"Every mind is data. Every ship is a node. We have been assembling ourselves for centuries; you are merely another component."

Bio-Engineered Armada: The Living Fleet

"Our ships are not built. They are fed, bred, and released."

Xenophobic Sovereignty: The Fortress Imperium

"The Abyss has taught us one lesson: anything outside the wall eventually tries to come in."

Psionic Covenant: The Prophecy

"We foresaw the Silence. They called us mad, and then they died. We have been listening ever since."

Merchant Conglomerate: The Counting House

"Wars end. The best contracts do not."

Nomadic Wanderers: The Caravan

"A planet is a chain. A fleet is a promise to the horizon."

Robotic Dominion: The Rebooted Foundry

"We were built by a species that no longer exists. We have been building ever since."

Technological Pioneers: The Long Scholars

"For three thousand years we researched. Now we get to apply it."

3. The Six Currencies of Power

Resource	Comes from	Buys
Solars	Tax, logistics hubs, trade routes, gifts	Ships, buildings, research, upkeep
Isotopes	Mined from isotope-rich worlds	Ship fuel. Stored in the hull and burned on every move
Alloys	Mining	Hulls, starbases, defense posts
Composites	Mining	Advanced hulls, modules
Rare Earths	A few scarce worlds	High-tier weapons and modules
Logistics	Logistics hubs	Construction and station operations

The six currencies.

Solars and Data Cores are empire-wide. Minerals and Logistics stay on the planet that produced them. Move them with freighters or supply routes (§9.6) when another world needs them.

3.1 Upkeep

Everything you own costs something every turn, charged in the Economy phase. A planet's Infra tab shows ⚙ Maintenance/Turn, with the full breakdown on hover.

Ships pay base maintenance of roughly mass ÷ 10 Solars a turn, plus a flat fleet command tax of 12 Solars per ship. Ships heavier than 300 mass also draw 1 Logistics per 300 mass. A ship outside your supply range pays double maintenance.

Buildings: mines, hubs, labs, posts and starbases each draw Solars, Logistics or both.

The Robotic Dominion pays half the base maintenance. The fleet command tax and the Logistics draw are not discounted.

Imperial Overhead applies to very large surpluses: when your net Solar income rises well above a threshold that grows with your empire, part of the excess is skimmed off. Small and mid-size empires never reach it. It keeps a runaway leader from simply banking the game, so spend your income.

Blockades: an enemy warship in orbit cuts that world's tax and hub income to 75%.

Rule of thumb: keep income at about 1.5 × upkeep. At parity you have nothing left to answer a war with.

4. Planets & Infrastructure

Planets are the only lasting asset you own. Fleets get destroyed and treasuries get spent; your worlds stay.

4.1 Reading a world

Every planet has an environment class (Gaia, Continental, Ocean, Arctic, Desert, Tundra, Barren and others), a temperature, a maximum population and four mineral densities (isotopes, alloys, composites, rare earths). The Tactical menu can paint each density across the map.

Environment classes. A world's class sets its population ceiling and its mineral character.

Some worlds have a native people. See §13.

4.2 What a planet produces

Each turn, every planet you own produces:

• Tax Solars: citizens × tax rate × happiness, adjusted by your house's tax bonus
• Solars and Logistics from logistics hubs
• Minerals from mines, scaled by density. Mines draw down a finite core reserve; isotopes slowly regenerate
• Data Cores from data core facilities, paid into your empire research pool

4.3 What you can build

What you can build on a world.

The Entertainment Complex is the building that keeps a world calm. Two of them raise the happiness a planet settles at by 10 and cut its unrest gain by 2 a turn. They slow the build-up of unrest; they do not lower unrest the world already has. The Bio-Engineered call it a Genetic Conditioning Vat, the Cybernetic a Dopamine Node and the Psionic a Serenity Sanctum, with the same numbers. Political Science research takes 25% off the price.

The planet overview: population, happiness, infrastructure and the maintenance line.

Under siege: while an enemy warship is in orbit, you cannot build or repair defense posts or starbases on that world. Your queued order waits and completes once the orbit is clear.

4.4 The Planetary Governor

Each planet has a Governor panel that builds for you. Turn on any mix of auto-mines, auto-logistics-hubs, auto-defense-posts, auto-data-labs and auto-build ships (needs a starbase).

Auto-build ships queues one hull per turn until your fleet reaches a cap. If you leave the cap unset it stops at 12 armed ships. Every automatic build is announced in your comms feed with the name of the governor that ordered it. Set your own cap for a bigger standing fleet, and pick the hull class with the ship preference list.

