Fleet Stun
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Fleet Hangar & Stun Recovery
What is the Fleet Hangar?
The Fleet Hangar protects idle ships at a colony. Ships inside protection do not join battles when your planet is attacked. That keeps reserves safe—but after an attack those protected ships enter Stun Recovery and cannot be launched until they gradually come back online.
Ships above your hangar’s capacity are not protected. They fight normally and can be destroyed.
Hangar capacity
Capacity grows with Fleet Hangar building level. Higher levels protect more ships per colony.
You can increase capacity further with:
- Fleet Hangar Protocols research (+3% capacity per level)
- Certain Monuments (hangar capacity bonus)
Rough idea: at higher building levels, capacity scales up quickly—upgrading the hangar is the main way to protect a larger fleet.
How protection splits your ships
If you have more ships docked than your hangar can hold, protection is shared fairly across all ship types:
Protected share = Hangar capacity ÷ Total ships (capped at 100%)
Each ship type keeps that same share protected; the rest is exposed and can fight (and be lost) in combat.
Example — Over capacity
| Total docked | Hangar capacity | |
|---|---|---|
| Your colony | 1,200 ships | 1,000 |
- About 83% of each ship type is protected
- About 17% of each type stays exposed and can be destroyed in battle
If you have 600 Fighters and 600 Cruisers, roughly 500 Fighters + 500 Cruisers are protected, and 100 + 100 are exposed.
Turning protection on or off
| State | What it means |
|---|---|
| Protected (default) | Ships up to capacity skip combat; you cannot launch attacks from this colony until you expose the hangar |
| Exposed | All ships can fight and be lost; you can launch fleets |
Switching between protected and exposed takes about 10 minutes (configurable on the server). You can cancel a pending change before it completes.
While ships are stunned, you cannot change hangar protection.
Pirate NPC bases do not use player hangar protection.
What happens when you are attacked (PvP)
- Protected ships do not enter the battle and are not destroyed by that fight.
- Exposed ships (and ships in stationed fleets) fight and can be lost.
- After the battle, protected ships (and stunned stationed fleets) enter Stun Recovery.
- Ships above hangar capacity that were exposed may be lost; they are not put into stun—they are simply gone or reduced.
Example — Defender after a lost battle
You have 800 ships protected and 200 exposed. The attacker wins and destroys 120 of your exposed ships.
| Ships | In battle? | After the attack |
|---|---|---|
| 800 protected | No | All 800 stunned (still on the colony, not launchable for a while) |
| 200 exposed | Yes | 80 left if 120 were destroyed; these are not stunned |
Your protected fleet is safe from destruction, but you need to wait through recovery before using it again.
Stun duration (how long until full recovery)
Stun length depends on how costly the losses in that battle were (based on ship value), and whether the attacker won.
| Situation | Typical stun length |
|---|---|
| Attacker won, moderate losses | Starts around 1 hour, increases with heavier losses |
| Attacker won, very heavy losses | Can grow toward a maximum of about 24 hours |
| Attacker lost, little or no defender losses | Shorter stun (often around 15 minutes at default balance) |
| Attacker lost, but you still lost exposed ships | At least the base stun (~1 hour), without extra scaling from “attacker victory” |
Ways to shorten stun:
- Fleet Hangar Protocols (−1% stun duration per level)
- Monuments with stun duration reduction
Reductions from research and monuments stack, up to a very high cap (you will never fully eliminate stun from bonuses alone).
Player takeaway: bigger defeats while the attacker wins → longer lockout; successful defense with few losses → much shorter stun on protected ships.
Recovery cycle — getting ships back in steps
Stun does not unlock everything at once at the end of the timer. Ships return in four steps: 0% → 25% → 50% → 75% → 100% over the stun period.
| Recovery progress | When (example: 24h max stun) | When (example: 1h stun) |
|---|---|---|
| 25% | ~6 hours | ~15 minutes |
| 50% | ~12 hours | ~30 minutes |
| 75% | ~18 hours | ~45 minutes |
| 100% | Full timer elapsed | ~1 hour |
The game updates progress periodically (about every 30 minutes), so the exact moment you see the next step may be slightly after these times.
Ships you can still use while stunned
Only the protected portion is stunned. Any ships over your hangar capacity were never protected and stay usable during recovery (if they survived the battle).
Simple rule:
Usable now = Ships above capacity + (protected stunned ships × recovery %) Still stunned = The rest of your protected ships
Example — Partial recovery
- 1,000 Fighters docked, hangar fits 800 → 200 always usable (if alive)
- 800 protected Fighters stunned
- Recovery at 25% → about 200 of the 800 recover → 400 usable total (200 + 200)
- Recovery at 100% → all 1,000 usable again
Check the Fleet Hangar building screen for stun status, recovery %, and time until full recovery.
PvE stun (pirate battles)
When PvE casualty recovery is active on your account/server, fighting pirates works differently from normal total losses:
| Permanent loss | Stun recovery | |
|---|---|---|
| Share of battle losses | 10% destroyed | 90% return home stunned |
- You lose ships in the fight as usual on the fleet.
- When the fleet returns to your colony, the recoverable ships are added back to your colony.
- Those returned ships are stunned and unlock over the same 25% step recovery as hangar stun.
- Stun length uses the same general rules (based on the value of recoverable ships; typically closer to the base ~1 hour band for pirate fights, unless losses are enormous).
If your fleet is wiped but still has recoverable ships, it will return home so recovery can start there—not stay lost in space.
Mail and battle reports show how many ships were destroyed vs how many came back stunned and are recovering.
If recovery is not enabled for you, pirate losses behave like normal combat: lost ships are gone (aside from debris rules).
Fleet Hangar Protocols (research)
| Per level | Benefit |
|---|---|
| +3% | Hangar capacity |
| −1% | Stun duration |
Fleet Hangar Protocols requires a Research Lab and Shield Technology. Worth investing if you rely on hangar protection or fight pirates often with recovery on.
Hangar stun vs PvE stun — quick comparison
| After your colony is attacked | After pirate battles (recovery on) | |
|---|---|---|
| What gets stunned | Protected docked ships + stationed fleets | Ships that returned home (the 90% recoverable part) |
| Can protected ships be destroyed in that fight? | No | 10% of losses are destroyed; 90% come back stunned |
| Ships over hangar capacity | Can fight; losses are permanent | N/A (losses were on the attacking fleet) |
| Recovery | 25% steps over stun timer | Same step system |
Practical tips
- Don’t keep your whole empire in one exposed stack—only hangar capacity is safe from combat.
- Expose the hangar before attacking from that colony.
- Plan around recovery windows after big defenses or large pirate losses.
- Upgrade Fleet Hangar and Protocols if stun downtime hurts your operations.
- Stationed fleets at a attacked colony can be stunned too—protection is not only for ships sitting in the shipyard list.
Expedition stun (different system)
Expedition events can stun an active exploring fleet for a set time (event-based minutes). That is separate from Fleet Hangar protection and colony recovery above.
Exact timers and balance may be adjusted in live updates; in-game tooltips and the Fleet Hangar panel always show your current recovery status.