Every player's home world, and the Ferion planet, has a moon. No other planet has one. You can see it orbiting the planet on the map, under the star name in the planet header, and as a badge in every planet list.
The moon stays with the planet through a capture: whoever owns the planet owns the moon and whatever was built on it. Only launching it (see below) or the destruction of the planet takes it away.
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Lunar Construction (Era II, 3,000 science, after Quantum Gravity Theory) unlocks three buildings that can only be built on a planet with a moon. In every other respect they are ordinary buildings: one of each per planet, built through the production queue, and lost like any other building when the planet is bombarded.
| Building | Cost | Effect |
|---|---|---|
| Lunar Shield Projector | 900 | +20 planet shields |
| Lunar Defense Battery | 900 | +30 planet attack against ships |
| Lunar Deep Space Radar | 700 | +15 scanning range |
While the moon orbits the planet it cannot be shot at. Its buildings simply add to the planet's stats, and in the battle replay part of the planet's fire comes from the moon once a Lunar Defense Battery is built.
Lunar Propulsion (Era III, 50,000 science, after Antimatter Thruster) unlocks the Moon Engine (2,500 production), a fourth moon-only building. On its own it changes nothing about the planet. What it gives you is ten engine slots on the moon.
Click the moon in the planet header to open the Lunar Drive screen. There you bring engines online one at a time, for 1 Dropium each. Engines stay online until the Moon Engine building is demolished or destroyed, or the moon is lost; either resets all of them.
With at least one engine online you can launch the moon.
Launching takes the moon away from the planet for good, together with its lunar buildings and their bonuses. The planet keeps everything on its surface. The moon becomes a ship of its own, named <planet> Moon:
| Stat | Value |
|---|---|
| Hit points | 1,000,000 |
| Speed | The number of engines online at launch (1 to 10) |
| Attack vs ships | 30 with a Lunar Defense Battery, otherwise 0 |
| Attack vs planets | 0 |
| Shields | 20 with a Lunar Shield Projector, otherwise 0 |
| Scanning range | 5, or 20 with a Lunar Deep Space Radar |
| Repair | None. A moon is rock, not hull: the Repair command, repair components and the Orbital Ship Repair Dock all skip it. |
A moon-ship only takes Move and Attack orders and never joins a fleet. Damage it takes is permanent.
Give the moon an Attack order on an enemy planet or Ringworld and it flies straight there. When it arrives at a defended planet under that order there is no battle: the moon crashes into it.
Planet defenses cannot stop a moon that has reached its target. The only defense is to destroy it on the way: send fleets to intercept it in open space, where it fights as a ship.
A moon that is attacked in open space, or that is parked at a location where a battle breaks out, fights like a very large, very slow ship:
With a million hit points, a moon rarely dies in one battle. The round cap stops an undecided fight after 50 rounds and resumes it on the next combat turn, so expect to grind a moon down over several turns.
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