Portals

Shattered Galaxy battle maps use Portals (which appear similar to "Star Gates" from the movie) for entry and exit points.

Many people feel that as long as you can get to a battle, it is fine. This is extremely untrue and can often create a huge disadvantage for your teammates and yourself. Almost all maps have one or two portals that are better than any other. This is why you often see regiments land grabbing and fast poccing around a battle in order to be able to use more portals within that battle.

In almost all battles, most players on one side will be using the same portal. This portal, I will name the "default portal." The default portal is the portal that SG gives you when you click on the map where the battle is taking place. When you right click or double click on a map, SG will create a route for you. Most that reinforce from the capital will use the same portal as their default portal.

Once inside a battle, you can move whatever units you have out to a different portal from the one you used to enter the battle originally. You will then get a message saying "Your <unit name here> wishes to escape from this portal," if you hit "Ok", then you will be permanantly using that portal for the rest of the battle. You can use any portal that leads to a map that is owned by your faction at the time you enter the battle. Once you enter the battle, the portals are locked for you. This means that different players can use different portals in any given battle.

You are only allowed to change portals once during a battle, and retreating through your original portal counts as a portal change. It is important to choose a good portal early in the game. The best portal is an individual choice. If you are using nukers (Spectres) or Arbalests, you will want to use a portal that is not used by many people and that is not near pocs or close the enemy's main portal. However, most of the time, you will want to use a portal that is close to a poc or close to many pocs.



More in depth strategy and reasoning:

I have seen too many times that our default portal happens to be the portal that is the farthest away from any pocs. We often lose these battles because there are too many people in one part of the map. However, if you have people reinforcing for every direction, your chances of winning absolutely skyrocket. If you are a leader of a regiment, you will want to advise your regiment to spread out and use the available portals.

Which portal to use depends on what units you own. Clouters with many tough, slow units often prefer to use portals as close as possible to enemy portals. Eduers with units that try to avoid detection such as Arbalalests, War Pigeons, etc. often want to use far pocs so the enemy has a lower chance of spotting them. Often it is best to simply use a portal that few other players on your side are using. It eliminates portal jams and forces the enemy to spread out in order to fight you.