbit about a planet under your
control, support crews from the planet will maintain your ships. This
does require some expenditure of planetary resources. In fact, if
your fleet becomes large enough, you might discover that the
maintainance crews cannot keep up with the high demand.
Your fleets each have an effectiveness rating, expressed as a
percentage. When a fleet is away from your planets, or when a fleet
at a planet is larger than the planet can support, the fleet's
effectiveness rating will drop. In general, an ineffective fleet will
not inflict as much damage in battle.
When a fleet falls below 70% effectiveness, it might start to lose
ships. Since it is more efficient to maintain old ships than to build
new ones, try to avoid such losses.
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