War

A war is a formal fight between two alliances. One leader declares it, the other leader accepts it, and from then on every battle between the two sides is scored. The first alliance to reach the points goal wins. War also bends a few of the normal rules: the bashing limit stops applying between the two alliances, wartime raids plunder more, and destroyed ships count double toward the goal.

Declaring war

Only alliance leaders can start a war. Open Alliances, go to All Alliances, click the alliance you want to fight, and press Declare War on their page. The button only appears for leaders, and only on somebody else's alliance.

The form has three settings:

Points to Victory. The score the winner has to reach. Anything from 50,000 to 100,000,000. The box starts at 200,000.
War Expires In. An optional deadline. Leave it on No expiration and the war runs until somebody wins or surrenders, or pick a length from 7 up to 80 days.
Count battles with inactive players toward war points. On by default. Turn it off and any battle where the defender has been inactive for 7 days or more scores nothing for either side.

Declaring is only a proposal. It goes to the other alliance's leader as a message, and nothing happens until they accept it. Until then the alliance that declared can withdraw it, the alliance that received it can reject it, and if nobody answers within 7 days it is withdrawn automatically. When it is accepted, every member of both alliances gets a message telling them the war has started and what the goal is.

Both alliances have to be in the same universe. You can only have one war running with any given alliance at a time, but you can be at war with several different alliances at once.

The War Room

Every war is tracked under Alliances then War Room. Any member can open it and watch the score. Only the leader gets the buttons.

It has four parts: active wars with the live score, incoming declarations waiting on your leader, declarations you have sent that nobody has answered yet, and the war history with your alliance's win and loss record.

How points are scored

Two things earn war points, and both sides earn them:

Destroyed ship points. One point for every DSP of enemy ships you blow up. Defenses do not count, only ships.
Plunder points. One point for every 1,000 resources you actually carry home from a raid.

Defending scores as well. If an enemy fleet attacks one of your planets and loses ships, those ships are worth war points to your side even though you never launched anything.

The scoreboard column headed RSP shows raw resources stolen, not points. Divide it by 1,000, add the DSP column, and you get the total on the left. That column is nothing to do with the RSP on the Leaders boards, which is the build cost of everything you own.

Only real attacks feed the score. Espionage, transports, deploys and harvests do nothing for the war. Missiles do nothing either, because they only destroy defenses and defenses are not worth DSP.

What changes while you are at war

No bashing limit. The usual cap of 6 attacks on the same planet in 24 hours does not apply between the two alliances at war.
Bigger plunder. Wartime raids take 55 percent of what is sitting on the planet instead of 50 percent.
Double points for kills. Ships destroyed in a wartime battle are worth twice as much on the war scoreboard. That is only for the war. The Leaders boards still get the normal amount.
Red rows in the Galaxy view. Planets belonging to players in an enemy alliance show with a red background, the same way your own alliance shows blue.
No harassment flags. Repeated attacks between two players at war are not counted as harassment.
Nobody can leave. A member cannot quit the alliance while it has an active war.

The plunder bonus and the double points are stricter than they sound. They only apply to a clean war battle, which means every fleet in the attack belongs to an alliance at war with the defender and nobody from outside is group defending the target. If one fleet in a group attack is not at war, or an outsider drops a defend fleet on the planet, the whole battle falls back to 50 percent plunder and normal points. The war still scores, it just scores at the plain rate.

What does not change

Newbie Protection still applies. A war does not let you hit somebody far below your size.
Vacation Mode still blocks attacks on that player.
Diplomacy Mode still protects an active player, and it still stops you attacking while you are in it yourself.
Moon rolls, debris fields, Resource Dens and cargo limits all work the way they always do.

Ending a war

A war can end four ways:

Points goal. The moment either side reaches the goal the war ends and that side wins.
Expiry. If the war had a deadline and it passes, whoever has fewer points loses. Level scores are a draw.
Surrender. A leader can press Surrender in the War Room. That starts a 24 hour countdown, and only the alliance that started it can call it off. When the timer runs out the war ends and the surrendering alliance takes the loss.
Disbanding. If an alliance disbands, every war it is in ends straight away as a loss for it.

However it ends, every member of both alliances gets a message with the final score. The war then moves into War History, which keeps both sides' scores, the reason it ended, and where each alliance stood on the alliance leaderboard when the war started and when it finished. The win and loss record shown on the alliance page updates too, except after a draw, which counts as neither.