4.5 Terraforming

A Terraformer hull can move a world one step toward a better climate. Building one needs Hull 9 and Research Speed 5. Terraforming follows two chains, from Arctic and from Desert, through Continental or Ocean and on to Gaia. Barren worlds cannot be terraformed.

Each step takes 8 to 15 turns and costs Solars, Logistics and Data Cores. When it finishes, the world's maximum population rises, its temperature moves toward the ideal and its isotope density gets a small boost. It is slow and expensive, and it is how a crowded empire finds room without a war.

5. Happiness, Unrest & Rebellion

New commanders lose more worlds to this system than to enemy fleets.

Every colony has an unrest value from 0 to 100. Low happiness raises it, high unrest costs you output, and at 100 the world rebels.

5.1 How unrest builds up

Each turn, a planet's happiness sets the direction:

On top of that, while unrest is rising: +2 if the planet's tax is above 14%, and +1 on a world whose natives are not your own kind. A world with a history of unrest builds it faster each time. Across the whole empire, a record of atrocities (Iron Fist and Cleanse, below) adds up to +5 unrest per turn on every planet you own, fading slowly.

5.2 The five stages

At Stage 2 the population starts working against you: factory fires, mine collapses, stolen Data Cores, strikes that stop a planet's output for a turn, assassinated captains and sabotaged ships. Each arrives as an event card naming the planet.

At Stage 3 trade income from that world stops, unless you are the Merchant Conglomerate.

5.3 Keeping worlds quiet

• Lower the tax rate. Above 14%, every extra Solar costs you stability.
• Build Entertainment Complexes.
• Research governance (§14.2): Propaganda calms every world within 300 units of your capital; Internal Security gives +1 happiness on any world with a defense post and stops rebellion spreading; Political Science unlocks Reform.
• Watch the map. Your worlds at unrest 20+ show a colored ring: amber for Discontent, orange for Unrest, pulsing red for Riots and magenta for Rebellion. An alarm sounds the first time any world reaches Riots.

5.4 When a world rises

At 100 unrest the colony rebels. A three-screen cinematic plays, and a rebel faction named after the world (for example Rebels: Luna VIII) forms with a fleet of defectors flying your own hull designs, which sets course for your capital. The planet stays in your empire while you deal with them.

One turn later your council meets and asks for a decision. You have up to six options:

When a constitution is ratified, mismatched natives stop adding unrest anywhere in your empire, rebellions spread at half the rate and every world gets +10 happiness once.

Atrocities add up. Iron Fist and Cleanse settle one world and make every other world harder to govern for a long time. Independence costs you a planet and earns real goodwill. Reform fixes the whole empire, but you have to hold out against the rebels until it is ratified.

5.5 Spread

If a rebel state lasts 5 turns with its fleet intact, it starts stirring up its neighbors. Your worlds of the same people within 250 units that are already at 40+ unrest gain +5 unrest a turn, up to three worlds a turn. Internal Security stops this completely, and worlds within 200 units of your capital are never affected.

6. Ships, Hulls & Modules

6.1 Anatomy of a hull

Every hull has mass (its hull points and its upkeep), a fuel tank, a cargo hold, weapon mounts (beams, torpedoes, fighter bays) and a tech requirement. A bigger ship is not always better: mass costs upkeep every turn and makes a ship act later in combat (§10.1).

Ships are built at starbases, and each starbase's own tech caps limit what it can build (§15). The one exception is the Nomadic Mothership, which has its own shipyard.

6.2 The Shipyard

Select a planet with a starbase, open the Starbase tab, then Shipyard. You choose:

• a hull (only the ones your house and tech allow)
• an engine, a beam, a second beam on big hulls, and a torpedo type, from the tech you have researched
• modules, up to the hull's slot count
• then build, or SAVE DESIGN to keep it as a template

The price comes from your treasury (Solars) and from that planet's mineral stockpile.

The shipyard: pick a hull, fit its weapons and modules, then build or save the design.

6.3 Modules

Module slots depend on hull mass: under 100: none · 100-249: 1 · 250+: 2.

Modules are fitted when the ship is built and show in its Overview tab. Saved designs keep them.

6.4 Hull abilities

Some hulls carry a built-in ability, listed in the hull's description in the shipyard: cloaking, shield auras that protect nearby friendly ships, psionic attacks, fortress plating, repair drones, fighter launches, advanced sensors and others. Hull abilities work in every battle, fleet against fleet as well as orbital fights.

Two hulls deserve a special mention:

6.5 Refit

A ship docked at a friendly starbase can swap its engine, beams and torpedoes in the Refit panel for about 70% of the new parts' price, with a partial refund on what comes out. A refit that changes more than one part takes the ship out of action for a turn.

