Campaign Battles

What starts a battle

A battle is triggered when an army ends its move on contested ground, either entering a province held by an enemy or when two hostile forces land on the same hex. There's no separate "attack" order: moving an army onto ground someone else holds represents an 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 naturally as its units' behaviors 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. The defending side will only break that line to answer fire it can't otherwise avoid. Some factions are naturally better at attacking or defending based on their durability or weaponry.

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 such as Ironfall, Chorus, and Praxis holding your own ground is a real advantage while others, such as the Solari and Bretteur, 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. Larger provinces field a much tougher garrison than a lone hex; not only is their budget larger but the technology they use is significantly stronger.
• 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. Expect to see the same kinds of units they've been bringing to fights. Every owned province fights back, the only question is how much.

A garrison that holds by defeating the attack keeps the province for its owner. All garrison units must be destroyed or retreat for the attack to succeed.

Home-ground advantage

The buildings you've raised may change the nature of fights near their province. Fortifications and bunkers reinforce the defenders, shield domes and pylons top up shields, ammo depots and caches keep guns fed, targeting spires sharpen aim, and other faction structures may pile on their own effects. Some bonuses even apply to an army that departs a supplying hex.

Pick your battles carefully; fighting an enemy on their home ground is a very different proposition than attacking an enemy in recently-conquered territories or in your own provinces. Battles may be won or lost depending on the structures that have been built there, and it can be difficult to discover those in advance if you haven't scouted ahead. Balance your watchtower construction and scouting with your need to advance rapidly. Move too fast and you'll probably run into an ambush, but move too cautiously and your opponent may have too much time to dig in.

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 behavior 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 army composition your best tools to defeat your foes. A frame's brain, behavior and loadout decide how it fights when no one is steering it, so a battle is often won back in the Engineering Bay, based on which technologies you chose to research and what you chose to build. You can watch the battle play out as a replay; make sure you watch replays to learn what works and what didn't.

Retreat and rout

A losing army isn't always wiped out. A unit that can no longer fight due to losing all its weapons stops fighting and retreats toward its own edge; if it reaches the edge the unit leaves the field as a survivor rather than a casualty. Battles do not end until every unit on one side of the field or the other has left or been 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. A beaten army can preserve a core to regroup with if they don't spread out too much.

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 fix design flaws 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 than defending, so pick your battles carefully. Study the replays to discern what your opponents are doing and refine your designs to counter them, and conquer the map one hard-won province at a time.