Galactic Command Handbook
Codex
Welcome, Commander
You command one homeworld in a shared galaxy. The goal: grow your economy, build a fleet, and raid rivals for asteroids (roids): the resource that decides your rank. Here's exactly what to do in your first session.
Upgrade a mine
Open Base and upgrade your Metal Mine a level or two. Mines are your income: everything else is paid for in metal, crystal, and eonium that accrue every tick. Cheapest first: metal.
Build a few ships
Open Fleet and queue some Fighters. They're cheap, fast, and a solid early raider. Ships sitting at home defend your planet automatically.
Set your Night Shield
In Settings (or the welcome flow), pick the 8-hour window you're usually asleep. Raids during it steal ~75% fewer roids. See Defense.
Scout a target
Open the Map. The scanner lists a weakly defended NPC world tagged Suggested at the top, send a Scout fleet to see its defenses before committing.
Launch your first raid
Once scouting confirms it's soft, send an Attack fleet. Survivors carry off roids up to their cargo capacity. Congratulations, you're playing the core loop.
You start with at least 48 ticks of Beginner Protection (longer the later you join the eon), along with boosted starting resources to help you catch up. While it lasts a raider can only take about a quarter of the roids they normally would, a heavy discount, not immunity, so use the time to build a defensive fleet before it lapses. An empty planet is an easy target the moment protection ends.
Build → Fleet → Raid → Grow
Every strong empire runs the same cycle. Each turn of it makes the next turn faster.
Upgrade mines and structures. More production means more ships, faster.
Convert resources into ships at the Shipyard. A balanced mix beats a one-class stack.
Attack rivals and NPCs to take roids and salvage. Scout first.
Roids raise your rank and your mining rate, so each raid funds the next. Reinvest the salvage into more BUILD.
The Tick
Actions resolve on a server heartbeat called the tick (normally 1 tick = 30 minutes). Construction, shipyard queues, fleet travel, and battles all complete on tick transitions. You don't need to babysit the game, set things in motion and check back.
Resources accrue continuously and are calculated the moment you log in or act, so being offline never stops your economy (until storage fills up, see Economy).
Where the loop lives
- Base: structures & upgrades (the BUILD step).
- Fleet: Shipyard build queue (the FLEET step).
- Map: pick targets and dispatch missions (the RAID step).
- Ranks: see how your GROW is paying off.
Winning the eon
Eons run 30 days, then the black hole at the galactic core consumes everything and the next eon begins immediately. Your commander name, your history, and your home planet's name survive the collapse, planets, fleets, and resources do not. The winner is crowned on a composite score:
Three resources + one prize
Metal
Hull plating and basic structures. Your cheapest, most abundant income, from Metal Mines.
Crystal
Power grids, targeting relays, shipyards. From Crystal Refiners.
Eonium
Rare heavy element for heavy hulls and long-range fleets. The scarcest, from Eonium Extractors.
Roids (Asteroids)
Your strategic prize, and the only one you cannot build. Roids decide your rank AND raise what your mines produce every tick, so a raid pays twice. You take them by winning attacks.
How income works
Each mine produces a fixed amount per level, per tick. Resources accrue continuously: the game computes what you've earned the instant you look, so you never lose income for being away.
The catch: storage has a cap. Once it fills, new production is wasted. If you'll be offline a long time, upgrade Storage Silos first, or spend down before you log off.
Multipliers worth chasing
- Refinery: +10% mine output per level, stacks with your race bonus.
- Race bonus: e.g. Terellian's +10% production. See Reference → Races.
Note: Power Plants generate power, which you assign on the Power tab of your Base to Mine Overdrive (more resources), Shipyard Overclock (extra build slots plus slightly faster builds) or Shield Surge (less damage taken). Buildings do not consume it, so power you leave unassigned does nothing. A slider only appears once you own the building it drives. You never have enough for all of them at once, so the split is the decision, and the mine and shipyard boosts only apply to work you start after the change settles. Shields are the exception: they are read when a fleet lands, so a swing to defence can still catch a raid already on its way.
How combat resolves
When a fleet arrives, the server runs up to 4 rounds of mutual attrition. Both sides always take losses, there's no clean knockout, and expect roughly a third to a half of each fleet to survive. From the second round, an attacker who is clearly losing starts breaking off: those ships come home alive rather than dying, and fast hulls escape far more often than slow ones. A withdrawal is not a defeat, but it earns nothing, you only carry roids away on a clean attacking win, up to your surviving fleet's cargo space. A fighter carries none at all.
