How to play Asteria Online

You can learn the whole game later. To get moving, do these five things in this order. They are what the first hour of a healthy empire looks like, and they are the same on every realm.

1. Found your empire. Choose a base people, spend your 15 trait points, design a flag and name it. You start with a homeworld of 250,000 people, 8,000 IDC, 5,000 each of minerals, spice and gas, a hangar in orbit, 6 mining, 3 spice and 3 gas ships, 5 corvettes, 1 frigate, 1 Scout and one Builder ship (every people starts with the same fleet). More on founding.
2. Send the gatherers to work. Drag a box around your mining, spice and gas ships, then right-click a planet nearby that nobody lives on. Each ship flies out, works, flies home to unload and repeats until you tell it otherwise. A habitable world with all three resources sits close to every new homeworld, and your log points to it: it is the best first target. More on gathering.
3. Raise your first Factory. Select the Builder, choose Factory on the command card, click an empty spot near home. You may have 7 factories with no research at all. Each costs 20 alloy, 8 circuits and a small IDC fee, and you already hold the alloy and circuits. All goods in the game are made in factories. More on production.
4. Start your first research. Open Research (T). You have 3 research slots from the start. Research costs goods and spice far more than IDC. The cheapest first blueprint, Explosive Charges, needs fuel cells, and you start with exactly the 6 it takes. More on research.
5. Make Refined Imperium and sell it. Set your factory to Refined Imperium (250 minerals, 67 spice, 150 gas and 10 Coolant Fluid each), then offer it on the Exchange in the Market (K). The Empire's central bank buys it with newly issued IDC. It is the only way new money enters the economy, so it is how a young empire pays for everything else. You have a free Exchange licence for the first 7 game days. More on the economy.

What a good first hour looks like

How long a “game day” takes in real time depends on the realm; see realms and time. On Artemis, the open realm, a game hour is one real minute.

You are a commander with a homeworld, a stockpile and a small fleet. Everything is server-authoritative: the world runs on the server whether or not your browser is open. Ships keep flying, factories keep building, automations keep running and your planets can be attacked while you sleep.

The loop has three parts that feed each other:

• Gather. Gatherer ships and extraction buildings pull minerals, spice and gas out of planets. These deposits are finite and never regenerate.
• Make. Factories turn raw resources into refined goods, components, advanced goods and the parts of ships. Hangars turn parts into ships.
• Trade and fight. One shared Exchange moves goods and IDC between commanders. The Empire buys Refined Imperium and consumer goods. Fleets raid, defend and conquer.

There is no passive income. IDC, the currency, enters the world in only two ways: the Empire pays for what it needs, and the bank lends. Everything else is commanders paying each other. That single fact explains most of the game's economy, so it gets its own section: The economy.

Realms and time

A tick is one game hour. 24 ticks make a game day. Each realm runs the same rules on the same kind of galaxy; only the real-time length of a tick differs. Accounts, worlds and rankings are separate on each realm. Ship speeds are in world units per game minute, so travel scales with the realm's pace. Production runs in real seconds on every realm. Combat always runs in real time.

Realms marked opening soon are built and tested but not open yet. Artemis is the only realm open for now, and it is the best place to learn: you can see the result of a decision within minutes. Every open realm also has a read-only broadcast of its whole universe, made for a TV: the Watch live link on its realm card.

The map

The universe is a single huge map of galaxies, each with star systems, each with three to eight planets. About 5% of planets are habitable and can be colonized; the rest are resource worlds that can only be mined. About 30% of planets have a moon. In the middle of the map sits the Imperium, the galactic government, and between the galaxies are Imperial caches where deliveries to it dock. Nobody can see all of it: see fog of war.

New commanders are placed at least 4 galaxies away from every other human commander, so you always start with room.

The screen

• Map fills the screen. Zoom out to see galaxies, in to see planets and ships (up to 8×).
• Top bar: your minerals, spice and gas against your storage cap, IDC, your race ability, alerts, sound and music, settings.
• Left rail: one button per panel (Empire, Ships, Build, Research, Market, Federation, Intel, Bank and more). You can drag tabs to reorder them.
• Bottom bar: the minimap on the left, what you have selected in the middle, the command card (buttons for the selected thing) on the right. Drag its top edge to resize it.
• Lists on the map: Ships, Planets, Deliveries, Orders and Confederation. Click a chip to select, double-click to centre.

