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Astro Protocol

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Astro Protocol

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Astro Protocol is a high-stakes, turn-based 4X space strategy game distilled into intense one-hour matches. Six factions, randomized maps, tech trees, and anomalies ensure every run is unique. Victories are earned against a challenging opponents that play to win.

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Ships and Combat In Astro Protocol

30 Jan

Ships are the backbone of power projection in Astro Protocol. They explore the unknown, terraform and colonize planets, protect your network, and ultimately decide the outcome of wars. Every ship is defined not just by raw stats, but by its class, abilities, and intended role.

Some ships are built to deal overwhelming damage, while others are designed to withstand sustained fire. Some dominate at long range, while others should avoid combat entirely and focus on scouting and uncovering anomalies.

Ship Stats

Each ship is defined by a set of core stats that determine how it performs in combat, exploration, and positioning. All ships start with 100 hull points and are destroyed when their hull points reach 0.

Ship Stat

Description

Icon

Damage

Determines how much damage each individual attack deals. Higher damage is more effective against armored targets, as armor is applied to each attack separately.

Attacks

The number of attacks the ship performs when engaging in combat. Ships with many attacks spread their damage across multiple hits, which makes them less effective against heavy armor.

Shield

A ship’s first line of defense. Shields absorb damage before the hull is affected and fully replenish at the start of each turn.

Armor

Reduces damage taken from each individual attack once shields are depleted. Armor can never reduce an attack below 1 damage.

Action Points

Determine how many actions a ship can perform each turn, such as moving, attacking, or interacting with the environment. Higher action points allow for greater flexibility and mobility.

Sensor Range

Defines how far the ship can detect enemies and reveal unexplored areas of the map.

Attack Range

Determines the maximum distance at which the ship can engage enemies. Attacking from outside an enemy’s attack range prevents counter-attacks.

Ship Classes

Each ship belongs to one of four ship classes, which define its general role and available upgrades:

Ship Class

Description

Icon

Scout

Scout class ships are inexpensive, lightly armed vessels focused on exploration, scouting, and colonization. They are well suited for tasks other than combat.

Cruiser

Cruiser class ships are fast and agile combat ships designed to apply pressure and exploit positioning. They can deal significant damage but cannot withstand sustained fire.

Battleship

Battleship class ships are slow, heavily protected warships with strong armor and shields. They excel in direct engagements and prolonged fights.

Carrier

Carrier class ships operate at long range, with extended attack and sensor ranges. Many provide support capabilities that strengthen friendly ships and shape engagements from a distance.

Some technologies unlock upgrades and abilities that apply only to ships of a specific class, allowing you to specialize your fleet over time.

Combat and Counter-Attacking

When a ship attacks, it performs all of its attacks, each dealing damage independently. Damage is applied to shields first. Once shields are depleted, damage is applied to the hull, with armor reducing the damage of each attack. Armor can never fully negate an attack; every hit that reaches the hull will always deal at least 1 damage.

If a ship is attacked inside its attack range and survives the initial strike, it will counter-attack unless it is busy exterminating a planet. Counter-attacks use the defending ship’s full attack profile and are resolved immediately.

To attack or counter-attack, a ship must be able to see its target. This requires the target to be within the sensor range of at least one friendly ship during the turn.

Tactical Combat and Special Abilities

Combat in Astro Protocol takes place on a one-unit-per-tile hex grid. Only one ship may occupy a tile at a time, making positioning and map control critical.

Many ships have special abilities that modify how combat is resolved. These abilities can affect damage, positioning, or counter-attacking rules and often define a ship’s tactical role.

For example, the Disruptor ship has the Neutralizing Strike ability, which prevents the attacked unit from counter-attacking any other unit for the rest of the turn.

Combat in Astro Protocol is decided as much by positioning and information as by raw firepower. Understanding how positioning, counter-attacks, and ship abilities interact is key to effective combat.

Astro Protocol

Yimino is the only fun race

After multiple games with Yimino and having a lot of fun snowballing like crazy and being able to crush high difficulty AI i tried playing the other two races and wow they are awful, not being able to colonize everything and get massive planet income makes them incredibly boring to play, with terrans its a bit mitigated by the network range but i really felt the economic disparity at the start and the other one where you can only build one thing at a time is just plain horrible. Am i missing something ? ca...

NECRON

2 Feb @ 9:13am

General Discussions

Astro Protocol Launches on February 9

26 Jan

We’re excited to officially confirm that Astro Protocol will launch as a full release on February 9.

We’ve also just released update 0.21, the final major update before launch. From here on, our focus will shift to bug fixing, smaller quality-of-life improvements, and adding a few more anomalies for variety.