What beats what
There is no size ladder, a big ship is not automatically strong against the size below it. Each hull is built to hunt one or two specific things, and to struggle against one or two others. Everything else is a fair fight decided by numbers and cost.
Two numbers sit behind every pairing: how hard your shots land, and how much of your fire that target attracts. That second one is why a frigate escort works, everything shooting at your fleet is pulled toward the frigates, and why warships mostly ignore freighters.
Don't lose your fleet
- Recon before you commit. A scout report tells you what you're flying into, see Scanner.
- Bring the counters. A mono fleet is a fleet with an obvious answer. Check what the target has, then bring the hull built to hunt it.
- Don't fly naked. A fleet in transit isn't home defending, time your raids so you're not caught empty.
- Watch the clock. Longer travel = more time for the defender to react and reinforce.
Fleet orders
Attack
Assault a target. Survivors take roids off the belt and salvage off the ships they destroyed, both limited by the hold you brought.
Defend
Reinforce an ally, your fleet pools with their defenders in any battle there.
Scout
Gather intel without starting a battle, though the guns there still fire on your scouts. More scan power buys a more detailed report.
Occupy
Take an unclaimed world and hold it. Miners you leave there work it, and cargo hulls ferry the roids home.
Mission
Run a mission site's contract. Clear the guards and the Council pays the bounty to your home world.
Recall
Turn a fleet around, or pull a guarding fleet home.
Distance & the bash limit
Travel time is set by your slowest ship:
Travel Ticks = ceil( Distance / Slowest Ship Speed )
Bash limit: you can only attack players whose strength is between 0.5× and 2× your own. Try to hit someone far bigger or far smaller and the dispatch is rejected, no punching down on minnows, no suicide runs at giants. NPCs are exempt, so they're fair game at any size.
Watch for Incoming alerts (a fleet launched at you, with an ETA) and Radar Contacts (fleets moving nearby). They're your early warning, react before the fleet lands, not after.
You can't be wiped out
PvP is intense, but the game has layers that stop you losing everything overnight. Learn them and you'll always keep a floor under your empire.
Beginner Protection
At least your first 48 ticks in an eon, the later you join, the longer it lasts (and the bigger your starting reserves). Raiders take only a quarter of the usual roids and damage is cut 65%; production, building, and shipbuilding all run normally. Use it to stand up a defensive fleet before it expires.
Night Shield
Pick a daily 8-hour window: set it to when you're asleep.
- Raids during the window steal ~75% fewer roids.
- Ship-to-ship losses still apply fully, a shielded planet isn't invincible, so stationed defenders still matter.
- The window is publicly visible and changes take about 8 ticks to apply, so you can't dodge an inbound raid by re-timing it. (A high-tier Cloaking Array can hide it.)
Structures that guard your roids
- Bunker Network: cuts roids stolen per raid by 10% per level (up to 60%); doesn't stack with Night Shield, the stronger applies.
- Shield Generator: reduces combat damage to your defenders by 1% per level (up to 7%), and unlocks Shield Surge on the Power tab, which takes it further if you commit your grid.
- Turrets / Missiles / Plasma: planetary defenses that fight alongside your stationed ships (see Reference).
Tip: Protection and shields buy time, not immunity. The best defense is a fleet at home, a naked planet invites scouts and becomes an easy mark the moment your protection lapses.
Reading the map
The galaxy is made of local areas: clusters of planets. Your radar covers your own local area from level 1. Your homeworld is the cyan dot at your coordinates. Pan and pinch to explore; other planets fill in as you learn about them.
Intel Levels (0 to 4)
Everything you know about a planet is captured by one number, its Intel Level. The higher it is, the more you see.
| Lvl | You know |
|---|---|
| 0 | A dot: it exists, plus coordinates |
| 1 | Identity: name, owner, race, size + roids |
| 2 | + resources & fleet strength, rough (±) |
| 3 | + exact resources & exact ship counts |
| 4 | + defensive structures (full picture) |
Three ways to raise Intel
Radar Station: free & automatic. Everything in range reaches L2. Higher levels widen the range.
Subspace Scanner: costs eonium + a cooldown. Scans a distant region to L2 (L3 at Scanner L3+). Its edge is reach.
Recon fleet: send Probes / Scout Ships. The only path to L4, and the surest way to exact ship counts. Always recon before a real attack.
