the end of a turn the Glory Point total has reached the amount necessary for victory, then the war is ended with the Imperium declaring victory. If the total drops sufficiently, the war instead ends with Terra declaring victory. The players thus do not get to choose how long to wage a particular war. The range between the amount required for Imperium or Terran victory begins to shrink after turn three, representing the decreasing appetite for continued hostilities. Combat is somewhat abstracted, with the ships being lined up off map. All combat begins at long range. On subsequent combat rounds a die is rolled to see which player gets to determines combat range (long or short) with the smaller fleet gaining a bonus to their die roll. The defender places the ships down one at a time, and the attacker places a ship down to match. At the end, any left-over ships can be assigned to also fire on enemy vessels, or kept out of combat. The missile or beam factors of the firing ships are compared to the screen factors of the defenders, and a die roll determines if a ship has been destroyed. Several combat options are available, including firing all of a ship's missiles at once, or the so-called "suicide attack" where a ship maneuvers to point-blank range for a beam attack. Combat continues until one side is destroyed or until either player decides to disengage. The game also includes abstracted rules for ground combat. Terran land units are green while Imperium units are black. In addition to regular land units and planetary defense units that can oppose a landing, there are special drop troops that can land on a planet without requiring a ship to transport them to the surface. If one side is all standard troops and the other side is all drop troops, the standard troops gain a bonus artillery attack against the drop troops to simulate the inability of the drop troops to carry a lot of heavy vehicles with them. The ground units have a single combat factor, plus a symbol and a unit identifier. Surface combat used a combat differential with the defense combat factor subtracted from the attacker's combat factor. A die is then rolled to determine whether the unit is destroyed. The game system includes a random events table for various Imperium events. These can favor or hinder the