The Astro Galaxy battle system incorporates ship combat, station combat and planetary combat into a universal battle system.
Attacks can be initiated either by a ship towards an enemy ship / station / planetary structure or by a station against planetary structures.
When an attack is made, all units belonging to the attacker and the defender in that location (planet / moon / belt) will enter combat. Every ship, station, planetary force is a unit in the battle. Units are ordered from highest power to lowest, with the most powerful units going against each other.
When two units battle, there are 4 phases to the attack.
Phase 1: Combat speed initiative is determined to see who attacks first. For ship vs. ship, the ship with the highest combat speed goes first. If equal combat speed, the chances are 50% - 50%. For ship vs. station or ship vs. planet, the combat speed is irrelevant so chances are again equal on witch unit fires first.
Phase 2: Weapons assault. If the unit has weapons installed and manned by personnel, it will fire the weapons. Damage is done to target shields, armor, manpower. Once the damage gets past shield and armor, it begins to kill personnel on board.
Damage:
Ships enter emergency warp and flee if 25% of the crew is lost. Planetary units and stations do not have that luxury. Planetary structures can be either captured or destroyed when all personnel is killed. If destroyed, some resources can be recovered from the wreckage. Stations blow up and are destroyed when all personnel is killed. From stations, cargo bays can be looted and resources from the station wreckage.
Phase 3: Boarding assault. Marine assault units are sent to the enemy unit in order to sabotage and do damage. Marines are trained soldiers, tougher then civilians. If the marines successfully defeat the enemy unit, enemy personnel can also be captured as POW (prisoners of war). The POW can either be disembarked at Sol->Earth for a bounty, or incorporated into the crew at 50% the personnel costs.
Phase 4: Civilian boarding: Civilians try to sabotage / do damage to the enemy unit. Rather weak assault, but could work if there are many personnel. Rather costly though. Kind of like a desperate assault.
When ships are defeated and it flees / enters emergency warp, sometimes the fleet looses cargo. The victor can then scoop this cargo if there is available cargo bay, in case of ships / stations. This way resources, fuel, modules can be looted from the defeated ship cargo bay.
The use of weapons such as viper / laser / railgun / etc is recommended as the weapons will fire first. While you can not capture POW if you annihilate the enemy unit with weapons, it is an effective means of ensuring minimal casualties. Mining outposts and stations that do not have weapons can easily be defeated by a ship with a few weapons installed on it, so it is recommended that all facilities be defended by weapons.
Shields are great in defending a ship, but are generally weaker then armor. The shields will replenish after each battle, while armor needs to be repaired. Armor can only be installed on ships / stations. Shields can be installed on ships / stations / planets. If damaged, the armor will need to be repaired using resources and it may also take time.
If you want to create a boarding platform ship, it's good to use shield / armor to protect against incoming weapons fire and then have Marine Assault Units for boarding.
The Attack timer to position / maneuver
The attack position / maneuver time is directly influenced by the ship power involved in the battle. This serves as a warning to the defender as well as a way to match out forces. Basically, if you have a very powerful ship and attack a tiny ship, the tiny ship will have ample time to escape.
It is of course possible to optimize this attack / maneuver time by the attacker in order to reduce time it takes to attack. What you need to do is try to power down weapons if you can, by shifting marines from manning the weapon to the Marine Assault Unit module, this will effectively reduce your ship power rating, making the attack faster, though it will also decrease your winning odds if you're too closely matched with the opponent. Also, powering down shields may also decrease your power, again with a risk of less defense
For example, if you have a ship with just an FTL, Cargo, MAU with 0/1000 pers, and 5x Laser MK I module with 50/50 personnel. Powering down the 5x Laser MK I modules by assigning personnel from the laser module to the MAU, making 250/1000 marines will greatly reduce the ship's power and lower the attack time to position, but the Laser modules will not fire in combat as their power will be 0, so only the marines will enter combat.
Having many weapons on the ship and attacking different targets, a ship captain can estimate how many weapons are needed online to ensure victory, thus optimizing attack timers.
So the attack time to position is in no way affected by the size of your ship, just by the power rating it generates. Thus you can have a highly flexible ship that could be modified for combat speed, boarding, weapons etc. depending on your target. It makes for interesting strategies.