Gratuitous Space Battles: Galactic Conquest

Galactic Conquest is the fifth expansion for Gratuitous Space Battles and requires the original game to play. This add-on introduces a campaign meta-game to wrap around battles so they are no longer isolated. Ships are no longer designed to fight a single enemy in a single confrontation. The player has to plan ahead and can take control of a system by conquering planets controlled by the enemy. The galaxy has 52 planets and offers opponents from all available races (including DLC packs when they are installed). Opponents are not generated by the AI, but are designs created by other human players and these are downloaded automatically. The campaign comes with a manual, new music and three difficulty settings. There are new background graphics and planets, and fleets can attack and move only through established hyperspace wormholes. There are also loyalty and threat levels modelled for each world.

This expansion has some other features and tweaks, often related to the campaign. A fleet can now retreat in the middle of a battle, be repaired after a confrontation, and enemy ships can be captured once victory is declared. This includes both crew and scrap for the construction cost. There are shipyards in three different sizes, factories that produce cash, and academies that provide crew. Sometimes there are anomalies in space, changing the conditions or offering a limited ship choice.