Operation

## Introduction

Operations, also called an operation areas, are areas in space that have been specifically marked for the purpose of conduction operations. All fleet actions must take place within an operation area.

Operations are given both a number and a name. The numbers are assigned in sequential order. When an operation is reclaimed, all operations with higher numbers are renumbered. The name of circle operations can be set by the player and is not visible to others. Construction operations take the name of the structure and the name is visible to all.

## Operation Types

There are four types of operations:

* the small round or circle operation,
* the square construction operation,
* the large circle shaped command operation, and
* the arrow shaped rally operation

The latter two are sub-types of community operations.

### Circle Operations

Circle operations can be freely placed by the player when they click on the Create Operation button. They will also be created automatically when the player tries to conduct an action outside of an operation area.

The player is limited in the number of circle operations they are allowed to have at any one time. This number increases with various base upgrades as well as with the *Advanced Military Operation Center* strategic equipment.

Circle operations of other players cannot be removed directly, but destroying the player's base will automatically remove all their circle operations as well.

### Construction Operations

Construction operations are the square operations areas associated with a structure. Player created structures and their construction operations do not count towards the player's circle operation limit - instead their number is limited by the number of structures a player can build.

Construction operations are created automatically once the build command for a structure is issued. They remain a so called ghost structure or operation until contruction begins. Once construction is in progress, the unfinished construction operation becomes a **warp target** for the owning player only, but once it finishes for the player's entire organization. Construction operations of other players can be removed by destroying the associated structure.

Construction operations are always aligned on the coordinate grid system so that the corner coordinates are precisely at a multiple of 10.

Construction operation types:

* player faction bases come with a 10 Gm x 10 Gm sized construction operation
* outposts also have a 10 Gm x 10 Gm construction operation (except for the *Large Outpost* provided by the *Large Outpost Control Core* strategic equipment, which has 20 Gm x 20 Gm)
* all mining platforms have a 20 Gm x 20 Gm operation
* pirate outposts and military strongholds of NPC factions come in 10 Gm x 10 Gm and, starting from level 5, also in 20 Gm x 20 Gm sizes
* cities come in various sizes ranging from 40 Gm x 40 Gm to 300 Gm x 300 Gm, with higher level cities typically but not always being larger than lower level cities

All construction operations **control access** to the structures and resources contained within:

* **mineral resources** can only be mined by the owner and their organization (see also mining platform sharing)
* **trading posts** at cities can only be liaised with by owner of a construction operation touching them
* docking points within cities can only be docked to by members of the organization owning the city (if they had already been docked to before a change of ownership their effects are deactivated), while docking points elsewhere become inaccessible until the construction operation covering them is removed

### Community Operations

Community operations are operations that can be used by all members of a community. They were introduced on 2024-01-24 and replace the previously available org operations. Using them counts towards the player's operation total, therefore they must have a free operation available before they can use a community operation. Selecting the community operation, players can choose to exit the community operation, i.e. to stop using it, in order to reclaim the operation slot they used.

Community operations can only be created or reclaimed by the captains of the squads forming community. Each community, regardless of size, can place up to six community operations simultaneously. They can be reclaimed again by any of the squad captains regardless of who placed theml. Reclaiming a community operation incurs a countdown timer of 10 hours. Players already using the operation at that time can continue using it until the countdown ends, but other players trying to use it afterwards will receive an error message.

The creator of a community operation can optionally designate a so-called **Execution Squad** for city sieges, which is the squad that will take ownership of the city if the siege is successful. This feature only takes effect if the community operation is placed over the target city. It is currently unknown what happens if two community operations with different execution squad settings are both placed over parts of the target city.

Community operations appear blue at first, but once the player activates them or the reclamation timer is triggered, they seem them as grey like any other of their operations. The operation indicator always shows them as blue. They can be named just like player operations and are numbered independently of those along with squad construction operations.

There are two different types of community operations:

#### **Rally Operations**

* **arrow shaped**, sized 30 Gm x 20 Gm
* allows all community members to warp to it as soon as five fleets of the organization are moored within

Rally operations are often used to allow community members to warp onto a structure touched by the tip, although this practice has been made less useful by changes to the game to prevent what was known as "warp stacking", where with the operation placed like that all fleets would be landing in the same spot on top of each other without collision or pathing issues.

#### **Command Operations**

* **circle shaped** with a radius of 15 Gm
* allows delegation of community member fleets

##### Delegation

Command operations have a "Commander" property, i.e. an explorer chosen by the operation's creator be in control of all fleets delegated into that operation by the community's members. The same explorer cannot be commander of more than one community operation at the same time.

Up to 20 fleets can be delegated into one command operation, thus a community can operate up to 120 delegated fleets at the same time if using all 6 available community operations.

The commander can view and control the delegated fleets as if they were their own, while the fleet owner retains only the option to retreat them or to cancel the delegation. Originally, delegated fleets were unable to leave the community operation they were delegated to, but since the 2023-06-28 patch they can be freely moved to any of the commander's operations. This feature can be highly useful to maximize the number of available fleets for attacks when some members cannot be online.