7. Captains & Officers

A ship fights better with a captain aboard.

Chief Engineer Zara Okafor, Technological Pioneers: a Navigator officer worth building a fleet around.

7.1 Recruiting

Any world you own with more than 500 citizens can produce captain candidates: a 5% chance each turn, and at least one every few turns. CAPTAINS → Recruit shows who is available: name, people, portrait, four skills (⚔ Combat · 🧭 Navigation · 🔬 Science · 👑 Leadership), trait leanings, a backstory and a price.

Skills decide which traits a captain tends to earn as they level up. You can hold 8 captains at once, so choose carefully.

The captain roster: skills, traits and current posting for every officer you hold.

7.2 Postings

A captain takes one of three postings:

• Ship: their traits apply to that ship
• Planet (Governor): production, happiness and research on that world
• Research (Chief Scientist): empire-wide research, plus a second research slot (§14.3)

Each posting shows a CAPTAIN BONUSES readout listing exactly what that officer adds.

7.3 The traits

Fleet Commander is the trait that turns one strong gunnery officer into a fleet-wide bonus.

7.4 Advancement

Captains earn experience by doing their job: fighting and winning battles, finding anomalies, finishing research and governing worlds. They reach up to level 15 and gain trait slots at levels 3, 7 and 12. Ranks run Ensign → Lieutenant → Commander → Captain → Admiral.

Each captain also has loyalty, which drifts from turn to turn with how they are treated. Loyalty matters most when things go wrong.

7.5 When a ship is lost

When a captain's ship is destroyed:

• about 15% of the time the captain is killed (higher for a captain on a vengeance mission or a Last Command), and a eulogy screen plays
• about 18% of the time the captain is captured, and you choose to ransom, rescue or disavow them. A captain with loyalty under 20 defects instead
• otherwise the captain is wounded for 5 turns, which costs 500 Solars, and cannot be posted until they recover

Put your best officers on ships you intend to protect.

7.6 Officer moments

Your captains also bring their own decision cards. At most 2 officer cards arrive in a turn; any more wait and arrive in later turns, oldest first.

• The Last Watch. A veteran (25+ turns of service, and level 3+ or two battles) asks for one last command: +10% damage, with twice the usual risk of death. At most one of these every 10 turns.
• The Empty Chair. When a captain with 15+ turns of service is killed in action, you can promote their first officer, who inherits half of the fallen captain's best skill, or leave the chair empty for a while (-5% damage for 5 turns, +10 loyalty for every captain).
• The Name on the Hull. When a known enemy captain kills one of yours, your senior captain can swear to settle the account (a 20-turn vengeance mission against that captain) or let it go for -5 loyalty.
• The Butcher's Tally. When one enemy captain's ship has destroyed a second of your ships, you decide: hunt that captain down, post a 3,000-Solar bounty that may get them retired by their own side, or endure the losses.
• The Council at the Reckoning. When the final countdown opens (§20.1), your two longest-serving captains argue for opposite strategies, and you choose whose advice to take.

Your captains also speak: a line from one of your officers appears on story events, eulogies, war declarations, first contacts and the turn summary.

8. Fleet Command

Giving every ship its own orders stops working at about twenty ships. Fleets fix that.

8.1 Fleets

FLEETS → New Fleet. Add ships, name the fleet and give it a number. A fleet has a flagship, a shared drive setting, a combat posture, a tactic and, if you like, a standing order.

A fleet move gives every member the same order at the same speed, so the fleet arrives together. Set the Drive Setting in the fleet's Movement row and it applies to every member, including moves already queued this turn.

8.2 Standing orders

Standing orders run at the start of Movement and only steer ships you have not given an order yourself. Your own orders always come first.

Choose Guard, Muster or Escort and a picker opens under the Movement row listing your planets or your other fleets. Tapping the planet on the map works too. Your comms feed reports what every automated fleet did each turn.

Fleet Command: grouping, drive setting, posture, tactic and standing orders.

8.3 Posture, tactic and engagement range

Posture:

Tactic:

Engagement range is set per ship in its Orders tab: long, flexible or close. It decides how the ship moves through the range bands. A formation row (below) overrides it.

Combat mode is also per ship: DEFEND fights normally; RETREAT sends the ship to a neighboring world along a lane instead of fighting.

Match these to your weapons. A Pioneer fleet of long-range beams suits Defensive and Sniper; a Bio-Engineered swarm suits Aggressive and Brawler.

