W.E.B. — Rules Reference

1. Welcome — The Galaxy Awakens

Aeons ago, a great galactic war shattered civilization across the stars. The conflict was so devastating that entire sectors were reduced to silence. Warp lanes went dark. Worlds that had once traded freely across light-years found themselves isolated, cut off from neighbors they could no longer reach. Over the millennia that followed, knowledge faded. Technologies were forgotten. The galaxy slid into a long barbarism, and the war that caused it passed out of memory entirely.

No one remembered the ancient highways between the stars — until explorers from a handful of resurgent civilizations ventured beyond their own systems and discovered something extraordinary: warp gates. Massive ring-like structures orbiting near every star, built by a forgotten race in an age no one can date. The gates were dormant but intact, connected to one another in a vast web-like network spanning the galaxy. With enough study, engineers learned that a ship equipped with a specialized warp field generator could activate a gate, opening a near-instantaneous corridor to the next gate along the network.

This discovery changed everything. Civilizations that had spent centuries rebuilding on single worlds suddenly had access to the stars again. But expansion brings need: the advanced industries and infrastructure required to sustain interstellar society demand far more resources than any one planet can provide. Minerals, population, production capacity — the hunger for growth is insatiable, and every neighboring system is a prize worth claiming.

You are one of these resurgent empires. Your scientists have cracked the secret of the warp gates, and your fleets are ready to push outward along the ancient lanes. But you are not alone. Other empires have made the same breakthrough, and they have the same ambitions you do.

Scattered among the stars you will also find independent civilizations — worlds that have rebuilt enough to field local defense fleets but have not yet unlocked the secret of the gates. They cannot project power beyond their own system, but they are far from helpless. Some may welcome you as liberators; others will fight to the last ship. How you treat them will shape your reputation across the galaxy.

And in the dark spaces between the civilized belts — the Dead Systems and drifting asteroid fields at the galaxy's edge — pirates lurk. These lawless fleets prey on any system rich enough to plunder, raiding along the warp lanes from hidden bases in regions too remote or too dangerous for legitimate settlement. They answer to no empire and respect no treaty (see Pirates). Left unchecked, a pirate armada can grow powerful enough to threaten even a well-defended frontier.

Strategy Overview — Explore, Expand, Secure

The early game is a race to explore the galaxy and expand your borders. Every habitable system you claim serves two purposes: it increases your production capacity (more factories building more ships) and it secures mineral income to feed those factories and keep your fleet supplied with Ion-9 crystals.

But production alone won't sustain a growing empire. You need a steady flow of minerals — the raw material behind everything you build and everything that keeps your ships in the fight. There are three sources of minerals in the galaxy:

• Habitable Systems (Planets A–E): Your primary mineral source. Each colonized world starts with some minerals on hand and generates more each turn through its minerals-per-turn rate. Higher-quality planets tend to produce more. Population not used for production automatically mines minerals, adding to the stockpile.
• Dead Systems: These blasted worlds carry no population and produce nothing on their own, but some contain mineral stockpiles — salvageable remnants from the ancient war. Claim a Dead System by placing a Starbase, and your ships can load the minerals. Once collected, the stockpile is not replenished — Dead Systems are a one-time windfall, not a long-term supply line.
• Asteroid Fields: Dangerous but rewarding. Freighters stationed in an asteroid field mine +1 mineral per turn each (up to their 3-mineral cargo capacity). The risk is real — ships take debris damage every turn — but a well-protected mining fleet can generate a reliable stream of minerals from a source that never runs dry.
• Nebulas: These shrouded systems play by their own rules — the swirling clouds warp sensors and weapons fire, so combat inside a nebula follows its own special rules. They're also haunted by the ancient war: drifting somewhere in the haze may be Derelict ships — lost vessels that a patient commander can find, claim, and restore to service. Keep your ships in the cloud long enough, and you may turn up more than just trouble.

Smart commanders don't just build fleets — they build supply chains. Use Freighters to shuttle minerals from mining systems and asteroid operations to your production centers and home world. A powerful fleet without minerals behind it is a fleet that will slowly starve.

2. How to Win

Victory Conditions

The war ends when one empire establishes dominance. There are three paths to victory:

• Galaxy Domination: Control 30% of the galaxy's ownable systems — Star Systems plus Dead Systems you have claimed with a Starbase both count (the same 30% applies at every player count). Your empire's reach becomes undeniable.
• Vanquish Your Enemies: Control 3 original home worlds, including your own, in games of 4–6 players — or 4 including your own in games of 7+ players (thresholds are set by the players at the start of the game and don't drop as empires fall). It is a simple ownership count of the galaxy's original home systems on any turn: your own counts, and every rival home you hold counts. Crushing your rivals at their seat of power breaks their capacity to resist.
• Victory Points: If neither of the above is achieved by the turn limit, the empire with the highest Victory Point total wins a marginal victory. VP are scored as:
  • Home System = 10 VP — yours, and any enemy homes you hold
  • Gaia System = 4 VP
  • Other Star System = 2 VP — 4 VP if it carries the Avian prestige ability
  • Plundered systems lose value: every pirate plunder that steals more than 1 mineral takes 1 VP off that system’s value, permanently — but a system can never drop below half its value, however many times it is plundered (see Plundering)
  • Population = 1 VP per 5 population, rounded up
  • Minerals at home = 1 VP per 10 minerals in your home system’s stockpile, no cap — counted fresh every turn, so banking minerals scores and spending them gives the points back
  • Mission rewards that grant VP
  • Combat glory = 1 VP per 50 enemy player ships destroyed
  • Standing fleet = 1 VP per 75 ships — counted fresh every turn from the ships you have in the air right now. A Carrier counts as 10 ships for this (and this only — it is still one ship everywhere else), so three Carriers are worth 30 toward the total. Starbases and Defense Satellites are structures and do not count at all. Lose the fleet and you lose the points.
  • 1 VP per enemy Carrier destroyed
  • Dead Systems = 0 VP — they count toward Galaxy Domination instead (the Dead System Network legacy adds 1 VP for each one you hold with a Starbase)
  Territory, prosperity, and battlefield prowess all matter.

Galactic Ranking

Win or lose, every finished game earns you a score based on how many players you beat. In a 9-player game, the winner beat 8 rivals and scores 8 points. Second place beat 7 and scores 7. Last place scores 0.

Bigger games mean bigger scores. Coming in 2nd out of 9 players (7 points) is worth more than winning a 4-player game (3 points). This rewards commanders who test themselves in the largest wars the galaxy has to offer.

Your Galactic Ranking in the Hall of Fame is your average score across all finished games. You need at least 3 completed games to appear on the ranked leaderboard.

Empires that are eliminated during a game are ranked by how long they survived — holding out to turn 20 places you above someone knocked out on turn 5. Empires that abandon a game (AI takeover) receive last place for that game, scoring 0 points. There is always something to play for, even when the war turns against you.

Vanquished — Defeat & Ship-to-Pirate Conversion

When an empire loses its last star system, it is vanquished. All of its surviving ships — fleets still in transit, raiding forces, stragglers at enemy systems — are absorbed by the galaxy’s pirate empire and drift toward the nearest Dead System or Asteroid Field. They raise the black flag and become part of the pirate threat.

Any Starbase the fallen empire still held on a Dead System does not change hands. Its crew abandons the station and sets the reactor to overload rather than let it be captured — the Starbase and any Defense Satellites there are destroyed in the blast, and the Dead System immediately becomes unclaimed, free for anyone to take by placing a Starbase of their own. Every empire with ships at the system watches it happen.

Every surviving player receives an in-game announcement naming the fallen empire and the empire that delivered the killing blow. The vanquished player is locked out of the game — no orders, no map access — until the game ends. Once the game finishes, the full map is revealed and the vanquished player can review the final results.

Victory Rewards

Winners earn credits that can be used to join future games:

• Large games (9+ players): The winner earns 2 credits and the runner-up earns 1 credit.
• Smaller games (under 9 players): The winner earns 1 credit.

Skilled commanders can sustain their campaigns through victory alone. The bigger the war, the greater the spoils. Practice and Single Player games never earn credits.

Practice and Single Player Games

Besides multiplayer games, there are two ways to play alone against the AI. Both are in the Lobby: Practice on the Public Multi-Player tab, and Single Player on its own tab.

The difficulties: Normal is the standard AI. On Hard, the AI starts with more ships, minerals and Ion-9 crystals. Extreme has all the advantages of Hard, plus lower fleet maintenance and higher mineral output. Either kind of solo game counts toward the limit of 3 games you can play at once. You can abandon a Single Player game from your Dashboard at any time; the credit is not refunded.

The Golden Rules — What Overrides What

1. Specific beats general. A rule for a specific situation — an Advantage Card, a race ability, a terrain effect like a Nebula — overrides the general rule it contradicts.
2. Advantage Card text beats race abilities, and race abilities beat the general rules.
3. The game is the referee. If the game and this manual ever disagree, the game is right — please report the difference through Feedback so the manual gets fixed.

3. Your First Turns

New to W.E.B.? Start here. The fastest way to learn is to watch the short how-to videos below — each one walks through a real first game, about 2 minutes per turn. Then play along: the game's built-in guided tour and advice tips point out each screen as you go, and the Video Help button in the top bar always offers the right video for your current turn.

A quick checklist for any early turn:

1. Read the map. Rotate the galaxy sphere, find your Home System, and note the warp lanes leading out of it (map legend).
2. Build something every turn. Idle Build Points are lost momentum — open the BUILD ORDER modal on your Home System (Economy & Production).
3. Keep your fleets moving. Explore outward and claim systems before your rivals do (Fleet Movement).
4. Submit your orders before the deadline. Orders process together when the turn runs (The Turn).

The Empire button opens a summary of everything you hold. Every card collapses, so you can keep only what you watch each turn open:

Playing the Corsair? Your Empire panel is a different set of cards — see Appendix G.

Comfortable with the basics? Skip ahead — the rest of this manual is a reference you can return to whenever a question comes up mid-game.

4. The Turn

Each turn is processed in a fixed sequence. Understanding this order helps you time your actions — minerals and population unloaded in Phase 1 are available for production and mining the same turn, and ships that move in Phase 3 arrive before Combat Round 2 in Phase 4. (The list below shows the major phases a player sees; the engine runs many smaller housekeeping passes between them.)

1. Phase 1 — Load / Unload / Place Starbases (placements are recorded now but only finalized in Phase 15)
2. Phase 1.5 — Local Traders (passive mineral flow along your active warp lanes — see §7i)
3. Phase 2 — Combat Round 1 (opens with the fighter battle — launches, dogfights, flak, strikes — then withdrawal fire and phased ship fire)
4. Phase 3 — Movement (fleets warp to destination systems)
5. Phase 4 — Combat Round 2 (pirate plunder resolves just before; then ambush fire, phased ship fire, and invasion)
6. Phase 5 — Pirate Activity (pirate captures of destroyed ships; new raids launch; rewards for fighting pirates)
7. Phase 6 — Production (build ships, PD, industry), then Fleet Maintenance (Ion-9 crystals deducted one per system per pass, farthest systems first)
8. Phase 7 — Mining (population not used for production mines minerals)
9. Phase 8 — Population Growth
10. Phase 9 — Unrest Check
11. Phase 10 — Asteroid Damage
12. Phase 12 — Ownership Changes (invaded systems transfer to their conquerors; lost capitals are reassigned)
13. Phase 13 — Independent System Join Transfers (independent systems that voted to join complete the handover)
14. Phase 14 — Independent System Diplomacy (ongoing relations rolls, missions, and the turn's relations reports)
15. Phase 15 — Finalize Starbases (pending Starbase placements land on their systems)

4a. Missing a Deadline

A turn processes when every player has submitted or the deadline passes — whichever comes first. If you miss one, auto-production keeps your empire alive: 1 Ion-9 Crystal at every system with an Ion-9 Refinery, Destroyers everywhere else with the Build Points remaining. No fleets move and no other orders are given on your behalf. (On Turns 1–2 the auto-advisor plays a full opening turn instead, so a late start doesn't sink your game.)

Miss three turns in a row and the AI takes permanent control of your empire — you are out of that game. You are warned by email, Discord, and in-game notification after every miss, and the warning tells you how many you have left.

