Battles are divided into battle ticks (sometimes rendered as seconds). During each tick, a certain series of events happens. The fight ends when a winner can be declared. Therefore, a battle tick is to a fight what a turn is to a game.
Ships start at a distance of 58000 meters.
- Weapons recharge. See BeamRechargeRate etc.
- If a ship has fighters, and has not yet exceeded the MaxFightersLaunched limit, it launches a new fighter.
- Fighters that are close enough to their enemy will fire. Fighters that run out of ammo (StrikesPerFighter) will retreat.
- If the ships are close enough (TorpFiringRange), torpedoes are launched. Torpedo tubes need time to recharge before they can fire again.
- Likewise, if ships are close enough, beams are fired at enemy fighters (BeamHitFighterRange) or the enemy ship (BeamFiringRange). Beams need time to recharge before they can fire again. The more they are charged, the more damage the beams do.
- Fighters that come close try to shoot each other down (FighterKillOdds).
- Fighters move towards their enemy, or back to their base ship.
- Ships move towards each other until StandoffDistance is reached.
Planets behave mostly identical to ships. They obviously cannot move in the last step, but are otherwise treated the very same way as ships.
The battle ends immediately if one of the following happens:
- A unit exceeds the maximum damage (100% for most races, 150% for lizards).
- A ship loses all crew.
- Both units run out of ammunition.
(4.1a) When a fight does not progress, PHost will cancel it. This does generally not happen in regular games, but can happen when the combat configuration has suboptimal values. PHost will cancel a fight if StandoffDistance has been reached, but no unit has taken damage, fired torpedoes, or lost fighters for 5000 battle ticks. In this case, the fight ends as if both units ran out of ammo.
Combat is not deterministic. Weapon recharge is a probabilistic process, and weapons have a certain hit/miss ratio. Therefore, many fights have no predetermined outcome. Whereas HOST has just 110 possible outcomes, PHost has a theoretical set of 65536 outcomes.
