Goal and Endgame

At the center of each server is a Fortress, surrounded by 7 hubs. The object of the game is to destroy this Fortress:

• Only an alliance can attack it.

• First 4 of the 7 hubs must be fully occupied (all 8 terminals on each hub filled by alliance bases, with each player only allowed on one terminal of one hub) for 10 days to bring down the Fortress shield. If any base leaves or is destroyed during this period, the shield is fully restored, once fewer than 4 hubs are fully occupied. For this reason, and for the virus injections mentioned below, it is wise to occupy 6 hubs (occupying all 7 would require more players than an alliance can have) and surround them by allied bases, to protect them from enemy attacks.

• Each player may land on occasional satellite wreckage sites and occupy them long enough to extract a secret code. This code can then be used to inject a virus into a hub fully occupied by your alliance, during a Fortress attack, and each weakens the Fortress slightly. An alliance can thus inject up to 48 viruses during the attack, if they have 6 fully occupied hubs and every player on those hubs has the code. (You never actually see the code in the game, it is all handled internally.) It is essentially impossible to destroy the Fortress without injecting virus code.

• Every player in the alliance can then attack the Fortress (although they can also launch pre-virus injection attacks to take out walls, etc.). Each of a player's bases must wait 50 minutes to attack again, and the Fortress attack typically lasts 2–3 hours, meaning each of the player's bases may be able to attack a few times.

• If the Fortress is not destroyed, then the alliance can try again, after they upgrade their offences and or change their tactics.

• If the Fortress is destroyed, then the conquering alliance and each individual player receive a badge, which can be viewed by anyone on that server or any other. The badge lists the world and date on which the Fortress was destroyed, along with the order (whether this is the first, 2nd, 3rd, etc., time it was destroyed on that world), and whether that player had Nod or GDI units. The Fortress then rebuilds, in a week, and any alliance can then try to destroy it again. If an alliance destroys it which has already done so, they do not get an additional badge. Each time the Fortress rebuilds, it is stronger, based on the strengths of the top alliances on that server. It typically takes months for any alliance to destroy the Fortress, meaning only a small portion of the players on a server will ever get their badge.