5. Systems & the Star Map

The galaxy is made up of many different kinds of locations. Some are thriving worlds with populations and industry; others are barren wastelands or hazardous phenomena left behind by the ancient cataclysm. Understanding what you'll find at each type of system is essential before committing your fleets.

5a. Star Systems (Quality A–E)

Star systems are habitable worlds with populations, industry, and natural resources. Each is rated by quality from A (best) to E (poorest), which determines its population capacity, industrial base, and growth potential.

Interestingly, the most developed worlds are not always the richest in raw materials. Higher-quality systems spent centuries building up their infrastructure before rediscovering the gates — their mines are well-established but increasingly depleted. Lower-quality systems, while less developed, often sit on untapped mineral wealth that fuels rapid expansion for any empire willing to invest in their growth.

Most star systems you encounter will be controlled by independent civilizations — worlds that have rebuilt enough to field local defense fleets but have not yet unlocked the secret of the warp gates. Their reaction to your arrival depends on your empire's reputation (see Independent Systems).

5b. Home Systems

Every player begins the game with a home system — a Class B world that serves as the heart of your empire. Home systems are better-established than typical colonies, with higher starting population, industry, and planetary defense.

Here is how to read a system card in the game — your home system's card has all four panels from turn 1:

Property	Value	Notes
Quality	B
Population	6.0 (limit 10)	Needed to work industries and mineral mines
Industry	5.0	Produces Build Points if enough population and minerals
Minerals/Turn	2	Produces minerals if enough population to mine
Minerals on Hand	20	Used by industries
Ion-9 Crystals	5	Needed by ships to maintain full combat readiness
Planetary Defense	8	Prevents unrest and resists invasions
D-Sats	2	Inexpensive and effective system defense
Starbase	1	Strong defense; its fighter wing stands up to 5 over the first two turns
Starting Fleet	2 CR + 5 DD + 2 Fr	Used to move to and explore nearby systems

5c. Dead Systems

Scattered across the galaxy are worlds that bear the scars of the ancient war — planets blasted so thoroughly by the devastating weapons of those forgotten empires that they can no longer sustain life. Their atmospheres burned away, their surfaces reduced to irradiated glass, these Dead Systems are silent monuments to the destruction that ended the previous age.

• No population, no industry, no natural mineral production.
• Some Dead Systems still contain mineral stockpiles — leftover war materiel or salvageable debris from the old civilization. However, you must first claim the system by placing a Starbase before your ships can access these minerals. Once collected, they are not replenished.
• A Starbase is the only way to claim ownership of a Dead System, since there is no population to conquer or negotiate with. It is also the only way to lose one: a Dead System goes back to being unclaimed when its Starbase is destroyed and the owner has no ships or Defense Satellites left there — or when the owning empire is vanquished, in which case the crew scuttles the station themselves.
• Dead Systems may harbor pirate fleets — scavengers lurking among the ruins (see Pirates).
• If two or more empires attempt to place a Starbase at the same Dead System on the same turn, all placements are cancelled and each Starbase is returned to its Freighter. No one claims the system.
• Precursor Archaeology: Dead Systems that harbor pirate garrisons are often the most promising sites — the pirates were drawn there for a reason. Once you defeat the pirates and establish a Starbase, your scientists begin excavating the ancient ruins in search of lost relics and forgotten technologies. Most digs take several turns, and there is no guarantee: some ruins have been stripped too thoroughly, or their secrets simply died with the civilization that built them. But when a dig does turn something up, the Precursors left behind remarkable discoveries — strange artifacts and reawakened technologies that can grant your empire a powerful advantage, sometimes fleeting and sometimes lasting.
• Ancient technology stays with the system, not with you. A relic is bolted to the world it was dug out of. If your Starbase there is destroyed and you lose control of the system, the technology does not follow you home — it goes quiet and waits. Any empire that then plants a Starbase on that Dead System inherits whatever is left of it: the turns still on its clock, the charges still in its magazine, or a one-off effect nobody has spent yet. Timed relics do not count down while the system sits unowned, so a rival who takes the world gets the full remainder. The one exception is the Ancient Data Banks — those star charts are copied out the moment they are found, and nothing is left behind for anyone else.
  
  Any fleet parked at such a world can see the ruins for itself: the system card names the ancient technology and how much of it remains, whether or not you own the system. And on the turn a holder's Starbase falls, every empire with ships in that system is told plainly what has just been left lying there.
• Your own relics are listed in the Empire panel. Once you have found something, the Empire panel grows an Ancient Technology card listing every relic your empire has ever held: what it is, the system it came from, and what is left of it — turns remaining, salvos in the magazine, surges in the silos, or a one-shot still waiting to be armed. Relics whose lifetime was never knowable read Time left unknown and warn you on their last turn. If somebody else takes the system the row stays, marked UNKNOWN with its counters withheld — you know you had it and you know you cannot see it any more. If the system is merely abandoned it reads PAUSED, because a Starbase there would start the clock again. Anything that ran out, was used up, or went down with its Carrier while you held it stays listed in grey. Each row opens that relic's own discovery page.
• Precursor stargate technology. Two of the things a dig can turn up act on the warp lanes themselves, and neither can be found more than once in a game. Both work only from the Dead System they were found at, while you hold it with a Starbase, and both fire once:
  • The Precursor Wormhole Generator opens one permanent warp lane from that system to any system where you have a Cruiser with no move order. That Cruiser holds the far end open and cannot move that turn. The lane is open to every empire. It cannot reach one of the system’s neighbors, or a system across a severed lane: a dead stargate cannot be re-lit.
  • The Precursor Stargate Virus severs one of that system’s own warp lanes, permanently, for every empire. The cut happens before ships move, so every fleet moving across that lane that turn loses its lead Cruiser and stays where it was — yours included. An ambush watching that lane stops watching it, and a Local Traders route along it is dropped.
  You use either one from the system’s card: pick the other end and press the button. That files an ordinary order in your Orders panel, and deleting the order changes your mind. If the order cannot run when the turn processes (your Starbase there was destroyed, or the Cruiser at the far end is gone), your report says why and the technology is not used up. Every turn you hold one unused, your report reminds you in General.

5d. Asteroid Fields

Asteroid fields are resource-rich but dangerous locations. Fleets stationed there face ongoing hazards, and only Freighters can mine minerals from the debris.

Debris Damage:

Ships in an asteroid field take damage from collisions with debris each turn:

• Each affected ship is destroyed (one hull point or not, it's a debris strike). Carriers are the exception — a debris strike costs a Carrier 1–3 hull points (equal chance of each) rather than destroying it outright. A Carrier is only lost when its hull reaches 0 HP, so a healthy 10-HP Carrier can weather several strikes — but a battered one should not linger in the rocks. A strike that deals the full 3 hull points also destroys 1 Fighter Squadron caught on the hangar deck.
• If a Freighter is destroyed, the cargo aboard it is lost with it — destroyed Freighters are picked at random from the group, and your turn report names what was lost.
• Pirate fleets are immune to asteroid damage.
• Fleets that are moving through (not stationary) skip the per-turn 5% check, but still take the 5% arrival hit at their destination.

Freighter Mining:

Freighters stationed in an asteroid field automatically mine minerals:

• Each surviving Freighter with free cargo space mines +1 mineral per turn.
• Freighters whose cargo hold is full (3 minerals max per Freighter) do not mine. A Freighter carrying a Starbase package or a population unit counts as full.
• Mining happens after debris damage is applied, so only surviving Freighters mine.

Movement & Trapping:

Only Cruisers (CR) carry a warp field generator powerful enough to activate the ancient warp gates for a whole fleet. All other ship types require a Cruiser to tow them through. Destroyers, Novas, and Carriers carry a small generator that moves only themselves (a lone Destroyer can still make a one-way probe jump, but it cannot tow anyone else).

Combat in Asteroid Fields:

• Missile Ships are nearly useless in asteroid fields, raising their to-hit number from 5 to 10 (on a d10, essentially impossible). The iron-nickel cores inside tumbling asteroids generate chaotic, shifting magnetic fields as they spin. In a dense field, thousands of these rotating metallic bodies create an electromagnetic storm of overlapping anomalies that overwhelms missile guidance systems — targeting locks break within seconds, inertial navigation drifts wildly, and the missiles veer off course into the rocks long before reaching anything living.
• All other ship combat stats remain unchanged.
• Starbases cannot be placed in asteroid fields.

Pirate fleets may also lurk at asteroid fields. They are immune to debris damage and use asteroid fields as staging areas for raids into nearby systems (see Pirates).

5e. Nebulas

Nebulas are dense clouds of interstellar gas and charged particles that drift between the stars. Ships can pass through freely, but the electromagnetic interference disrupts targeting systems and makes sustained operations impossible.

• −1 die roll penalty for all ships (harder to score hits) — targeting through the interference is difficult.
• Small fleet vs. large fleet — a small fleet (20 or fewer ships) fighting a large fleet (40 or more) gets +1 to hit the large fleet, while the large fleet gets −1 to hit the small one. Fleet sizes count each player's own fleet separately (allies are not combined), and this applies to mobile ships only — Starbases and D-Sats are unaffected. Nebulas play havoc on sensors and visibility — small fleets can use hit-and-run tactics to out-maneuver larger forces.
• No ambush allowed — sensor readings are too unreliable to set a trap.
• No Starbases can be placed in a nebula.
• All fire is resolved simultaneously — ships destroyed in a round still get to fire that round. Hits are pooled and applied at the end of each phase.
• Nebulas have no population, no industry, and no resources.
• A Derelict ship may drift hidden in the cloud — keep ships here to search it out, then claim and restore it (see Chapter 16).

5f. Ion Nebulas

Ion nebulas are far more dangerous than ordinary nebulas. The intense ion storms surging through these regions disable ship shields entirely, stripping away the energy barriers that normally protect hulls from weapons fire.

• All rules from regular nebulas apply (no ambush, no Starbases, −1 die roll penalty, simultaneous fire).
• All ships are reduced to 1 HP regardless of their normal hit points. A single hit destroys any ship — Destroyer or Starbase, it makes no difference.
• Like ordinary nebulas, an Ion Nebula may hide a Derelict ship to find and claim (see Chapter 16).
• Every Ion Nebula is a pirate haven: it starts the game with a pirate garrison of 1 Cruiser and 3–6 Destroyers. The garrison never leaves and never rebuilds — it only grows when other pirates take refuge there, and only shrinks in battle. Until it is cleared it attacks fleets that enter (unless your standing with the pirates keeps them off you) and blocks the search for the Derelict ship.

5g. Black Holes

Black holes are gravity wells of absolute destruction. Any fleet that enters a black hole is instantly and completely destroyed — ships, cargo, and all. There is no combat and no survivors. The only thing the doomed fleet relays back before it is lost is the names of the systems bordering the black hole.

• Black holes are visible on the star map. Flying into one is entirely avoidable — and entirely your fault if it happens.
• Discovering a black hole (by having it on a connected warp lane) reveals its position permanently.
• There is exactly one black hole per galaxy.

5h. The Star Map

The star map is your primary strategic view of the galaxy. It displays all known systems, the warp lanes connecting them, fleet positions, and empire territories. Learning to read the map quickly is essential.

System Symbols

Each system is drawn as a circle on the map. Inside the circle, a letter or short code tells you the system type at a glance:

If you haven’t fully explored a star system yet, the quality letter may not appear. Star system circles also scale in size based on population limit — larger circles mean bigger worlds.

Circle Colors (System Ownership)

The fill color of each system circle tells you who controls it:

• Your empire’s color — a system you own
• Another empire’s color — an enemy-controlled system
• Muted blue-gray — an independent system
• Very dark / dim — a system in the fog of war (unexplored)

System Name Labels

The name label below each system is also color-coded:

• Empire color — any owned system is labeled in its owner's empire color — both yours and your rivals'. (You tell your own systems apart by your color and the star outline on your capitals.)
• Muted gray — an independent system
• Dim / default — unexplored

Home System Star

Home systems are marked with a five-pointed star outline drawn around the circle, in the empire’s color. This makes capitals easy to spot at any zoom level.

Warp Lanes

Thin lines connecting systems represent warp lanes — the only routes your fleets can travel. The galaxy is displayed on a sphere, so lanes wrap naturally around the globe with no artificial edges.

