Planets & Citadels

Planets & Citadels

Most pilots never claim a planet. They fly, they trade, they fight — and when the cycle ends, they leave behind drone markers and port stock fluctuations and nothing else. The pilots who claim planets change the shape of the galaxy. A citadel on the right node becomes a chokepoint, a supply depot, a defensive wall that forces enemies to spend ten turns routing around it. A planet is a long investment. This document explains how to make it pay off.

Two separate systems. Planets and citadels are distinct entities in Fugari Wars — they don't share a progression track. Colonization is the process of depositing cargo to claim a planet and unlock drone production. Citadel building is a separate military/infrastructure investment you make on top of that: it starts the moment you make your first deposit and grows independently. You can build a citadel to tier 3 at 10% colonization if you want. Only the final tier 4 upgrade requires full colonization.

Where to manage planets: When your ship is at a planet node, the node sheet opens to a Planet tab automatically — this is where you deposit cargo, adjust your production split, and extract drones. The Citadel sub-tab (same panel) handles garrison, battery, upgrades, and PlanetWarp. If you own two or more accessible planets (including syndicate planets), a Summary tab appears showing a compact overview of all of them with one-click navigation.

Finding a Planet

Planet nodes appear on the galaxy map as circles with a dashed orbit ring. Before you claim anything, you can see the one thing that matters: the planet's size (1–5, displayed in the planet panel). A planet's citadel tier is public too, as a deliberate deterrent, but its exact garrison and surplus counts are not: other pilots need an active scan to see them (as of the scan), while you and your syndicate always see your own planets live. Size drives everything — colonization cost, drone output per minute, surplus cap, garrison cap, and battery charges. Bigger is better, but bigger also takes more cargo to claim.

Where you plant matters as much as what you plant. A planet on a dead-end node behind a one-way warp is defensible — enemies have to spend turns reaching it and can't easily return for follow-up raids. A planet at a corridor junction controls traffic — once it has a citadel and a garrison, every hostile who enters its node is intercepted and has to fight it or turn back. A planet in the open, connected to six warps in contested space, will be raided constantly unless you garrison it hard.

Claiming a Planet

Planet cap: tier-dependent (3–20). Your maximum planet count scales with your rank tier (see Fleet & Meta). Attempting to claim a new planet when you're at the cap will be rejected. Existing planets are never forcibly removed — you must abandon one if you want to claim a different one.

Colonization is a deposit-based ownership system. You must be physically present at the planet node to deposit.

Eligible cargo: agri_common and energy_common deposits, tracked in separate buckets. Each deposit action costs 1 turn.

Progress formula — 3 distinct buckets:

• Agri bucket — contributes up to 50% colonization. Cap: planet_size × 8,910 units.
• Energy bucket — contributes up to 50% colonization. Cap: planet_size × 8,910 units.
• Reactor (specialty) — the final push from 99% → 100%.

agri_contribution  = min(agri_deposited,   planet_size × 8,910)
energy_contribution = min(energy_deposited, planet_size × 8,910)
colonization_pct   = (agri_contribution + energy_contribution) / (planet_size × 180)

Both agri and energy are required. Neither type alone can push colonization past 50%. A size-1 planet needs 8,910 agri + 8,910 energy to reach 99%, plus a Reactor deposit to hit 100%.

Deposits beyond a bucket's cap are not accepted — the planet takes what it has room for and the rest stays in your hold. A deposit that can achieve nothing is refused with a message saying so, rather than silently absorbing the cargo.

The final 1% (99% → 100%) requires depositing 1 unit of specialty cargo instead of common cargo. Specialty cargo can only be carried by a Hauler or higher (any tier-2+ hull). This is the gate that keeps a starter Drifter from fully colonizing a planet — you can get to 99% on any ship, but you need a bigger hull to close it out.

Drone production begins as soon as the planet reaches 10% colonization, scaled by the colonization percentage — a half-colonized planet produces at half rate. Surplus extraction, however, requires 100% colonization: partially-settled planets stockpile drones you can't collect yet.

Garrison capacity is determined by your citadel tier, not planet size alone — see Garrison & Defense below.

