TORN CITY // GUIDE
Guide · faction warfare mechanics
A ranked war in Torn City isn't something one faction declares on another directly — it's a weekly matchmaking system. Any faction with at least 10 members (recruits included) active in the last 24 hours can enlist on the Ranked tab of the faction page; matchmaking runs once a week (Tuesdays, 12:00 TCT), pairing enlisted factions against an opponent of comparable size and average stat strength. Neither side picks its opponent, and once a war is matched there's no official way to forfeit — it runs until it's decided.
Each war has a target score both sides race to reach first, set from the size and relative strength of the two factions so a large faction can't casually steamroll a small one. If neither side reaches it within 24 hours, the target itself starts shrinking — by 1% of its original value every hour — so a stalled war doesn't drag on forever; a ranked war's theoretical maximum length is around 123 hours (a little over five days) before the target decays to zero and it resolves. Full rules are on the official Ranked War wiki page.
Score is built from successful attacks between members of the two warring factions, and it's equal to the respect earned from each hit. Hospitalising or "leaving" an opponent scores the full respect value of the fight; mugging them for cash instead scores about 75% as much. Chain bonus hits — reaching one of the game's chain milestones — generate especially large respect, and therefore especially large score, which is a big part of why coordinated chaining matters so much more in a war than isolated hits.
Only hits that land between the two warring factions count toward the war score. Attacking someone outside the war, or being attacked by someone outside it, doesn't move the number either way.
A chain is Torn's escalating combo system: attack successfully in short succession and your personal hit streak climbs, unlocking growing respect and payout bonuses at set milestones. Chains aren't exclusive to wars, but they're central to war strategy — a faction that keeps a chain alive across many members can rack up score far faster than isolated, uncoordinated hits, and the milestone bonuses reward exactly the kind of sustained pressure that wins a war outright. Losing a chain to a timeout mid-war is a common and costly mistake, which is part of why factions assign "chain watchers" to flag when the timer is running low.
A successful attack can leave the target hospitalised for a period of time — they can't fight back or be attacked by anyone while they're in hospital. The moment they leave, they get a brief 60-second grace period, but only against outsiders: it stops mercenaries and other non-war attackers from sniping a target the instant they're free, but it does not protect them from the faction they're actually at war with. That's the core rhythm of war day: hospitalise an opponent, know roughly when they'll be free again, and be ready to re-engage the moment they are — the enemy faction isn't shielded from you the way outsiders are. Members who get hit are also free to retaliate once they're back, and factions often coordinate assists — one member weakening a tough target so a teammate can finish the hit — to take down opponents that would be too risky to attack solo.
Two pieces of information decide most individual engagements: is this target currently hospitalised or online, and how strong are they relative to me. Neither is directly visible in-game — you only find out by attacking, or by piecing it together from other signals. That's the gap tools like hospital trackers and stat estimators exist to close: a faction that knows who's free to hit and roughly how tough they are can commit its members to fights it's actually likely to win, instead of guessing. See how stat estimates are built and hospital-timing strategy for more.