Tech Cards

Tech Cards

Tech cards are the upgrades a war offers you as you explore. This page explains how offers work and defines the terms every card page uses. The cards themselves are listed by kind:

Page	What it covers	Cards
Loadouts	The starting hand you pick before a war	23
Unlock Tech	Cards that add units, structures, or whole trees	15
Stat Tech	Combat, Armor, Engine, Ammunition, Fabrication, energy, titan, and cooldown cards, plus Anti- Ammo cards, Protocols, game-mode cards, and Structure Engine Tech	70
Upgrade Tech	One card per unit that changes how that unit works	117
Commander and Sub Commander Tech	Cards that change your Commander, and the Sub Commander card	6

Additional Data Bank, described below, is the 232nd card.

Decks

The Techs dropdown on the war setup screen picks which cards a war can deal. Its tooltip reads "BASIC: base game tech cards / GALACTIC WAR OVERHAUL: over 150 additional cards."

• Basic is the base game's 56 cards, with their errors fixed.
• Galactic War Overhaul is Basic plus everything this mod adds, plus three base-game cards the base game never dealt: Intelligence Fabrication Tech, Improved Intelligence Tech, and Improved Energy Weapons.

Galactic War Overhaul is the default and the last deck you used is remembered. Other mods can add cards, loadouts, and decks of their own. To make one, start from the New Galactic War Cards template.

Offers

• Exploring an enemy system offers three cards.
• When every data bank is full you are offered a fourth card, and that card is always Additional Data Bank, so a full hand can still grow.
• Lucky Commander adds one more card to every offer.
• Available Tech is a card pre-dealt to each enemy system you can move to. It appears in the Planetary Intelligence panel and joins the offer when you explore that system. It is re-dealt every turn as your inventory changes, and it is never Additional Data Bank. The Static Tech game option freezes it.
• An offer never repeats a card you already hold, and never offers the same card twice. In co-op, players with separate tech may hold copies of each other's cards.
• Reroll Tech (tooltip "Reroll the data caches but get offered one less.") deals the offer again with one card fewer. You can reroll down to a single card, after which the button reads Dismiss Tech. Rerolls reset every turn. A loadout offer on the treasure planet cannot be rerolled. In co-op a viewer's reroll goes through the host, and viewers see "Host Choosing Tech" while the host decides.
• Which Units? appears on a card that grants or changes units. Hover it to see those units, with the ones you do not yet own highlighted. Race players see their race's units. Anti- Ammo cards, game-mode cards, Sub Commander techs, Additional Data Bank, the Sub Commander card, and loadouts have no unit list.

Data banks

A data bank is a place in your inventory that holds one card. Every war starts with four. Your loadout sits in its own fifth bank, which no other card can use.

Name	Description	Effect	Requires	Weight
Additional Data Bank	"Adds a new slot for another technology."	One more data bank. It is the only tech that adds data banks on its own, and it is never a system's Available Tech.	none	100,000 when every data bank is full. Otherwise 300 with one empty bank, 200 with two, 100 with three, and never below 25.

Two other things add data banks: every Upgrade Tech card brings its own bank with it (the three Sub Commander techs excepted), and being offered your own loadout again mid-war adds one (see Loadouts).

Delete Tech appears when you hover any card in your inventory, at any time. Deleting a loadout also removes the units it granted.

How offers are weighted

Every card the war could deal you goes into one pot with a weight. A card with weight 100 is offered twice as often as one with weight 50 in the same pot. A weight is relative to the other cards on offer, not a percentage, and a card with weight 0 is never offered. Weights change with what you hold, how far you have travelled, and whether the planets are flooded, so the card pages describe them with the terms below.

Terms used on the card pages

• Weight: how often a card is offered relative to the other cards in the pot. Higher is more often.

• Near, moderate, and far: how many jumps the system is from your starting system, measured against the thresholds below for your galaxy size.

  • A card with two weights, such as "60 near, 30 far", uses one threshold. The system is far when its distance is greater than that threshold, and near otherwise. Most such cards use the Near column.
  • A card with three weights, such as "100 far, 50 moderate, 25 near", is far when its distance is greater than the Far column, moderate when it is greater than the Moderate column, and near otherwise.

  Galaxy	Near	Moderate	Far
  Small	3	3	4
  Medium	3	4	5
  Large	4	5	6
  Epic	5	6	7
  Uber	6	7	8
  Vast	7	8	10
  Gigantic	8	10	11
  Ridiculous	9	11	12
  Marathon	10	12	13

  Vast, Gigantic, Ridiculous, and Marathon come from the Bigger Galactic War mod.

• Commander weight: a base weight that grows by a third of itself for every Sub Commander you field, capped at double the base. Cluster players always get the base, because their Sub Commanders are not commanders.

• Sub Commander weight: zero until you field a Sub Commander, then a base weight that grows by a third of itself for every extra Sub Commander, capped at 90.

• Flooded and dry: whether every planet is flooded, which happens when you hold the Naval Commander loadout or Tsunami Tech. Naval cards carry a flooded weight and a smaller dry weight; where only one figure is given the dry weight is 40% of it.

• T2 access: you hold Complete Air, Bot, Naval, or Vehicle Tech, any of the four basic fabricator Upgrade Tech cards, or the Hoarder Commander loadout.

• Hitscan: a weapon that hits the instant it fires, with no projectile to dodge.

• Requires: the unit or card you must hold before the card can be offered, or "none".

Races

A war fought as Legion, Bugs, Exiles, or another race from a server mod deals cards by matching each card to that race's units of the same kind and tier, and from the next release, for combat units, by job as well. A few cards and loadouts are MLA only. Races and Add-ons lists them.

The treasure planet

Every war holds one treasure planet near the centre of the galaxy. Winning there unlocks a loadout for every future war. Loadouts explains the offer and The Guardians who defend it.