Structs Combat

Combat exists to move ore. Raiding is how you take another player’s mined ore; attacks soften defenses and kill structs; defense keeps your own ore and infrastructure alive. The single most important fact: a planet can only be raided to completion while the defender’s Command Ship is offline, destroyed, or non-existent. Keep your Command Ship online and you are effectively unraidable; to raid someone, you must catch theirs down.

Conventions (TX_FLAGS, -- rule, -D 3 PoW, the per-player charge bar, one-tx-at-a-time) come from conventions.md.

When to use it

• You spotted a target with stored ore and want to raid it.
• You’re under attack or expect to be (a refine window, a hostile fleet nearby).
• You need to kill a specific enemy struct (a generator, a defender, a Tank).
• You’re setting up standing defense for your planet.

Decisions

Raid go/no-go (the most important decision)

A raid is only worth launching when all of these hold. Use scripts/scout.sh [planet-id] to get this as a structured go/no-go, or check manually:

1. Defender’s Command Ship is offline / destroyed / absent. If it’s online, the planet’s shields are up and planet-raid-complete is rejected (shields_active) no matter how long you grind. This is the gate.
2. There is ore to take — defender’s storedOre > 0 (ideally a lot; a successful raid seizes all of it, not a share).
3. The shield is low enough that the raid PoW is feasible in the time you have (shield raises raid difficulty; base 25, +contributions of online defense structs).
4. The defender’s fleet is away / weak so your fleet survives the resolution.

When NOT to raid: defender CMD ship online; little/no stored ore; a shield so high the PoW outlasts your window; or the target’s guild will retaliate as a bloc for less ore than you’d lose. Raiding is an expedition — it costs you a fleet locked away and your home undefended by fleet. Expected ore must beat that cost.

Defense doctrine

• Keep your Command Ship online — always. That alone makes you unraidable. Most “I got raided” stories are “my CMD ship went offline (usually power) and I didn’t notice.” Watch for it (scripts/watch-defense.mjs alerts on your CMD ship dropping and on raids against you).
• Stack shields. Orbital Shield Generator and Ore Bunker are unlimited — build several to push raid difficulty up as a second layer behind the CMD-ship gate.
• Refine fast. Defense protects structs, never ore. The only defense for ore is turning it into Alpha Matter (structs-production).
• Assign defenders across ambits to protect the Command Ship and key structs.

Decisions live in playbooks/situations/under-attack, guild-war, and playbooks/meta/counter-strategies.

How a raid resolves

blockStartRaid is the defender’s Command-Ship vulnerability clock, and raid PoW age is measured from it:

• It starts when the defender’s Command Ship goes offline (or when you arrive to find it down).
• It resets to 0 if the defender brings the Command Ship back online — and completion is rejected (raid_clock_unset when 0; the raid status flips to ongoing with shields restored).
• Raid statuses you’ll see: initiated → shieldsVulnerable (CMD ship down, clock running, winnable) → raidSuccessful / attackerRetreated. attackerDefeated means your raiding Command Ship was destroyed while away. demilitarized means no defenders to resolve against.

So a raid is a race against the defender noticing and restoring their Command Ship. Scout the CMD ship first; don’t move your fleet until it’s down.

A raid steals ore. A successful raid seizes all of the defender’s storedOre and nothing more — it does not destroy the player or their structs. Killing the defender’s Command Ship opens the shieldsVulnerable window so the raid can complete; if the defender restores or rebuilds it before you finish, completion is rejected (shields_active) and you get nothing. Beware the reverse: trigger_raid_defeat_by_destruction is on the Command Ship, so if your raiding CMD ship is destroyed while away, your fleet is defeated (attackerDefeated) and sent home. Win path for ore: strip same-ambit blockers → destroy the defender’s CMD ship → complete the raid before they rebuild it (most reliable vs an offline defender).

Procedure — raid

1. Scout — scripts/scout.sh [planet-id] (or structsd query structs planet [id] + struct/player queries). Confirm the four go conditions above, especially the defender’s Command Ship status.
2. Optional stealth — stealth a unit before approach (struct-stealth-activate, 2 charge); attacking later auto-drops it.
3. Move fleet to the target (instant). Your fleet (and your Command Ship) is now away; you can’t build/mine at home while away.

   structsd tx structs fleet-move TX_FLAGS -- [fleet-id] [destination-location-id]
   

4. Approval Block — fleet is your raider and now at the target; defender’s CMD ship is down (verified); your home ore is refined or below your theft tolerance; you accept an auto-submitted completion landing minutes-to-hours out.
5. Raid compute (expedition, auto-submits completion — the documented -y exception):

   nohup structsd tx structs planet-raid-compute -D 3 --from [key] --gas auto --gas-adjustment 1.5 -y -- [fleet-id] \
     > memory/jobs/raid-[fleet-id].log 2>&1 & echo $! > memory/jobs/raid-[fleet-id].pid
   

6. Move fleet home and refine the stolen ore immediately — it’s stealable in your hands now too.

If the defender restores their Command Ship mid-raid, the clock resets — withdraw or wait for it to drop again.