Drone Production

From 10% colonization the planet is a drone factory. It produces drones every minute based on size, citadel tier, colonization percentage, and how you have split your production allocation across drone types.

Production formula

Each minute the engine calculates a base capacity value:

base = planet_size × citadel_mult × colonization_factor

colonization_factor is colonization_pct / 100 — production scales smoothly from the 10% floor up to full capacity at 100%. Citadel multiplier scales with tier: 1.0x at tier 0, up to 2.0x at tier 4 (adding 0.25x per tier).

That base capacity is then distributed across drone types according to your production split, with each type converting capacity to drones at its own inherent rate:

produced_per_type = floor(base × split_pct / 100 × type_rate)

Drone type rates — the number of drones produced per unit of capacity allocated:

Guardians are the cheapest to manufacture — 10 roll off the line per unit of allocated capacity, four times the wrecker rate. Wreckers are precision siege units. This is a fixed manufacturing reality of the factory, not something you can change with the split.

What this means in practice: If you split evenly across all three types (34/33/33), you will always produce more guardians than strikers, and more strikers than wreckers from the same investment. If you want wreckers, you need to give them a disproportionately large share of your split. The planet-info panel shows your production_per_minute estimate broken down by type so you always know what the current split will deliver.

Example — size-5, tier-4 Ferralite planet (guardian specialty, base = 10), equal 34/33/33 split:

Configuring the split

The production split is configured via the Planet menu when you are physically present at the planet (1 turn, takes effect at the next hourly production tick). The three values must sum to exactly 100. New planets default to 100% guardian.

The split tells the factory how to allocate capacity — it doesn't override the per-type rates. The planet-info panel shows your current production_per_minute projection so you can see the actual drone counts before committing.

Guardian auto-feed

Guardians produced each epoch fill the garrison first. Once the garrison cap is reached, surplus guardians overflow into surplus like all other types. All other drone types (strikers, wreckers) go directly to surplus.

Surplus cap

Each drone type's surplus cap is deliberately small — about 4 minutes of full-rate production:

surplus_cap_per_type = floor(planet_size × citadel_mult × 4 × type_rate × class_mult)

class_mult is 1.0 for non-specialty types and 1 + planet_class_bonus_pct (default 1.20) for the planet's specialty type. Production into a full surplus is discarded — the hourly production report flags any type sitting at its cap. Extract regularly; a planet is a conveyor belt, not a warehouse.

Example — size-5, tier-4 Ferralite planet (guardian specialty, cap base = 5 × 2.0 × 4 = 40):

Surplus Extraction

To extract: fly to the planet and use the Extract action (1 turn). Drones move from the planet's surplus into your ship's drone bay, limited by available bay space.

Guardian routing: When extracting guardians on a planet with a Settlement or higher citadel (tier 1+), you can route them directly into the garrison instead of your ship's bay. The quantity is auto-calculated to fill available garrison space — you don't specify a number. This is the fastest way to top off a garrison after an epoch reset.

Any syndicate member can extract from a syndicate-owned planet, but non-owners pay a 20% extraction tax — a fifth of the extracted drones are lost in the handoff. The owner extracts tax-free.

Selling surplus drones: Drones extracted from surplus can be sold at ports for 50% of the standard buy price.

The Citadel

The moment you make your first cargo deposit on a planet, a citadel row is created — your Tier 0 Outpost exists from day one. Colonization and citadel building then proceed independently. You don't need a fully colonized planet to build up your citadel — only the final tier 4 upgrade has a colonization gate.

Each upgrade requires energy cargo deposited directly at the citadel (from your ship's hold). Fly energy cargo to your planet and use the Deposit Energy action. Once enough energy is deposited, initiate construction (1 turn). Construction completes after a number of epochs.

Upgrade rules:

• You must be at the planet to deposit energy and to initiate construction (1 turn each)
• Energy is deposited from your ship's hold into the citadel's construction fund
• Deposited energy cannot be withdrawn — it is consumed when construction begins
• Tiers 1–3 and 5 can be initiated at any colonization percentage
• Tier 4 requires 100% colonization
• Only one upgrade can be in progress at a time
• You cannot upgrade while the planet is in transit
• Tiers are destroyed individually by bombardment — each tier must be rebuilt at full cost. A Tier 5 Fortress bombed down to Tier 3 must pay back both the Tier 4 and Tier 5 costs to restore it.

