Campaign Battles

What starts a battle

A battle is triggered when an army ends its move on contested ground - entering a province held by an enemy or two hostile forces landing on the same hex. There's no separate "attack" order: moving an army onto ground someone else holds is the attack. Everything then resolves during the turn resolution step, before ownership changes hands.

Attacking and defending

Sides fight with a stance decided by who holds the ground. The defender is whoever owns the contested province; everyone else is attacking. An attacker advances as its units' behaviours dictate. A defender is more cautious: it holds behind a creeping defensive line, staying back near its own edge until it detects an enemy, then engaging - and only breaking that line to answer fire it can't otherwise avoid.

The defensive line isn't set in stone: it drifts forward as the battle drags on, so a defender that's never engaged will eventually advance and take the fight to a stalled attacker. For some factions holding your own ground is a real advantage - Ironfall, Chorus, and Praxis all have excellent defensive tools - while others, such as the Solari, tend to prefer attacking since they have better opportunities to hit and run.

Native garrisons

You never attack an empty province unopposed. If you march on ground with no defending army present, a native garrison is raised to defend it:

• On a neutral province, the garrison is bought from a common pool, sized to that province's defensive budget - which scales with the province's footprint, so a rich three-hex province fields a stiffer garrison than a lone hex.
• On a player-owned province whose owner has no army there, the province is still defended - by a garrison drawn from the units that owner has available to manufacture, on a generous budget. Every owned province fights back.

A garrison that holds - defeats the attack or survives it - keeps the province for its owner.

Home-ground advantage

The buildings you've raised feed straight into a fight on or near their province. Fortifications and bunkers harden defenders, shield domes and pylons top up shields, ammo depots and caches keep guns fed, targeting spires sharpen aim, and faction structures pile on their own effects - a Chorus ley anchor amplifying your ichor effects, an Exordia corrosion spire coating attackers in Acid Gel, a counter-battery station handing defenders Point Defense Active against incoming rockets. Some bonuses even ride out with an army that departs a supplying hex.

So the fight isn't decided only by the two armies present - it's decided by the ground it's fought on. Attacking into a well-developed enemy province is a very different proposition from catching a force in the open.

Auto-resolution

Campaign battles are fought by the same tactical engine as any other battle - the same Movement & Positioning, How Damage Works, Vision & Detection and Abilities & Stances rules - but resolved automatically, with each unit run by its design's scripted behaviour rather than by you clicking. There's no deployment step to play; the armies are placed for you (attacker to one side, defender to the other) and the fight plays out to a result.

That makes your designs and your composition the levers you actually pull. A frame's brain, behaviour and loadout decide how it fights when no one is steering it, so a battle is really won back in the Engineering Bay and in how you mass your armies. You can watch the battle play out as a replay on the next turn.

Retreat and rout

A losing army isn't always wiped out. A unit that can no longer fight - every weapon destroyed, or on a side that's lost all its firepower - stops fighting and retreats toward its own edge; reaching it, the unit leaves the field as a survivor rather than a casualty. The battle even extends a little past the decision to let a broken side's remnants run for it - the rout - so they can escape or be cut down.

What becomes of the escapees depends on the result. A winning side keeps its retreated units on the province. A losing side's escapees have a chance to flee to a friendly connected province and fight another day; the rest are destroyed. So a beaten army can preserve a core to regroup with - retreat is a way to lose a battle without losing the war.

The battle log

Every fight you're part of is recorded. The dispatch feed in the left rail summarises the latest turn's battles, and its history view lists every engagement you fought, newest first, each opening the full replay. Hover a row to see both sides' deployed and destroyed counts at a glance. Reviewing your losses is the fastest way to learn what your auto-resolved designs are struggling against - and to fix it before the next clash.

Fighting the campaign

Battles are won by preparation: strong designs that fight themselves well, armies massed before they strike, and developed ground to defend from. Attacking is always the harder job - defenders pick their moment, garrisons always answer, and home buildings tilt the field - so commit your troops in force. Study the replays to discern what your opponents are doing and refine your designs to counter them, and take the map one hard-won province at a time.