The RTSC Guide to Startopia
Part 18: Combat

Warfare is optional in Startopia. You can engage in "friendly" competitive economic battles between two adjacent territories or opt for a violent military solution; breaking into rivals' territory and seizing segments by force. Directing a battle is the nearest you'll ever get to direct control over your Peeps and even then they will have appeared from around the Station to defend your turf. If you do want to rally the troops, drop down Mustering Points in strategic locations. And concentrate your fire on select targets rather than rely on the AI defaults. Each target earns a small green cross hair tagging them as incontrovertibly hostile, and the number inside shows how many available Peeps and Security Scuzzers are currently assigned to zap it. By left clicking Diablo style on a cross hair you increase the number of staff and droids on a target, or repeatedly right click to reduce the number.

Peep's Loyalty and Dedication ratings will decide whether your guys stick it out during a fight, and their Skill rating will show just how well they can shoot straight. Stray shots will hurt civilians (who are probably fleeing the scene anyway) and damage station facilities. If you're not careful, "low rent" employees with poor Loyalty ratings may bolt if a fight starts to go badly.

If things do go badly you can find yourself in a situation where all your medics have been killed just when you need them the most. Waging war requires considerable medical support, and you can shoot yourself in the foot if there's insufficient medical services and most of your employees are off the job getting patched up. Peeps can get carried away and rush in where Fools would fear to tread, getting themselves killed deep in enemy territory or trapped behind closing segment doors. Next of kin payout's can snowball rapidly and devastate even the most robust economy. While Kasvagorians revel in a good bit of biffo, you can still traumatize them, and the effects of battle are especially acute with the other species. Survivors can be seen crying and mourning their fallen comrades in the aftermath of a big fight, and you can be sure they've taken massive hits to their Minds, Bodies and Souls.

When attacking other Administrators outside your own territory your energy and power supplies start to be crucial: the further from your own turf you are, the weaker your guys' energy weapons will be. Your e supply is also used to power their weapons - the further away from your territory they stray, the more expensive it becomes for them to shoot. You may want to build the odd Power Booster near a potential fight.

Attacking and claiming sections just comes down to hacking the locks on each of the giant segment doors. To claim an opponent's segment, there's a two step process. First, you have to get a Security Scuzzer to break open the lock and open those giant doors. Second, you then have to cross the contested segment to hack the next lock to claim all the segment and all facilities and cargo within it. This takes a fair bit of time, hacking both the first lock and then the second, giving your opponent plenty of time to valiantly defend themselves and pick off any offending Scuzzers. Those Security Scuzzers are easily nailed and the Achilles Heel of any attack - so look after them. The door locks and the Scuzzers hacking them are easily the most strategically critical points in any border battle. If things start going wrong you might have to close those doors just to protect yourself from a defeat - and without any Security Scuzzers to do this for you you've almost certainly yielded control of your doors to your opponents. Any staff that get stuck behind them in hostile territory will still fight for you and cost you e, but you'll lose control and visual contact with them.