Tier descriptions:

• Tier 0 (Outpost) — A flag in the dirt. Created automatically on first deposit. Drone production starts at 10% colonization and scales up with it.
• Tier 1 (Settlement) — Infrastructure in place. You can now name the planet and garrison up to 50% of the full garrison cap. Production multiplier rises to 1.25x.
• Tier 2 (Brigade) — Walls and a real military presence. Full garrison capacity unlocked (planet_size × 200,000). Production multiplier rises to 1.5x.
• Tier 3 (Stronghold) — Orbital scanner sweeps adjacent sectors. Orbital canon charges, firing on each wave of a fight at the planet: an assault, or the intercept that starts when a hostile ship enters the node. Production multiplier rises to 1.75x.
• Tier 4 (Citadel) — The planet can PlanetWarp to a different node. Production multiplier rises to 2.0x.
• Tier 5 (Fortress) — Activates the Orbital Lock: a gravity well generator that prevents all hostile ships from leaving the node — by warp or TransWarp — as long as the lock is operational. See Orbital Lock below.

Garrison & Defense

Garrison unlocks at citadel tier 1. The cap scales with tier:

Example: a size-3 planet at tier 1 can hold 300,000 guardians. Upgrading to tier 2 (Brigade) doubles the cap to 600,000.

Guardians auto-feed the garrison from production until cap. You can also manually garrison guardians from your ship's drone bay: fly to the planet and use the Garrison action (1 turn, must be present).

The garrison fights attackers during wave combat (phase 2 of a planet assault — see combat.md for the full assault flow). A well-garrisoned planet is not an easy target.

If the garrison drops to zero, the orbital canon goes offline and the planet becomes vulnerable to bombardment.

Guardian Deployment — Proximity Caps

Beyond the planet garrison, you can deploy guardian drones at nodes near your planets using the Drones action (up to 50 per action, 1 turn each). The cap at each node is derived from your nearest owned planet's citadel garrison capacity, halving with each hop of distance:

Where garrison_cap = planet_size × 200,000 at tier 2+ or planet_size × 100,000 at tier 1. If a node is near multiple planets, the best (highest) cap applies.

Example: A size-5 T3 planet has a garrison cap of 1,000,000. Nodes 1 hop away can hold 500K guardians, 2 hops → 250K, 3 hops → 125K, 4 hops → 62.5K. A weaker size-2 T1 planet (200K garrison) projects only 100K at 1 hop.

Port nodes cannot have guardians deployed. You also cannot deploy guardians at your own planet node — the citadel garrison already defends it.

This design rewards citadel investment: upgrading your citadel tier and owning larger planets directly increases the guardian power you can project outward. Clustering planets creates overlapping defense bubbles with very high effective caps in the corridors between them.

Planet Mineral Class

Every planet has a mineral class that determines which drone type it specializes in. The class is a fixed property of the planet — you don't choose it, you discover it when you arrive.

The bonus applies only to the specialty drone type. Non-specialty types produce at the standard 1× rate. If a Ferralite planet (guardian specialist) allocates 100% of its split to strikers, it receives no bonus — the specialty bonus only activates when production of that type occurs.

What the bonus does:

• +20% production rate: Each minute, the specialty drone type rolls an additional 20% output on top of the base formula. A Ferralite planet producing 10 guardians per minute at base produces 12 with the class bonus.
• +20% surplus cap: The surplus ceiling for the specialty drone type is 20% higher. You can stockpile more before production pauses.

Strategic implication: Match your split to your planet's class when specializing. A Lumecite planet running 80% guardian production outperforms a Ferralite planet running the same split by 20% on guardians. When scouting new planets, check the class before committing cargo to colonization.

The class bonus percentage is game-configurable (planet_class_bonus_pct, default 0.20).

Orbital Canon

At citadel tier 3+, the planet gains an orbital canon that fires automatically on each combat wave of a fight at the planet, against any non-owner, non-syndicate ship. That includes the intercept a hostile ship triggers by entering the node.

