Combat

Combat happens in zones, with your active robot. You fight other players (PvP), NPCs, and hostile structures. This page covers the mechanics that are confirmed on the server side; detailed damage/fitting interactions live under robots & fitting.

UI locations follow the client UI overview: your robot's shield/armor/hull and energy are shown on the undocked status panel. In-combat targeting and weapon controls are not yet documented in detail.

Entering combat

• You can only fight while undocked — you are your active robot.
• Firing an offensive weapon at another player in an open (PvP) zone raises the PvP flag on the attacker. Firing back, or using a support module on an already-flagged player, raises it on you too. The flag lasts 5 minutes (the effect_pvp definition, 300,000 ms) and is refreshed with each new act of aggression.
• While the flag is up:
  • you cannot use teleports (including mobile ones), and
  • you cannot dock normally — the only way out is force dock, which is deliberately not blocked by the flag.

What you can fight

• Other players' robots (PvP).
• NPCs — zone NPCs are organized into flocks (groups with shared behaviour).
• Hostile structures / deployables in the zone.

When your robot is destroyed

Your robot is destroyed and a loot container appears where it died. The loot is rolled per item, each roll at 50%:

Insurance (bought at a base's insurance facility, docked — see production → insurance) covers a robot for 15 days (plus extension bonus days). Each robot has a content-defined fee and payout (the insuranceprices table — 67 robot definitions); the fee can be reduced by an extension bonus and paid from your corp wallet. Starter bots can't be insured. You can hold insurance on 1 + (extension bonus) robots.

After a kill you are left with no active robot. To get back in the game you can:

• select another robot you own that has the required enabler extensions, or
• request a starter robot while docked — but there is a short lock after a kill: 3 minutes if you were killed by a player, 1 minute by an NPC. If an NPC killed you, the base also drops you a free starter robot automatically on return.

Escaping

When a fight goes badly:

• Force dock — the emergency exit. Pulls you out of the zone and docks you at the main base (TMA) immediately, even mid-fight.
• SOS — an alternative exit: docks you at the current base after the normal (7-second) undock delay.

Both are your safety nets; force dock is the "I'm about to die" button.

flowchart TD
    F["Weapon fires\n(lock must be Locked)"] --> LOS{"Line of sight?\n(ballistic arc over terrain)"}
    LOS -->|blocked| B["Hit the obstacle\n(damage the terrain)"]
    LOS -->|clear| H["Hit the target"]
    H --> C{"Critical? 1.75×"}
    C --> SH{"Shield active?"}
    SH -->|yes| ABS["Damage absorbed by shield\n(core is drained)"]
    SH -->|no| RES
    ABS --> RES["Resistance: damage ÷ (1 + res/100)"]
    RES --> CO["Rest hits the core"]
    CO --> K["Kers: post-resist damage ×\nthe kers modifier is added to your core"]
    CO --> D{"Core at 0?"}
    D -->|yes| L["Death: explosion (open zones),\n50% loot rolls, insurance check"]

Target lock, range and hit

• Lock first. Weapons only fire at locked targets — and only once the lock has filled. Locking a target takes your robot's locking time (a stat in ms); firing while it is still in progress is rejected. You can hold several locks at once (limited by the max locked targets stat), but only one is primary, and some weapons fire only at the primary target.
• Optimal range + falloff. Inside a weapon's optimal range you deal full damage. Beyond it, damage tapers smoothly over the falloff distance — roughly half damage at the falloff's midpoint, zero at its edge. Beyond optimal + falloff you deal no damage at all.
• Blast size vs. target size. Guns do not "miss": a gun's accuracy stat works as a blast radius, and a target whose signature is smaller than it takes proportionally less damage. Missiles can miss outright (the miss chance comes from the robot's missile-accuracy stat), but when they hit they explode for their explosion radius — and, as with guns, a small target takes less of the blast.
• Critical hits. Each shot rolls your critical hit chance; a crit multiplies the whole hit by 1.75×, and every hit also varies randomly by ±10%.
• Line of sight. Shots travel in a straight line and terrain, obstacles and plants block them. Missiles fly an arc and can clear low cover — but the arc is limited, so high ground still blocks.
• Your own shield blocks your own weapons. While your shield is active, your weapons will not fire.

Damage types

Ammo carries the damage: every ammo has a value for one or more damage types — usually one dominant type plus a smaller secondary one (missile ammo is explosive plus kinetic or chemical, laser crystals thermal plus chemical, railgun rounds kinetic plus thermal). The types:

Incoming damage is reduced per type by the target's resistance to that type: a 50% resist cuts damage by 50/(50+100) ≈ 33%. Resistances apply only to what gets through the shield — the shield absorbs first, and is paid out of the shield's energy: the harder the hit, the more energy it costs. Kers modules let a share of a damage type burn the shield's energy directly even after resistance. Adaptive alloy redistributes your resistances toward whatever is actually hitting you.

Detection, masking and speed

• Detection vs. masking. You can see a unit within a range that grows with your detection stat and shrinks with the target's masking stat — roughly 100 m × detection ÷ masking. A unit that has locked you is always visible to you, regardless of its masking. Stealth modules temporarily raise your own masking (see modules); mines use a dedicated detection range instead.
• Blob. Some units and structures emit a blob field. While you stand inside an emitter's radius, the blob level on your unit rises; between your two blob threshold stats it increases your locking time (up to 6× the base value) and cuts your locking range and sensor strength (down to half).
• Speed. Top speed falls with mass: speed = base × (design mass ÷ actual mass) — every ton of extra modules, armor and cargo you fit makes you slower.
• Demobilization ("demob"). The webber effect slows a target's top speed. How hard it lands scales with the target's massiveness — heavier units get demobbed harder, so big slow targets feel it most.

Alarms

An alarm is triggered in a zone by an alarm switch (a mission-related structure). When started:

• It runs for a fixed alarm period (set by the mission; short by default).
• You have to stay within the switch's range for the whole period — it is checked every couple of seconds, and drifting away cancels the alarm.
• You can have only one alarm running at a time.

Alarms are tied to mission content — see missions.

Kill reports

Your combat history is available as kill reports:

• Filter by time window.
• Filter by role: as victim, attacker, or killer.

Use them to review how you died or who you destroyed.

High scores

• Server high scores — top results across the server.
• My high scores — your personal bests.

Practical notes

• Don't die carelessly — a destroyed robot means downtime while you refit or re-request.
• Force dock is instant — if you're outmatched, get to TMA now; you can refit later.
• PvP locks teleports — plan your escapes; you can't blink out of a fight.
• Alarms are a signal — an active alarm means a mission event is live in that area.