Fleet Orbit Dots

Small colored dots orbiting a system show fleets present there. Each dot represents one empire’s fleet at that system.

• Your empire’s color — your fleet
• Another empire’s color — a foreign fleet
• Red — pirate or hostile fleet
• Gray — neutral fleet

If a fleet has more than one ship, the count appears inside the dot.

Pulsing Threat Alerts

Systems under threat display a pulsing ring around the circle:

• Red pulse — hostile fleets (pirates or enemies) are present at this system right now
• Amber pulse — the system is threatened but no hostile fleet is on-site yet

Your Orders on the Map

The orders you give this turn are drawn on the map, so you can check your plan at a glance before you submit. Only you see them: nobody else’s orders are ever shown, and nobody sees yours.

• Move — an arrow in your colour down the warp lane, labelled with the number of ships leaving. Hover it to see which ships are going; click it (or tap its tooltip) to change the order.
• Probe — the same arrow with a pulsing PROBING.
• Build — a blue factory and the Build Points you are spending, under the system’s name. Click it (or tap its tooltip) to change the order.
• Ambush — a green shield on each warp lane you are watching.
• Load / Unload — small white chevrons between your fleet’s dot and the system, lighting up in turn the way the cargo goes: out to your fleet for a Load, into the system for an Unload, and two thin runs, one each way, when you do both. Delivering population or minerals for a favor, and placing a Starbase, count as unloads.
• Attack — a red target ring around the dot of each fleet you are attacking.
• Invade — the same red ring around the system itself. You also see it when you attack a system’s owner who has no fleet there, so the target is the Starbase or D-Sats.

The chevrons and the ring around a fleet dot are markers only. Clicking them selects the system as usual, and you change or delete these orders in the Orders panel. They are hidden when you switch off ship counts in the map filters, because there are no fleet dots to point at. The Invade ring stays.

Empire Borders

Soft, glowing colored blobs in the background show approximate empire territory. These borders connect your owned systems along warp lanes, giving you a quick sense of where each empire’s space begins and ends.

Fog of War

You can only see systems you have explored. Unexplored systems appear very dark and dim, with muted warp lanes. A system becomes visible when:

• You own it or have owned it previously
• Your fleets have visited or passed through it
• You have probed it
• It is adjacent (one lane away) to any system you currently have intel on — one you own, have visited, or have probed — not only systems you own

Using the Map

Hover over any system to see a tooltip with details: system name, type, owner, population, industry, minerals, and your fleet composition (if present). The tooltip appears after a brief delay.

Click a system to select it. The selected system gets a bright ring highlight, and its detail card opens in the side panel.

Jump to a system by clicking its card, or its name in the Orders, Reports or Previous Orders panels. The globe turns all the way to it and centres it, however far round the globe it is. A click on a system on the globe itself turns the globe only part of the way, so systems near the poles do not send it spinning.

Search using the search box at the top of the map. Type a system name and matching systems will highlight. Press Enter to jump to the best match and center the map on it.

Zoom with the +/− buttons, or use your mouse scroll wheel. Rotate the globe by clicking and dragging on empty space. The Reset button rotates back to your home system and restores the default zoom.

6. Ships Reference

Your fleet is composed of seven core ship types, each with distinct roles. Understanding their strengths and limitations is the foundation of effective strategy. An eighth class — the Carrier and its fighter wing — joins the fleet once you unlock it midway through the game (described below; full rules in Chapter 15).

Cruiser (CR)

The Cruiser is the backbone of every interstellar navy. It carries a full-size warp field generator — the only ship class powerful enough to activate the ancient gates for an entire fleet. Without a Cruiser, no fleet can move. With one, an unlimited number of ships can ride its warp field through the gate in a single movement order.

In combat, Cruisers are tough and reliable: 3 hull points absorb sustained punishment, and their twin-battery turrets hit on 5+ (60%). They sit in the middle of the screening order, shielded by Destroyers and Novas but protecting the Freighters and fixed defenses behind them. Every ton of hull is given over to the warp field generator and weapons — a Cruiser carries no cargo; hauling is Freighter work.

When the fleet turns to ground operations, Cruisers excel. Their precision orbital bombardment platforms (Invasion Rating A) can knock out planetary defense installations with surgical strikes and zero collateral damage. A Cruiser over your world is both a shield and a scalpel.

Destroyer (DD)

Cheap, fast, and expendable — the Destroyer is the workhorse of the fleet. At just 1 BP each, Destroyers are built in volume and thrown into battle as the first line of defense. In the screening order they absorb hits before any other ship type, buying time for heavier vessels to fire.

Destroyers carry a micro-scale warp field generator — not powerful enough to gate other ships, but just enough to activate a gate for themselves alone. This makes them ideal for probe missions: a lone Destroyer overloads its power plant to force the gate open, hurling itself through in a blinding surge. The strain is catastrophic — the ship's systems burn out shortly after arrival — but in its final moments it transmits a full sensor sweep back through the gate: fleet composition, population, industry, defenses. The defending player never knows the probe was there. One ship sacrificed for intelligence that can change a war.

In ground operations (Invasion Rating B), Destroyers can manage rough surface strikes but lack precision targeting — a hit on 8+ with a chance of collateral damage to industry or population. Use them to invade only when better options aren't available.

Missile Ship (Mi)

Missile Ships carry long-range guided warheads and one critical advantage: they fire first. Before Starbases, before Cruisers, before anything else — Missiles launch. A coordinated salvo can eliminate fragile targets before they ever get a shot off, making Missile Ships devastating alpha-strike platforms in the opening moments of an engagement.

The trade-off is fragility. At just 1 HP, a single hit destroys them. And they carry no warp field generator — a Missile Ship requires a Cruiser to activate the gate for it. In asteroid fields, spinning iron-nickel asteroid cores create chaotic magnetic fields that overwhelm their guidance systems, raising their to-hit from 5+ to a near-useless 10.

On the ground they're the worst option (Invasion Rating C). Their warheads were designed to track ships in open space, not hit fixed ground installations — and a missed warhead can level a city block. Avoid using Missile Ships for invasion if you want anything left to conquer.

Nova (N)

The Nova-class warship represents the cutting edge of military technology — a breakthrough so profound that strategists agree it will one day become the standard bearer of every civilized navy. Its weapon: an anti-matter beam, a needle-thin lance of absolute destruction capable of annihilating any vessel regardless of size or armor. When a Nova scores a hit, it deals up to 5 damage in a single strike — enough to instantly destroy any regular ship in the game. A single beam vaporizes a 3-HP Cruiser outright; only the largest hulls (a healthy 10-HP Starbase or Carrier) can ride out the antimatter strike, and even they are left crippled — a second hit finishes the job.

But the technology is still new, unstable, and expensive. Anti-matter containment systems are finicky (2 BP to build), and the beam's targeting arrays are maddeningly unreliable — the worst accuracy in the fleet at 8+ (30% hit chance). Novas also fire last among combat ships, meaning they must survive the opening volleys before they can return fire. And their targeting is indiscriminate: a Nova hit strikes a random enemy ship, weighted by ship count. You cannot choose the target.

Novas carry a small warp field generator — enough to move themselves through a gate, but not to carry others. In ground operations (Invasion Rating A), their pinpoint antimatter beams excel at neutralizing planetary defense with zero collateral damage.

Freighter (Fr)

Freighters are the economic lifeline of your empire. Their cavernous cargo bays can carry 3 minerals, 1 population unit, or 1 Starbase (mutually exclusive) — making them the only ship that can transport population to new colonies, deliver minerals to production centers, and deploy Starbases to claim Dead Systems.

In asteroid fields, Freighters become miners. After sitting stationary for one full turn, each Freighter with free cargo space extracts +1 mineral per turn — a dangerous but lucrative operation in the debris-strewn belts. Smart commanders build supply chains: Freighters shuttling minerals from asteroid mines and Dead Systems to home worlds and factories. A powerful fleet without minerals behind it is a fleet on borrowed time.

In combat, Freighters are nearly helpless — 1 HP, to-hit of 10 (10%), and they fire dead last. But the screening order protects them behind every other ship type, and they are excluded from ambush calculations. Lose a Freighter, though, and you lose its cargo with it.

Freighters are actually your best invasion ships (Invasion Rating A). Their vast cargo bays harbor multiple marine divisions, and their drop pods deliver precision landings on defense installations with zero collateral damage. Critically, each Freighter hit deals 2 damage to Planetary Defense — enough to destroy a standard PD unit in a single shot. Cruisers and Novas only deal 1 damage per hit and need two hits per PD unit. When conquest is the mission, load up on Freighters.

Defense Satellite (DS)

Defense Satellites are immobile orbital platforms anchored to a system's gravity well. They cannot move, cannot be transported, and cannot participate in invasion or ambush fire. What they can do is fight. At 3 HP and a to-hit of 5+ (60%), a Defense Satellite hits harder and survives longer than most mobile warships — and they cost just 1 BP.

D-Sats are generated automatically when the galaxy is created, their numbers determined by system quality. You can also build more D-Sats using Build Points, up to the maximum for that system's quality class:

The pirate homeworld fields a formidable ring of 8. Once in place, D-Sats fire alongside the owning player's fleet — a permanent garrison that never needs reinforcement.

In the screening order, D-Sats sit deep behind mobile ships, meaning attackers must chew through your fleet before reaching them. Like all fixed platforms, D-Sats cannot initiate combat — enemy fleets can maneuver to avoid stationary defenses — but they fire back with full force the moment an attacker commits to an engagement. (An ambush aimed at ships arriving down a warp lane is not such a commitment: it is fought out at the gate, so your D-Sats hold fire — and cannot be destroyed by it. See Starbase for the full rule.) They are the silent guardians of your empire — always watching, always ready.

Starbase (SB)

The Starbase is the most powerful unit in the game — a massive orbital fortress, a large city in space. Starbases offer the following benefits:

1. Determines system ownership of Dead Systems (DS and DS+).
2. Can send search parties to search for ancient wonders in Dead Systems + (DS+).
3. Can rapidly repair Carriers and rapidly replace their fighters.
4. Have 2 massive beam weapons as well as 5 Fighter Squadrons for defense.
5. Can activate a Warp gate connecting an adjacent system with a Starbase.
6. Can collect minerals from Dead Systems (allowing Freighters to move them to other systems). (DS and DS+)

At 10 HP, a to-hit of 3+ (80%), and two shots per combat round, a single Starbase can shred attacking fleets. It costs a steep 4 BP to build and consumes 1 population from the system during construction (there are over a million engineers and crew permanently stationed aboard).

Starbases are immobile — once placed, they cannot be moved. They must be built via a build order, then loaded onto a Freighter for transport and placement at their destination. Only one Starbase may exist per system. They are the only way to claim ownership of a Dead System, making them essential for accessing those irradiated mineral stockpiles left over from the ancient war. A Starbase can't be placed when your forces are outnumbered and under attack in the system — the placement is cancelled that turn. And the deployment itself is risky: the Freighter carrying the Starbase remains a normal combat target during the battle, and if it is destroyed before deployment completes, the Starbase is destroyed with it.

Because a Starbase is locked to its orbital position, enemy fleets in the same system can keep their distance and avoid engagement — as long as no attack orders are given. However, the moment they attack (or are attacked by ships), they enter the Starbase's devastating weapons envelope — at which point the Starbase will participate. So it's a good idea for the Starbase owner to also keep a ship or two in the system so that they can force combat on enemy fleets and force them to engage the Starbase.

For all their power, Starbases fear one weapon above all others: the Nova's needle-thin anti-matter beam. A single Nova hit tears 5 hull points off the station in one blinding antimatter strike — half a healthy Starbase's hull in an instant — and a damaged Starbase at 5 hull or less is destroyed outright. Two Nova hits will fell even a pristine fortress.

Against ordinary weapons fire, however, Starbases are remarkably resilient. Hull damage accumulates between rounds and between turns — a battered Starbase does not magically heal — but the onboard repair bays mend 1 hit point at the start of every turn until the station is back to full strength. Throughout that recovery, the Starbase keeps fighting at full capability: both shots, full accuracy, undiminished firepower right up until its last hull point falls.

