Starship Duel

How to play Starship Duel

Three ways to win

Domination — each turn you bank control points equal to your income from the systems you own (single +1, binary +4). First to the target (the CONTROL bar) wins on points. Income banks both Energy and points.
Elimination — a landed Fire is a raid: it steals control points, captures the system, and costs your rival a life (they respawn hidden). Take all 3 lives and you win the hunt.
Collapse — outlast a rival caught on a dying star.

You can't just hide: to score you must Claim territory and defend it. Fog of war — you only see ownership of systems you've sensed, so a deep-cloaked Claim expands invisibly. The second mover gets a small starting handicap (komi) for fairness. Crash your bot and you forfeit.

A turn

You get 2 actions per turn (plus any you banked via Overcharge).
At turn start you earn Energy from systems you own: +1 per single-star, +4 per binary system.
Leftover actions beyond the base 2 carry over to next turn; the base 2 do not.

Staying hidden

You start cloaked. Certain actions expose you (reveal your exact system): an uncloaked Claim, collecting a cache, firing, and entering rival space. Hold to slip back under cloak. Your rival only ever sees a “could be here” set — and the ownership map is fogged, so claims you make while deep-cloaked stay invisible to them.

Actions

Action	Cost	Effect
Jump	—	Move to an adjacent system. Entering rival space can expose you.
Hold	—	Stay put and regain cloak.
Claim	—	Take the system you're on — even a rival's. Exposes you unless deep-cloaked/jamming.
Fire	3⚡	Raid: on a hit, steal points, capture the system, cost the rival a life. Deep-cloak is immune.
Scan	free	Recon ping: sweep the whole ownership map, and fix the rival — unless they're deep-cloaked.
Deep Cloak	14⚡	Undetectable for 2 turns — immune to every reveal, to raids, and to life loss.
Overcharge	6⚡	Bank +1 extra action for next turn (stacks).
Unlock: Proximity Alert	6⚡	Permanent: capture shield for your ship's system + a short-range alarm that pierces cloak.
Unlock: Long-Range Scanners	10⚡	Permanent: ranged raid (fire one hop away), 2-hop vision, passive rival tracking.
Unlock: Jamming	8⚡	Permanent: silent claims, blinds the rival's Proximity Alert, hides your Energy actions.

Kit counters: Deep Cloak beats Scan/Scanners · Proximity Alert beats Deep Cloak · Jamming beats Proximity Alert.

Caches

Energy caches appear on systems and grow in value over time. You collect one only by starting your turn on it — which grants its Energy (or a banked Overcharge action) but exposes you. Binaries pay more but are the busiest, most contested systems.

The collapse

To keep games decisive, the field shrinks: from ~turn 24, systems collapse from the outside in toward a random surviving “eye”, roughly every few turns. A system first DESTABILIZES — shown with a ⚠ countdown giving you a few turns to evacuate — then goes supernova. Anyone still on it is destroyed, so both ships are forced together and every game resolves.

Reading the board

Orange = Player 1, blue = Player 2. A ship at half-opacity is cloaked.
Glowing rings mark systems you can jump to — click them to move.
Faint halos mark your rival's possible “could be here” systems.
Step advances one bot action; Auto runs continuously; Stop pauses.

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