The Ship to Planet combat is virtually the same as Ship to Ship so read that FAQ if you haven't already.

Here is a list of the main differences.

The planet doesn't have an ECM tech level and the Jammer doesn't work like the ECM. This means that a ship may be able to evade more of the planets defenses while the planet can't avoid the ships attacks.

Planet shields use 10 times the energy of ship shields so they will go though energy much faster when they are attacked.

Planets can store more energy, torpedoes and fighters than their tech levels can use during an attack. So this means if you do not defeat the planet it will rearm itself with energy, fighters and torps from storage.

If you destroy all of the planets shields and armor and you are destroyed then the planet is not defeated.

Planets make their own armor and players need to adjust their production to allow the building of armor. The armor tech level for a planet is the AVERAGE of all the other tech levels on the planet. To build armor points to match the tech level you must have more than 10,000 units of ore and goods on your planet. The planet will slowly take ore and goods to build and maintain the armor. If the stored ore and goods ever drops below 10,000 then the planets armor points will start decreasing.

If a planet doesn't have any armor points then all an attacker has to do is breach a planets shields to defeat it.

If there are any ships landed on the planet then they will also add their fighters, beams and torpedoes to the number the planet is using. Landed ships will also do this during sofa runs.

SOFA (Sub-Orbital Fighter Attack)

Sofas are similar to the old sofa but they use the new hit/damage point system. A Sofa is used to batter down a planets fighters and torpedoes. The attack only uses ship fighters to attack the planet. The calculations are the same as the fighter phase for normal combat.

The planets torpedoes cannot attack you when you are making a Sofa run but there is a slim chance the planet can lock on with their beams. If they do lock on then you can take from 50% to 400% damage from the beams. If you are unlucky enough to get tagged with 400% damage from the planet beams you will probably be destroyed. The beam damage goes against your shields first and then your armor. If you lose both armor and shields your ship is destroyed in the Sofa run.