First, you put together the spaceships you want to use in your fleet, building them from a variety of basic hulls and over a hundred different ship components, even in the basic game. (You are given some basic ships as examples).

Second, you select from your list of ships, a fleet composed of fighters, frigates and cruisers, position them in formations and issue each ship with orders telling it which targets it should attack, and at what range, with special orders such as escort, protect or concentrate fire.

Third, the battle is played out, with you able only to watch, not to control. You can pause the battle and play it faster or slower, and can view the effectiveness of each individual shot, both during the battle and afterwards, so you can fine tune your fleet design.