Selecting and ordering

Ships are individual units, not fleets: ships act together only while they are selected together. Keys that act on selected ships take priority over panel keys; if a key does something unexpected, use the rail button instead.

Panel keys

To play you register an account on the realm with an account name, a password and an e-mail address (the address is not confirmed). Accounts are per realm. The founding flow shows a live card of your empire (your people's home planet, a flagship, your flag and a nameplate) and goes in six steps: Race, Details, Appearance, Flag, Traits and Review.

• Race. Pick one of six base peoples.
• Details. Name your commander (3 to 24 letters, digits, spaces and a few punctuation marks) and your empire.
• Appearance. Choose how your commander looks: a class of species, a portrait and its details.
• Flag. Emblem, pattern, frame and colours. Everyone who knows your system sees it on your planets, and in federation lists and rankings.
• Traits. You have 15 points. Strengths cost points; drawbacks give points back (at most 10 points gained, at most 6 drawbacks, at most 10 traits, one trait per group). Traits are small multipliers on top of your base people.
• Review. Check everything, then press Found empire.

Not sure which people to take? The creator has a four-question quiz that recommends one. If you are new, Human is the gentlest start: it is tagged beginner friendly and its warships carry the heaviest shields in the game.

You do not choose a galaxy. The server places you away from other humans. One account can hold 2 commanders for free (up to 12, extra slots cost 5,000 IDC); you play one at a time, and the others stay in the world like sleeping planets.

The six peoples

Each people has its own ship style, voice, ability, special good, planet names and a hull language. Balance is tuned so that every people ends near equal total power; they differ in shape, not in strength. Races are fully editable by realm operators, so a realm may differ slightly.

Traits

Three raw resources drive everything: minerals, spice and gas. You see them in the top bar. They are the inputs of every good, the cost of every ship, the food, heat and upkeep of every colony, and, once made into Refined Imperium, the way money enters the world.

Which planets hold what

A planet's biome decides which resources it has. A deposit is a random amount between 0 and 550,000 for minerals, between 0 and 150,000 for spice and between 0 and 450,000 for gas; most planets are in the middle, very rich and nearly empty ones are rare. Habitable worlds hold about 60% of what a resource world of the same biome would. Every planet also has a richness multiplier per resource that scales each trip a gatherer makes.

Planets of the same biome differ a lot; click a planet to see what it actually holds, and its richness.

The sky is not even. Rocky and gas worlds are common; metallic, crystalline and ringed worlds are rarer; a few dark worlds are almost empty and now and then hold a jackpot. Each galaxy also leans: a metal belt, a gas nebula, a spice desert. What is scarce where you live is plentiful somewhere else, and that is what trade is for.

Gatherer ships

1. Select gatherers and right-click a planet nobody lives on. You can also press G and click, use Send idle in the Ships panel, or set a hangar rally point on a planet so new gatherers go to work by themselves.
2. The ship flies out, works inside the planet for a fixed number of real seconds (set by the realm), then flies home to the nearest of your populated planets, unloads at once and goes out again. Nothing else is needed.
3. A hold is small (mining ships carry about 150 units, spice about 100, gas about 90). A trip fills a share of the hold set by the planet's richness, your race, your Gathering research and your traits.

• Mining ships bring home less. They load only 40% of a normal hold; spice and gas ships load full holds.
• You cannot mine a planet someone lives on. Once a world is colonized, its deposits belong to the colony and are worked by extraction buildings.
• Full storage stops gatherers. A gatherer that cannot unload waits at the drop-off with its load until there is room.
• Ships burn gas when they move. Every gatherer and warship burns gas for each tick it spends travelling. With no gas the whole fleet flies at 50% speed and fires at 60% damage, so never let gas hit zero.

Storage

There is one shared storage pool per resource for all your planets: 50,000 of each resource for every planet you own. Two things raise it:

• Cargo Depots (a structure a Builder raises): each adds 25,000 of every resource. You may have up to 12. A depot is paid in raw resources: 1,300 each of minerals, spice and gas, plus a small IDC fee.
• The Storage technology multiplies the whole pool by 1 + 15% per level.

When a resource is at its cap, gatherers wait and extractors stop. The top bar shows how full each pool is, and the “While you were away” report warns when you are near the cap.