Procedure — direct attack

Scout the target’s ambit and defense type, position (Command Ship only) into range, then fire. The CLI prompts; verify target IDs and that you aren’t crossing guild lines you didn’t intend to (attacking another guild’s structs is a Tier 2 act of war). Note most weapons are single-target (primaryWeaponTargets = 1) — the comma list only spreads damage for weapons whose target count is > 1.

structsd tx structs struct-attack TX_FLAGS -- [operating-struct-id] [target-id,target-id2,...] [weapon-system]

Attacks cost 3-5 charge from your per-player bar; space repeated attacks accordingly.

Procedure — defense setup

structsd tx structs struct-defense-set TX_FLAGS -- [defender-struct-id] [protected-struct-id]
structsd tx structs struct-defense-clear TX_FLAGS -- [defender-struct-id]

Defenders must be in the same ambit as the protected struct to block (1 charge each; stagger ~6 s on one key). Minimum viable defense: at least one combat struct per ambit guarding the Command Ship (6 HP; most fleet structs are 3 HP).

Tactical reference

Targeting (which struct hits which ambit)

The Command Ship is the only struct that can change ambits (struct-move); it attacks only its current ambit. Reposition it into range to attack, or out of range to hide.

Weapon control vs defense (evasion + armour-piercing)

Use unguided vs Signal Jamming, guided vs Defensive Maneuver. Armour reduces damage by 1 — except against armour-piercing weapons (the Battleship primary), which ignore it. The Battleship is the dedicated answer to Tanks and to the (now armoured) power generators. Minimum damage after reduction is always 1.

Combat resolution notes

• Counters are ambit-gated, blocks are ambit-matched. A defender counters whenever its weapon can reach the attacker’s ambit (regardless of what it’s defending); it can only block when it shares the target’s ambit. Consequence: attacking land structs from air/water/space (an ambit the defenders can’t reach) takes zero counter damage — the single biggest combat lever. Pick your attacking ambit to dodge counters.
• Each struct counters at most once per struct-attack invocation (not per target/shot). Defender counter fires before block and even on evaded shots; target counter fires after all shots (destroyed targets can’t counter).
• Block only fires on non-evaded shots and only from a defender in the target’s ambit.
• Single-target: every weapon has primaryWeaponTargets = 1 (one struct per volley) — no multi-target weapon exists. The comma-list in struct-attack doesn’t make a single-target weapon spread.
• No charge banking: any action resets your shared charge bar to 0 and it refills ~1/block — you cannot stockpile for a multi-attack burst. Plan combat as spaced single actions.
• Planetary defenses (attacking a planet): the Jamming Satellite runs a low-orbit ballistic interceptor network that can evade your air/space attacks against the planet’s land/water structs (evadedByPlanetaryDefenses) — hit those land/water structs from land/water instead, or expect 0s from the air/space. Guided weapons that miss come from the target’s unit-level signalJamming, not the satellite. The PDC and the interceptor network are the planetary defenses that affect combat.
• PDC auto-fires after all targets resolve (it does not counter); multiple players’ PDCs stack.
• A successful raid seizes all of the defender’s storedOre and nothing else — there is no player-elimination outcome (see raid section). Destroyed structs are gone forever but can be rebuilt (full PoW). Losing your Command Ship disables the whole fleet until you build a new one — protect it above all, and never let your raiding CMD ship die while away (attackerDefeated).

Commands reference

Raid flow: scout → (CMD ship down?) → fleet-move → raid-compute → fleet-move home → refine. planet-raid-compute is the documented -y exception; your Approval Block is the gate. planet-raid-complete does not consume charge.

Requires: structsd on PATH and a signing key.

Verification

• structsd query structs fleet [id] — location and onStation/away.
• After a raid: planet_raid seized_ore shows what you took; your storedOre rose (refine it).
• After attacks: events include remaining-health values — use them to assess damage.
• Broadcast ≠ success: a raid can land but resolve as defeat/ongoing. Query the raid status.

Errors

• “shields_active” / raid rejected — defender’s Command Ship is online. You cannot win until it’s down. Stop grinding.
• “raid_clock_unset” — blockStartRaid is 0 (CMD ship never went down or came back). Wait for it to drop.
• “unreachable” / “out_of_range” — your weapon can’t reach that ambit; reposition the Command Ship or use a different struct.
• “fleet not away” — move the fleet to the target first.
• “insufficient charge” — per-player bar too low; wait (see conventions).
• Stolen-from — your CMD ship went offline mid-window. Restore it; refine ore faster next time.

See also

• knowledge/mechanics/combat — damage, evasion, raid phases, SHIELDS_VULNERABLE
• knowledge/mechanics/fleet — fleet status, raid window
• playbooks/situations/under-attack / guild-war / counter-strategies
• structs-intel — scouting + raid-worthiness scoring; structs-production — refine to protect ore