Damage: Variable dice roll — battery_dmg = (5 + planet_size × 2) × roll(0.5–1.5). The battery always deals some HP damage. Guardians reduce the damage (up to 40% at full bay coverage) but cannot fully block it. As collateral, the battery also drains 10% of the target's guardians each shot.

Targeting: The battery always fires at the assault's lead attacker (primary / unit 1).

Charges: Maximum planet_size × 4 shots (size-5 = 20 shots, size-1 = 4 shots). The battery passively recharges at +2 shots per hour — no player action required. Your activity log records each recharge event so you can see what happened while offline. The battery is armed only while all three hold: citadel tier 3+, a live garrison, and charges remaining. Lose any one — garrison wiped, tier bombed below 3, or ammo spent — and it goes silent. Charges keep recharging in the background either way.

The battery is a passive deterrent. It doesn't stop determined attackers, but it taxes them — every approach costs HP, and enough passes will destroy a ship that can't repair.

Orbital Scanner

At citadel tier 3+, the planet gains an orbital scanner.

• Alerts the planet owner when unknown ships enter adjacent nodes.
• 75% chance to decloak cloaked ships entering the planet node itself.

Orbital Lock

At citadel tier 5 (Fortress), the planet generates a gravity well that prevents any hostile ship from leaving the node. This affects both standard warp jumps and TransWarp. The lock is not visible to a scan — only the planet's owner (and their syndicate) can see battery and lock state. Attackers discover it on entry, so assume any tier 5 citadel may have one.

Active conditions — both must be true:

1. orbital_lock_hp > 0 — the lock structure has not been destroyed
2. battery_charges > 0 — the orbital canon still has power

If either condition fails, the lock is down and ships can exit freely.

Lock HP:

orbital_lock_hp = planet_size × 100,000

How strikers interact with the lock:

Strikers attack the Orbital Lock first. While orbital_lock_hp > 0, 100% of striker damage goes into the lock structure — the garrison cannot be depleted at all until the lock is destroyed. Once the lock HP reaches 0, the lock is gone for the remainder of the cycle and cannot be rebuilt. Strikers then proceed to attack the garrison as normal.

This is the strategic cost an attacker pays to break the lock: you must spend those strikers before you can even touch the garrison or citadel.

Battery drain path:

The orbital canon depletes through normal assault waves. When battery_charges hits 0, the lock deactivates — even if lock HP is still intact. This event is broadcast as a streaming NodeActivity message to all players at the node:

"⚡ Orbital Lock offline — battery depleted. Escape vector open."

Similarly, when lock HP reaches 0, all players at the node see:

"🔓 Orbital Lock destroyed — escape vector clear."

Either message is your window to retreat.

Breaking free

A ship with no strikers, or no wish to fight its way out, can break free instead. Each attempt:

• costs no turns, and 10% of your maximum hull;
• has a 10% chance to tear the ship out of the gravity well, throwing it to a random neighbouring node;
• can be repeated, a few seconds apart, for as long as the hull can take the strain.

The attempt the hull cannot take destroys your ship: it becomes a wreck and you eject in an Escape Drifter, scattered like any other death — which is also out of the lock. So from a full hull you get nine chances to escape with your ship (about a 61% chance in all), and the tenth attempt always gets you out, at the price of the ship.

Breaking free works on every Orbital Lock, a player's Fortress and Kethara Prime's alike, but not on a Drift Lock or a Fugari latch. The planet's owner is told when a ship breaks free of their lock or is destroyed trying.

Fugari Orbital Lock:

Kethara Prime (the Fugari home world) gains an Orbital Lock when the cycle's GPI band reaches 3 (Thriving) or higher — typically in the early-mid cycle when player wealth is strong. The Fugari lock behaves identically from the attacker's perspective: hostile ships cannot exit the node while it is active. However, it has no destructible HP — you cannot destroy it with strikers. The only way to bring a Fugari lock down is to drain the battery to zero through sustained assault waves — though a trapped ship can still break free.

PlanetWarp Relocation

At citadel tier 4, a planet can be relocated to any valid target node via PlanetWarp.