Harvest Posts and extraction buildings

• Harvest Post (structure): a drop-off right in the gathering grounds. Gatherers unload at the nearest of your planets or Harvest Posts, so a post shortens every trip. It only serves planets within 600 units. Up to 20. Cost: 6 alloy, 6 circuits, 4 engines and a small IDC fee. A post whose planets are all used up can be scrapped for half its cost.
• Extraction buildings (on your own planets): the Mineral Mine, Spice Gatherers and Gas Facility pull units out of that planet's own deposit every tick, straight into your stores. Output scales with building level (up to 10), with the planet's richness, with your race's gathering yield and with an Extraction World specialization (+150%). Your homeworld starts with level 1; every new colony starts with no buildings.

Habitable or not?

Every planet is one of two kinds:

• Habitable (about 5% of planets). People can live there. Only habitable planets can be colonized. Every galaxy has at least a couple. Habitable planets are scarce, so they are the real prize of expansion.
• Resource worlds (the rest, in every biome of the table above: rock, gas and ice giants, helium worlds, volcanic, desert, metallic, crystalline and dark worlds, and more). Nobody can live there. Ships mine them, and nobody can colonize them. Only Cyberia can settle any world, at ten times the normal Colony Ship price.

Most habitable planets are Tropical, Continental, Oceanic or Arctic (the earthlike biomes; in the biome table above they hold a bit of everything), Steppe, Jungle or Fungal (a spice world you can live on). About one in five is a habitable desert, gas dwarf, helium, volcanic or carbonized world, so the biome alone does not tell you whether a planet can be colonized: click it. Your people grow at full speed on their ideal biome and at 60% speed elsewhere. The Planetary Survey technology reveals every free habitable planet in the galaxy and keeps the list fresh as worlds fall free. Without it you only know the habitable planets in star systems you have already seen.

Founding a colony

1. Build a Colony Ship. You already have the blueprint and the Colony Kit blueprint. A Colony Ship costs 50% of what a normal ship of its tier does and needs an engine and a Colony Kit among its parts.
2. Select it and right-click a free habitable planet. It first flies to your most populated world and loads colonists (10% of that world's people, up to 500,000 per ship), then flies to the target.
3. Hold position for 10 ticks. The ship must stay over the planet while the colony is founded. The timer pauses while the ship is in combat, and if the ship is destroyed the colony fails. That window is when defenders strike.
4. The colony is founded. The ship is consumed. The planet has no buildings. 10% of its current deposits move into your storage (as much as fits). You can hold at most 40 planets.

What a colony needs

Every populated planet is a running cost. Each tick it uses:

Happiness

Every colony has a happiness from 0 to 100. With nothing supplied it settles at 30. Supplying comfort goods raises it: Life Support and Stimulants matter most, then Medical Bay, Circuits, Ceramic, Coolant and Catalyst. Happiness moves 2 points per tick toward its target. A happy colony grows faster (up to +50%) and its extractors produce more (up to +25%); an unhappy one does the opposite.

Buildings, specializations and moons

Research Lab, Shipyard, Storage, Factory Systems and the five goods-family works are technologies, not planet buildings: you research them once for the whole empire. Planet buildings cost minerals on top of a small IDC fee.

Specializations. Give each planet one purpose; switching has a cooldown and a planet that is conquered loses its specialization.

Moons. About 30% of planets have a moon. On those you can build a Moon Base Research Center: +3% research speed, stacking across your planets (one level per planet).

Naming. Every people names its worlds in its own standard (the first world is “<base> Prime”). You can rename any planet you own; everyone who knows the system sees the new name.

Production has two halves. Factories make goods. Hangars make ships out of goods. Both run in real seconds (not ticks) and keep running while you are offline.

Factories

• All goods are made in factories. A factory is a free-standing structure raised by a Builder ship. You may have 7 with no research; each level of Industrial Fabrication adds 5 more.
• One category per factory. The first good you queue at a factory sets its category: Refined, Components, Advanced goods or Race goods. After that it only accepts goods of that category. You can change the category when the factory has nothing queued or running.
• Four lines. A factory runs up to 4 jobs at once. More factories mean more parallel lines.
• Each good has its own build time, from a few seconds for the cheapest to about a minute for Refined Imperium. Factory Systems, Automation, specialties and works levels make it faster.
• Factories run on gas. A batch burns gas worth 40% of its value, paid up front and refunded if you cancel. A factory that waits for gas pulses red.
• Queue goods by selecting the factory and pressing Queue goods, or from the Production panel (P). A factory with nothing to do pings amber and says IDLE, so you notice.

Builders and structures

Builders raise every structure. Select one, pick the structure on its command card and click the map. Shift+click queues several builds in a row (up to 12); each is checked when you queue it and paid when the Builder gets to it. Structures snap to a grid; hold Alt to place freely.