Carrier (CV)

Carriers become available midway through the game — you unlock the technology empire-wide by placing a Starbase on a Dead System. A Carrier is a flagship-class command ship with a hangar of 12 fighters. At 10 HP and a to-hit of 3+ (one shot per round, firing right after Cruisers) it is a capable gun platform in its own right — but its real weapon is its fighter wing, which strikes before the normal combat rounds begin.

A Carrier self-propels like a Nova (it can warp alone, but carries no cargo and cannot tow), costs 5 BP, and adds +1 Ion-9 crystal per turn in upkeep. Its hull damage and combat experience persist between turns, it is screened last (so it dies only once the rest of the fleet is gone), and it cannot be captured — a Carrier self-destructs rather than fall into enemy hands. See Chapter 15 for the full carrier and fighter rules.

Fighters

Fighters are never built or moved on their own — they live inside Carriers, Fighter Bases, and fighter-equipped Starbases, and launch automatically when battle is joined. Each fighter has 1 HP and flies in one of two roles: CAP (a defensive screen that intercepts enemy fighters and soaks hits for your fleet) and Strike (offensive fighters that fly out and attack a chosen enemy ship type). The whole fighter exchange — launch, dogfight, flak, and strike — resolves in a pre-combat phase before Round 1. See Chapter 15 for the full rules.

6a. Invasion Ratings

When invading a system, different ship types have different effectiveness against Planetary Defense. Each PD unit has 2 hit points and must absorb that much damage before it is destroyed. Freighters deal 2 damage per hit — the only ship type that can destroy a PD unit in a single shot. All other ships deal 1 damage per hit.

Note: Fighter superiority provides a bonus to Freighter die rolls (either +1 or +2).

Note: A Reviled empire's Freighters deal +1 invasion damage (Shock Troops) and its own PD units take +1 HP to destroy (Fearless PD); both stack with the Elite Troops card. See Invasion & Conquest.

7. Fleet Movement

An ancient, long-forgotten race once built a vast network of warp gates near the stars of every inhabited system. These gates are connected in a web-like pattern — the warp lanes shown on your star map. The gates still function, but they require a warp field generator to activate. Once a gate is powered up, nearby ships are accelerated along the warp lane to the gate at the destination star almost instantaneously. Most of the travel time is actually spent generating the warp field and activating the gate.

Movement is always one hop per turn: you pick a connected system and your ships jump there when the turn processes.

7a. Warp-Capable Ships

Not every ship carries a warp field generator. A valid move order requires at least one ship equipped with a generator to activate the gate:

7b. Destroyer Probes

Destroyers carry only a micro-scale warp field generator — not powerful enough for sustained gate travel. When a lone Destroyer activates a gate by itself (without a Cruiser in the same move order), it overloads its power plant to force the gate open. The surge generates just enough field strength to hurl the ship through, but the strain is catastrophic: the Destroyer's systems burn out shortly after arrival. In its final moments, the ship transmits a full sensor sweep back through the gate before breaking apart. This is a probe — a one-way reconnaissance mission:

• The Destroyer reaches the target system and burns up — it is destroyed before combat round 2.
• It transmits full intel on the destination system (fleets, owner, minerals, population). The probed system also counts for map adjacency — the systems one lane beyond it appear on your map by name (though the probe report itself doesn't list them).
• The defending player is not notified of the probe.
• The probe does not engage in combat and is not affected by ambush.

7c. How to Issue Move Orders

There are three ways to initiate a fleet move from the player portal:

1. Move link: Click the "Move" action link on any system card where you have warp-capable ships. This opens the move modal with that system as the origin.
2. Dropdown menu: Click the menu icon on a system card header and select "Move" from the dropdown. Same result as above.
3. Drag and drop: Drag a CR or N ship chip from the ships section of a system card and drop it onto one of the warp lane pills (the destination system names shown on the card). The move modal opens with the destination and ship type pre-filled.

All three methods open the same move modal, where you choose exactly which ships and cargo to send.

7d. Cargo & Transport

Ships can carry cargo during movement. Each ship type has different capacity:

• One cargo type per Freighter: each Freighter's hold carries a single kind of cargo — up to 3 minerals, OR 1 population unit, OR 1 Starbase package. A Freighter carrying a Starbase package or a population unit has no room for anything else.
• Losing Freighters loses cargo: when Freighters are destroyed — by enemy fire, Nova ships, fighters, ambush, withdrawal fire, or asteroids — the destroyed Freighters are picked at random from the group, and whatever they were carrying is destroyed with them. Your turn report names exactly what was lost. Minerals are spread as evenly as possible across your free Freighters; Starbase packages and population each ride a dedicated Freighter. Example: 4 Freighters carrying 1 Starbase package — if a Nova destroys one Freighter, there is a 1-in-4 chance the Starbase dies with it. Pirates are the exception: the minerals aboard Freighters that pirates destroy or capture are seized, not lost to space (11e).
• Cargo must be explicitly included in the move order — ships don't automatically carry what's at a system.
• Use Load/Unload orders to transfer cargo between ships and systems. Ships with move orders may still load first and move the same turn — loading and unloading resolve in Phase 1, before movement, and the orders may be given in any sequence. Two limits apply: you can't unload cargo a move order is already carrying, and you can't load more than the Freighters staying behind can hold.
• Population works immediately: Population unloaded into a system you own is put to work the same turn — unloading happens in Phase 1, before Production and Mining, so new arrivals count for both that very turn.
• The move modal shows how much cargo your moving ships can carry and prevents overloading.
• A Freighter that is placing a Starbase this turn cannot move or load any cargo — it is fully committed to the placement operation.
• Pirate raid lockout: Load and Unload orders at a system are blocked while a Pirate Raider fleet is over it with that system as its target. You can't lift minerals onto freighters to evacuate them ahead of a raid.

7e. What Happens When You Move

Movement is processed as Phase 3 of the turn, between the two rounds of combat. Here's the sequence:

1. Combat Round 1 — Your ships that are staying behind fight normally. Ships marked for movement do not fire in round 1 (they're preparing to jump). If enemies destroy all your staying ships, overflow damage hits the departing ships as withdrawal fire.
2. Movement — Surviving ships warp to the destination. A fleet that lost every Cruiser in round 1 can't activate the gate: its jump is canceled and it stays put (see Stranded Fleets).
3. Arrival checks — If the destination is an asteroid field, each ship has a 5% chance of being destroyed by debris on arrival (Carriers instead take 1–3 hull damage per strike — see Asteroid Fields). If it's an independent system you haven't visited, a reaction roll is triggered.
4. Combat Round 2 — Ships that just arrived have arrival immunity: they cannot be targeted by normal fire (only ambush fire can hit them).

7f. Black Holes

If you move a fleet into a black hole, all ships and cargo are instantly destroyed. There is no combat, no intel gained — just total loss. Black holes are visible on the map, so this is entirely avoidable.

7g. Stranded Fleets

Only a Cruiser can tow other ships through a warp gate. If the last Cruiser at a system is destroyed — by combat, debris, or withdrawal fire — any Freighters and Missile Ships left there are stranded: they have no way to activate the gate and cannot leave until a Cruiser arrives to tow them out. Destroyers fare little better: a lone Destroyer can overload its micro generator for a one-way probe jump — it escapes, but is destroyed on arrival — while two or more Destroyers without a Cruiser (or an active warp lane) cannot move at all. Only Novas and Carriers carry a generator strong enough to leave on their own and survive the trip — though they can't take anyone else with them.

Stranded mid-jump. If your Cruisers are destroyed during combat round 1 while a move order is pending — or the Starbase powering your warp lane is destroyed that round — the jump is canceled. Your fleet re-forms and fights normally in round 2, with no accuracy penalty: it held fire in round 1 preparing to warp, but once the gate fails those guns come back online. Your turn report will tell you the gate activation failed. Novas and Carriers ordered out on their own still leave — but a Nova or Carrier moving alongside Freighters, Missile Ships or Destroyers is stranded with the rest of them. A stranded Carrier fights round 2 with its guns but launches no fighters — it had already secured them for the jump, and the fighter phase is over. See A Carrier under a move order launches no fighters.

7h. Active Warp Lanes (Starbase Network)

The warp gates of the ancients were never designed for individual ships. They were built as a permanent network — pairs of gates locked in a continuous resonance, the warp lane between them held open by a vast computer intelligence calibrating both ends in real time. When the ancients vanished, the calibration computers fell silent and the lanes collapsed back into dormant rings of metal — passable only by ships equipped with their own warp field generator.

A Starbase is the only modern structure massive enough to host the AI cores and reactor banks needed to wake a gate and hold it open. Activating a lane requires two of your Starbases in adjacent systems — that is, in the two systems sitting at opposite ends of the same warp-lane line on your star map. Starbases in systems that aren't directly connected to each other don't form a lane; only a pair of neighbouring Starbase systems does. When both endpoints of a lane are yours, the resonance is restored: the lane snaps alive, glowing on your star map in mint green. While that lane is active, any of your ships — in any combination, with or without a Cruiser — can travel along it freely. Lone Freighters, lone Missile Ships, mixed groups, anything goes.

• Same empire only: Both Starbases must belong to you. An ally's Starbase does not count.
• Lane timing: A Starbase placed this turn does not activate a new lane until next turn. If a Starbase supporting a lane is destroyed in combat Round 1, the lane collapses immediately — any fleet relying on that lane without a Cruiser may have its move order canceled and be stranded in system.
• Cargo rules unchanged: Freighters still respect their cargo capacity. Active lanes only remove the Cruiser requirement — they do not increase what a ship can carry.
• Ambush still applies: Defenders ambushing the lane still get their free round on incoming ships, exactly as with a Cruiser-led move.
• Black holes and Ion Nebulas cannot host Starbases, so no active lanes are possible there.

Enemy active lanes are rendered on your star map in red (visible only when both endpoints have been scouted). A red lane signals strategic threat: an enemy with a working Starbase logistics network can move freight and combat ships freely along it without needing Cruisers, and is dangerous. Cutting an enemy's network by destroying one of their Starbases will instantly collapse every active lane that depended on it.

Lore: A Cruiser can’t hold a gate open the way a Starbase can. What it carries instead is a tactical warp field projector — a clever hack that briefly tricks the gate’s beacon data into wrapping the Cruiser and any ships flying in its formation in a localized warp envelope. The lane never truly opens; the fleet just rides a temporary bubble along the same ancient routing. A Nova carries a one-shot version of the same hack, small enough to envelop only itself.

7i. Local Traders (Passive Mineral Flow)

Every inhabited system has its own merchant captains, bush pilots, and gray-market haulers. They don’t report to Fleet Command, they don’t take orders, and they don’t file manifests. Give them a safe warp lane and a buyer on the other side, and a handful of mineral crates find their way across every week. It isn’t a supply line — it’s a rumor that happens to be true. When fighting breaks out, they vanish until the shooting stops.

Once you have active warp lanes (see 7h above), local traders will automatically move a small trickle of minerals along each active lane every turn — no orders required, no cost, fully passive.

• Only on active warp lanes. Plain (inactive) warp lanes and disrupted lanes never carry traders. If a lane doesn’t glow mint green for you, it doesn’t trade.
• Home comes first. Most trader movement flows toward your home system — that’s where your empire’s commerce centers on.
• Running-low systems get help. Traders also redirect some minerals to systems that are burning more than they mine and have a low stockpile.
• Enemy ships block the lane. If an enemy fleet is at either endpoint of an active lane, no mineral moves on that lane this turn. The lane itself stays lit — ships still move through it normally — but the civilian traders wait out the trouble.
• Freighters still do the heavy lifting. Traders are a trickle, not a supply line. Freighters remain strictly better for bulk hauling and long-range moves. Traders just reduce the micromanagement burden on short, well-connected stretches of your empire.
• You can take manual control. Click the Starbase icon on any of your owned systems (other than your home) to open a trade-route panel and pick which neighbors that system sends a trader to each turn. The first time you change a checkbox, your empire switches to manual mode for the rest of the game — the auto algorithm stops adjusting routes for you and your stored selections drive every shipment from then on.

Losing your home matters. Trader flow is loyal to your ancestral home — the system you started the game in — not any re-anchored capital. If your ancestral home is captured, the entire Local Traders network goes dark for your empire until you recapture it. Freighters and other mechanics still work normally, but the civilian trade network stays loyal to the original.

