Version 1.3.7

A territory-and-combat release: alliances assign each system a Doctrine, plant Bastions far from home, and fight defence-window sieges that scale with Bastion roots — plus Carrier rapid-fire screens, a boss loot rework, safer expeditions, score-gap war fatigue, and Diplomacy / FCS chat.

New to Bastions and Doctrines? See the full Alliance Territory guide. Staged conquest and defence windows are in Territory Siege. Boss haul math is in Pirate Bosses. Or open Settings → Quick Guides in-game.

New Features

Doctrines

Every system center — Headquarters, Division, and Bastion — carries exactly one Doctrine, set on the main building by a Deputy or Leader.
Five doctrines: Production Hub (resource production), Shipyard Outpost (ship build-time reduction), Fortress (tonnage capacity + neighbour defence projection), Logistics Center (alliance Warp Gate), and Anti-Intel & Sensor (alliance scans / counter-scout).
The signature building is an activation gate: the effect stays at zero until that building exists at level ≥ 1; the size of the bonus comes from the node's main building level.
First doctrine pick is free; switching costs the last upgrade of the main building, may demolish incompatible signature buildings (with confirmation), and starts a 72h cooldown.
The HQ may only take Production Hub or Shipyard Outpost. Fortress, Logistics, and Anti-Intel stay out on Divisions and Bastions where positioning still matters.
Alliance-wide bonuses use a diminishing-returns curve with a hard ceiling (tonnage +5%, production +10%, ship time −25%). Only connected (effective) nodes with an active signature contribute.

Bastions

Standalone territory anchors for systems that are not adjacent to your HQ blob. The Bastion main is the system main — no separate Division Center on that system.
Three archetypes (instance caps apply):
- Embassy — 1 system, 0 children (max 5)
- War — root + up to 2 child Divisions (max 3)
- Expansion — root + up to 5 child Divisions (max 2)
Each Bastion's territory-cap grant matches its child capacity, so a Bastion is capacity-neutral for the main blob. Capturing a whole cluster nets +1 slot.
Embassy placement requires hex adjacency to Ally / NAP territory; Expansion needs clearance from at-war territory. Bastions are always conquerable.
Abandon (Deputy+) releases the entire cluster, frees the archetype slot, and starts a 168h per-archetype cooldown. Blocked while any siege is open in the cluster.
New Alliance → Territories tab shows HQ / Bastion / Division nesting, connection flags, capacity, and live territory effects.

Connected territory

Bonuses, Fortress projection, alliance scans, and warp hops only count while a system is linked back to the HQ blob or its Bastion root over hex adjacency.
Cutting a corridor orphans systems: they keep buildings, harvest, and missions, but feed nothing alliance-wide until reconnected.

Fortress projection & Anti-Intel

The strongest adjacent Fortress projects 50% of its held defence into a neighbour's fight. Borrowed units are never consumed from the projecting colony.
Anti-Intel Intelligence Centers enable vault-paid alliance scans (radius scales with level) and strengthen counter-scouting nearby.

Territory Siege defence windows

Rival-held system conquest no longer uses a fully random Contested timer. After Contest, later stages wait at least 24h, then open a random 2h Vulnerable slot inside the defender alliance's 8-hour defence window (start hour chosen by Deputy/Leader, default 17:00 UTC).
Divisions / Bastion children / neutrals: 2 stages (1 wait). Bastion roots: 3 stages (2 waits) — capturing the root takes the whole cluster.
Defence window start hour has a 168h change cooldown and is blocked while the alliance has any open siege. If no alliance member has been active within 7 days, the defence-window benefit is skipped.
Contested income (×0.5), Graveyard debris rates, building penalty (−3 levels; mains floor at 1), and the 7-day previous-owner waiver are unchanged in spirit from 1.3.6.