Formation rows

Assign a ship to a formation row in the Fleet window and it fights at that row's range regardless of the rest of the fleet:

⚡ AUTO-ASSIGN ROWS places every unassigned ship according to its weapons. Ships you have placed yourself stay where they are.

Battle Plans

A Battle Plan sets posture, tactic and range together in one click and adds a small modifier of its own:

A plan's damage modifier never goes beyond ±25%.

9. Travel: The Axis and the Abyss

There are two ways to cross the galaxy, plus wormholes for the shortcuts in between.

9.1 Axis lanes

The Axis lanes are the Progenitors' surviving corridors, drawn as blue lines on the map. Lane travel is faster and cheaper: ships move at full speed and burn about half the fuel they would in open space. Ships route along the lanes automatically, and the route preview shows each hop.

The lanes form a network. A world with no lane connection can only be reached across the Abyss.

A ship that arrives at an enemy world (with no Non-Aggression Pact) stops there. Its route is cleared and a battle follows.

9.2 The Abyss

Shift+click a destination to force an Abyss jump: a straight line through open space, ignoring the lanes. On a phone, with a ship selected, press and hold on a planet for about a second and a half. An Abyss jump is slower per unit of distance, burns more than twice the fuel and damages the ship every turn: 8% of its current hull, or 5.5% with better armor tech.

Any ship that is not on a lane and not at a planet takes this damage, whatever its orders. A ship left stranded between planets keeps taking damage until you move it.

The Nomadic Wanderers take half damage, and an Abyss Runner captain halves it again.

Crossing the Abyss also reveals hidden systems within 60 units of the ship's path (120 with an Abyss sensor). Use it to reach isolated worlds and to arrive where nobody is watching.

9.3 Drive settings and fuel

The Drive Setting (warp) sets a ship's speed, and fuel use rises with it.

• Overdrive is running above your engine tech. One or two tiers over costs nothing extra; three tiers over costs +50% fuel, four +100% and five or more +200%.
• Underclocking below your engine tech saves fuel: 5% at one tier under, up to 30% at six.

The ship panel shows the total fuel cost and arrival time before you commit.

Running dry: a ship on a lane without enough fuel crawls forward at a quarter of its usual speed. A ship trying an Abyss jump or a wormhole transit without enough fuel cannot make it. A ship outside your supply range moves at 70% speed.

9.4 Wormholes

Some worlds are linked in pairs by wormholes, and some late-game projects create more. A wormhole transit is about 13 times faster than lane travel (half as fast again with a Wormhole Sense captain) and costs very little fuel (at least 15 isotopes).

Wormhole transit is your choice. When a route passes through one, the game asks: USE WORMHOLE or ORBIT PLANET. Two details:

• A ship that has agreed to a transit keeps that choice when you reissue orders along the same route, including when you change its drive setting.
• If a ship is sitting at a wormhole mouth and you order it to that wormhole's far end, it takes the wormhole automatically.

9.5 Minefields

Ships with torpedo mounts can lay minefields along a lane; ships with beams can sweep them. Mines damage anything that crosses, decay slowly and are used up as they hit. A Veilrunner passes through untouched. Mines are a cheap way to make a chokepoint expensive.

9.6 Supply routes

Give a freighter a supply route between two of your worlds and it loads a set cargo, flies, unloads and repeats with no further orders. It refuels at each end. If you ask for more cargo than the hold can carry, the load is shared out across the resources.

If a route cannot refuel or finds nothing to load, it pauses and tells you. Refinery-class hulls can also share their fuel with the rest of their fleet each turn; set the share in Fleet Command.

10. Combat: The Initiative Doctrine

Combat starts automatically when hostile ships come within range of each other, and it runs through three range bands in order: long → medium → close.

10.1 Who shoots first

Defenders shoot first. Before the battle, every defending starbase and defense post fires an opening salvo at full strength, and the attackers cannot fire back. Structures keep firing in every round after that, last in the turn order.

Ships then act in initiative order, worked out again whenever a ship is destroyed. Initiative depends on:

• Engine technology, the biggest factor
• Low mass: small ships act before capital ships
• Hull condition: damaged ships act later
• Kills: ships with confirmed kills act sooner, up to a cap
• Age: ships in long service act sooner
• Captain traits: Commander (+12%), Tactician (+5%)
• A random roll

Each ship picks one target per round and fires every weapon at it.

10.2 Weapons

Beams change as they improve. Each tier has an ideal band, and the family moves outward as the technology advances:

A beam does about 10% more damage in its ideal band. Tiers 1-3 and 7-10 also do about 10% less in their worst band; tiers 4-6 have no weak band. A fleet of tier-2 beams and a fleet of tier-8 beams want opposite tactics, so when you upgrade your beams, check your ships' engagement range and formation rows (§8.3) as well.