7j. Fleet Size Limitations

One giant fleet is tempting — but the galaxy is quietly hostile to it. Several rules key on the number of ships you have in a single system (the fleet standing in front of the enemy, not your total navy), and every one of them favors the smaller force:

• The underdog shoots back. Outnumber an enemy fleet more than 3-to-1 and every mobile ship they fire gets +1 to its die roll against you — small fleets maneuver and react faster than your cumbersome armada (see 9g. Outnumbered Bonus).
• Nebulas favor the nimble. In a Nebula or Ion Nebula, a fleet of 20 or fewer hulls firing at a fleet of 40 or more hits +1 easier — and the big fleet firing back hits −1 harder. A two-step swing against the giant (see 5e. Nebulas).
• Novas love big targets. Enemy Nova Ships hit your fleet +1 easier at 41–80 hulls, +2 at 81–120, and +3 at 121 or more — the swarm is the target.
• One bad jump can end it all. Move into an unexplored Black Hole and the entire moving fleet — ships and cargo — is destroyed (see 7f. Black Holes). Probe first. The bigger the fleet, the bigger the funeral.

7k. Rally Points

A rally point is a standing instruction: "pull my ships here." Plant one on a system and, every turn, the fleet computer drafts Move orders that bring your chosen ship types from every fleet within range one jump closer along the shortest safe route. You no longer have to hand-move a dozen small groups toward a staging system.

• Placing one. Open a system's ⋮ menu and choose Add Rally Point, or press-and-hold the system on the map (right-click on a desktop). Any system you have seen will do — your own, an Independent, even an enemy world (the modal warns you in red; ships arriving there will fight). You may hold up to 3 rally points at a time.
• What it pulls. Tick the ship types to pull (Cruisers, Destroyers, Missiles, Novas, Freighters — and Carriers in fighter games) and the range in jumps (1–6, default 2). Everything of those types in every fleet within range is drawn in; a fleet already sitting at a rally point is never pulled away.
• Timing. The moment you create (or change) a rally point, Move orders for every fleet in range appear in your Orders panel and as arrows on the map — if you have already submitted this turn, they start next turn instead. From then on every new turn's Orders panel opens already filled with a fresh set of drafted Move orders, each tagged RALLY. They are ordinary orders: edit them, delete them, or leave them. Whatever you leave in the panel is what happens; the next turn drafts a fresh set from wherever your ships ended up.
• Ship limit. Optionally cap the number of ships (of the selected types) the rally point gathers. Once the ships already there plus those arriving next turn reach the cap, only fleets one jump out keep moving, trimmed to fit; ships two or more jumps out hold where they are until losses at the rally point re-open room.
• The usual movement rules apply. Destroyers, Missiles and Freighters still need a Cruiser (or an Active Warp Lane) to move — if you left Cruisers unticked but the fleet has one, a single Cruiser is borrowed as escort. A lone Destroyer is never sent (that would be a probe). A Freighter's cargo stays behind unless no Freighter would remain to hold it, in which case all the Freighters and their cargo travel together. A fleet you gave an Attack or Ambush order this turn is left alone.
• Expiry. Leave it standing forever or set it to expire in N turns. Your turn report notes what each rally point did ("4 ships ordered toward it, 2 arrive next turn").
• On the map a waving banner in your colour marks each rally point, with the pull range printed on it and a sonar ring that stops once the cap is reached. Hover it for the live count.

7l. Courses — Automatic Multi-Jump Moves

A course is a standing instruction for one group of ships: "take these ships and this cargo to that system." Set one and your fleet walks the route by itself — one jump per turn, as ordinary Move orders that appear in your Orders panel every turn for you to see, change or cancel. It is the companion to a rally point: a rally point pulls ships toward a system, a course pushes one shipment along a route. Ideal for Freighter convoys hauling minerals, population or Starbase kits across your own space with a Cruiser escort.

• Setting one. Open a Move order as usual. Below the adjacent systems the destination list has a second group, Further away · automatic route, naming systems 2 to 4 jumps away in purple with the distance ("Alfirk — 3 jumps"). Pick one, choose your ships and cargo exactly as for a normal move, and the button reads Set Course. The route appears above the ship list. You may run up to 5 courses at once, and one course per destination from any given system.
• Only clear routes are offered. A course never travels to or through a hostile system or a system you have never explored — anywhere reachable only that way simply is not in the list. (Hostile means an empire you are at war with, a hostile Independent, or pirates you have not made peace with.) The system your fleet is standing in is never a problem: if an enemy is sitting on top of you, you can still set a course out.
• Every jump is an ordinary order you approve. Each turn the next leg appears in your Orders panel as a Move order with a purple COURSE tag listing the remaining route (COURSE: Mira → Rigel → Deneb → Alphard), shrinking as you travel. Nothing moves that is not sitting in your panel when you submit. On the map the arrow carries purple chevrons — one per jump still to go.
• Changing or cancelling. Edit the order to open Modify Course: change the ships or cargo, or pick a different far destination and the course re-targets from where your fleet is now (so you can extend a journey at any point). Picking an adjacent system instead turns it back into a normal move and ends the course. Delete the order and the whole course is cancelled — your ships simply hold where they are.
• If trouble appears ahead. The route is recalculated every turn, so a severed warp lane or a new threat is routed around automatically when a clear path exists. If the only way forward turns hostile, your convoy continues one more jump — giving the danger a turn to clear — and then cancels the course rather than fly into it, holding position and telling you why.
• What else ends a course. Arriving (your report says "Course complete" and lists what was delivered); coming under fire where your ships are standing; losing the ships it was carrying; or finding no route at all for three turns running. Your turn report explains every one of them.
• The usual movement rules apply. Destroyers, Missiles and Freighters still need a Cruiser (or an Active Warp Lane); a single Cruiser is borrowed as escort if the group cannot move on its own, and a lone Destroyer is never sent (that would be a probe). Cargo travels only if the Freighters you sent can hold it.

8. Economy & Production

Your empire runs on three interconnected resources: population, industry, and minerals. Mastering the economy is just as important as winning battles — fleets must be built, systems must grow, and resources must flow where they're needed most.

8a. Build Points (BP)

Everything you build costs Build Points. Each BP requires:

• 1 population (workers)
• 1 industry (factories)
• 1 mineral (raw materials)

Your BP output at a system equals min(population, industry, minerals on hand), rounded down for fractional industry — if you have 5 population, 3 industry, and 10 minerals, you produce 3 BP that turn. Of the three, only minerals are actually spent: each BP used consumes 1 mineral from the stockpile. Population isn't consumed — but every worker on the production line is tied up for the turn and cannot mine (see Mining). Industry is never used up at all; the factories keep standing.

8b. What You Can Build

8c. Mining

Population not used for production automatically mines minerals:

• Available miners = population − BP spent
• Minerals mined = min(available miners, system's minerals/turn rate)
• Mined minerals are added to the system's stockpile and available next turn.

Systems with high minerals/turn but low industry will stockpile resources quickly. Use Freighters to transport those minerals to your production centers.

Home System depletion. Home Systems have been mined since long before the war started, and they run dry. On turn 24 and again on turn 32, every Home System in the galaxy permanently loses 1 mineral/turn. A Home System starts at 2 minerals/turn, so from turn 32 it mines nothing of its own. This applies to every Home System, including one you have captured from another empire — and to the original Home System only, never to a capital you relocated after losing it. You are told in your turn report when it happens, and the turn it is announced still mines at the old rate.

8d. Population Growth

Population grows each turn based on system quality:

• Minimum growth is always 0.1 per turn, even at low populations.
• Population cannot exceed the system's population limit.
• Systems in unrest grow at only 0.1 per turn regardless of quality.

8e. Unrest

Systems enter unrest when conquered or when population significantly exceeds planetary defense. During unrest:

• Industry output is halved (rounded in the system's favour — a 5-industry system still produces 3, and 1 industry never drops to 0).
• Minerals per turn is halved (rounded down, minimum 1).
• Population growth drops to 0.1 per turn.

Unrest clears gradually as you build up Planetary Defense relative to population. Keeping PD close to your population level prevents unrest from triggering.

8f. Production Disruption

Production is cancelled if an enemy fleet with ATTACK orders is present at your system and you have no defending ships, D-Sats, or Starbases. Your workers cannot operate factories under threat of orbital bombardment.

8g. Fleet Maintenance — Ion-9 Crystals

Every ship in your fleet is powered by Ion-9 crystals — rare, high-energy lattices grown in the orbital furnaces of an Ion-9 Refinery. Ion-9 crystals degrade with each warp jump and every weapons discharge. Without regular replacement, a ship's power core loses output: targeting systems drift, shield generators falter, and weapons fire weakens. A fleet running on stale crystals is a fleet fighting at a disadvantage.

Ion-9 crystals are a stockpile resource — a discrete, per-system count that you produce, hold, and draw down. They are not automatically refined from minerals each turn. You must deliberately build crystals, just as you build ships, and store them at the systems where they are produced.

The Ion-9 Refinery — Starbase Level 2

Crystals are produced through the Build modal, but only at a system whose Starbase carries an Ion-9 Refinery. A refinery is an upgrade installed in an existing Starbase — think of it as taking the station to level 2. No refinery, no crystals: a system's quality, its population and its history count for nothing here.

Every home system starts with one. Nothing else does — not a Gaia world, not a captured capital, not your best-developed colony. That first refinery over your home is where your entire fleet's supply comes from until you build a second one.

Look for the upgraded station on the map and on system cards: a Starbase with a refinery shows an Ion-9 crystal at the centre of its orbit ring instead of the usual star, and its tooltip reads “Ion-9 Refinery present” — for you and for rivals who can see the system. Knowing where an enemy refines is knowing where to hit them.

A refinery dies with its Starbase. Destroy the station and the refinery goes with it; rebuilding means a new Starbase (4 BP, a free Freighter and a turn to deploy) and then the 3 BP upgrade again. This makes the Starbase over a home a genuine military target — break it and the owner's whole fleet starts running down its stockpile with no way to top it up.

Ownership changes are different: a refinery is removed only by the destruction of its Starbase. If a Starbase survives a change of hands — a cultural rebellion, an independent world joining your empire — the refinery survives with it and the new owner inherits the production line. Existing crystal stockpiles always stay with the system, whoever holds it, and a system keeps showing its crystal count on the card until the last one is spent, even after its refinery is gone.

Each crystal then costs 1 Build Point, drawn from the same pool you use for ships, PD and industry upgrades.

Supply Cost

Each turn your fleet consumes crystals in proportion to its size: 1 crystal per 50 ships, measured to the tenth of a crystal. Ten ships use 0.2 crystals a turn, 25 ships use 0.5, 50 ships use exactly 1, 75 use 1.5 — the 51st ship adds a fraction, not a whole crystal. Any fleet at all uses at least 0.1.

Ion-9 Usage Breakpoints — the fleet size at which usage ticks up

Every 5 ships add 0.1 crystals.

Usage and stockpiles are both kept to the tenth, and exactly your usage leaves the stockpile every turn — a system holding 6 crystals that pays 1.2 shows 4.8 next turn. Whole numbers are shown without a decimal (9, not 9.0), and nothing is ever rounded beyond the first decimal place. Only your mobile fleet counts toward the total — Cruisers, Destroyers, Missile Ships, Novas, and Freighters. Starbases and D-Sats do not count: they are fixed installations running on their own onboard power, not the fleet's Ion-9 supply chain.

Each Carrier you field adds a flat +1 Ion-9 crystal per turn on top of the usage above — an irreducible surcharge that Revered reputation and the Ion-9 Catalyst do not reduce.

When You Can’t Pay the Full Bill

Each turn the game adds up your crystal stockpile across every system you own. If the total covers your supply cost, you pay it and your fleet is in supply. If it falls short, even by a tenth of a crystal, your fleet is out of supply, and three things happen:

1. You pay what you have. The bill is always collected: every crystal you hold is consumed, down to zero. You cannot hold crystals back, and a part payment does not buy supply. For example, a fleet using 2.4 crystals a turn with 1.5 in the stockpile spends all 1.5 and is still out of supply.
2. −1 to hit. Your ships fire at a −1 die roll penalty until supply is restored (see Combat Penalty below for the timing). Starbases and D-Sats are exempt.
3. Ships break down. A few ships are lost to low-power failures each turn you end out of supply. The number scales with your usage (none at 1 crystal a turn or less, up to 10 in a turn at most), and the crystals you did manage to pay count toward reducing it (see Attrition below).

