Engagement Range

The Engagement Range is an attribute of enemy ships. It's a a number indicating how many hexes away on the Game Board's world map that the enemy ship can detect player ships.

When an enemy ship activates (in the Enemy Phase), it will try to attack the nearest player's ship within Engagement Range, if there is one. If two or more player ships are tied for being the nearest, the enemy randomly selects one of them to aim for.

If there isn't any player ship in range, the enemy ship will try to move towards its destination in the most efficient manner. If it reaches its destination, it is Banished, advancing the Enemy Agenda token as many steps as the enemy ship's remaining health.

Enemy

Enemy is the general term for all the forces opposing the players in the game. There are enemy ships on the Game Board, enemy creatures that can appear on player Ship Boards, and the Elder One which is the big final boss. All enemies except the Elder One are spawned via Enemy cards, while the Elder One is spawned based on a separate Elder One board.

"Enemy" is also one of the types of six-sided dice used in the game. They are used when enemies are attacking or defending. The dice can produce three different outcomes: Move, Damage and Omen.

The Move outcome is used to move enemy ships, one step towards the destination or towards its attack target if a player's ship is in its Engagement Range but not within attack range. If the enemy ship can attack a player, it prefers to do so over moving towards its destination.

If Enemy dice produce outcomes are not usable for the enemy, a pair of useless outcomes are swapped out for one useful one. For example, if the enemy rolls Damage outcomes, but it's an enemy ship that doesn't have anything in range that it can attack, and Damage outcomes thus are useless, then if there are two Damage outcomes, discard one of those dice and turn the other into a Move outcome.

In the rulebook, enemy spawning and behaviour is covered on pages 29-30.