You start with one homeworld and a small garrison. Your job: grow an economy, reach farther worlds, and capture every rival homeworld. Here's the whole loop, start to finish.
Every commander has exactly one homeworld, marked with a 👑 crown. Capture a rival's homeworld and that commander is eliminated. The last commander standing wins. In solo play, you win by capturing every enemy homeworld — and you lose the moment yours falls.
Homeworlds are marked everywhere — on the map, in the selected-planet panel, and in the owned-planet bar — so you always know what you're protecting and what you're hunting.
Each commander opens a match with the same fair loadout:
| Resource | Start value | Notes |
|---|---|---|
| Gold | 1,100 | Enough for ~5 Factories or a mix of buildings |
| Ships (garrison) | 16 | Stationed on your homeworld — real defense and early attack power |
| Factories | 0 | Build them to produce gold or ships |
| Tech Labs | 0 | Build them to raise your Tech Level |
| Tech Level | 0 | Reach 1–2 nearby worlds; higher tech reaches farther |
Homeworlds are seeded fairly — usually in the B to A+ range, occasionally S-/S, and never a D/F dud. No one starts with a hopeless world.
Select an owned planet to open its panel. Each planet has a limited number of building slots (its buildable land). You fill them with two building types:
Produces gold or ships each cycle, depending on that planet's Manufacturing Focus slider.
Generates hidden Tech Progress every cycle, pushing you toward the next Tech Level. Ignores the focus slider.
Manufacturing Focus is a per-planet slider between Gold Production and Shipbuilding. Set a planet to 100% gold to bankroll expansion, or swing it toward ships when you're preparing an assault. Tech Labs keep researching no matter where the slider sits.
Pending buildings can be canceled before the cycle resolves for a full refund. Completed buildings can be demolished, but with no refund. Buildings stay put when a planet changes hands — capture a developed world and you inherit its factories.
There is no research tab. Tech Labs quietly accumulate research, and when you cross a threshold your Tech Level ticks up. Tech Level is one visible number that controls three things: how far fleets can jump, how fast they travel, and your edge in combat.
Travel range (hops) = 1 + Tech Level
Travel speed (hops/cycle) = 1 + Tech Level × 0.5
Travel time = ceil(distance ÷ speed)At Tech 0 you can only reach the nearest one or two worlds — so you hop outward, using each new planet as a stepping stone. Each Tech level adds a full hop of reach, letting fleets jump farther in a single flight. Early Tech levels are cheap on purpose (Tech 1 in about five cycles with one lab), so a slightly-too-far planet is never 20 turns away.
When you select an owned planet, reachable worlds light up and out-of-range worlds dim. Selecting a target shows its distance, your range, and the arrival time — or an "out of range, increase Tech Level" warning.
Two ways to launch ships:
The send modal shows origin, destination, ships available, a slider with 1 / Half / All quick-buttons, distance, range, and travel time. On confirm, ships leave the origin immediately and appear as a moving fleet icon on the route with a cycles-remaining label. A Galactic News entry announces the launch.
When your fleet arrives at a planet held by an enemy, a combat modal opens showing both sides' ships, both Tech Levels, and the estimated odds. Combat is resolved as a series of ship-vs-ship rounds:
attackerWinChance = clamp(0.5 + techDifference × (0.4 / 15), 0.10, 0.90)At equal Tech it's a coin flip per round; a Tech lead pushes the odds in your favor, capped between 10% and 90% so nothing is ever a sure thing. Each round, the loser drops a ship. When one side hits zero, the other holds — or captures — the planet.
Homeworld defense bonus: defenders on their own homeworld fight as if they had +3 Tech. A same-size fleet won't flip a homeworld on a coin toss — cracking one takes a committed force, often pooled from several worlds.
Capture an enemy homeworld and that commander is out of the game. Lose your own and you're eliminated. The last commander with a homeworld wins the galaxy. Because homeworlds bleed attackers through garrison attrition, games stay decisive without artificial score timers.