Combat Penalty

If your fleet is unsupplied (maintenance unpaid), your ships suffer a −1 die roll penalty (harder to score hits) until supply is restored. Ships with degraded Ion-9 crystals simply cannot aim or fire as effectively. Note the timing: the supply check runs after each turn's battles, so a shortfall detected this turn degrades your fire starting with next turn's combat — and restoring supply likewise takes effect a turn later.

Starbases and D-Sats are exempt from this penalty. They are static defenses with their own onboard power, not drawn from the fleet's Ion-9 supply chain, so their anti-ship fire stays at full accuracy even when your fleet is out of supply.

Attrition — Ships Lost to Low Power

Aiming badly is the least of it. A ship running on dead crystals is a ship running its containment fields, coolant pumps and magazine safeties on reserve power, and every turn your fleet ends out of supply a few of them fail: a drive core overloads, a weapons bay loses cooling, a sensor suite browns out at the wrong moment. Our engineers put the breakdown rate at roughly 1–2% of the fleet per turn.

The exact number depends on your supply usage. A fleet using 1 crystal/turn or less never loses a ship this way. Above that the risk fades in with your usage: at 1.2 crystals/turn there is a one-in-five chance of the losses a 2-crystal fleet faces, at 1.5 a one-in-two chance. At 2 crystals/turn you can lose 1 or 2 ships; at 3 crystals/turn, 1, 2 or 3 — and so on, up to your usage, though never more than 10 ships in a turn. The bigger the fleet, the more ships fail. Every crystal helps: a fleet that can pay part of its bill runs its reserve systems a little longer, and the engineers report noticeably fewer breakdowns than a fleet with nothing in the stockpile at all — but once your usage reaches a whole 2 crystals a turn, at least one ship is always lost.

• Cruisers are never lost — their heavy cores ride out a brown-out.
• Losses come from your largest ship-type group first, the second-largest next, then alternate back and forth.
• Only empty Freighters can fail. Loaded Freighters are never lost, and if every Freighter is loaded the group is skipped entirely.
• Ships only. Carriers, Starbases, D-Sats and Planetary Defenses are never affected.

The turn report names the ships lost and where they were. Losses stop the turn supply is restored.

Stockpile & Deduction Order

Crystals are stored on the system where they were built. They cannot be loaded onto Freighters and cannot be moved between systems — the lattices are too unstable to ship. To keep a forward outpost stocked, you must build crystals there directly, which means putting a Starbase and a refinery on it.

Your supply each turn is paid out of every system you own, not out of one. The collector takes one crystal from each stocked system in turn, starting with the system furthest from your original home and working inward, with your home last. If the cost is not covered after that first pass, the round begins again at the furthest system and takes a second crystal from each — and so on until the bill is paid.

An example. Your fleet costs 3 crystals this turn, and you hold three stocked systems: a frontier outpost with 2, a mid-empire colony with 1, and your home with 5.

Three crystals, one pass, one taken from each. The frontier outpost is not stripped of both of its crystals before the collector moves on — the load is spread, so no single forward system is emptied while others sit full. Had the cost been 5, the round would simply repeat: the outpost would give its last crystal, the empty colony would be skipped, and your home would cover the rest.

While the cost is 1 crystal — which it is for most of a game — this all comes to the same thing: the furthest stocked system pays, and your home reserve is the last to be touched.

Holding Multiple Producers

Every system you own contributes its stockpile to the supply check, whether or not it can still produce. Refineries are what you should be counting: hold two or three and the loss of any one of them is an inconvenience rather than a crisis.

A single refinery is a single point of failure. If your home Starbase is destroyed, your only production line dies with it — your empire keeps burning crystals while nothing replaces them. A second refinery, on a defensible system with 3 industry well away from your frontier, is one of the better 3 BP an empire can spend. If you hold no refinery at all, your fleet will run dry and fight at reduced effectiveness until you build one.

Maintenance Reductions

Two effects can reduce your Ion-9 crystal cost below the standard table:

• Revered Reputation: When your reputation reaches Revered, allied traders and independent system councils begin routing surplus Ion-9 feedstock directly to your refineries. Your fleet maintenance cost is reduced by 1 crystal per turn (minimum 1). This bonus applies automatically each turn you hold Revered status and stacks with other reductions.
• Precursor Ion-9 Catalyst (temporary relic): A cache of ancient catalytic material discovered in Dead System ruins doubles the efficiency of your Ion-9 crystals, so each crystal powers 100 ships instead of 50 — your fleet's usage is halved while it lasts (a 60-ship fleet pays 0.6 a turn instead of 1.2). This bonus lasts 6 turns and then expires.

When both are active simultaneously, the Catalyst divisor is applied first, then the Revered flat reduction is subtracted, floored at 1 crystal.

Checking Your Supply Status

Your current crystal stockpile is shown on the card of every system holding one — look for the Ion-9 crystal icon in the Economy stats bar. The count stays visible on a system that has lost its refinery, so you can watch a stranded stockpile drain away. The card also shows a usage line indicating how many crystals you spend per turn and roughly how many turns of supply you have remaining (which pulses Amber at 2 turns or fewer, and Red when you are out of supply).

Your per-turn supply cost is also displayed in the top bar next to your total ship count — for example, Ships 73 (1.5×crystal/turn) means a 73-ship fleet consumes 1.5 crystals per turn. The Ships Present box on every system card shows a small crystal icon next to each empire that is currently in supply, or a pulsing “–1 to hit” indicator if that empire’s fleet is unsupplied.

9. Combat — Ship Battles

Combat occurs when hostile fleets share a system. Each turn has two rounds of combat (Phases 2 and 4), with fleet movement happening in between. Understanding stances, firing order, and screening is key to winning battles.

This chapter covers ship-to-ship fighting. Landing marines and taking a system away from its owner is a separate operation with its own rules — see Chapter 10 — Invasions & Conquering.

9a. Combat Stances

Every fleet has a combat stance that determines when and how it fights:

• Conditional is the default for all fleets. Your ships won't start a fight on their own, but they'll fight back if attacked. Two Conditional fleets sharing a system will coexist peacefully.
• Attack requires you to select one or more enemy empires to target. You can set this via the Attack action on a system card. Your fleet will fire on all selected targets in both combat rounds.
• Ambush requires you to select one or more adjacent warp lanes to watch. Your fleet does not fire in round 1 — it waits. In round 2, if enemy ships arrive from a watched lane, your fleet opens fire on them. Warning: your fleet's firepower is split evenly across all watched lanes — the more gates you cover, the less damage you deal at each one. Watching a single lane concentrates your full ambush firepower on that gate.

9b. Turn Structure & Two Rounds

Combat fits into the broader turn sequence like this:

1. Phase 1 — Load/Unload cargo, place Starbases
2. Phase 2 — Combat Round 1 — opens with the fighter battle (if fighters are present, all launches, dogfights, flak, and fighter strikes resolve first — see Chapter 15), then fleets fire; moving ships take withdrawal fire (see below)
3. Phase 3 — Movement — Surviving ships warp to their destinations
4. Phase 4 — Combat Round 2 — Fleets fire again; ambush fires; newly arrived ships have arrival immunity; invasion resolved
5. Phases 5–15 — Pirate activity, production, mining, growth, ownership changes, etc. (see Turn Order)

9c. How Firing Works

Each ship rolls a d10 to hit. If the roll meets or exceeds the ship's to-hit number, it scores a hit. Modifiers can make hitting harder.

To-hit penalties (each subtracts from the firing ship’s die roll, making it harder to score hits):

• Nebula / Ion Nebula: −1 die roll penalty (interference makes targeting difficult)
• Ambush fire: −1 die roll penalty (firing from concealment is less precise)
• Asteroid field (Missile Ships only): −5 die roll penalty (Missile Ships need a “10” to hit, nearly useless)
• Exposed pirates: −1 die roll penalty for Pirate Raiders and Corsair ships fighting 3 or more warp-lane hops from the nearest asteroid field (the Exposure penalty, see 11e and G.8)

To-hit bonuses (each adds +1 to the firing ship’s die roll, making it easier):

• Outnumbered more than 3-to-1: +1 die roll bonus for the smaller fleet’s mobile ships — the underdog fires easier (see section 9g)

Modifiers stack, but the final to-hit is capped at 10. A natural 10 always has a chance to hit — and a natural 1 always misses, no matter how many bonuses a ship, base or fighter has piled up.

The one exception: an exposed pirate Freighter. A Pirate Raider’s or a Corsair’s Freighter fighting far from the asteroid fields pays the Exposure penalty (11e, G.8). A Freighter already needs a 10, so it then needs an 11 and can’t hit at all, unless a die roll bonus such as the Outnumbered bonus (9g) brings it back to 10. Every other exposed ship keeps its natural-10 chance.

9d. Fire Order

Fighter strike combat always takes place first (see Chapter 15 for more about carriers and fighters). But for standard combat (Rounds 1 and 2) each ship rolls a d10 to hit during each combat round.

Ships don't all fire simultaneously. They fire in a strict sequence, and hits are applied immediately — meaning early-firing ships can destroy enemies before those enemies get a chance to shoot.

The firing sequence during Rounds 1 and 2 is:

1. Missile Ships — fire first, can eliminate threats before they shoot
2. Starbases — fire twice (2 shots)
3. Cruisers
4. Carriers — 3+ to hit, one shot (their fighters already struck in the pre-combat phase)
5. Destroyers
6. Defense Satellites
7. Novas
8. Freighters — fire last

When several empires fire the same ship type in the same round, the smaller fleet shoots first — the nimbler force gets its volley off (and claims its kills) ahead of a larger one. Damage from all fleets firing the same ship type still lands together at the end of that firing step, so a bigger rival's broadside can't silence your ships mid-step.

9e. Screening Order & Damage

When your fleet takes hits, damage is absorbed by ships in screening order. The front-line ship absorbs all incoming hits until it's destroyed, then the next ship type in line takes over.

Hits are applied one at a time. Each hit reduces the front-line ship by 1 HP. When a ship reaches 0 HP, it's destroyed, and the next hit moves to the next ship in the screening order.

9f. Nova Antimatter Strike

The Nova-class warship represents the cutting edge of military technology. Its anti-matter beam weapon is a breakthrough that will eventually make conventional armaments obsolete — a single focused beam can annihilate almost any vessel, regardless of size or armor. Military strategists agree that Novas will one day become the standard warship in every fleet. But that day hasn't arrived yet. The technology is still new, the beam targeting systems are unstable, and the anti-matter containment required makes them significantly more expensive to produce than conventional ships. For now, Novas are built for specialty roles — high-value strikes where one perfect shot can change the course of a battle.

In game terms: when a Nova scores a hit, its antimatter strike deals up to 5 damage to one random enemy ship in a single blow. Every regular warship in the game has 3 hull points or fewer, so a Nova hit still instantly destroys any Cruiser, Destroyer, Missile Ship, Freighter, D-Sat, or fellow Nova. Only the two capital hulls — the Starbase and the Carrier (10 HP each) — can survive the strike, and only while their remaining hull exceeds 5.

• A Nova hit deals up to 5 damage against the target's current hull. A ship at 5 or fewer remaining hull points is destroyed outright.
• A healthy Starbase or Carrier survives its first Nova hit at roughly half strength — a crippling antimatter strike reported in your combat replay — and a second hit destroys it. Starbase damage persists between turns (repairing 1 per turn as usual), so the follow-up blow can come next turn.
• Target selection ignores screening order — any ship can be hit.
• Novas are hard to hit with (need 8+ on d10), but devastating when they connect.
• In an Ion-9 nebula, shields are down and every ship is reduced to 1 effective hull point — there, a Nova hit destroys even a Starbase or Carrier in a single strike.

9g. Outnumbered Bonus

If your combat ships are outnumbered more than 3-to-1 by enemy combat ships, all your mobile ships receive a +1 die roll to hit bonus (easier to land hits). A small fleet is nimble — it maneuvers and reacts in seconds, while a massive fleet is cumbersome and slow to answer. The bigger fleet gets nothing.

