Combat
No matter how peaceful an empire you resolve to be, combat is unavoidable. That means you’d better be ready to defend yourself at the very least, and be able to push back against empires sizing up your colonies for conquest. If you’re a more aggressive empire, you can use combat as a way to expand your own empire and unite the galaxy under your rule.
Weapons
You won’t last long in combat without having some potent weapons and some skill with them. When you first start Space Stage, you start out with the Mini-Laser and Minor Proton Missile. These low-powered weapons are good for zapping infected creatures and downing weak pirate spacecraft, but not much else. Most weapons are purchased from your own homeworld or colonies, or the colonies of empires who are not hostile to your empire. As with all tools, you must earn certain badges to unlock weapons for purchase and have enough Sporebucks to afford them once they’re available. Your own colonies will always have every available weapon for sale at high prices, while other empires have a limited but cheaper selection.
Many weapons are upgrades to previous weapons in the same category. For example, Mini Bomb, Justa Bomb, and Mega Bomb are three different levels of the same weapon. Once you purchase a higher powered weapon, it replaces the weaker version of itself in your inventory. You cannot go back and purchase weaker versions of weapons once you’ve purchased their more powerful versions. Once purchased, weapons appear in the Weapons tab of your item inventory. Click a weapon’s icon to select it, and then click where you want to use it to fire it. Most weapons consume energy from your spaceship’s batteries when fired, so if you’re out of energy, you can’t use those weapons.
Weapon Types
There are more than two dozen weapons that you can acquire in Space Stage, but most of them fall into one of five categories: laser, pulse, bomb, missile, or auto blaster.
Spore Update: Space Stage
Lasers are precision weapons designed for use against ground targets, although they can also be used against enemy ships as long as you are at a higher altitude than the target. Click and hold on the target to fire a continuous blast of energy at it. Release the button to stop firing. Lasers consume energy at a steady rate, and the most powerful versions can drain your ship’s reserves quickly. Variations: Mini Laser, Laser, Mega Laser
Pulse Pulse weapons fire a burst of energy in a straight line, and they’re intended for use against ground targets. Because they fire in a pulse and not a steady stream, they tend to consume less energy than lasers of comparable power. Variations: Mini Pulse, Pulse, Mega Pulse
leave you out of energy during combat. Variations: Minor Proton Missile, Proton Missile, Mega Proton Missile, Anti-Matter Missile
Auto Blaster Auto blasters can be turned off or on once purchased. Unlike other weapons, you don’t need to select them and aim them at a target. Like the name implies, auto blasters automatically fire upon any hostile vehicle or turret that fires upon you first. If you don’t want them to open fire on your attackers (because you’re traveling to the star system to try to make peace, for example), be sure to turn them off. Variations: Mini Auto Blaster, Auto Blaster, Mega Auto Blaster
Health and Damage
The goal of combat is to reduce the health (green bars) of all attacking enemy vehicles and turrets to zero before they do the same to your spaceship’s health. When a vehicle or turret’s health reaches zero, it is destroyed.
Bomb Bombs are high-yield explosives dropped from your spaceship onto ground targets. They tend to be more inaccurate than any other weapon type, but the damage that they inflict upon buildings and ground vehicles is significant, especially considering that they don’t eat up your spaceship’s energy the way lasers and pulse weapons do. Bombs are best used against colonies that you’d rather destroy than capture, because it’s hard to target specific buildings precisely. Variations: Mini Bomb, Justa Bomb, Mega Bomb, Anti-Matter Bomb
Missile Missiles are air-to-air weapons designed specifically for use against other spaceships and air vehicles. All missiles home in on their targets and detonate upon impact. Like bombs, they are energy-efficient weapons that will not
Some enemy spaceships drop treasure when they are destroyed. If your radar is turned on, it will point you to the treasure. Use the Abduction Beam to pick it up. Once the treasure reaches your ship, it is added automatically to your Sporebuck total and does not occupy any space in your cargo hold. If your spaceship is destroyed, you respawn at the last one of your colonies that you visited. Thanks to the miracle of advanced cloning technology, you wind up in command of the exact same type of spaceship, with exact duplicates of all weapons, tools, and cargo that you previously had.
Your Fleet
At regular intervals during Space Stage, you can add additional spaceships to your fleet, similar to how you assemble a pack in Creature Stage. Like forming a pack, you can only add one additional
wingman to your fleet at first, but as you progress through Space Stage, you can add more ships, up to a maximum of four. You can only add as many ships as you have free fleet spots. Unlike forming a pack, however, you cannot add your own ships to your fleet. You can only add spaceships from allied empires to your fleet, and each ship must be from a different empire. To add a ship to your fleet, visit an empire that you have formed an alliance with. The empire must not already have a ship in your fleet. Open communications with them and use the diplomacy screen to request that they add a ship to your fleet. Allied empires will never refuse this request. Having an empire’s ship in your fleet improves your relationship with that empire.
Warrior empires’ spaceships make the best wingmen. Zealots and Scientists are good. Bards, Ecologists, Traders, Diplomats, and Shamans tend to be less effective, because they are not combatfocused cultures. If an allied fleet ship is destroyed in combat, you suffer a very small penalty to your relationship with the empire, but this is almost never enough of a justification for them to dissolve your alliance. To replace the ship, you must return to the empire that it originally came from and request another one.
Use the AOE Repair tool to repair your allied ships during combat. When you have a fleet of ships, choosing to repair or recharge at a colony also repairs and recharges all of your fleet ships as well.
If your spaceship is destroyed in combat, you lose your entire fleet and must rebuild it by visiting allied empires and requesting ships from them.
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Laser
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