Ships are your primary instrument to increase your attack or defense combat strength on your warplanet or on your solar systems. It might be advisable, to build a strong fleet of warships, even if it is only used for defensive purposes.

On top of the page you find a selector field, where you can choose the ship, that you want to display.

6.1 Overview

This page contains general information regarding the selected ship: name, hull class and range are shown at the top.
The range is determined by the installed drive system. A tech 6 drive can move a ship 60 light years per turn, a tech 3 drive can only be used for distances of up to 30 light years.

Note: A ship can never be positioned in open space at the end of a turn. It must be orbiting a bigger object (like a warplanet or a solar system). Therefore, the range specification is equal to the maximum distance, a ship can travel in one turn, without using a warplanet as a carrier. Higher technology drives allow "planet hopping" between more distant solar systems.

Experience: Every ships' crew collects experience points, when it successfully leaves a battleground. Experience points will positively influence that ships' combat qualities. For example, the hit rate for the different weapon systems will be increased, if a ship has gathered some experience points.
Note: If you disassemble a ship in a shipyard (and therefore disband the former ships' crew), all its experience points are lost! If you just reconfigure a ship in the shipyard (for example, just add some higher technology lasers), the experience points will remain the same.

Morale: The morale of a ships' crew indicates how well the crewmen are able to work together. It is very important to keep the morale up! If a ship participates successfully in combat, the morale rises. If you are unable to pay the ships' upkeep (the pay of the crew), morale will drop. Similar to experience, morale positively affects the combat performance of the ship.
If morale falls to a low level, the crew will mutiny, steal the ship and flee to a nice, uninhabited world, with pretty sea shores and lovely native inhabitants!

The combat strategy selector allows a modification of the ships' attack preference. It will either attack the weakest or the strongest enemy, first.

The right overview map shows the cruising radius of your ship. The more powerful your ships' drives are, the bigger the red operating range circle will be displayed, and the more targets within that range can be reached!
If you click on a reachable solar system or a warplanet on the map, a command box is opened, which allows you to give your ship some orders (regarding the selected target).

• Fly to a self-owned solar system (e.g. for defense).
• Fly to a solar system of an imperator of your house (e.g. to fulfull a defense mission).
• Fly to your warplanet (e.g. to strengthen your attack force).
• Fly to a warplanet of an imperator of your house, if that imperator allows friendly ships in orbit (e.g. to increase that warplanets' combat power).
• Intercept an enemy warplanet and attack it. You can give this order to several of your ships, which are in range of the enemy warplanet. Your ships will form up and conduct their attack together.
• Enemy solar systems can not be attacked by ships alone. For that matter, you need a warplanet (which can and should hold attack warships).

By confirming your Order, the ship will try to execute the given command. That command can still be modified during the turn.

Note: Ships are much faster than warplanets! They have a smaller mass and can therefore accomodate more efficient interstellar drives.
If you order a ship to intercept a "moving" warplanet, the ship will reach that warplanet, before it can even move a light year! Always remember that in-range ships can reach a warplanet, before it can flee or advance any further. Fast ships, therefore, are a true necessity when you have to effectively defend your empire!

Important: As an additional parameter, when attacking an enemy warplanet, you could give the order to attack and occupy the enemy warplanet. If your ships' attack is successful, it will stay in orbit of the conquered enemy warplanet! If you choose to intercept, your ship will launch a quick attack, and instantly return to its origin.

Note: If you are a pro user, you can also issue a fleet command, causing all ships at one location to follow your order. This can help save time, if you want to move large fleets from one point to another. All fleet ship drives needs to be powerful enough to travel the fleet command distance, otherwise the less powerful ships will not join the fleet.

6.2 Ship Details

In the "Ship Details" submenu, you can have a look at the hull configuration of your ship; equipped conmpontents like drives, lasers, shields and torpedos are listed here.

Furthermore, the ships' combat power (which depends on the power of the hull and the configured components) is displayed. This parameter is only a rough estimate of the real combat performance of this unit.

In addition, the ships upkeep per turn is shown. If you cannot afford to pay that upkeep, you risk a mutiny on board. You should better avoid that scenario :-)