Watch for Incoming alerts (a fleet launched at you, with an ETA) and Radar Contacts (fleets moving nearby). They're your early warning, react before the fleet lands, not after.
Races
Chosen at colonization. Each grants a permanent passive and a signature ship.
Terellian Alliance
Industrial. +10% resource production rate. Signature: the Terellian Harbinger (arrives announced). heaviest hull in the game.
Xandir Collective
Hive mind. +15% fleet travel speed · −15% ship build ticks. Signature: the Xandir Raider (strikes where it isn't expected). fastest gun in the game.
Centaurian Syndicate
Cartel. +20% cargo hauling · +8% roids per raid · −10% build cost. Signature: the Centaurian Privateer (equal parts warship and smuggler). wins the fight and hauls the vault home.
Structures
Built in the Base screen on a single FIFO queue (ships use a separate Shipyard queue). Tiers are gated by your Command Center level.
Tier 1 · Foundation
Metal Mine
ProductionProduces 10 × level Metal per tick. Cheapest, most abundant income.
Crystal Mine
ProductionProduces 6 × level Crystal per tick. Feeds shields, scanners, shipyards.
Eonium Extractor
ProductionProduces 3 × level Eonium per tick. Fuels heavy hulls and long-range fleets.
Command Center
Tech CapOther structures can't exceed Command Center level + 1. The gate to every advanced building.
Radar Station
UtilityPassive intel: covers your whole local area from level 1; each level reaches ~18% further (L10 ≈ 4× the local area). Everything inside reaches Intel L2 and inbound attack fleets show with ETA. For distant regions, use the Subspace Scanner.
Orbital Shipyard
ManufacturingBuilds starships. Higher levels unlock heavier classes: L2 corvettes/scouts, L3 frigates/destroyers, L4 cruisers/privateers, L5 battleships/dreadnoughts/harbingers (the last unlock). Level also sets batch size, which keeps rising past L5: a level N shipyard rolls out N+1 ships per batch, so bulk orders clear in fewer waves. It does not speed up a single ship.
Tier 2 · Industry
Refinery
Economy+10% mine output per level. Multiplies with race bonuses and with Mine Overdrive.
Requires: Command Center 2
Storage Silo
Economy+5,000 storage per level above the cap. Stops income overflowing while offline.
Requires: Command Center 2
Power Plant
Energy+100 energy capacity per level. Tier 2+ buildings draw the grid; over-budget runs at reduced effect.
Requires: Command Center 3
Tier 3 · Defense
Laser Turret Battery
Anti-Light2 turrets/level. Fights beside your stationed ships and tracks fast hulls well, the cheapest answer to a swarm.
Requires: Shipyard 3
Missile Platform
Anti-Medium1 launcher/level. Heavier warheads for mid-weight hulls, frigates, destroyers and privateers.
Requires: Shipyard 4
Plasma Bastion
Anti-Capital1 bastion/level. The heaviest gun a world can mount, and the answer to capitals if you cannot afford capitals. Its guns are far too slow to touch anything fast, pair it with turrets for that.
Requires: Shipyard 5
Shield Generator
Dmg Reduction−1% combat damage to THIS planet's defenders per level, capped 7%. Unlocks Shield Surge on the Power tab.
Requires: Command Center 4
Bunker Network
Roid Protection−10% roids stolen per raid per level, capped 60%. Doesn't stack with Night Shield, the stronger applies.
Requires: Command Center 3
Tier 4 · Force Projection
Wormhole Gate
Fleet SpeedShortens ALL outgoing fleet travel times, with diminishing returns at high level.
Requires: Command Center 5 + Hyperlane Theory
Subspace Scanner
Regional ScanScan a distant region with no fleet: L2 intel (L3 = exact at Scanner L3+). Reach = level + 1 regions. Costs eonium + cooldown.
Requires: Radar Station 4
Counter-Intel Bunker
DeceptionEnemy scouts get a fabricated report (15% × level, capped 90%). Their Sensor Array can see through it.
Requires: Command Center 4 + ECM Doctrine
Trade Hub
TradeUnlocks NPC trade missions for bonus resources. +1 concurrent slot per level.
Requires: Command Center 5
Cloaking Array
StealthHides your Night Shield window and rejects incoming scouts (5% × level, capped 50%).
