There are two special types of combat that can occur during a spaceship battle. These are mini-battles inside the larger battle and have their own guidelines for how they are handled. The two types of special combat are ship boarding and combat in MI space.

Ship Boarding

Enemy ships and creatures who can survive in space can dock with the player characters’ ship and unload invading adversaries inside. This is a common strategy. Ships are valuable in Olaxis, so most adversaries would rather seize another vessel than destroy it. In order for enemy ships to dock, they must take a docking action (in lieu of making an attack or other action). Docking actions are a type of special action that requires the enemy ship to be in a near space zone with the player characters’ ship’s airlock when the action completes in order to successfully dock. Player characters can avoid an enemy ship docking with theirs the same way they would an attack (by getting out of docking range, destroying the docking ship, or having the pilot make a successful skill roll to avoid the enemy ship latching on).

If an enemy ship does successfully dock, it can unload its troops immediately. The player characters now must contend with the units inside the ship while the combat outside continues.

Combat in MI Space

Some enemies are capable of attacking the player characters’ ship’s MI directly. When the enemy launches an attack against the MI, the GM puts one or more enemy tokens in MI space on the map. During each combat round, enemies in MI space can make attacks against the MI directly. The MI is not capable of dodging attacks or fighting off the units in its space.

Player characters can defend the MI by entering MI space through the MI jack. A character who is in MI space can make skill rolls to attack enemies located there and defend the MI. These attacks can only be made using Mental or Social skills, and the player characters do not gain any benefits of equipment while in MI space. 

Movement is irrelevant in MI space. All tokens, player characters, enemies, and MI are considered within range of each other’s attacks.

Allied Ships in Combat

There are times the player characters’ ship fights alongside other vessels with common goals. The rules for a ship allied with the player characters change from an enemy ship fighting against the player characters in the following ways:

• Ships allied with the player characters can move, take one action, and have that action resolve during Phase 2. If the action requires a skill roll, the roll has a complexity of 2. The skill die size for the allied ship’s action depends on the ship’s power rating. Minion ships use a d4, weak ships use a d6, standard ships use a d8, formidable ships use a d10, and epic ships use a d12.
• A ship allied with the player characters cannot use Collapse points. Instead, the ship can spend Advantages in place of the Collapse points with the permission of all the players to activate an ability that normally requires Collapse points or to take an extra action on its turn. If this extra action requires a skill roll, it has a complexity equal to 2 plus the number of actions the allied ship has already taken this turn.
• When a ship allied with the player characters fails a skill roll, it suffers the consequences of failure as normal or the GM can instead choose to gain 1 Collapse point.