This mainly came into question when playing with the Nekro virus. There ability reads "When you destroy at least 1 enemy unit in a space battle or invasion combat (excluding pds fire), you may copy (recieve) 1 free tech card (ignoring all prereq's) that the enemy player has already researched. Limit once per battle."

The Nekro virus invades the Hacan HS, winning the space battle and recieving a free tech, they also land on all 3 of the Hacan planets each planet has 1-2 GF's. The virus takes 2 of the 3 planest, but destroys at least 1 unit in each battle. Does the space battle and invasion combat all count as 1 battle ie: each activation is 1 battle, are each of these seperate battles (thus awarding 4 techs), or are the space battles 1 and the invasion 1 (thus awarding 2 techs)? I'm assuming it's one of the first 2 but not sure. Is there any place that spells out what constitutes a battle?

Asmuth said:

A "battle" (in this context) is a single space battle OR a single invasion combat. If all invasions were meant to be counted as one "battle" they could as easily have said "when you destroy at least 1 enemy unit in the Space Battle step or Invasion Combat step of a tactical action... Limit one per step."

If I understand your example correctly, the Nekro landed on all three planets, destroyed at least 1 enemy unit of each planet, but only successfully claimed control of two of the three planets. In this case, the Nekro get a whopping 4 techs copied from Hacan.