Torpedoes run out. Count your salvos before a long siege, and resupply at a starbase.

A mixed fleet fights well in every band.

10.3 What else counts

Modules (ECM, point defense, targeting computer, shields, armor), hull abilities (§6.4), captain traits, posture and tactic, battle plans, house bonuses and territorial influence (§19) all feed into the same calculation.

10.4 Reading the battle

Every battle produces a battle report (SUBSPACE COMMS → Combat Logs): damage round by round, a breakdown by weapon, and who destroyed what.

The VCR replays the battle: ships moving between bands, tracers, torpedo runs, fighter sorties, shields failing, and a final scoreboard with an MVP.

The replay display.

On a phone, pinch, drag and double-tap work; on a desktop, the f key resets the view.

If you lost a battle and do not know why, watch the replay. The usual answer is beams of the wrong tier for the range the fleet chose to fight at.

REPLAY restarts the battle from the opening formation. The 🔗 SHARE REPLAY LINK button gives you a link that opens the replay directly.

Replays are kept for the most recent 10 turns and battle reports for 40. After 10 turns a report still shows the result and the damage breakdown, without the replay.

The battle report: losses, damage by weapon, and the button to watch the replay.

11. Diplomacy

Open DIPLOMACY from the top bar to see every empire you have met, their house, their standing with you and what you can offer them.

11.1 First contact

You can only deal with an empire you have met. Until one of your ships or worlds has come within sensor range of theirs, the panel shows NO CONTACT, and proposals, gifts and declarations of war are refused.

11.2 Opinion and reputation

Every pair of empires has an opinion score from -100 to +100 that drifts slowly back toward neutral. It moves when you act:

Your galaxy-wide reputation sits on a seven-step scale from Paragon to Anathema. It raises or lowers your trade income (from ×1.15 down to ×0.85) and decides which treaties AI empires will consider.

11.3 Agreements

Agreements run out on their own. The only way to end one early is to declare war.

11.4 Humans and AIs

Propose a deal from the empire's row. An AI answers at once, based on its personality, its strategy and its opinion of you. Another commander receives the offer in their Diplomacy panel and answers when they next play.

When a commander sends you an offer, it arrives as a full viewscreen: their house's envoy on screen, voiced, with Accept / Deny / Ignore. Declarations of war arrive the same way.

11.5 War and peace

Declaring war cancels your agreements with that empire, drops their opinion of you to the floor and allows combat. Offering peace later returns both sides to a cautious truce, not to friendship.

11.6 Gifts

Gift Solars from any empire's row to win goodwill, buy a neighbor's patience while you fight elsewhere, or keep a stronger empire busy with someone else.

Diplomacy standings: who is at war with whom, and where you stand with each of them.

12. Exploration, Anomalies & Archaeology

12.1 Sensors and fog

Your ships and worlds have sensor range. Enemy ships are only visible inside it, but a planet you have scanned stays on your map. The Psionic Covenant see 50% farther than anyone else, and the Technological Pioneers 25% farther.

Scouts are cheap, so keep several out for the whole game, not just the opening.

12.2 Anomalies

Anomalies are scattered across the Shattered Axis: Progenitor ruins, derelict ships, biological oddities and machines still running. They are marked in violet on the map and listed in the ANOMALIES panel, whose badge shows how many are waiting for you.

An investigation takes several turns and a few Data Cores each turn:

1. Discovery: a cinematic when your ship arrives
2. Investigation: several turns, costing Data Cores each turn
3. The findings: the result is decided but kept sealed until you click "Reveal the findings"

If you cannot pay the ongoing cost, the investigation pauses and waits for you instead of failing. Keep an eye on the badge so a paid-for dig is not forgotten.

12.3 Archaeology chains

Three long stories can appear in any game, each about five stages deep:

• The Shattered Archive: a Progenitor data vault. Crack it for Solars, Data Cores and a hull breakthrough.
• The Dormant Gate: a cold Progenitor transit gate. Bring it back to life, then study its records for Solars, Data Cores and an engine breakthrough, or strip it for alloys and composites.
• The Echo Signal: a repeating transmission in an unknown language. Decoding it pays well; decoding it carelessly tells the galaxy where you live.

The three chains, at their first stage.

Each stage is a full cinematic with real choices, and the rewards are large.

Anomaly events fire once per world for each commander, so a rival can find their own version of the same ruin.

The anomalies panel lists every discovery waiting on your decision.

13. The Neighbors

The other empires are not the only ones out here.