Gameplay Changes

Several systems have been refined to improve variety, balance, and strategic decision-making:

Added Shattered Sector and Fractal Corridors map generators, creating more constrained and fragmented map layouts (not available in the demo)
Added more anomalies to increase exploration variety
United Tellus bonus changed from extending the network to +1 network range
Terraform, exterminate, and discover actions now cost energy when performed outside your network
Decreased the attack and damage of Phantoms

User Experience

The user experience has received further polish ahead of release:

Reworked the start of the tutorial for clearer pacing
Updated tutorial steps and explanations
Improved tutorial map edges
Improved minor factions menu for better readability
Added help buttons to menus for quicker access to explanations
Added a force end turn option by holding Shift + End Turn
Improved tooltips and shortened long tech names

Audio & Graphics

Added new music tracks
Various small visual improvements across the UI
Updated map edge texture
Added a new Earth planet texture
Darkened map background elements to improve overall visibility

AI & Performance

Improved AI technology research selection
General performance improvements
Improved performance on large maps

Looking Ahead to Release

With update 0.21, Astro Protocol is now feature-complete. The remaining updates before launch will focus on stability, polish, and final balance tweaks to ensure a strong full release experience.

Thank you to everyone who has played, tested, and shared feedback throughout development. Your input has been instrumental in shaping Astro Protocol into what it is today.

See you among the stars!

Astro Protocol

Map Generation, Graphics, User Experience, AI and Balance improvements

9 Jan

As release draws closer, this update focuses on map generation, map graphics, visual clarity, and user experience improvements, based on feedback from our playtesters.

Map Generation & Graphics Updates

This update improves exploration, readability, and atmosphere across the galaxy:

Added another map generator, introducing more varied and less predictable maps
Added a new network indicator, now enabled by default for better strategic awareness
Added particle effects for harvesting metal, gas, and energy (thanks Pymous for the idea!)
Unexplored tiles are now fully hidden by black fog of war, while explored but unobserved tiles use white fog of war
Replaced space telescope image backgrounds with new painted backgrounds by our artists
Improved anomaly placement and added more anomaly types
Added icons to allied units and planets for quicker identification

User Experience Improvements

Many changes in this update aim to reduce friction and make information easier to read at a glance:

Switched to a more readable body text font
Added colonizable and terraformable icons directly to planet labels
Improved nested tooltips system
Added more game settings descriptions
Unified resource icon sizes
Recolored and reordered ship stat icons for better readability (thanks Pymous for the idea!)
Center planet name is now shown in tooltips
Improved the loading screen and removed the blur effect
Shift-click to build multiple stations or ships at once
Added a button to center the camera on your home planet
Added a notification when a ship is attacked outside sensor range
Added more input and hotkey icons throughout the UI
Added clearer, more instant feedback on victory and defeat
Improved ship descriptions, tooltips, and tutorial texts

AI Improvements

AI behavior has been refined across multiple systems:

Improved AI evaluation of adjacency based production bonuses
Improved AI usage of conversion stations
Improved major faction AI behavior towards minor factions
Various additional improvements to AI economy and decision making

Balance Changes

Several balance updates refine progression and faction behavior:

Rebalanced minor factions and their alliances
Generator, mining, and agriculture planets now provide only 1 resource per adjacent station, but have a base income of 2
Allowed the Myrmidon Horde to gain techs from anomalies instantly
Limited anomaly reward displays to a maximum of 3 rewards

Fixes

Fixed resource icon colors not updating correctly
Fixed stealth ships capturing stations while moving through enemies
Fixed duplicate ships appearing in the buy menu
Fixed scoreboard scrolling issues

More Playtests

If you'd like to help make the game better or get access to the full version of the game you can apply to the playtest in https://nullvectorstudios.com/playtest

Thanks to all the playtesters for the valuable feedback!

See you among the stars!

Astro Protocol

Bug Submissions?

Is it possible to submit a save file with a repeatable crash at turn end? About 5 or so moves into ai turn the game crashes to desktop.

Talltale

31 Jan @ 2:23am

General Discussions

Broken Tutorial

The step about tech says to research molecule cloud technology, but that isn't a research option and it's impossible to move forward.

tgb

20 Jan @ 5:07am

General Discussions

Deleting save files

I'm deleting game saves in the C:\Users\<username>\AppData\Roaming\Astro Protocol\saves. I'm assuming the game will eventually have a way to delete game saves from within the game. Does that sound correct?

mbar

30 Jan @ 12:39pm

General Discussions

Thoughts, a lot of them!

While I've said much of what I think already in my stream, I want to summarize and expand on my thoughts here for more people to benefit from. The game is in a fairly solid state right now and I enjoy a lot of aspects of it; however, there are definitely improvements and changes I would like to see. I will admit that I'll most likely improve at the game with more familiarity of its mechanics and the ships, stations, etc., that are currently available, but so far I've only been able to win on the absolutel...

Zachopotamus

13 Jan @ 5:44am

General Discussions

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