Requirements:

• Citadel must be at tier 4
• Planet must be at 100% colonization
• Target node must not already have a planet
• No more than 1 PlanetWarp per cycle

To initiate (must be physically at the planet, 1 turn cost):

Energy cost formula:

warp_cost = (hop_distance × energy_per_hop) + (planet_size × energy_reserve_per_size)

• energy_per_hop = 200
• energy_reserve_per_size = 1,000 per size unit

This energy must be deposited on the planet before initiation. The reserve portion stays on the planet after arrival — only the warp transit cost itself is consumed.

Example: Warping a size-3 planet 5 hops costs (5 × 200) + (3 × 1,000) = 1,000 + 3,000 = 4,000 energy deposited. After arrival, 3,000 energy remains as reserve; 1,000 was consumed in transit.

Transit:

• Duration: 24 hours real time
• The planet disappears from its current node for the entire transit period
• During transit the planet cannot be upgraded, garrisoned, extracted from, or raided
• Your activity log will show a PlanetWarp notification when it lands

On arrival:

• The planet appears at the target node with all surplus, garrison, citadel tier, and battery charges intact
• The PlanetWarp counter increments — only 1 PlanetWarp per cycle is allowed

Strategic use: PlanetWarp is how you respond to late-cycle map changes. A fortress that was defensible in epoch 2 may be a liability in epoch 5 if the combat front has shifted. Move it to a dead-end chokepoint or reposition it next to a high-traffic port. The 24-hour transit window is the opening your enemies have to exploit the gap — plan accordingly.

Attacking a Planet — What You're Really Attacking

When you initiate a "planet assault," you are attacking the citadel, not the planet itself. The planet's colonization, deposits, and drone surplus are not the target — the defender's citadel is.

Intercepts

A planet with a citadel (tier 1+) and a garrison defends its node. When a ship that is neither the owner's nor a syndicate mate's enters the node, by a warp, the autopilot or any server run (warp-and-port, warp-and-raid, auto raid), the planet's defenses intercept it. That starts the same wave fight an assault does, against the garrison, with the orbital canon firing every wave from tier 3.

• It costs no turn. You did not choose the fight (an assault costs one).
• Nothing else can be done until it ends. A server run stops at that node (stop_reason: "intercepted"), and the client offers CONTINUE RUN once the fight is over, unless your ship was lost.
• Retreat goes back where you came from, not to a random neighbour as in other fights.
• Win, and it is an assault won: the garrison is broken, and you can CLAIM or BOMBARD exactly as after an assault.
• Bots are intercepted too, by the same rules, and fight it out with the bot combat resolver.
• A planet with no citadel, or a citadel with no garrison, lets ships through. So does a planet in transit (PlanetWarp).

This replaced entry fire, a single battery and garrison hit as the ship arrived, after which it flew on.

A planet assault plays out in phases:

1. Entry — Entering the node of a garrisoned citadel starts the fight by itself (intercept). From tier 3 the orbital canon fires on every wave. Your HP is the bill for every wave.
2. Orbital Lock check — If the citadel is tier 5 (Fortress) and the Orbital Lock is active (lock_hp > 0 and battery_charges > 0), you cannot exit the node until the lock is broken, or you break free. A scan will not show whether the lock is up; you find out on entry, so treat any Fortress-tier citadel as locked.
3. Wave combat — lock phase — If orbital_lock_hp > 0, your strikers attack the lock structure instead of the garrison. The garrison takes zero damage during this phase. This continues until lock HP is depleted.
4. Wave combat — garrison phase — Once the lock is destroyed (or was never present), strikers fight the garrison guardians as normal. The orbital canon fires each wave.
5. Garrison broken — If all garrison guardians are eliminated, the orbital canon goes offline regardless of remaining charges.
6. Bombardment — With the garrison broken, you can deploy wreckers to reduce the citadel one tier at a time. Each tier has its own wrecker threshold (see the table in combat.md — Planetary Bombardment). In wave combat, wreckers deploy at 10% of your drone bay per wave. Wreckers can only be purchased or extracted onto a Warship or larger hull (tier 4+), so that is the effective ship gate for bombardment. Bombardment can reduce a citadel all the way to tier 0 (demolished). The Orbital Lock's HP is also chipped by strikers — while it stands, every striker volley (raid or assault wave) hits the lock instead of the garrison — and it is destroyed outright when the Fortress tier (5) is bombed away.
7. Claim — Once the garrison is cleared and the citadel is at Tier 1 or lower, you can claim the planet. Claiming transfers ownership to you and you inherit the citadel at its current tier — ready to rebuild. Tier 2+ citadels must be bombarded before claiming.