Requires: Command Center 5 + Stealth Subroutines
Ships
Built at the Shipyard. Ships defend your planet automatically unless in transit. SY = minimum Shipyard level to build.
Combat & Recon
Expendable eye · No guns, no armour. A one-way trip.
Overwhelm · Can't dent capital armour. Carries nothing home.
The screen · Beats small things and nothing else.
The bodyguard · Can't win anything alone.
The siege breaker · Can't catch nimble fleets.
The reachable capital · Can't match the bigger two head-on.
Siege · Can't react. Eleven ticks to replace.
The patient eye · Slow to fight. Built to flee.
The statement · Everyone sees it coming. Thirteen ticks to replace.
The first tank · Guns are an afterthought.
The heavy tank · Melts against guns built for heavy hulls.
The fleet healer · Useless against heavy siege burst damage.
Industrial & Cargo
Raid cargo · Unarmed. Dies to anything. Always escort it.
Heavy raid cargo · Slow and unarmed. Worth escorting properly.
Bulk plunder · Ungainly, exposed, and cannot fight.
Occupation mining · Earns nothing at home and nothing in a fight.
Race Signature Ships
The fast swarm · Dies to anything that can track it. Carries nothing.
Payload run · You pay for the hold, not the guns.
Siege engine · Too slow to dodge, too fragile to brawl. Needs an escort.
Upgrade Costs
A level-N upgrade costs N × the per-level base. Representative Tier 1 bases (× target level):
· Metal Mine: 100 M · 20 C (build ~2+level ticks)
· Crystal Mine: 120 M · 40 C · 10 E
· Eonium Extractor: 150 M · 80 C · 30 E
· Radar Station: 200 M · 150 C · 50 E
· Command Center: 150 M · 50 C · 20 E
· Orbital Shipyard: 180 M · 100 C · 40 E
Tier 2 to 4 buildings cost hundreds to thousands more per level. See each structure's in-game info sheet for its exact per-level table.
Glossary
Quick definitions for the terms you'll see across the cockpit.
- Tick
- The game's heartbeat, one real hour by default. Resources accrue per tick, builds resolve at a set tick, and fleets travel for a number of ticks.
- Round
- A 4 to 6 week season. It ends with a winner crowned, then the whole galaxy wipes and a new round begins.
- Roids
- Asteroids: your strategic prize. They drive your leaderboard rank more than anything else you own, and are taken by raiding or carried home from a world you occupy, not mined. Build an Asteroid Processor to turn the ones you hold into metal, crystal and eonium every tick; each level works more of them, and asteroids it cannot work still count for score. You lose up to a capped share when raided; your Night Shield protects ~75% of them.
- Interloper
- A body drifting through from outside the galaxy, carrying metal, crystal and eonium and leaving on a deadline. The pot only grows while somebody occupies it, faster with more Ore Miners aboard. You bank what you recall: a fleet carries home only what fits its hold, and whatever is still aboard when it leaves goes with it.
- Metal
- The bulk resource that pays for most structures and ships. Accrues every tick from your Metal Mines, up to your storage cap.
- Crystal
- The mid-tier resource for advanced structures and heavier ships. Accrues per tick from Crystal Mines.
- Eonium
- The scarcest resource, needed for the strongest ships and top-tier upgrades. Accrues slowly from Eonium Extractors, plan around it.
- Production rate
- How much of a resource you gain each tick (shown as +N/t). Raise it by upgrading the matching mine or extractor.
- Storage cap
- The most of a resource a planet can hold. Once you hit the cap, further production is wasted until you spend or raise capacity, don't sit at the ceiling.
- Mines
- What your on-planet extractors (Metal Mine, Crystal Mine, Eonium Extractor) generate each tick. Upgrade the matching mine to raise this rate, and assign Mine Overdrive power to push it up to 15% higher.
- Asteroid Processor
- Turns the roids you hold on this planet into a small stream of metal, crystal and eonium every tick. It works up to 50 asteroids per level, so more roids only pay if the Processor can handle them. No Processor means your asteroids score for you but pay nothing.
- Occupied worlds
- Income from Ore Miners you left occupying someone else's world, credited to this planet every tick. Each rock only absorbs so many miners before the extras sit idle, and the total is scaled down so mining at home always outpaces it.
