The goal

Build an empire and hold planets. Every planet is worth points to whoever holds it: 1, or 2 for the few prize planets, which sit in contested space between empires (never anyone's home). The gold number after a planet's name on the map is its value. Your score is the value of the planets you hold right now: take a planet and its points are yours; lose it and they're gone.

To win, hold planets worth the target at the end of two turns in a row. When an empire first reaches it, everyone is told, and the others get one turn to knock it below the target. The target is a share of the map's total value, smaller with more empires: .

The host can pick a game length when creating a game:

You also win by being the last empire standing. An empire is out when it has no colonies left, or no ships left. Its planets go back to neutral.

If nobody has won after 150 turns, the empire holding the most points wins (ties go to the bigger economy).

How a turn works

Everyone gives orders at the same time; when every empire has ended its turn, the turn resolves in this order:

1. Research and refits. Your research budget is invested in your queue; weapon changes are fitted.
2. Scrapping and building. Scrapped ships leave; new ships join their fleets.
3. Movement. Fleets move one lane (two with Warp Drives). Enemy fleets meeting head-on in a lane fight there.
4. Battles. Wherever two or more empires have fleets at the same planet, they fight. All fleets of one empire at that planet fight together.
5. Colonies. An undefended enemy colony with your fleet in orbit is destroyed. A fleet that spent the turn colonizing founds its colony, if no enemy is there.
6. Victory points are awarded, eliminated empires are removed, and the game checks for a winner.

The map and fog of war

• Planets are joined by lanes. Fleets can only travel along lanes, one lane per turn. Pick any planet and the route follows the lanes.
• You see your planets, your fleets, and everything one lane beyond them (two with Long-Range Sensors), inside the bright frontier line. Beyond it you see planets as you last saw them, and no fleets.
• Wherever you can see an enemy fleet, you can see its ships, so scout before you commit. You can't see its battle orders or where it's heading. Fleets in a nebula stay hidden unless you have a fleet there too.

Planet traits

Battle conditions

Each turn, about one system in eight has a condition for that turn only, marked on the map (if you can see the system) before you give your orders. Battles there are fought under it, so plan around it, or use it.

Economy

• Every planet you own adds production each turn. Production is a fresh pool every turn: whatever you do not spend is lost.
• You spend it on ships, colonizing, and your research budget. Scrapping a ship returns half its price to this turn's pool.
• To colonize, park a fleet on a neutral planet and press Colonize. The fleet holds still for the turn and the colony is founded when the turn resolves. Ships cannot join that fleet until the colony exists.

Fleets

• Every empire has four fleets. New ships can only join a fleet while it is at one of your planets. A destroyed fleet is raised again at your home world when you buy ships for it.
• A fleet's value is the total standard price of its ships. Each fleet has a cap: Research (Fleet Logistics, Fleet Command) raises it.
• Fleets keep their battle orders (stance and retreat) from turn to turn.

Ships

Three classes. Each beats one and loses to another: Interceptors beat Heavy Battleships (big guns waste their shots on small, dodging fighters), Cruisers beat Interceptors (flak catches whole groups), Heavy Battleships beat Cruisers. Mixed fleets are usually safest.

Battleship weapons

Combat

Battles are simulated, not rolled (apart from a little luck, below). Ships deploy on a battlefield, pick targets, move and fire in 0.2-second steps using their stats; the replay you watch is the actual battle, the same for every player in it.

• Hitting: a shot hits unless the target dodges. Agile ships dodge weapons that track poorly: chance to dodge = agility × (1 − tracking).
• Armor softens every hit, light weapons most: damage dealt = damage² ÷ (damage + armor). Interceptor lasers pierce 1 point of armor, so a 2-damage shot against a battleship's armor 4 deals 1.2.
• Overkill is wasted: one shot can destroy at most the ship it strikes. Beams pierce a line of ships, but destroy at most one fighter per wing they cross.
• Flak saturates: one burst damages at most fighters, however tightly they're packed. Each cruiser can only handle so many fighters at once.
• Formation: fleets form up in blocks of rows that fit the battlefield, fighters in front, then cruisers, then battleships, so the whole fleet engages from the start.
• Range: longer-ranged ships open fire first as the fleets close.
• Terrain: battles at asteroid fields and nebulas change the rules (see planet traits), and so do this turn's battle conditions.
• A little luck: each side's damage in a battle varies by up to 7%. It almost never changes a lopsided fight, but it can tip a close one; the battle report says when a fight was that close.
• After every battle, the report shows which ship classes destroyed what, damage dealt, shots dodged, hits on shields, and missiles fired and shot down.