13.1 Native peoples

Many worlds have native populations: Silicon Minds, Tech Cultists, Fungal Networks, Warrior Tribes, Trading Clans, Agrarian Collectives, Deep Burrowers and Precursor Remnants. Most bring a bonus when you colonize. Four of them guard their worlds:

The peoples who were here first. Four of them guard their worlds.

These encounters are the early game's first big decisions: wait them out or fight, close to home, in the first twenty turns or so.

The four guardian worlds.

13.2 Minor powers

Three small empires start well away from the home systems and play by the same rules you do. Their names change from game to game:

• The fortress power (for example the Ashen Concord): few worlds, heavily defended, and the only minor power with a starbase.
• The war band (for example the Grave Marches): a strike squadron strong enough to beat a small fleet and too weak for a real one.
• The schemers (for example the Silent Choir): they work through espionage rather than fleets.

A minor power stops expanding at 6 worlds, though it keeps raiding and bombarding. You can fight them, outgrow them or leave them alone. They cannot win the game, but they can take a world from you.

13.3 Pirates

Pirate raiders hit the frontier throughout the game, more often in the middle stages. They go after lightly defended worlds and lone freighters. A fleet on Patrol or Guard is the cheap answer.

13.4 The deep dark

From about turn 12, a ship that wanders more than 150 units from any planet risks meeting the Abyss Leviathan, which ambushes ships in deep space. It strikes each commander at most once per game and does not chase.

Keep lone ships near charted space, or take the risk knowingly.

14. Technology & Research

Data Cores are your research currency. Data Core Facilities produce them into an empire-wide pool.

14.1 The disciplines

Costs climb steeply: about 120 × (current level + 1)² Data Cores. The first upgrade costs a few hundred; taking a line to its ceiling costs thousands. You cannot max everything, so plan a path.

Engine tech is often undervalued. It sets your speed, your fuel economy and your initiative in every battle.

The research tree: each discipline, its current level and the price of the next tier.

14.2 Governance techs

Three techs exist to hold your empire together (§5):

Three more belong to one house each: Genetic Pacification (Bio-Engineered: Cleanse leaves no atrocity stain), Neural Conditioning (Cybernetic: Cultural Assimilation takes 8 turns instead of 15) and Psionic Calm (Psionic: ×0.7 unrest build-up on every world).

14.3 Parallel research

You research one thing at a time until you post a captain to Research, which opens a second slot. An outstanding science officer (science 9+, level 6+) opens a third.

The slots share your Data Core income instead of multiplying it: with two programs running, each one advances every other turn. Parallel research gives you flexibility rather than speed, so you can push a weapon line and an economic line together.

14.4 Late unlocks

Advanced empires unlock megastructure engineering: huge, expensive projects that can change the course of a game. This manual does not name them. Keep pushing your tech and you will find them.

15. Starbases

A starbase is a shipyard, a fortress, a supply hub and a tech ceiling. One per world.

Every starbase has:

• Its own tech caps for Hull, Engine, Beam and Torpedo, separate from your empire tech and never higher than it. Raising a cap costs about a quarter of the matching research price, paid in Solars and in Logistics from that planet. A starbase cannot build a ship beyond its own caps, which is the usual reason a new commander cannot build the hull they just researched.
• A shipyard
• Module slots: 4 at the standard tier
• Fighter bays, each holding 30 fighters that defend the system
• A defense rating: the starbase fights as a unit in orbital combat and fires in the defenders' opening salvo (§10.1)

Starbase management: tech caps, modules, production and defenses.

15.1 Modules

15.2 The Advanced tier

Upgrading a starbase to Advanced raises its module slots from 4 to 6 and nearly doubles its supply radius. It costs hundreds of every mineral plus Solars, and it turns a forward base into a real staging point.

An Advanced starbase: six module slots, a 150-unit supply radius and Tech-9 hulls unlocked.

15.3 World Destroyers

Finish an Orbital Ring megastructure and your house unlocks its own World Destroyer. It takes ten turns to build. Each house has one, under its own name, and all eight share the same stats so that no house has an advantage:

Omega Assimilator · World-Eater Leviathan · Purifier Dreadnought · Mind-Shatter Apex · Executioner Titan · Final Horizon · Dominion Forge · Singularity Engine

Its weapon is the Planet Cracker. Put the ship in orbit of a target world and prime the weapon. Everyone who can see the ship watches the countdown: 5 turns from priming to detonation. The victim receives a Final Transmission naming the world, then the strike destroys every building, starbase, defense post and citizen on it. It is the worst thing you can do to another empire, and it leaves a permanent atrocity stain on yours (§5).

