I get how the navigator + assassin combo works. My question is how is it determined if you will get your assassin and navigator back? For example:

1. Queen is at gen with max shields but no troops. Assassin walks in, kills queen and is he able to leave? Although he defeated the queen, the attack loses based on numbers. (30 shields vs 0 troops). In other words, is this a suicide mission?

2. Assuming the assassin is allowed to leave after killing the queen, is he "released" back to the nearest friendly outpost?

3. If it is pirate navigator assassin, a queen fleeing on an empty sub who gets intercepted will die, and the pirate spec will proc, causing the hit squad to be diverted back to the nearest base. Correct?

4. If the queen flees with drillers: the hit squad intercepts, kills, but gets captured by the remaining drillers and are sent to the nearest enemy post.

Basically, using this combo snipes a queen but more likely than not its a suicide mission. You win the battle but you lose the war.

This problems stems from intepreting the rule book.

1. Specialist phase: assassin kills queen
2. Shield + driller phase: loses to the defender
3. Specialist captured in battle phase.
4. Defending player loses control of his bases as his queen is dead.


Thanks in advance!

As far as I know, even an eliminated player can still hold captive specialists. So in your example the queen would be dead, and the assassin would be now a captive on the base of the eliminated player, until the assassin's owner took control of that base or if he had a diplomat in range.

When your queen is eliminated you cannot issue orders to your game, but your bases still stand "owned" by you and continue producing drillers, regenerating shields, and holding captives.

As for catching the queen in a sub, I think if the battle is lost the assassin will be shipped as a captive to a nearby enemy base (even if he is eliminated), and the queen will be shipped to the closest friendly base as a captive. (not 100% sure on this one but I think this is how it works).

There are 2 phases with all of the attacks that you mentioned.

The first is: Does the assassin kill any specialists? In all the above examples the answer is yes. The assassin would kill the queen because they are in the same combat.

The seconds is: Do you win the actual battle?
- If you win the battle at an outpost: you capture the outpost
- If you win a sub-to-sub battle (no pirate): your sub will continue on it's course.
- If you win a sub-to-sub combat (with pirate): your sub will return to your closest outpost at 4x speed.
- If you lose the combat at enemy outpost: your specialists are taken prisoner at that outpost.
- If you lose a sub-to-sub combat: your specialists head towards the nearest enemy outpost and become prisoner there.
- If, in a sub-to-sub combat, after all specialists and driller actions are resolved you both have 0 drillers left then the winner is decided by who has more specialists involved in the combat. Then follow the relevant bullet point above.
- If, in a sub-to-sub combat, after all specialists and driller actions are resolved you both have 0 drillers left and equal number of specialists then your specialists will return to your closest friendly outpost.

I think I covered all the options

I think it might be more accurate to say you lose the battle but win the war.