Flanking. When your fleets reach a planet along different lanes in the same turn, they attack from several sides: they come in as separate wings, and deal 10% more damage from two directions, 20% from three or more. Fleets already at the planet count as one direction. Coordinate your fleets to surround an enemy.

Battle orders

Stances

Formation

Stance and formation combine: an aggressive charge in spread formation, for example. If an empire has several fleets in one battle, it uses the battle orders of its largest fleet there.

Retreat

• Retreat is set per fleet: never, or at 25%, 50% or 75% losses.
• How losses are measured: by ship value (standard ship price; free drones do not count), against what your side brought into that battle. It is checked continuously during the fight.
• The moment your remaining ships are worth that much less, your side stops firing and flees toward the edge it came from, 20% faster than normal. The enemy can keep shooting for up to 7 seconds; ships that get clear survive.
• After the battle, survivors fall back to the planet they started the turn on. Defenders fall back to their nearest other colony. In a head-on lane fight they stay where they set out from.
• A retreat only happens while there is still an enemy to flee from.

Example: you bring 600 credits of ships with retreat at 50%. As soon as your surviving ships are worth 300 or less, the fleet breaks off. What escapes returns home.

Research

• Set a research budget (default a quarter of production). Each turn it is invested in the first tech in your queue; progress carries over, so big projects take several turns. Leftover budget flows into the next tech.
• Research takes effect when the turn resolves, before that turn's battles.
• Each race has its own tree with a fork: pick one side; the other is locked out. Race research unlocks race-only mods, and tier 3 unlocks new ship designs (marked ◆): big mods that rename the class and change its look.
• Shared research is open to everyone, including counters to each race's powers.
• Ship mods: shared combat research doesn't make ships stronger by itself; it unlocks mods. Each class has fitting points (), and each mod uses some. A mod is a trade: better at some fights, worse at others, or a few credits more per ship. Fit them in a ship's file (tap a ship); a refit applies when the turn ends, to every ship of that class.
• Counters are mods too: Point Defense and Firewalls ride on cruisers, Deflector Arrays and Ion Disruptors on battleships, and each works only while that class is in the battle.

Mods

Races

Every race's ships have the same stats and prices. What sets a race apart is one rule on the map, its own research (which unlocks race-only mods and new ship designs), and the look of its ships.

Playing with friends

• Inviting: pick the game's size and With friends on the New game screen, then share the link (or the six-letter game ID) with as many friends as you like. The first to arrive take the seats; when the host starts, empty seats become AI empires.
• Turn timer: when friends play, the host picks a turn timer (No limit, 15 minutes, 1 hour or 24 hours; 15 minutes by default). Players still giving orders get a reminder near the end, and when time runs out the AI plays that turn for them, just that once, so the game keeps moving.
• Reopen turn: changed your mind? While others are still playing the turn, Reopen turn lets you keep editing. Your orders stay as you sent them; end the turn again when you're done.
• No turn timer: a turn resolves when everyone has ended it. Turn alerts (in the side panel) notify you when it is your move, even with the game closed. On iPhone, add the game to your home screen first.
• AI stand-in: let the AI play your turns while you are away, or (as host) for a player who is holding everyone up. Take it back any time.
• Comms: chat with everyone, or privately with one player.
• Rejoin code: enter it on any device to get back to your seat. Keep it private.

What we record

• Games, anonymously. When a game ends, or is cleaned up unfinished, we keep a short summary: the map and length, each seat's race, whether it was a person or the AI, who won, points, mods fitted, how many turns and battles, and how it ended. No names, game codes or addresses. The totals are public on the Community stats page and help us balance the game.
• Errors. If something breaks in your browser, the error message and where in our code it happened are sent to us, so we can fix it. Nothing else about you or your game.
• Feedback you send (More → Send feedback) is kept as you wrote it, with the email address if you add one (only to reply to you), and the screen, turn, map and race you were on, so we can find the problem. Only the person making the game reads it.
• Friends, without an account. Your device makes up a random ID the first time you play. We keep it with the name you play under and the people you've started games with, so you can invite each other again with one tap (and, if you've turned on turn alerts, send each other a notification). Nothing else about you.
• Your browser's 3D. Once a visit, whether your browser draws 3D with a graphics chip, without one, or not at all, as a count, so we know how many players the map suits.
• Your games themselves are kept while they're played, and deleted after a month without play.