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joining the Discord server will greatly improve the experience

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WC:I is a space themed challenge starting from the near future with missiles, cannons, and more realistic combat scenarios in the testing phases all the way to lasers, war drives, and death stars.

It is currently in the testing phase as a PVE challenge where you defend against invading aliens. This challenge is different form all the other challenges as it uses 3D tactical maps built in SP with grids to move fleets to give the player more control over what to do in the battle.
Downside is maps with details take a long time to build so it will be super slow as only I am building maps because there's no mod team.

Top Down Map:

enemies will attack from the red triangle. Your goal is to defend the red planet.

In case you know nothing about space I still hope you can make something after looking at this. There might be some incorrect stuff, but it is pretty accurate.

Space Crafts:
Remember this is space, and your ship can't stop without any form of extra thrusters in the front so include thrusters everywhere in order to make your craft useable. This is not a space game, so gravity exists. Your craft do not need to fly in this game but if you want the ability to launch it from a planet the craft must have thrusters strong enough to lift off from the ground into space. It is also advised that you put CIWS and countermeasures to ward off incoming missiles and use jammers to confuse the enemy.
Eletronic Warfare
here is a video explaining sensors
and another one about stealth

Engines:
Radiators are important to make sure you don't overheat here is a video You should probably armor or hide your radiators in combat, so you don't lose the ability to move.
Video on how to use engines

Weapons:
A lot of videos explaining how they work

The weapons listed down here is what is available for now

Guided Weapons:
Ships might often include the use of missiles as they have a higher hit rate even until the later stages of this challenge, nukes are allowed, however they are less effective in space than in real life so they cannot act as an AOE weapon but rather as a single very effective missile that very often one-shot ships. Missiles will NOT produce trails behind them making them very hard to spot by eye, so warning systems are required to spot missiles due to the lack of air, to this same reason you need maneuver thrusters on missiles as well.

PD:
Point defense is important if you don't want your entire fleet getting wiped out by missiles. Similarly to naval anti air and CIWS they fire shells at incoming missiles/planes, missiles are more effective than shells.

Cannons:
Probably usually used for attacking planets, it's very hard to hit a ship in space using cannons which are slow. Cannons are often used by shooting at both the enemy ship and the space around it which it could maneuver to in the time span it takes the shells to arrive to the enemy vessel.

ION weapons:
You can deflect partial beams by using magnetic fields, this can be countered by neutralizing the IONs before they leave the barrel but could also be countered by recharging the IONs before they hit but it would be hard as ION beams are ION beams thus obviously very fast and small compared to shells or missiles. This can also be used to capture enemy ships.

Mining:
Mining ships can use UAVs to mine asteroids instead of coming down itself as it is dangerous to do so.

Tactics:
because space is a 3d environment ships would dodge in all 3 directions. In naval combat there is only X and Y but in space there is X, Y, and Z (up and down). In order to hit a ship in this environment, missiles are the first choice as they make up for missing by guiding themselves in. Cannons and other unguided weapons should be fired in the general direction of the enemy warship in a circular pattern, this is more effective against bigger fleets as more shells are expected to hit and it is less of a waste of ammo as to shooting one ship.

The pictures here are simplified in 2D, in 3D the lines would look like a cone with the point starting at your ship

In the first picture it shows the allied ship firing at one spot, this is bad as the enemy ship could simply go in any three directions to avoid this shot for example up, down, left, right, accelerate (if the ship is not at top seed but in this case, it is at top speed), or decelerate and the shot would not hit.

In the second picture it shows the allied ship firing in a cone. This cone should take into account how much the enemy ship can maneuver in the time the shells reach the enemy. Turning away in any direction from the shells is a good way to avoid shells but this can be compensated by using more ammo with a pear-shaped cone with the wider end near the current enemy position.

Asteroids will be taken into account in battle, and they can provide good cover.
Again, this can be compensated for firing even more ammo, doubling the shots to where asteroids are. But at some point, the ammo expenditure is going to be so high your enemy would not choose to fire more ammo instead choosing to fire smaller bursts of shots by avoiding areas where you are less likely to go to. Cannons will have a lot more problems with this than other types of unguided weaponry like ION cannons or lasers.

And this ammo waste brings us to missiles

Missiles are used to hit ships accurately over long distances but can be shot down. This is why they are more effective against singular targets in saturation attacks or even just a few as there would not be enough CIWS on one ship to shoot down everything. Missiles can be avoided by using countermeasures but beware at what the countermeasures are as missiles could be coded to go for anything for example the hottest or the coldest or somewhere in the middle. This is why ships should include different types of countermeasures and use CIWS. CIWS can shoot down missiles at a closer range, or destroy planes that get too close, but it cannot be effective at longer ranges which is why Anti air Missiles are used to shoot down enemy missiles and planes at medium to longer ranges, you could also put countermeasures on your anti-ship missiles, but it would cost more. Also, asteroid fields will cause problems for missiles.
What not to do as your main strategy

Took me 2 hours to write this lol, ever longer for the discord server.
the lengths I will go to make something I want to happen knowing it probably won't. Put it in the middle, if you actually read this thing, thank you.

Fleet Tactics:
To deal the maximum amount of damage to your enemy, try to position your fleet to be on the side where the enemy fleet is the thickest to ensure more shots hit. To do this you should position your fleets one parallel and one perpendicular to the enemy fleet to either force them to split up or deal more damage

But this could also be disadvantageous as the enemy fleet might attempt a charge into one of your fleets, getting destroyed faster but disabling one of your fleet's firepower as firing into your own fleet to hit enemy ships is a 50/50 chance of a medal of honor or treason, though it's not much of a treason as it is also dealing damage to the enemy. Mobility is also important, powerful reverse thrusters can get your fleet away from the enemy's charge and let more of your firepower engage for longer by dragging out the distance that the enemy has to cover in order for a merge.

Flanking is very effective, also take into account of where the enemy's firepower is the weakest and where your weapons and armor are the strongest.
Star Wars tactics Video

Invasion:
Dropships are useful in invasions but be careful, hell diver type of drop pods are very inaccurate as you are orbiting the planet, so you won't stay in the same place for long. Dropships should either be able to descend into the atmosphere or include compartments with parachutes so the people in drop pods don't die on impact. Drop pods with parachutes are only practical in areas where you already have good control or has no enemy activity near as they will be easy to shoot down when the parachute is deployed. It is advised that you use ships that can descent into atmosphere with some escort ships to defend the dropship or have defenses descend with the drop pods like warships or turrets.
how to land on a planet
how to land on a planet 2
(it's very hard to invade a planet that has defenses unless you bombard everyone to death first, that is also hard)

Planetary Defense:
Just turrets on the ground are not enough to defend against invading fleets as they can destroy your turrets while in space. This is why space turrets exist. Space turrets can defend against enemy attacks, but they also orbit the planet so they should have thrusters to position them correctly and be essentially spaceships that focus heavily on armor and firepower with very limited mobility.
Video about it

That's about all? I might be missing stuff or the information here is wrong but it's as close as I can get without blowing my brain up.

Also, there's no one in this server right now. I need some people that is more knowledgeable than me to approve vehicles and balance this better.

Please join, even if you are not interested, I hope you can still watch some videos from Space Dock and try to make a ship to enter into this challenge. I think his videos are great for explaining this stuff and you could make a pretty good ship if you watched some of it.

Active Warzones:

Defense Of Lyrastra (2061-5-18)
Battle 1 Free Space (no asteroids or anything, just the planet and two moons)
(not open yet)

waiting for ships...