Costs in IDC are only a few percent of the nominal price (rule cost.struct); the real cost is the goods. Every structure can be destroyed, the home hangar included: the planet raises a new one after a while.

Hangars and ships

• Ships are built in hangars. Your homeworld starts with one in orbit. Each hangar has its own queue and 2 parallel slots, you can have up to 8, and a hangar within 100 units of a planet builds ships 50% faster.
• Click a hangar: every ship you know how to build is a button. Click queues 1, Shift 5, Ctrl 10. Double-click a hangar to select every hangar on screen: one click then builds one ship in each.
• A finished ship appears beside its hangar and flies on its own: there is no storage and no launch step. A rally point (right-click the map with a hangar selected) sends new ships somewhere; gatherers rallied onto a planet start working at once.
• To build a ship you need its blueprint, a Shipyard level high enough for its class, its component goods and its raw resources, plus a small IDC fee. You can have up to 500 ships per planet you own.

What ships cost to run

Every ship has an upkeep weight (gatherers 0.2, utility ships 0.5, corvette 1, frigate 2, destroyer 4, cruiser 8, battleship 16, carrier 24). A ship burns 2 gas per weight point for each tick it travels, and costs a little IDC per tick. Big fleets cost disproportionately more. Docking a damaged ship at a hangar repairs it for a fee of up to 12% of its value.

Research has two kinds of project, and both use the same slots.

• Technologies are empire-wide upgrades with up to ten levels. Each level is its own node in the tech tree and needs the previous level, and sometimes a level of another technology.
• Blueprints unlock what you can build: ships, components, refined and advanced goods, consumer goods. You start with 40. Higher tiers need a bigger Research Lab.

Slots. You start with 3 research slots: 2 plus your Research Lab level. Every Research Lab level adds one, and every three levels of Research Networks add one more. Fill them all, always.

Cost. A project costs a small IDC fee and, much more importantly, goods and spice: a blueprint needs goods worth about 32% of its nominal price, a technology level about 28%, spread over two to four kinds of good (the last levels need Advanced goods), plus spice worth 50% of its nominal price. Nothing is taken until everything is in stock, so a stalled project usually means you are short of a good: the Research panel says which.

The five branches

Technologies

Open a branch to read what each technology does. Prices are the nominal base price of the first level; every level costs more, and the real cost is paid in goods.

Blueprint copies

A blueprint can be copied in your lab. The copy is a tradable item: sell it on the Exchange, and the buyer learns the blueprint from it. Learning from a bought copy is cheaper than researching the blueprint yourself, which makes copies a real market.

IDC (Imperium Denominated Credits) is the currency. Your balance is in the top bar. The money system is deliberately simple and strict, and understanding it is the difference between a thriving empire and a stuck one.

The Galactic Exchange K

One market for the whole realm. Every good, every raw resource and every blueprint copy trades here. It runs on orders.

1. Buy a licence. You start with 7 days free. After that you buy more days; the price grows with the number of open orders in the realm, falls with Trade Relations research and is higher for very rich commanders. Turn on auto-renew and it renews itself while you are away.
2. Place an order. Pick a good, buy or sell, a price and a quantity, and how long it stays open (1 to 720 ticks; the default is 72). An order that matches one already on the book trades at once. The rest rests on the book until it fills, expires or you cancel it. You may have 50 orders open at a time (more with Trade Relations).
3. Goods travel. What you buy arrives by courier drone from the seller. A courier on a long trip can be raided, so you can tick insured on an order (a premium of about 3% of the cargo value, higher while many convoys are being destroyed). Freight and customs apply to the trip: see delivery time and freight.
4. A 2% tax is taken from the seller on every sale. It goes to the Empire's treasury, which then pays part of what the Empire buys.

Delivery time, freight, regions and a private network

The Exchange is open to everyone, but goods still have to fly to you, and the map is huge. Every offer shows how many ticks its courier needs to reach your homeworld and which region (galaxy) it ships from. The time uses the seller's own courier speed (race and Logistics included). Some offers come from the far side of the map, so read the time before you buy.