Carrier rapid-fire screen

Carriers project a rapid-fire screen that cancels part of the enemy RF value aimed at their own ships each round (escorts thinning as Carriers fall).
The screen is deliberately partial: a line keeps at least half of its RF advantage and can never be pushed down to RF 1 (max cancel fraction 50%, capped cancel points).
Guardian class amplifies the screen via +50% Rapid fire cancel. Battle reports, Item Info, and the combat simulator surface the effect.

Boss loot in owned space & haul rework

Pirate boss group loot gains a territory ownership modifier: +10% when the boss sits in a hostile alliance's system, +5% in your own alliance's space, and none in neutral or Ally / NAP territory.
The modifier is resolved from the alliance most participants belong to, so arrival order or an unallied tag-along cannot rewrite the payout.
Hauls now extract a curve fraction of the boss's actual stockpile (not a detached baseline that could empty a thin stock):
- Mid-Boss: per-player curve 0.8× → 3.75×; a full 6-player rally accesses ≈90% of the 25× pool.
- Boss: front-loaded group curve — ~60% of the 100× pool by 10 players, full stock by 20.
Share blend weights lean on fleet build-cost (50%), with combat power and damage at 25% each (linear, not ^1.8). Inverse-score boost for smaller commanders caps at 2× the least-boosted fleet.
High-Boss per-alliance join cap raised to 12 (overall still 20). Full rules: Pirate Bosses.

Score-gap protections

Score-bully attack limits: when your total score is at least 10× the defender's, attacks against that player are capped at 1 distinct event per rolling week and 2 per rolling month. Strikes within 1 hour on the same pair count as a single event. Scouting remains allowed.
Score-gap war fatigue: separately, attacking a much weaker player trims loot — −5% from 5× score ratio, scaling to −20% at 50×+. Stacks multiplicatively with repeat-raid war fatigue.

Diplomacy & FCS chat

Diplomacy chat — Ally treaties unlock a shared chat channel between the two alliances (Messages → Diplomacy).
FCS chat — each open FCS rally gets a participant-only room for coordinating the strike (Messages → FCS). Rooms stay available for a short window after the rally closes.

Improvements

Galaxy map and system UIs tint your own systems by doctrine, show Bastion / Division nesting, and surface siege stage countdowns on Bastion mains as well as HQ / Division centers.
Alliance Admin Settings expose the defence-window start hour for Deputies and Leaders.
Tonnage summary and resource overlays call out Fortress and Production Hub territory contributions.
Quick Guides cover Bastions, Doctrines, territory buildings, and the updated Territory Siege flow.
Expedition Protocols risk reduction and Legendary Expeditions insurance now reduce expedition ship-loss rate and stun duration (combined, capped at 25%). Per-level values retuned so the cap is reachable without overshooting.
Mass Explorer / Science Vessel stacks count at 1/1000 of stack size when applying expedition ship-loss percentages (still at least 1 hull if present), so large explorer fleets are not wiped by the same % as combat hull.
Daily Race reward mails use distinct daily subject/body copy. Direct-message threads can be deleted from your side.
FCS combat simulation applies per-player class bonuses correctly when mixed fleets fight together.

Balance

Fortress tonnage, Production Hub output, and Shipyard Outpost build-time bonuses use diminishing returns with hard ceilings so wide empires do not stack endlessly.
Bastion archetype and territory caps are checked when a Contest starts, not at the final stage — no three-stage surprise blocks.
System protector garrisons still scale with how many systems you already control.
Boss loot fairness leans toward invested fleet value and pool access rates that match the designed occupied-rate curve (mid full rally ≈90%; high boss fills by 20).

Bug Fixes

Fixed pirate stronghold / outpost respawn edge cases that could leave cleared pirate sites stuck or respawning incorrectly.
Fixed boss FCS target joins that failed to resolve the stronghold when launch stored planet/moon targetType without toPirateStrongholdId.
Siege, Bastion cluster, and doctrine UI edge cases cleaned up alongside the territory features above.
FCS per-player bonus and rapid-fire screen edge cases cleaned up in battle reports and the simulator.