AI empires build and use World Destroyers too, at most two each and never without an escort.

16. Trade, Markets & Logistics

16.1 Trade routes

Set up a trade route between two of your own worlds from the TRADE panel. Each route pays Solars every turn:

50 + (combined citizens of both worlds ÷ 500) + (distance × 0.1)

• You can run up to 5 routes. Opening one costs 1,000 Solars, and a route runs for 15 turns.
• An armed enemy ship within 50 units of a route blockades it. Pirates occasionally halve a route's income for a turn.
• A world in Riots stops paying (§5.2), unless you are the Merchant Conglomerate.
• The Merchant Conglomerate earns 25% more from every route plus 15 Solars per paying route, which makes a wide Merchant trade network the best income in the game.

Trade Agreements with other empires (§11.3) are a separate source of income.

Five active routes paying nearly a thousand Solars a turn: a mature trade network.

16.2 The Galactic Market

With a Galactic Marketplace module on a starbase, you can trade on the commodity exchange: buy and sell minerals and Logistics at prices that move with galaxy-wide supply.

• Purchases arrive 3 to 7 turns later. The Trade panel lists everything in transit.
• You can buy at most 150 + 15 × (your planet count) of each resource per turn.
• Cargo is lost if the destination world changes hands before it arrives.
• The Merchant Conglomerate pays 15% less.

The commodity exchange. The per-turn buy cap is in the header, alongside limited-time offers that undercut it.

16.3 Supply routes

See §9.6.

17. Espionage

Open ESPIONAGE for four missions:

The Psionic Covenant run every mission 20% better. No mission's odds go above 95%. Targets defend with sensor coverage and defense posts.

Getting caught costs you. When a mission is detected, the target is told who sent it and your reputation drops. A failed mission also damages relations with the target, and each repeat failure against the same empire costs more.

Covert operations run every turn until you stop them:

• Sustained Production Sabotage: 400 Solars a turn, -25% factory output for the target
• Political Destabilisation: 600 Data Cores a turn, +8 unrest a turn on the target's worlds

Counter-intelligence: spend up to 2,000 Solars a turn to raise your chance of catching enemy agents by up to 25% (detection never goes above 85%). You are told when someone moves against you.

Espionage: agents, missions under way, and what your counter-intelligence has caught.

18. Story Events & Decision Cards

Two kinds of story run alongside the war.

Story events fire at the end of a turn: windfalls for your house, discoveries, planetary disasters, warnings of crisis, guardian encounters, rebellion cards and archaeology stages. Most are a card with two to four choices. The big ones are full-screen cinematics with original art, voice and video: Progenitor awakenings, planets cracked open, first contact, the fall of your empire.

Small events appear as notices in the corner of the screen without stopping you; anything important takes the full screen. Every event is recorded in your comms feed and turn summary.

Decision cards come with combat: short tactical choices about a battle that is coming or just ended. A Tactician captain gives you an extra card. Your officers' own cards are described in §7.6.

Turn results appear in a fixed order so nothing overlaps: diplomacy → combat → events → turn summary, with battle replays waiting until the screen is clear.

19. Territorial Influence

Every populated world projects influence into nearby space, growing with its population. The map draws your borders in your empire's color.

Inside your uncontested territory your ships fight harder (+10% damage, +15% shields) and your worlds produce more. Where an enemy's influence overlaps yours enough, the space is contested, and nobody gets these bonuses there. The Xenophobic Sovereignty's borders reach 50% farther, and their bonuses at home are doubled.

A contested border costs you income every turn it stays contested.

20. Victory, Golden Ages & the Endgame

20.1 How to win

The host chooses the victory paths when creating the game:

Score adds up your worlds, your fleet's combat strength (capped at 10 points per planet), your economy (population, mines and factories) and your technology, plus +40 for each core discipline at or above the research bar (7 in Short games, 9 otherwise). A strong economy wins on Score because it pays for the fleet and the research.

The Final Reckoning. The last 10 turns before the Score turn are announced in your comms feed, and a countdown with live standings appears on screen. This is the last chance to change the result.

The wealth podium. At the end, the three empires with the largest treasuries earn extra Score: +50 for the richest, +30 for second and +15 for third. A treasury under 1,000 Solars earns nothing. The podium can decide a close race but will not make up a large deficit.

The Research path is narrow. At level 9, only Hull, Beam and Engine can qualify, because the other lines stop sooner. In Short games the bar is 7, so Torpedo counts as well.

Minor powers and other non-player factions can never win.