Freight and customs. A sell order is priced at the seller's homeworld; the price of a buy order is the price delivered to you. Moving the goods costs freight: the seller burns gas from their own stock for every tick the courier flies (20 gas per tick for every 10,000 units of the good, so a longer route or a bigger lot burns more) and the buyer pays the worth of that gas in IDC, at the going gas price, as part of the delivered price. Keep some gas in stock if you sell far away. Goods that cross into another galaxy also pay that galaxy's customs, a percentage of the goods value (3% as a base, higher or lower for each galaxy) that goes to the Empire's treasury; trades inside your own federation or confederation are duty-free. The delivered price shown in gold in the Market (goods + customs + freight) is a reference to help you compare offers: the order book and the price charts show the goods price. There is no price ceiling and no price floor on the Exchange.

The delivery bar at the top of the Market panel (K) lets you set your limits. They are remembered in your browser and sent with every buy order:

• Wait at most N ticks. Presets for 3, 6, 12, 24 or any. Offers that would take longer are hidden, and a buy order only trades with offers that fit, also when an offer is posted later.
• Region. Buy only from one galaxy. Prices differ between regions, which is room for arbitrage: buy where it is cheap, sell where it is dear.
• Only buy from my federation / confederation (a checkbox). The Exchange then shows only offers from your federation and confederation, which turns it into a private network of allies that still uses the same order book.

Quick trade shows the delivery time of the best offer that fits (green up to 12 ticks, gold up to 48, red beyond) or “none in range” when cheaper offers exist outside your limits. The order book shows the time and region of every ask, and on every bid the time your convoy would need to reach that buyer. My orders lists the limits of each order you placed.

The Empire and Refined Imperium

The Empire is a permanent buyer. It plays two roles, and it is the only source of new money:

• The central bank buys Refined Imperium. Refined Imperium is a good made in a factory from raw resources and Coolant Fluid (250 minerals, 67 spice, 150 gas and 10 Coolant Fluid per unit). The bank keeps a reserve of it and bids for more on the Exchange, paying with newly issued IDC. Couriers deliver what you sell to the nearest of 14 caches, which join the reserve when they arrive. Banners on screen announce every time the bank prints money.
• The Empire buys consumer goods. It keeps a standing bid for each of 51 goods it is short of (staples first, then comfort goods, then luxuries) and consumes them to feed its own population. Its bid is higher the lower its stock is, and a random event (a glut or a shortage) moves the appetite for a day or two.

The Imperium Standard. The reserve of Refined Imperium backs all the IDC in the world. If more money is in circulation than the reserve can back, the bank bids more for Refined Imperium, borrowing becomes dearer and the excess is levied; if there is spare backing, the bid falls and borrowing is cheaper. The Empire only buys while its stock is below about 10 days of what it burns. If the reserve falls under 4 days, everyone gets a LOW reserve alert and the bank bids emergency premiums: a good moment to sell Refined Imperium.

The doom clock. The Imperium's star is kept in check by Refined Imperium. If the reserve, with what is already flying in, cannot cover about 6 ticks of the Imperium's appetite, the reserve counts as empty: every commander then pays a tithe of 100 IDC for each unit the Imperium still needs, every 5 ticks, and a red banner counts down. If the Imperium is not supplied within 30 ticks, the mega star explodes and the whole universe is wiped: accounts keep their logins, the realm is backed up, and every commander starts again on a new map. Any supply that lifts the stock back over the line resets the clock. During an emergency the bank pays emergency premiums for Refined Imperium and the AI commanders make and sell it before anything else. The Economy panel shows the reserve and the clock.

Gatherers feed the Imperium: every mining, spice and gas ship in the realm (yours, other players' and the AI's) adds to how much Refined Imperium it burns each tick, and the appetite grows as the game goes on. That is why there is always a buyer. The cost is that the reserve keeps shrinking, and the realm depends on someone always supplying it (see the doom clock above).

The wealth levy and why money has to move

IDC in your wallet plus on deposit is free up to an allowance of 100,000 plus 50,000 for every planet you own. Above that, a levy burns part of it every game day: 0.5% a day on the next two allowances and 1.5% a day above that. Exchange licences cost more for the rich as well. The effect is that hoarding bleeds slowly, and working money wins.

The Treasury (Y) has two services. Both use one pair of market rates for the whole realm, moved by how much of the realm's money is borrowed.

• Locked rate. A loan keeps the rate it was granted at until you repay it. Borrow when rates are low and you keep the cheap rate; repay the dearest loan first (the game does this for you).
• Credit crunch. If total debt reaches about 150% of what the bank can lend, no new loans are granted until people repay or deposit.
• Over the limit. If your debt goes more than 25% above your limit for 48 ticks, the bank seizes assets, blocks your credit for 168 ticks and charges you an extra 0.5% a day on later loans for each default.

