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Skirmish is the competitive pillar of ZeroSpace, built for players who want straight strategy battles outside the story. It supports online player-versus-player matches in 1v1 and 2v2 formats, along with free-for-all games, and the same maps and rules can be played cooperatively against the computer.
The competitive design has drawn on the experience of veteran professional strategy players, with the goal of a fast, readable game where positioning, economy management, and hero usage all matter. Each match starts with choosing a faction and a hero, then racing to secure map control and out-produce the enemy. The team's roadmap adds new skirmish maps supporting up to 4v4 on the road to the 1.0 release.
Playing Against the Computer
You do not need other players to enjoy Skirmish. A traditional 2v2 comp stomp lets a team take on AI opponents, and the AI offers a wide range of difficulty so it works both as a practice tool and as a late-game sandbox for huge armies.
Setting | Options |
|---|---|
AI difficulty levels | 8 |
Match difficulty settings | 4 |
PvP formats | 1v1, 2v2, and free-for-all |
A cooperative Survival mode is also available, where you and a friend hold out against escalating waves of enemies for as long as you can. It is still labelled beta in the mode selector, and it sits at the end of the list for that reason. Between ranked play, comp stomps, and Survival, Skirmish covers most ways to fight without touching the Campaign or the Galactic War. Faction choice, Heroes and Commanders, and a firm grasp of Resources and Economy all carry over directly from the other modes.
Ranked Ladders
Ranked play is broader now than it was at release. The Early Access launch on July 20, 2026 opened with a 1v1 ladder and a 2v2 ladder and nothing else. As of late August 2026 competitive play is split across six separate ranked boards rather than one combined ladder, so a 1v1 specialist and a co-op regular each climb their own. Every board tracks a rating, a win-loss record, and a win rate, and the ladder also keeps a per-faction rating alongside your overall one.
Ladder | Format |
|---|---|
Ranked 1v1 | Solo head-to-head |
Ranked 2v2 | Two-player teams against another pair |
Ranked vs AI | Solo ladder against the computer |
Ranked 2v2 vs AI | Paired ladder against the computer |
Free For All | Everyone for themselves |
Survival | Ranked runs of the wave-defence mode |
Only the first two boards in that table date from launch. The two versus-AI ladders, Free For All and Survival all arrived later in Early Access.
Note that free-for-all and Survival both carry ranked boards, so the competitive layer reaches past straight versus play. There is no 3v3 ladder in the Early Access build. The roadmap holds full 2v2, 3v3 and free-for-all modes for the 1.0 release, alongside new maps that support up to 4v4, so some older marketing copy describing 3v3 versus play is describing the target rather than what currently ships.
Leagues
Ranked players are sorted into five leagues, each split into five divisions numbered I through V, giving twenty-five rungs from the bottom of Bronze to the top of Diamond:
Diamond I to V, the top league
Emerald I to V
Gold I to V
Silver I to V
Bronze I to V, the entry league
Standings can be filtered by league and by faction, with the Protectorate, Grell, Legion, Xol, and Random each tracked separately. The studio publishes the boards on a public web page as well as in the client, with daily snapshots so you can look back at how a ladder moved during a season.
Ladder Maps
The ranked pool runs to nineteen maps. Ten are built for 1v1, eight for 2v2, and one, Total Annihilation, hosts free-for-all games. The community knowledge base records each map with its player count, its number of XP towers, and the modes and ladders it appears in. A full breakdown lives on Maps.
Watching and Reviewing Games
An update on August 19, 2026 widened what a spectator can see. Unit upgrades, topbar abilities and tooltips now show in live games and in replays, closing a gap that had left anyone watching a match reading less information than the players. The same update started posting rating and rank changes on the versus tab straight after a game, so you no longer have to reopen the ladder to see where a match moved you.
Competitive Events
The studio began running organised competition almost immediately after launch. The First Contact Invitational brought veteran strategy players onto the live ladder through the opening weeks of Early Access, with the results feeding the in-game leaderboard and a broadcast final closing the event on August 9, 2026.