The first thing to do is to exted the mothership by searching for basic materials. In time, the mothership becomes harder and harder to extend because of the complexity of the materials required for extending the already big ship, so the station commander will have to search for materials already processed from another mothership hull.

When there are some segments available, the commander can build workshops witch will allow him to construct facilities faster, but the workshops will not generate credits.
The biofarms, however, will generate 10 credits for 1 biofarm whenever a players uses turns.

When some credits are available, the commander can buy ship hulls from the black market. However, the hulls are not usefull in a battle if they are not equiped properly, but often used in combat by smart commanders as decoys to avoid a direct attack on another fleet.
Every purchase of a number of ships forms a fleet, all the fleets form the Armada.
When a motherships is under attack, the 10 most powerful fleets in the Armada join the defence against the agressor.

After buying some ship hulls, the commander has to equip them to suit his needs, either for defence or for offence. Keep in mind that the price for selling an upgrade is far less than that of buying one, so choose carefully before buying.
When buying the hull, the commander can also buy a Drive system/Power Generator witch will provide the necesary energy to sustain the other upgrades. If the ship has no energy generator the only upgrade that can be installed is the armour and marines .

When the commander wants to attack another mothership, the firrst thing to do is to gather information. This can be done by checking the Ranking and looking for a good target.
The commander can only attack another commander that has a minimum 80% of his power and a maximum 200% over his power.
While looking for the perfect target, you will notice small icons in the vicinity of each commander, labeled B (secret base found), N (hiding in nebula), and C (counters pending) .

B = it means you can raid that commander's secret base.
N = the commander is hiding in a nebula, and unless you have a counter (C) you can not attack
C = Counters are generated when a enemy commander sends flleets to attack you, leaving behind an attack signature, witch can be used in a 24 hour period to strike back and take revenge. The attack signature can be tracked even if you are hiding in the nebula, so choose your targets wisely, and don't attack commanders many times, because you will be vurnerable to attack in case of a major defeat.
A counter-attack will not generate another counter, as the mothership will be taken by surprise.
A counter-attack can also be used for raiding a secret base.
When making a counter the attack limit is a bit different, you can attack commanders ranging from 50% - infinite% of your own power.

Nebula : While in the nebula, you are protected from attacks, and can exercice counters and still be protected, and can also scout for secret bases.
The nebula can protect you as long as you do not take an agressive action, that means attacking or raiding bases without a counter. Once a hostile action took place, the enemy will discover your location, and can attack you again.

With the target in mind the commander can order an attack by activating the WAR button.
Here he will be prompted for the name or ID of the victim: A attack will cost 5 turns.
victim (#1001) => victim
victim (#1001) => 1001

To win an attack, the attacker needs to fulfill a few requirements:
- He will need to destroy at least 10% of the Defending Armada's Power.
- He will need to lose less % Armada Power than the Defender.

So if the defender lost 11% of his Armada Power, the attacker reached the first aim, but if the attacker lost 15% of his Armada Power during the battle, he lost more power than the defender and will lose the battle.

There are two types of attack that can be done:
Regular : The two Armadas meet in deep space and start the battle.
The attacker will suffer a 10% accuracy penalty, while the defender will have a 10% bonus to hitpoints, because of the support of the defender mothership.
If successful, the defender will lose 5% of his mothership segments, 1/3 of those will be taken by the attacker while 2/3 will be destroyed.

Board : The attacking Armada will not focus as much on the battle, but try to capture as many segments and fleets as possible from the defender mothership.
A boarding party will be sent to the enemy fleet, trying to capture it.
If the boarded fleet has no marines left after the marines fight, it will be captured and will disengage, retreating to the mothership for later use.
The attacker will suffer a 30% accuracy penalty, while the defender will have a 20% bonus to hitpoints, because of the support of the defender mothership.
If successful, the defender will lose 10% of his mothership segments, 1/3 of those will be taken by the attacker while 2/3 will be destroyed.

The attacker can take as much as 10 fleets on the assault.

Also, if the commander wants to capture the maximum amount of segments, he has to have 1 ship for every 100 segments the defender mothership has.

During battle, the fleets that will destroy ships will be awarded experience points acourding to the destroyed fleet power. By gaining experience the crew will become more skilled in combat, increasing the attack and defence of the fleet.

Scout Base : Before a commander can raid another commander's secret base, the base has to be discovered. When sending a scouting party to discover the base, the power of the fleets sent on the expedition is very important. For an expedition to be successful, it is good to send many fleet, but if you send many fleets, the chance of an ambush is grater.
In case the scouting party is ambushed, they will have much lower accuracy, while the commander setting the ambush would have much grater hitpoints.
When the scouting party is successful, they will atempt to scan the secret base, however the scans will not always be accurate.

IMPORTANT: Scouting a base will not generate counters, and you can do it from the nebula.
Raid Base : After the secret base has been dicovered, you will have 24 hours to plan your strike, before the secret base is relocated. If the secret base is raided 5 times, it will automaticaly relocate, and you will have to scout for it again.
When the base is raided, the defending fleet will have a grater bonus to hitpoints, while the raiding party, focused on captiruing and looting, will have a lower accuracy.
If the raiding party is defeted, all the loot will be lost.
When the raid is successful, the raiding party will capture some of the workers from the base and credits from the vault, however the amount captured depends on many factors, but you will have to find that out for yourself recruit.

After a attacking or defending battle, the commanders will eventualy lose some ships from the fleets. These can be replaced at the cost of the ship hull and upgrades installed by entering the Resupply room.
However, the experience gained by the crew can't be replaced, so if a fleet has 10000 experience points and 10 ships and the resupply is 5 more ships with the base rookie of 200 experience points per ship, the new experience of the fleet will be:
1000*10/15 + 200*5/15 = 6733 experience points.
The commander can also resupply the fleets with marines. They are needed for boarding other commanders fleets and to defend against boarding parties. One marine will cost 1 credit to hire. The maximum marines capacity of a fleet is determined by the total space the fleet has, knowing that 1 unit of space can hold 100 marines.

If the commander needs a bigger or smaller ship or system than those provided from the black market he can design his own ships acording to his needs by enterng the Design room.
After designing he will be prompted with a price for the ship or system that he can accept and confirm or deny and modify the design to get a better price.

This is a secret project undertaken by some commanders to entablish a mining colony in secret locations troughout the galaxy. This is were the commander can put workers to mine resouces and generate credits.
The base is also equiped with a vault, were the commander can chose to put his credits. Unlike credits stored on the mothership, the credits in the secret base vault will be used for trading, earnig interest over time, and for building ships.
The secret base will be hidden, and heavily defended, hard to find, but the rewards well worth the effort. The base can be raided, but has to be discovered first.

When building your fleets, you will notice bigger ships are harder to destroy or capture, because of their larger capacity, that allows them to transport more troops and weapons.
However, small ships are not to be underestimated. There is strength in numbers, the small ships acting as one fleet, supporting each other, can be a deadly enemy, even for huge lone ships.
For each ship drafted, the fleet will gain a bonus to defence, hitpoints, and attack.
The numbers bonus depends on the size of the ship, and it will max out quicker for big ships, and harder for small ones.
When you have reached the maximum bonus, you will have to build a new fleet, to gain even more bonus, from the swarm effect.
On the other hand, a strong ship with heavy firepower, can wipe out entire squadrons of small ships, or can use transportes to capture them, using the superior numbers of troops on board.
Now, the choice is yours... big strong ships, or swarms of small ships, there is much debate.