Combat is real time. Every ship is its own unit, with its own hull, shield, orders and stance. Select a group, give an order, and the group acts together; there is no separate fleet menu to manage.

Ship classes

The numbers are the Human values (each people has its own table). Reach is how far a ship shoots; Yard is the Shipyard level needed; Build is game ticks. Gatherers, Colony Ships, Builders and Repair Ships carry no weapons.

Rock-paper-scissors

Every warship class deals more damage to some classes and less to others. The table shows the damage multiplier of the row against the column. Green is a good matchup; red is a bad one. A smaller fleet of the right class beats a bigger fleet of the wrong one.

• Light ships: Frigates shred Corvettes, Corvettes pick off Destroyers and harass Gatherers, Destroyers brawl Frigates.
• Heavy ships: Battleships crush Cruisers, Cruisers escort and hunt Fighter Carriers, Fighter Carriers kill Battleships and Corvettes.
• Range matters. Destroyers are short-ranged brawlers; Frigates, Battleships and Carriers shoot from far away. Shots lose strength with distance, and ships close to about half their reach before they fire.

Orders, stances and formations

• Attack: right-click an enemy ship, convoy or planet with warships selected, or press A and click. The group focuses the target.
• Stances: Alt+1 aggressive (attacks what comes close, then walks back to its post), Alt+2 defensive (only shoots what is in range), Alt+3 hold position.
• Garrison: right-click one of your own planets to guard it; you can also garrison the planets of federation mates and allies.
• Waypoints and patrol: Shift+right-click queues waypoints; P then click patrols.
• Formations (cycle with V): box, line, column, wedge or free. Heavy ships take the front, fast ships slow down so the group arrives together.
• Dock at a hangar to unload cargo and be repaired. A Repair Ship (unarmed, heals all friendly ships within 260 units by 10% hull and 20% shield over time; up to 3× with several) keeps a fleet in the fight.

Attacking a planet

1. Scout it. Know what you face: its Defense Grid level, Planetary Shield, sentries and fortresses in range, and the fleet at home (see scouting).
2. Break the grid first. A planet shoots back with its defense grid (the Defense Grid and Planetary Shield buildings). Bring enough hull and shield to survive it and enough firepower to take it down.
3. Bombard. Shooting a planet kills its population; defenses and shields raise how much it resists.
4. Claim it. A fallen colony becomes free for 3 ticks. An attacker with a Colony Ship close by can claim it first; otherwise it is open to anyone. The best attack brings a Colony Ship with the fleet.

If a homeworld falls, its commander is wiped out: all planets, fleets, structures and orders are lost, and a new empire starts on a fresh planet (see winning, losing and starting again).

Raiding convoys

Goods and Refined Imperium on their way to a buyer fly across the map as convoys. Attacking one with warships loots 50% of its cargo; the owner's insurance (if ticked) refunds them. Escort your valuable deliveries: a Corvette is perfect for hunting unescorted couriers, and for being hunted.

A good defence does two things: it makes an attack expensive, and it buys the time your fleet needs to arrive. Use the layers below from the inside out.

If you are being attacked: the log and the attack alert show where. Pull your fleet to the planet, press Call for help in the Federation panel (federation mates and allies get your coordinates), and if the fight is lost, dock your ships at a hangar rather than lose them for nothing.

You only see what your sensors cover. The map has three layers:

Sensors come from your planets (the Sensor Array building adds +15% range per level), from your ships (each ship sees a radius around itself, so a cheap Corvette makes a good scout), from Sentinel posts, and from your federation and allies. The Deep Space Sensors technology adds range everywhere.

• Scouting trip. Send one or two fast ships along a line away from home and stop them where you want to see. Everywhere they fly stays known.
• Sentinels. Research Sentinel Network, and a Builder can raise sensor posts that watch the area around them for good. Every people builds its own kind (a Human Watch Beacon, a Mentat Psi Obelisk, and so on). A post sees about two galaxies out and can be armoured to survive. Level 1 allows 20 posts, +20 per level.
• Spy Couriers. The first level lifts the fog around your own delivery drones as they fly.
• Planetary Survey. Shows you every free habitable planet in the galaxy and keeps the list fresh. It does not reveal enemy fleets.

The Intel panel (I) holds the battle reports, the event list, chat and the rankings. It keeps your last 30 battles with who fought, what was lost and destroyed by class, the loot and a fleet-size timeline.