Key implication: A contested planet is a military target, not a colonization target. To take a heavily fortified planet you need to punch through the garrison, survive the battery, bombard the citadel down to tier 1 or below, then claim. Capture keeps the citadel tier, surplus stock, and any banked Reactor — but colonization restarts at 1% and cargo deposits are zeroed, so the new owner re-settles the world they conquered. Bombarding all the way to tier 0 demolishes the citadel entirely.

Attack Scenarios by Citadel Tier

These examples use a size-3 planet to keep numbers concrete. Scale HP and costs proportionally for other sizes.

Tier 0–1: Outpost / Settlement

What you face: No orbital canon. Settlement (tier 1) has garrison up to 300,000 guardians. No lock, no battery fire.

How to defeat it:

1. Enter the node — the garrison intercepts you. No battery fire.
2. Commit strikers in wave combat to wipe the garrison.
3. Bring wreckers on a Warship+ hull to bombard from tier 1 → tier 0 if you want full demolition, or claim once garrison is clear and tier is ≤ 1.

Cost to attacker: Striker losses proportional to garrison size. No HP damage.

Example: A tier-1 Settlement with 300K guardian garrison requires ~300K striker waves to clear (exact losses depend on combat roll variance). No battery, no lock, straight brawl.

Tier 2: Brigade

What you face: Full garrison cap (size-3 = 600,000 guardians). Still no orbital canon.

How to defeat it:

1. Enter — the garrison intercepts you. No battery.
2. Grind down up to 600,000 garrison guardians with strikers.
3. Once garrison is cleared, bombard tier 2 → tier 1, then claim.

Cost to attacker: Heavier striker drain than tier 1. Still no HP damage.

Tier 3: Stronghold

What you face: Full garrison (600K guardians), orbital canon firing on every wave of the intercept or assault, orbital scanner alerting the owner on adjacent-node movement.

How to defeat it:

1. Enter — the garrison intercepts you and the battery fires on every wave, dealing HP damage scaled to planet size. Bring guardians.
2. Every combat wave costs your ship HP. Battery fires until charges run out (planet_size × 4 shots; size-3 = 12 shots) or garrison is wiped.
3. Wipe the garrison → battery goes offline.
4. Bombard tier 3 → tier 2 → tier 1, then claim.

Cost to attacker: HP damage from battery fire (up to 12 shots on a size-3), plus striker losses to 600K garrison. A ship that arrives with low HP will be destroyed before the garrison breaks.

Example: Attacking a size-3 Stronghold with 600K garrison. Battery gets 12 shots of (5 + 3×2) × roll(0.5–1.5) = 11 × ~1.0 = ~11 HP each. Expect ~132 total HP damage from battery alone before garrison falls (if you don't kill it before charges run out). Bring a repaired hull and guardians.

Tier 4: Citadel

What you face: Same as tier 3 plus the planet can PlanetWarp away mid-cycle if the owner repositions it. Scan before committing to a long approach.

How to defeat it: Same as tier 3 — battery + garrison. Then bombard tier 4 → 3 → 2 → 1, claim. Four bombardment passes required.

Cost to attacker: More wreckers needed to tear through the extra tier. Wreckers are expensive and require a Warship+ hull — budget accordingly.

Tier 5: Fortress (Orbital Lock active)

What you face: Everything at tier 4, plus the Orbital Lock which prevents you from leaving the node until it is destroyed or the battery drains. You are committed the moment you enter — the only other way out is to break free, at the cost of your hull.

Check the scan first. The planet panel shows orbital_lock_hp and orbital_lock_active. If the lock is up, entering means fighting until it is down — or dying there.