- Energy
- Power plants generate power and you assign it on the Power tab of your Base. Buildings do not consume it, so power you have not assigned does nothing. Mine Overdrive raises resource output; Shipyard Overclock adds build slots (which is what speeds up cheap hulls) plus a small cut to build time (which is what helps capitals); Shield Surge cuts the damage attackers do to you. A slider only appears once you own the building it drives, so mines are there from the start, the shipyard one arrives with a shipyard and Shield Surge with a Shield Generator. The pool cannot cover everything at once, so pushing one up pulls the biggest of the others down, and a change takes a couple of ticks to settle.
- Beginner Protection
- For your first 48 ticks (~2 days) incoming damage is cut by 65% and a raider takes only about a quarter of the roids they normally would. It is a discount, not immunity. Use the window to build economy and defenses, and line up your first raid before it lapses.
- Night Shield
- An 8-hour window you set on the Base tab, usually your sleep hours. Inside it, roid losses from raids are cut by ~75%. Ship combat still happens normally. Changes take about 8 ticks to apply.
- Bash limit
- Attacking a target under half your strength resolves as no contest: zero combat, zero roids. Strength counts ships, ground defences and stockpiled roids, so a rich but lightly-defended planet still reads strong. Attacking upward is always allowed. NPCs and missions are exempt.
- Fleet power
- A coarse readiness score: the sum of (attack + defense) × quantity for your ARMED stationed ships, freighters and miners contribute nothing, because they cannot fight. It's an 'am I bigger than them?' gut-check, not the resolver's actual damage math.
- Scan level
- How detailed your intel on a target is. L1 shows roids only; L2 adds resources; L3 adds the defending fleet; L4 is exact. Send more Probes / Scout Ships to raise it.
- Intel
- What you've learned about a target, roids, resources, defending fleet. Gathered by Scout missions, and it ages fast (roughly a 24-tick freshness window).
- Scout / Recon
- Gathers intel without starting a battle, though the guns there still fire on your scouts. Scout before committing to a serious attack.
- Attack mission
- Send a fleet to raid a target. Survivors carry off roids and salvage up to their hold; both sides take losses, nobody is wiped in one hit.
- Guard / Defend
- Send a fleet to reinforce an ally, it pools with their stationed defenders in any battle there until you recall it.
- Recall
- Bring a fleet home before it engages: cancel a launch, turn a fleet around in flight, or pull a guarding fleet out of an ally's defense.
- Fleet status
- Where a fleet is in its life-cycle: transit (outbound to a target), returning (heading home after a mission), or guarding (stationed at an ally). Stationed ships defend your own planet automatically. Fleet dots on the galaxy map use the same colours as the status pills here: red = attacking, cyan = scouting, green = guarding, yellow = returning or other transit.
- When a fleet leaves
- Fleets do not leave the moment you launch. Your order is queued and the fleet departs on the next tick, so a launch just after a tick waits almost a full one. Travel time is counted from there, and the exact arrival tick is shown to you at launch.
- Travel time
- How many ticks a fleet takes to reach its target, farther targets cost more. Distance is the tax on raiding: anyone can attack anyone, but reach costs time.
- Cargo
- A fleet's carrying capacity. It caps how many roids and how much salvage the fleet can haul home from a raid.
- Shipyard
- The Base structure that builds warships. Higher levels do two things: they unlock heavier hull classes (Frigate at L3, Cruiser L4, Battleship L5), and they raise batch size. A level N shipyard rolls out N+1 ships per batch, so a 20-ship order clears in fewer waves. Level 5 is the maximum, and past it extra throughput comes from Shipyard Overclock on the Power tab. It does not speed up an individual ship.
- Ship stats
- Attack is firepower and defense is hit points, damage is divided by it, so armour decides how much punishment a hull absorbs. Speed sets travel time and how well a hull breaks off a losing fight; cargo sets the roids and salvage it can haul home (a fighter carries none). Counters are per hull rather than per size class, so a fleet built for the target beats a bigger blind one.
- Defenders
- An NPC planet's defensive force. Wipe it for salvage and to disable that planet for 48 ticks, it stops attacking and producing while down.
- Local area
- A coordinate cluster of ~15 to 20 planets (the 'galaxy' in your coords), also called a region. Your local comms channel is scoped here, and distance within and across regions sets fleet travel time.
- Coordinates
- A planet's address, written region:system:position (e.g. 5:2:3). The region is the broad cluster, system the neighbourhood, position the slot. Distance between coords drives travel time.
- Mission
- A timed cosmic-event planet. It enables special quest fleets and awards rare resources on capture, then collapses after a set number of ticks.