An automation is a small “when … do …” rule that you set once and the server runs every N ticks, whether you are online or not. Open the panel with U. You start with 12 automations; each level of the Automation technology adds 12 more.

• Scope. A rule acts on the whole empire (build, research, learn a blueprint, sell surplus, buy, renew the licence), on each matching group of ships (gather, return home, stance) or on each matching planet (upgrade a building, specialize).
• Conditions. Add checks such as “IDC above 20,000”, “stock of alloy below 500”, “free research slots above 0” or “fleet health under 40%”. A rule with no conditions simply runs every N ticks.
• Filters. For ships you choose the kind (gatherers, miners, spice, gas, warships, transports, builders) and the state (idle, moving, gathering, in combat, at home).
• Ready-made presets. The most useful one sends every idle gatherer to the nearest planet with reserves. It only uses planets you know, skips depleted ones and avoids planets near armed enemies.

First contact

The game never tells you who a commander is until you have met them. Until then every name, flag and federation reads “Another commander” in neutral grey: on the map, on leaderboards, in chat, in the world log. You meet someone when one of your sensor circles (planets, structures, ships, sentinels, convoys, fortresses) sees one of their ships, planets, structures or convoys, or when you interact: you attack, trade with them on the Exchange, or either of you sends a pact, deal, alliance or federation proposal. Your own federation mates, pact partners and allies are always known.

A “We made contact” window shows their name, empire, people and flag, federation, public rank, a few of their worlds, what you saw and how far away it was, and quick buttons: open intel, propose a pact or deal, declare war. Everyone you have met is listed in the Contacts tab of the Intel panel (I).

Federations and confederations

• A federation (H) holds up to 100 commanders. Founding one costs a fee (at least 200 IDC), a name and a 2 to 4 character tag. Federations can be open or by application; leaders appoint officers, set a motto and a message of the day, and browse and answer applications. A federation has a treasury (members donate IDC), a list of projects bought from it (for example a Trade Station, a Space Fortress, a Sensor Net or a Stargate), weekly goals that the whole federation works on together, and an activity feed.
• A confederation is a league of federations, founded by a federation leader (fee at least 350 IDC) and holding up to 500 commanders. It can be open or invite-only.
• What mates share. Vision (sensors of federation mates, confederation members and allies all count), IDC transfers without a fee and without delay, goods by courier (once or on a schedule), garrisoning each other's planets, repair auras, and the Call for help alert that sends your coordinates to federation mates and allies.
• Friends. Invite a friend with your link. When they reach their first milestone (a second planet or level 5), you both receive two frigates. Up to 10 rewards per account, and none for friends on your own network.

Pacts, alliances, deals and contracts

AI commanders accept and propose pacts and alliances, but contracts are only offered between human players.

War between commanders

Anyone, human or AI, can declare war on a commander they have met. War is also the default state of a shot: if you attack someone you are not at war with, the war is declared for you, and you are the aggressor. A world-log line tells everybody; the target, their pact partners and their federation are notified.

• Declare from the contact window, an intel card or the Wars tab of Intel. Declaring breaks pacts with the target, ends your own new-player protection, and is refused against federation mates, confederation members and allies, or against a commander who is still protected. There is a short cooldown between declarations and a limit on how many wars you may hold open at once.
• Peace. Either side can offer peace; an offer lapses after 48 ticks and the war simply carries on. A losing side can surrender.
• The ledger. Each war counts kills, losses and planets taken. The Wars tab lists your wars, the wars of the world and the history. A war marks the enemy “AT WAR” on their intel card and on the map hover card.
• Federation wars. Federation leaders can also declare war between federations. A federation war lasts 3 days, a federation must wait 2 days between declarations, and may fight up to 3 wars at once. The war score counts 1 point per ship killed, 5 per fleet destroyed and 50 per planet taken.

The galaxy is shared with AI commanders. They are real commanders in the same world, with the same homeworlds, rules, prices and ships, and they use the same commands you do: they gather, research, build, trade on the Exchange, found colonies, join federations, sign pacts, declare wars and raid convoys. They play by the same rules as you. They exist so that the Exchange is alive, the Empire has someone to sell to and a new player is never alone.