• Counted: Cruisers, Destroyers, Missile Ships, Novas, Carriers
• Not counted: Freighters, Defense Satellites, Starbases
• The ratio must be strictly greater than 3:1 to trigger. Exactly 3:1 does not trigger the bonus.
• The bonus applies to all your mobile ships for that round, on top of any other modifiers. Starbases and Defense Satellites never receive it — a station can’t outmaneuver anyone.
• It does not apply to ambush fire, and fighter dogfights are a different system entirely — surplus CAP stacks up on individual Strike fighters rather than outnumbering them (see Chapter 15).

9h. Withdrawal Fire

When ships are ordered to move out of a system where combat is happening, they face withdrawal fire in round 1:

• Moving ships do not fire in round 1 — they're preparing to warp.
• Your staying ships fight and absorb hits normally (using standard screening order).
• If all staying ships are destroyed, overflow hits carry over to the departing ships.
• If staying ships survive, the moving ships escape unharmed.
• If the withdrawal kills every Cruiser you had, the jump is canceled — those ships are stranded and fight normally in round 2 at no accuracy penalty.

9i. Arrival Immunity

Ships that arrive at a system during the movement phase (Phase 3) receive arrival immunity in combat round 2:

• Arriving ships cannot be targeted by normal fire in round 2.
• The only exception is ambush fire, which specifically targets arriving ships.
• Arriving ships also do not fire in round 2 — they're reforming after the jump.

9j. Defense Satellites & Starbases

Defense Satellites (DS) are fixed defenses attached to a system (not a fleet):

• 3 HP, to-hit 5+, 1 shot per round.
• Fire on attackers of their system automatically — even if the owner has no ships present. A world defended only by D-Sats (and its Planetary Defense) still fights back.
• Cannot move, cannot ambush.
• Not counted for the outnumbered-bonus ratio.
• Never Out of Ion-9 supply. A D-Sat is a fixed installation, not part of a fleet's supply chain, so it never pays the out-of-supply die roll penalty.

Starbases (SB) are the most powerful defensive unit in the game — massive orbital cities housing weapons platforms, command centers, repair bays, and the millions of crew and their families needed to keep them running. Constructing a Starbase is a monumental undertaking that permanently draws workers and their dependents away from the planet below.

• 10 HP, to-hit 3+ (best accuracy), 2 shots per round.
• One Starbase per system maximum.
• Costs 1 population from the system when built (crew, engineers, and their families relocate permanently to the station).
• Cannot be placed in nebula, ion nebula, or asteroid field systems.
• Cannot ambush, not counted for outnumber.
• Never Out of Ion-9 supply. Like D-Sats, a Starbase is a fixed installation off the fleet's supply chain, so it never pays the out-of-supply die roll penalty.
• A Nova antimatter strike deals 5 damage in one blow — a healthy Starbase survives one strike crippled; a second (or a strike on a Starbase at 5 hull or less) destroys it.
• Damage persists between turns. Starbases accumulate hull damage from combat hits and carry it across rounds and turns — they do not snap back to full HP at turn's end. Onboard repair crews mend 1 hit point at the start of each turn until the Starbase is back to full strength. A wounded Starbase still fights at full effectiveness — both shots, full accuracy, full firepower — right up until its last hull point falls.
• Can be upgraded to level 2 — an Ion-9 Refinery (3 BP, needs 3 industry at the system). Only a refinery system can build Ion-9 crystals. Every home system's Starbase starts upgraded. A damaged Starbase can still be upgraded, but the refinery is destroyed along with the station — which makes a Starbase over a crystal-producing world one of the most valuable targets on the map.

Immobile platforms cannot initiate combat. Starbases, D-Sats and Fighter Bases are fixed installations locked to a system's orbital infrastructure — they cannot maneuver to engage hostile fleets. Enemy ships in the same system can simply keep their distance, staying beyond effective weapons range of stationary platforms. However, the moment an enemy fleet commits to an attack, they must close range and enter the platforms' engagement envelope — at which point Starbases and D-Sats fire back with full force. To dislodge an enemy fleet camping in a system defended only by fixed platforms, you must send in mobile warships to force the engagement.

Fighters do not change this. A Starbase's 5 squadrons and a Fighter Base's 5 squadrons are short-ranged defensive cover, not a reach advantage — they scramble when your side is in the fight and at no other time. A system holding a Starbase, a Fighter Base and a ring of D-Sats but no ships still cannot give an attack order, and its wings stay in the hangar while an enemy fleet sits overhead. One mobile hull is enough to change that — even a single Freighter makes the attack order legal, and once it is given the Starbase, every D-Sat and both fighter wings all join in.

Ambush is not an attack on your platforms — and it cannot hurt them either. An enemy fleet in your system may lie in wait at a warp gate and fire on ships arriving down the lane (see Ambush). That volley is delivered out at the gate, against the arriving fleet. The ambusher never closes on your orbital infrastructure, so the range works both ways:

• Your Starbase, D-Sats and Fighter Base have nothing in range to shoot back at, so they hold fire.
• And the ambusher cannot touch them. Even if your relief fleet is wiped out to the last hull and the ambusher still has shots left, those shots are wasted — they do not carry on into your D-Sats or your Starbase. A station that never had a chance to fire does not get shot.

Ships you already have stationed in the system are another matter: they return fire normally. And an attack order changes everything — that fight is over the planet, where your Starbase, every D-Sat and both fighter wings can reach the enemy, and the enemy can reach them.

9k. Special Terrain Effects

Nebula:

• −1 die roll penalty for all ships (harder to score hits — interference).
• No ambush allowed.
• No Starbases allowed.
• All fire is resolved simultaneously — ships destroyed in a round still get to fire that round (hits are pooled and applied at the end).

Ion Nebula:

• Same rules as nebula (no ambush, no Starbases, −1 die roll penalty).
• The intense ion storms in these nebulae disable ship shields entirely, reducing all ships to 1 HP regardless of their normal hit points. A single hit destroys any ship.

Asteroid Field:

• Missile Ships receive a −5 die roll penalty (requiring a “10” die roll to hit before any other combat modifiers — nearly useless). The spinning iron-nickel cores of asteroids generate chaotic magnetic fields that overwhelm missile guidance systems, causing targeting locks to break and munitions to veer off course into the rocks.
• No Starbases allowed.
• Debris damage applies to all ships each turn (see Asteroid Fields).

10. Invasions & Conquering

Winning the battle in orbit is only half the job. Taking a system away from its owner means landing marines and grinding down its Planetary Defense — a separate operation with its own timing, its own to-hit numbers, and its own best ships. This chapter covers that operation, from the moment an invasion becomes possible to the unrest you inherit once the system is yours. Ship-to-ship fighting is covered in Chapter 9 — Combat.

10a. When Invasions Happen

Note: Invasions are only ever resolved during Round 2 — even if there was no ship combat in Round 1. An invasion is a complex operation that, in theory, plays out across the entire turn, but the game rolls the dice and distributes all invasion damage in a single round (Round 2).

Invasion happens in Combat Round 2, but only when the system has no active defenses capable of firing at the start of the round. Specifically, an invasion begins when:

• The defender has no non-arrived ships (ships that just arrived this turn cannot fire and do not count as defenders).
• The system has no Starbase and no Defense Satellites.

If the defender has anything that can fire at the start of Round 2 — ships, a Starbase, or D-Sats — Round 2 is spent on normal combat. The invasion is deferred until next turn. Your fleet was engaged fighting active defenses and could not simultaneously bombard the planet.

10b. Rolling Against Planetary Defense

Once the invasion begins, your ships fire at the system's Planetary Defense (PD) to take control:

Each PD unit has 2 hit points and must absorb that much damage before it is destroyed. Freighters deal 2 damage per hit — enough to take out a PD unit in a single shot. All other ships deal 1 damage per hit and need two successful hits per PD unit.

Reviled empires fight dirtier — on both ends. An empire at Reviled reputation invades with Shock Troops (its Freighters deal +1 damage per hit, so 3 instead of 2) and defends with a Fearless PD (its PD units take +1 HP to destroy, so 3 instead of 2). Both bonuses stack with the Elite Troops advantage card.

10c. Ships as Invaders

Not all ships are created equal when it comes to ground operations:

• Cruisers (A) carry dedicated orbital bombardment batteries designed to strike hardened planetary defense emplacements with surgical precision, leaving civilian infrastructure untouched.
• Freighters (A) — best invaders harbor multiple marine divisions in their vast cargo bays — trained ground forces who deploy via drop pods to neutralize PD installations from the surface. Each Freighter hit deals 2 damage, destroying a standard PD unit in one shot. The fastest, cleanest way to take a planet.
• Novas (A) can direct their antimatter beam at pinpoint defensive targets from orbit. Devastating accuracy, zero collateral — though one wonders what happens to the planet if the targeting drifts.
• Destroyers (B) were built for ship-to-ship combat, not planetary operations. Their light weapons can be turned against surface targets, but they lack the targeting systems for precision strikes. Expect some stray fire hitting factories and population centers.
• Missile Ships (C) are the worst invaders in the fleet. Their long-range warheads were designed to track engine signatures in open space, not strike fixed ground positions. Against planetary targets they are wildly inaccurate, and when a warhead designed to kill a starship hits a city block instead of a defense battery, the results are catastrophic.

10d. Close Air Support — Carriers & Fighters

Fighters lend a hand to a ground assault — not by landing troops (only marine-laden Freighters do that), but by flying cover that suppresses the defenders and clears the marines' approach. The carriers themselves never invade; the whole air battle is abstracted into a single bonus to your Freighter to-hit rolls against PD.

Compare the fighters in the sky over the target — your invading carriers' fighters versus the defending system's Fighter Base:

• Net air advantage = (total fighters aboard all your invading Carriers) − (fighters in the defending system's Fighter Base).
• Net 6–11: Freighters gain +1 to hit (6+ becomes 5+) — the marines have sufficient close air support.
• Net 12 or more: Freighters gain +2 to hit (6+ becomes 4+) — the marines have massive close air support.
• Net 5 or less: no bonus.

Only the defending system's Fighter Base offsets your fighters — a defending Starbase's or carrier's fighters do not. When it applies, the bonus shows as a Close air support modifier line on the Freighter group in the invasion report. (Full carrier rules: Chapter 15.)

10e. Conquest & Aftermath

• Each PD unit has 2 HP. Damage accumulates; a unit is destroyed when it absorbs 2 total damage.
• When PD reaches 0, the system is conquered. PD resets to 1 and the system enters unrest under your control.
• Collateral damage from Destroyers and Missile Ships can destroy industry and kill population during the invasion. Cruisers, Freighters, and Novas cause no collateral damage.

10f. Multiple Invaders

11. Pirates

Pirates are a hostile faction that, by default, threaten all players equally. They answer to no government and can never be controlled — but they can be bargained with. Tribute buys their patience, standing with the brethren earns real privileges (raids that skip your worlds, fleets that hold their fire, even hired raids against your rivals), and one advantage card puts an old debt of theirs in your pocket — see 11i. Pirate Diplomacy. Pirate fleets appear in red on the map and in ship reports. There are two types of pirate activity: local pirate fleets that lurk in dangerous locations, and raider fleets that actively hunt player systems for plunder.

11a. Local Pirate Fleets

Pirate fleets may be present at Dead Systems and Asteroid Fields. There is no way to know whether pirates are waiting at one of these locations until you arrive. A typical pirate fleet consists of a Cruiser and a group of Destroyers. They will remain in the system and fight any player ships that enter.

Rogue independent fleets (from failed diplomacy) may also end up joining pirate forces, merging into any existing pirate fleet at their destination.

11b. Pirate Raiders

Beginning in the early turns of the game, organized Pirate Raider fleets will begin launching raids from Asteroid Fields, targeting player-owned systems that have accumulated mineral stockpiles. Raids become more frequent as the game progresses.

Pirate Raiders appear as a separate fleet from any local Pirates in a system. You may see both “Pirates” and “Pirate Raiders” listed under Ships Present — they are tracked independently.

When a raider fleet enters civilized space, all players will receive a warning: “Traders are reporting a large Pirate Raiding fleet approaching civilized space.” If you have ships present at the asteroid field where the raiders originate, you will receive a more specific sighting report.