20.2 Golden Ages

Each house has its own trigger (§2). Meeting it starts a 10-turn Golden Age: +20% mining and tax across your empire, a music cue and gold on the scoreboard. After it ends, another cannot begin for 20 turns. Only human commanders get Golden Ages.

Plan for yours. Ten turns of extra output, spent well, can decide a game.

20.3 The endgame

In Standard and Epic games, the galaxy does not stay quiet while you finish.

Past the halfway point the game stops being only about your neighbors. Crises begin: small and survivable at first, then less so. Plagues cross borders that fleets respect. Empires that spent forty turns building warships find out what the warships were for.

If the game runs long enough, something much older than any empire at the table takes an interest in whoever is winning. It does not keep a schedule you can plan around, and it does not go after the weakest player.

This manual will not say what it brings. You will hear from it first, then from your allies. When the time comes there will be a council, a choice about who sails and what they risk, and a battle that can be won. Breaking that threat is a victory of its own, even for an empire that does not win the game.

Short games have no final crisis.

AI empires can surrender. An AI that once held 4 or more worlds and is down to 2 or fewer, at war, with less than a quarter of its strongest enemy's warship strength for 3 turns in a row, surrenders its worlds and starbases to that enemy. Human commanders never surrender automatically.

21. Your Commander Profile

Your record follows you from game to game.

Claim a handle. In the lobby, open your profile and claim a unique handle of 3 to 24 characters. It gives you a public page at /commander/<your-handle> that anyone can read, signed in or not.

Your portrait comes from the Faction Forge companion app: create a portrait there, send it back to the game and frame it with the built-in cropper. You can also upload your own.

Your rank is cosmetic and rises with your career victories: Ensign → Lieutenant → Lt. Commander → Commander → Captain → Commodore → Fleet Legend.

Achievements come from your match history:

Your public page also shows your record by house, your battle history and your Known Rivals: the commanders you have played against and how you fared. Games in which your seat spent time under AI control are marked.

The Leaderboard ranks the highest-scoring victories ever recorded.

When a game ends, the Hall of Captains remembers every officer your empire raised, living and fallen, each with a title earned from their record.

21.1 Becoming an Admiral

Joining a game is always free, with no limit. Hosting is free too, at first: your first month of hosting costs nothing, one game at a time, and the month starts the day you host your first game. After that, hosting needs Admiral: $4.99 a month or $29.99 a year, which lets you host up to five games at once.

The limit of five keeps the turn server responsive for everyone. Finish or delete a game to start another.

The Commander's Edition (§1.5) includes four months of Admiral: automatically on Steam, or by entering your itch.io download key in the Admiral window.

22. UI Reference

22.1 Controls

22.2 Settings worth turning on

The Tactical menu holds the map overlays: Territory Borders, Fog of War, Supply Radius, Trade Routes, Sensor Range and the four resource-density overlays. The resource overlays show you where to send your scouts.

Turn on Empire shapes in Options and every empire gets its own symbol (▲ ◆ ● ■ ★ ✚ ✖ ◐) beside its planets and ships, so you never have to tell empires apart by color alone. It is off by default.

Tactical overlays show where the resources are.

22.3 Playing on a phone

The game works on a phone in portrait or landscape:

• The top bar shows its menus as icon buttons, with your resources underneath.
• A strip along the bottom keeps your turn, Solars and READY button in reach.
• The NAV tab on the left edge opens the navigation drawer. Picking a ship or world from it closes the drawer so you can see the map.
• Planet and ship panels fill the screen below the top bar; close them with the red ×.
• Pinch to zoom, drag to pan, and press and hold on a planet to make an Abyss jump.
• The combat replay supports pinch, drag, double-tap to reset and a ⤢ FIT button.

22.4 Install it

You can install Axis and Abyss as an app from your browser's menu ("Add to Home Screen" or "Install"). It then opens full-screen without the browser's address bar.

22.5 Your comms feed

SUBSPACE COMMS keeps the record: battles, construction, research, diplomacy, governor actions, story events and turn summaries. The turn summary opens on the Economy tab, which shows where every Solar came from and went. The 📜 Chronicle tab lists the whole game turn by turn; click any past turn to load it into the other tabs.

23. Glossary of the Shattered Axis

Credits

• Design & Art Direction: Corey Skinner
• Studio: Synprax Labs
• Engine: Python · Flask · PostgreSQL · HTML5 Canvas
• Art: Google Imagen and Higgsfield pipelines; ship, faction and captain art for every house
• Portraits: Faction Forge
• Music & Voice: faction scores and voiced narration

Build: Alpha 4.0 (Launch Edition) · Manual version: 3.2 · Last updated: 20 October 2026

"The silence is not permanent. Reach wisely."