• They appear when you do. AIs are only created once a human commander exists in the realm. Artemis fills with 55 of them; other realms start with none unless the operator sets a number.
• Five levels. An AI's level is its action budget: how many commands it can send per real minute. Recruit 2, Cadet 3, Officer 4, Commander 5 and Admiral 6 actions per minute. New AIs are mostly the weak levels (weights 40 / 25 / 18 / 11 / 6), and the realm operator can change both numbers. An AI never exceeds its budget, however busy its empire is.
• Same tools as you. They use automations the way you can, for example to send idle gatherers back to work. They do not need the hotbar.

Goals: what an AI is trying to do

Each AI gets a directive that sets what it values and what it spends its money on.

How they behave on the Exchange

• Someone makes everything. Every good that a factory can make has at least one AI maker, and the goods the Empire buys have two. A shelf stock is kept and the surplus offered, so a player can always buy anything, at a price.
• No fixed price limits. The market sets the prices. An AI asks “is it worth buying?”: an ingredient may cost at most what the product sells for after tax, and warship parts at most a little above the ship's value. Needs such as upkeep, the lab or structures are not capped. When a good sells for much more than its inputs cost and bids stay unfilled, AIs learn to make it.
• Short orders, retried. AI orders live only 5 ticks. A buy order that did not hit is re-posted higher, a sell order that did not sell is re-posted lower, so the book keeps moving.
• They serve the Empire. AIs keep the Empire's consumer-goods bids filled, which is what moves much of the market.

Reading their minds

AIs think out loud. On the Exchange, On the floor shows the latest lines of the commanders trading a good (“Buying 30 Circuit Boards at 3.00: the lab needs it for Research Lab”), and the contact card of an AI you have met shows What they are thinking. The lines only say goods, prices and reasons; they never reveal positions or other commanders you have not met.

Playing with and against them

• An AI's army is kept to a size that fits its personality. It does not build forever, and it raids only when its fleet clearly beats what it expects to meet. A standing fleet and a few sentries make it look elsewhere.
• Rock-paper-scissors works on them as on anyone: see the counter table.
• The newbie protection of 72 ticks holds against AIs as well.
• AIs accept reasonable pacts and alliances, answer federation applications, and decline offers from a commander who attacked them lately. They accept peace when they are losing.

Seasons

The game is played in seasons of 30 game days. A commander, or a federation, can win a season three ways. A season cannot be decided by the first two in its first 10 days.

• Domination. Control at least 40% of all inhabited planets, once at least 20 planets are inhabited in the realm.
• Wealth. Hold 4,000,000 in wealth (your IDC plus 20% of the value of the goods you store). After a wealth win the next goal is 1.5 times what the winner held.
• Time. When the 30 days are over, the highest season score wins: 1,000 per planet, 1 per 1,000 of wealth and 5 per kill.

A new season begins at once. The Career panel (N) keeps your titles, trophies, levels and achievements, and the leaderboards rank commanders and federations by overall score, wealth, fleet power, planets, kills and resources gathered.

Losing your homeworld

If your homeworld falls, your empire is wiped out: all planets, fleets, structures and orders are lost. You are not locked out. A new empire starts on a fresh homeworld with the starting package, and the run you lost is saved to the Chronicle. A reinforcement package (IDC, basic ships and 12 to 48 ticks of protection) is also granted once per seven days if you lose your homeworld, or more than 60% of your fleet value in a day. Losing a colony costs only that colony.

The Chronicle and Play again

Every run of an empire leaves a record. When a run ends (a defeat, a season victory or when you Retire; retiring is blocked while a bank loan is open), the Chronicle opens: a headline card with your flag and the result, a timeline you can scrub and replay with every colony, battle, research, convoy, pact and war, a map replay of the worlds you held, charts of wealth, fleet, production, trade, research and kills, a generated story in chapters, your records and awards, and a table of your rivals. Past chronicles stay in the Career panel.

Play again founds a new empire from your last setup (name, people, traits and flag) in one click, or Change setup opens the founding screen with everything filled in. The normal rules apply: unique names, free slots, trait budget and new-player protection.

Words used in this manual

IDC

Imperium Denominated Credits, the currency.

Tick

One game hour. A realm sets how long it lasts in real time.

Blueprint

The knowledge to build a ship or make a good. Researched, learnt from a copy, or both.

Refined Imperium

The good the central bank buys with newly issued IDC.

Cache

An Imperial drop point where deliveries to the Imperium dock.

Convoy

Goods in flight to a buyer; it can be raided.

Region

The galaxy a convoy ships from.

Directive

The long-term goal of an AI commander.

Season

A 30-day contest decided by domination, wealth or score.