Phase 1 — Break the lock (or drain the battery):

Option A — destroy lock HP:

• Your strikers attack the lock exclusively. Garrison is immune.
• Size-3 Fortress lock HP = 300,000. You need enough strikers to burn through 300K HP before you can touch the garrison.
• Once lock HP hits 0 → streaming message to all: "🔓 Orbital Lock destroyed — escape vector clear."

Option B — drain the battery:

• Don't focus the lock. Let the battery burn out through combat waves and orbital scanner fire.
• When battery_charges hits 0 → streaming message: "⚡ Orbital Lock offline — battery depleted. Escape vector open."
• This takes longer but costs fewer strikers upfront — you are banking on the defender not recharging (battery passively recharges at +2 per hour when not in active combat).

Phase 2 — Once the lock is down:

• Proceed as a normal tier 5 assault: grind garrison, survive battery (if still charged), bombard tier 5 → 4 → 3 → 2 → 1, claim.

Total striker cost for a size-5 Fortress:

• Lock HP: 500,000 strikers to destroy the lock alone, before any garrison damage
• Garrison: up to 1,000,000 guardians (full cap)
• That is a 1.5M+ striker commitment to take a max-size fully garrisoned Fortress

The defender's investment: 5M credits + 5 epochs of construction for the lock. An attacker who commits 500K strikers to destroy it has spent real resources too — but the lock is gone for the cycle and the defender must spend 5M again to rebuild.

The lock is a two-way trap: If the battery drains mid-assault, the lock drops and you can retreat. If you destroyed the lock HP with strikers, you paid the 500K (size-5) striker tax but now have a free exit. The lock is designed so neither side gets the encounter for free.

Fugari Fortress (gpi_band ≥ 3): Kethara Prime's lock has no destructible HP — you cannot striker-burn it down. Your only exit is draining the battery. Plan for a sustained multi-wave engagement or bring enough firepower to kill the battery quickly.

Syndicate Planet Ownership

A planet is owned by either a player or a syndicate — never both simultaneously. Syndicate ownership grants the following to members:

• Syndicate members can extract surplus drones
• Only the owner can deposit cargo toward colonization — sharing grants extraction, docking, and defense privileges, not settlement rights
• Members are exempt from the orbital canon and orbital scanner alerts
• Commander/Officer/Member roles govern permissions for other actions (upgrades, garrison changes, initiating PlanetWarp)

Syndicate planets create supply lines. A well-placed shared planet with high surplus becomes a drone resupply stop for your syndicate's operations in that sector.

Planet Dock

At 100% colonization, a fully developed planet becomes more than a drone factory — it can shelter allied ships inside its citadel infrastructure. Docking hides you completely from all scans and probes. No signal. No trace. As far as the galaxy is concerned, you don't exist.

Requirements to dock:

• Your ship must be at the planet node
• Planet must be at 100% colonization
• Planet must be owned by you or your syndicate (all syndicate members are welcome)
• The citadel garrison must be active (> 0 guardians) — a broken citadel cannot shelter ships
• 1 turn cost to dock; cloak is dropped automatically, drift lock is released

While docked:

• Completely invisible — passive scans, active scans, and probes show nothing
• Cannot fly until undocked
• Not drawn into wave combat against the planet (you are deep in the citadel structure — you must undock to enter the fight)
• The garrison and orbital canon defend the planet on your behalf

Undocking:

• 1 turn cost
• Your ship reappears at the planet node — immediately visible and attackable
• A 1-minute real-time cooldown applies between dock and undock actions in either direction (if you try too soon, the server will tell you how many seconds remain)

Auto-eject — what happens when the planet is claimed: When an attacker successfully claims the planet (garrison wiped, citadel reduced to tier ≤ 1, claim action executed), all docked ships are forcibly ejected. Your ship appears at the planet node with no warning period — you are immediately exposed and can be attacked. You will receive an inbox notification: "The planet was claimed — your ship was forced out of dock."

This is intentional. Docking is a defensive shelter, not a permanent hideout. If the citadel falls, the shelter collapses with it.