When the commander takes an action with a delegated fleet, it uses action points specific to the command operation. These are added by the delegating player, at least 1 and optionally up to a maximum of 100 action points are added each time a fleet is delegated. Command operation action points do not regenerate over time, but the owners of delegated fleets can select the fleet and use the *Purchase* command at any time to replenish the action points available to the fleet, as long as these do not exceed the maximum of 100.

## Operation Management

### Acquiring

The number of operations is strictly limited at all times, which curtails how many things a faction can accomplish at one time. This limitation is one of fundamental reasons for joining an organization.

Operations can be acuired by constructing the following:

* Construction of Expansion zone 1 at the beginning of play gives 2 operations
* Construction of the Fleet Command Center, part of zone 1, gives an additional 3 operations
* Expansion zone 2 gives 1 additional operation
* Expansion zone 3 gives 1 additional operation
* Expansion zone 4 gives 2 additional operations
* Expansion zone 5 gives 1 additional operation

Completion of expansion zone 5 gives the player the maximum number of normal operations, ten. However, this can be significantly increased by the construction of outposts (up to 8), and mining platforms (up to 2 of each level, total 6), as these construction operations function as operations without counting against the faction's limit.

The number of available operations is **reduced** when operation expansion occurs.

### Creating

When the player issues an order for a fleet action at a location without a useable operation, the operation creation dialog automatically appears. It allows to place and optionally name a circle operation. If the player had already reached their operations limit then an *Insufficient Operations* error message is displayed and the command will not be issued.

Operations can also be created independent of fleet actions by activating the *CREATE OPERATION* button at the bottom center of the Expanse View.

In the operation creation view, the captains of squads that are part of a community additionally have a *Create Community Operation* button available (note that as at 2024-01-26, this button is mislabeled as *Community Creation Operation*) to switch to the community operation creation dialog instead. This button is located either at the top right or at the bottom center depending on screen orientation.

### Expanding

When a player creates a new circle operation in an area which touches or overlaps another of their own circle operations, the existing operation is expanded by the area of the newly places operation. This expanded operation is treated as a single operation area, but each individual circle operation that was placed counts towards the player's total.

An operation can be expanded at most five times, i.e no more than six circle operations can be combined in this way. Attempting to add a seventh operation results in an error “Max number of Operations reached,” with the text in red.

An expanded operation cannot be reduced, it can only be reclaimed as a whole. Because of this it should be avoided to use expanded operations for mining to avoid having to retask the utility fleets. Expanded operations are instead regularly used in combat situations to avoid the 15 AP cost incurred when changing operations.

A **special case** of expanded operation are circle operations **overlapping construction operations**. This is also called operation **invasion** and is shown by a special icon in the operation's list. The circle operation must be activated before it will expand. To expand city construction operations, usually the center of one of your circle operations must be inside of the city operation. This circle operation can be part of an already expanded operation. For other construction operations any form of overlap with a circle operation is sufficient.

Fleets inside of an expanded construction operation are able to use that construction operation as if it was part of the player's own operation, irrespective of the construction operation's ownership (with some exceptions like the Prospect command). This can be used when attacking cities but also in player vs player combat to allow attacking several structures at the "cost" of only a single player operation.

Important to note for PvP is that after the destruction of the construction operation, if the fleet was outside of the circle operation area and inside of the construction operation, it will cruise back to the center of the origin circle operation (the one that shows the operation number). Further note that while you can place unconnected circle operations inside of an expanded construction operation, these cannot typically be activated within the expanded area, but there are exceptions like the Prospect command causing that result. Lastly, you may sometimes experience pathing issues when trying to leave an expanded operation - fleets will sometimes fly back to the origin operation first before continuing to the destination even if it means flying in the opposite direction of where you want to go.

Operation expansion **cannot** be used in any form with **community operations**.

### Reclaiming

Circle operations can be reclaimed either automatically when retreating the last fleet using it or manually by selecting the operation itself (by zooming out a little or by selecting it from the operations list on the left side of the user interface) and issuing the reclaim command.

If manually reclaiming a circle operation used by any fleets, the player will receive a warning and if they proceed regardless all fleets moored within the operation or transfering towards it will retreat.

Since warp drives only activate at the edge of an operation, any fleets currently transferring away from a reclaimed circle operation will fail to engage their warp drives if they had not left the boundaries of the operation yet. No warning is given in this situation. The fleets will not retreat but instead continue their route at cruise speeds and the player will receive a system mail informing them about this.

## Operation Indicator

Directly below the **CREATE OPERATION** button on the Expanse view, is a set of indicators showing in use and available operations, in the order of their creation.

The number of operations shown will be reduced if there are **expanded operations**

The indicators in the operational status display have a color coded system to indicate status:

* Any operation in which combat is taking place is red

Otherwise:

* Construction operations are yellow
* Org operations are blue
* Allocated circle operations containing one or more of the player's fleets are white
* Allocated circle operations not containing any of the player's fleets will have a grey indicator with a white outline
* Unallocated circle operations will have a dark grey indicator