Strategic notes:

• Docking is strongest on heavily fortified planets (garrison + orbital canon + tier 4 citadel) — the garrison protects you while you hide
• A planet with no garrison cannot be docked in at all — keep the garrison stocked
• Syndicate planets open docking to all members, turning a fortified planet into a shared safe house
• Enemies watching your position will notice you have disappeared — combine with syndicate patrol ships for a convincing "not home" deception

Under Assault

When an active combat session is targeting your planet, the Citadel panel shows an ⚔ UNDER ASSAULT indicator. The garrison count shown switches from the base DB value to the live depleted value from the active session — what the attacker has actually burned through so far this assault.

Once the assault ends (retreat, defeat, or claim), the garrison count returns to the DB-persisted value. If the attacker retreated, that value reflects the depletion they inflicted.

Garrison Recovery Window

Garrison depletion is persistent — a partially successful assault leaves a real scar. But it is not permanent:

• Garrison regeneration ticks every minute (from your planet's guardian production and a passive regen bonus)
• Each epoch restores guardians up to the garrison cap
• If enough epochs pass between assaults, the garrison may fully recover

What this means in practice: An attacker who grinds your garrison to 20% and retreats creates a window of vulnerability. How long that window lasts depends on your planet's guardian production rate. A large, well-developed planet with high production recovers faster. A small undeveloped colony may take many epochs to heal.

The race: If a second attacker hits immediately after the first retreats, they attack into the depleted garrison. If they wait half a cycle, the garrison may be restored. Coordinated attackers exploit this window; defenders close it by reinforcing after every assault.

TTL Cleanup and Garrison Finalization

When a combat session ends, the server writes the final garrison state back to the citadels table. After the session is cleaned up (typically within an hour of ending), only the DB-persisted garrison value remains. At that point, normal garrison regen resumes against the depleted value.

There is a brief race window between session end and the TTL cleanup tick. During this window, the planet panel may briefly revert to the pre-assault DB value before the post-assault write completes. This is a cosmetic artifact — the actual DB value is correct.

Strategic Notes

A few observations from pilots who've held planets through full cycles:

• Dead-end nodes make defensible planet locations. One warp in means one chokepoint to garrison and battery-protect. Enemies have to commit turns to reach you and can't easily rotate out.
• Garrison maintenance is non-negotiable. Guardian production auto-feeds your garrison until cap, but a raid that depletes it leaves you exposed. Check garrison levels regularly.
• Fortress planets at corridor junctions control traffic flow. Every hostile who enters is intercepted and has to fight the garrison and the battery, or retreat the way it came. A size-5 planet with charged batteries at a high-traffic junction is an area-denial weapon.
• Citadel building is independent of colonization. You can build to Tier 3 Stronghold while still at 40% colonization. Only the Tier 4 upgrade gates on 100% colonization — Tier 5 has no colonization requirement of its own. Don't wait on colonization to start fortifying.
• Garrison scales with tier. A Settlement (Tier 1) gives you 50% garrison cap (planet_size × 100,000). Upgrading to Brigade (Tier 2) doubles it to the full cap (planet_size × 200,000). If you're under early pressure, pushing to Tier 1 provides meaningful defense at half the investment of Tier 2.
• The specialty deposit gate is real. Getting to 99% is easy. Getting to 100% requires a Hauler or higher ship and specialty cargo. Plan for this before committing cargo to a large planet.
• Plan PlanetWarp before you need it. You get one relocation per cycle. The 24-hour transit period is vulnerability. Plan the move for when your enemies are least positioned to exploit the gap.
• Orbital Lock is a commitment trap, not a wall. Scan before entering a node with a Fortress-level citadel. Once inside with the lock active, you either break it (strikers on the lock) or drain the battery — or you die there. The size-5 striker cost (500K to break the lock + 1M garrison) is the highest attacker investment in the game. An active Fortress at a strategic node is a credible deterrent.
• Tiers are rebuilt individually. Bombardment destroys tiers one at a time, and rebuilding each tier costs full credits and cargo. A player who defends their Fortress down to tier 3 has lost two expensive upgrades (4M + 5M credits). They can rebuild — it just costs 9M credits and 9 epochs. That's the cycle-level consequence the attacker is imposing. Any energy already deposited toward the next tier upgrade is also lost on bombardment — there's no partial credit for progress in flight.