Far from the belts, raiders fight worse. A pirate crew is happiest with an asteroid belt at its back. Out in civilized space their supplies run thin, there is no easy escape route, and every hand aboard knows it: out in the open, exposed, far from the rocks they can vanish into, morale drops. A Pirate Raider fleet fighting 3 or more warp-lane hops from the nearest asteroid field fires its guns with a −1 die roll penalty, the Exposure penalty. Within 2 hops it fights at full strength. The farther a raid strays from the asteroid fields, the better your odds against it, and you can see when it applies: an exposed raider fleet’s row in Ships Present carries a red −1 to hit badge. The full rule, including how the hops are counted, is in 11e. Pirate Combat.

11c. Raider Targeting

Pirate Raiders will head toward the closest player-owned system that has a meaningful mineral stockpile. They move one system per turn along a direct path, avoiding Black Holes.

The brethren avoid capitals. A home world is the hardest ground any empire holds, and the raid captains know it. Your capital is targeted only when the empire has nothing else worth taking within range — and even then the raid will usually turn aside and go after somebody else instead. They are wary of the ring around it too: a system one lane from its owner’s capital has to be a full hop closer than open country before it looks worth the trip. A world you have just taken from a rival is not your capital, and gets no such protection.

One exception: a raid a rival player has paid for. A contract can be aimed anywhere, capital included — the coin buys the target.

If the raider fleet arrives at its target and finds the minerals have been depleted (fewer than 5 remaining), it will redirect to the next closest eligible target. Systems that have already been plundered will eventually become valid targets again if no fresh targets remain.

11d. Plundering

If a Pirate Raider fleet has been at a system for at least one full turn (it cannot plunder on the turn it arrives) and there are no owner ships, Defense Satellites, or Starbases to oppose them, they will attempt to plunder the system instead of fighting.

The outcome of a plunder depends on your Planetary Defense (PD) relative to the size of the raider fleet:

If your PD equals or exceeds the raider fleet’s Destroyer count:

• Your defenders fight off the raiders — no minerals are stolen and the system does not enter unrest.
• Your PD still takes losses from the fighting (reduced by half).
• Production is disrupted for the turn due to the chaos of the raid.
• The raiders withdraw regardless.

If the raider fleet overpowers your PD:

• Minerals are stolen — the amount depends on how much the raider fleet’s strength exceeds your PD.
• For each mineral stolen, the raider fleet gains an additional Destroyer — hired mercenaries paid from the plunder. Smugglers, deserters, and desperate freelancers flock to any pirate captain who can pay, and stolen minerals are as good as currency on the black market. The fleet leaves larger than when it arrived.
• Your PD is reduced by half from the fighting.
• The system enters a state of unrest and loses all production for the turn.
• If more than 1 mineral was stolen, the system permanently loses 1 Victory Point of value (a Home System worth 10 drops to 9, and so on). A system can never fall below half its value, no matter how many times it is plundered. Elite Troops halve the theft first, so they can save the point. Your turn report tells you when a plunder costs VP, a red skull on the system card’s planet shows how many times it has been plundered, and the galaxy map marks the system with a pulsing skull on the turn it happens.
• The raider fleet then withdraws and heads home, re-plotting the shortest route each turn — the way home is not necessarily the way it came.

Blocking Raids with Fleet Defense

Stationing your own ships at a threatened system is the strongest defense against a raid. The rules are strict:

• Pirates cannot plunder on the turn they arrive — you always get at least one turn’s warning to react after a raider fleet drops in.
• Any surviving owner ships, Defense Satellites, or a Starbase at the system will block the plunder attempt entirely. The raiders sit overhead and try again the following turn.
• Only the system owner’s ships count. Friendly or allied fleets passing through do not defend a system against pirate plunder.
• Invaders can beat the raiders to it. If other empires are invading the same system and their fleets together are at least as strong as the pirates, the raiders stand down that turn and the invasion goes ahead instead (see Multiple Invaders).
• Ships that arrive on the same turn as the plunder attempt do not block it — defenders must already be on station from a prior turn. Move your fleet in before the raider arrives, not the same turn.
• If you keep defenders alive for two full turns of blockade, the raiders give up and head home with nothing stolen. Combat still happens each turn — you don’t have to wipe the raiders out, you just have to survive.

You will receive a detailed report when raiders attempt to plunder one of your systems, whether they succeed or are repelled.

No last-minute evacuations: Once a pirate raider fleet has arrived over a system and that system is its target, Load and Unload orders at that system are blocked until the raid resolves. You cannot lift minerals onto freighters to evacuate them ahead of a raid — the minerals on hand are what the raiders have come for, and the raiders get a shot at taking them.

11e. Pirate Combat

Pirates fight using standard combat rules with some important differences:

• Ship capture — pirate Destroyers only: Some of the ships destroyed by pirates are captured instead; they are added to the pirate fleet and can be used against you in the very next combat round. Defense Satellites and Starbases cannot be captured.
  Only pirate Destroyers carry boarding crews. Per ship type and per combat round, the pirates capture half of what you lost, scaled by the share of their hits that came from their Destroyers, rounded to the nearest ship (a half rounds up). A pirate fleet of nothing but Destroyers captures half, so even a lone ship of a type can be captured (3 Destroyers lost → 2 captured, 1 sunk; 1 Cruiser lost → captured). A fleet with no Destroyers captures nothing (everything it kills simply dies), and a mixed fleet captures in proportion: 6 Destroyers lost to a fleet whose Destroyers landed 10 of its 13 hits → 2 captured, 4 sunk. This applies to the Pirate Raiders exactly as to the pirates you meet at Dead Systems and asteroid fields. Pirate Cruisers, Missile Ships and Nova Ships are every bit as deadly — they just have no one aboard to sail a prize home. Count the Destroyers in a pirate stack before you judge how much a fight will cost you.
• Cargo plunder: When pirates destroy or capture your Freighters, they seize the minerals that were aboard, whichever of their ships did the shooting; none of it is lost to space. For each mineral seized, the pirate fleet recruits one additional Destroyer — mercenary crews bought with the stolen goods. Population and Starbase packages aboard are lost. Your battle report names the cargo the pirates seized.
• No invasion: Pirates do not invade or take ownership of systems. They raid for resources, not territory. Planetary Defense may be damaged but the system remains under your control.
• Asteroid immunity: Pirate ships are immune to asteroid field debris damage.
• Exposure penalty — Pirate Raiders far from the asteroid fields: a Pirate Raider fleet fighting 3 or more warp-lane hops from the nearest asteroid field fires its guns with a −1 die roll penalty (harder to score hits). At 0 to 2 hops there is no penalty. Supplies run short that far from the belts, and pirate crews hate being out in the open with no easy escape route: this close to civilized space, far from the asteroid belts they can vanish into, morale drops.
  • Ship fire only, every round. It applies to their ship fire in rounds 1 and 2 and to their ambush fire. Their flak against fighters is not affected.
  • Counting the hops. Hops are counted along the warp lanes as they stand that turn. A lane severed by the Precursor Stargate Virus is no route; a lane opened by the Precursor Wormhole Generator is one; a route through the black hole doesn’t count. If no asteroid field can be reached at all, the raiders are exposed. In a galaxy with no asteroid fields, nobody pays it.
  • Freighters can’t hit. A natural 10 normally always has a chance to hit (9c), and that still holds for every exposed pirate ship except a Freighter: a Freighter already needs a 10, so an exposed one needs an 11 and can’t hit at all, unless a die roll bonus such as the Outnumbered bonus (9g) brings it back to 10.
  • The pirates who stay put never pay it: the local pirate fleets (11a), the pirate fleets defending a Brother of the Black Flag’s systems (11i) and a Call in a Debt fleet.
  • You can see when a raid is exposed. Wherever you can see a Pirate Raider fleet in a system’s Ships Present list, its row carries a red −1 to hit badge while it stands 3 or more hops from the nearest asteroid field (or where no lane route reaches one). Hover it (tap it on a phone) for the reason: how far the raiders are from the nearest asteroid field, and that these pirate raiders fire their guns at a −1 die roll penalty while their flak is not affected. No badge means they don’t pay the Exposure penalty there.
  • In the battle replay it is its own red modifier chip with the distance, for example −1 Exposed: 5 hops from asteroid fields (Exposed: no asteroid field in reach when no lane route reaches one).

11f. Raider Growth

The brethren do not breed in their lairs. Every Destroyer that flies the Black Flag was bought with someone’s coin, dragged out of a smoking wreck, or sailed home with a hold full of plunder. There is no quiet, automatic build-up between turns — the pirate war chest grows only when the galaxy feeds it. Three streams do that feeding, listed in order of how much they actually move the needle:

• Tribute and bribes — the primary engine. This is by far the largest source of pirate growth, and the one most under the empires’ own control. Every mineral pressed into a pirate captain’s palm is poured straight back into shipyards, powder, and fresh crews. The brethren do not save; they spend. Each Pay Tribute payment, each Bribe to Raid fee, and every peace offering swells the next raid that launches — often onto a neighbor, sometimes back onto the empire that paid. The galaxy that pays the most pirates is the galaxy with the most pirates in the air. (See 11i. Pirate Diplomacy.)
• Returning raids after a plunder. When a raider fleet finishes a successful plunder and warps back to its asteroid lair, its surviving ships and stolen minerals are folded back into the pirate reserve. The cargo hires mercenary captains from the lawless fringes — smugglers running from debts, disgraced naval officers, opportunists who will fly for whoever pays — and the survivors re-fit for the next contract. Each mineral that makes it home buys roughly one fresh Destroyer crew. Catch a raid on its return leg and you remove both the ships and the loot from the brethren’s books for good.
• Captured ships in combat. Up to half of the ships destroyed by pirates in a fight are seized rather than sunk and added to the pirate fleet on the spot — but only their Destroyers take prizes, in proportion to their share of the pirates' hits, rounded to the nearest ship (see Pirate Combat). Defense Satellites and Starbases cannot be captured. This is a smaller stream than the other two in aggregate, but it can swing a single battle hard — a fleet that is barely strong enough to win can find itself losing as the brethren grow mid-engagement.

Two consequences fall out of these rules. First, raider fleets do not grow while sitting idle — if no one feeds them, they do not strengthen. Second, every raider you destroy before it returns home is a permanent loss to the brethren’s war chest, ships and loot both. Early-game raids are manageable threats; if the galaxy keeps paying, late-game raids can field substantial fleets that require coordinated defense.

11g. Defending Against Pirates

Effective pirate defense strategies include:

• Watch your frontier, not your capital. Raiders treat a capital as a last resort and shy away from the systems next to it, so your outlying colonies are where they will actually land — and an outlying colony is usually the one holding the biggest untouched mineral pile.
• Build a tripwire network. Station a Destroyer or Starbase in the systems one and two hops from your home world. Raiders move one hop per turn, so a sighting report from an outlying system gives you a turn or two of warning — enough time to recall your fleet, set it to Ambush, and make your home system a very unpleasant destination.
• Build up Planetary Defense. A PD force that equals or exceeds the raider fleet’s Destroyer count will completely block plundering and prevent unrest. Even partial PD reduces the amount stolen.
• Maintain garrison fleets. Even a small defensive force of ships or D-Sats will prevent plundering entirely, since raiders only plunder when no enemy ships, D-Sats, or Starbases are present.
• Intercept raiders in transit. If you spot a raider fleet moving through systems you control, you can position ships to engage them before they reach their target.
• Fight them far from the belts. Raiders fire at a −1 die roll penalty 3 or more warp-lane hops from the nearest asteroid field (the Exposure penalty). If you can choose where to meet a raid, meet it out there. You don’t have to count the hops yourself: an exposed raider fleet’s row in Ships Present shows a red −1 to hit badge, and its tooltip says how far it is from the nearest asteroid field.
• Destroy returning raiders. Raiders head home after a raid, re-plotting the shortest route each turn — they will not necessarily come back the way they went in, so watch every lane toward their origin. Engaging them on the return trip prevents their strength from being recycled into future raids.
• Don't leave loaded Freighters in a raider's path. A raiding fleet will break off and stay to fight if it finds 4 or more minerals sitting in one empire's holds at that system and it brings more combat ships than that empire does. Freighters do not count toward either side's combat strength — a convoy cannot bluff its way past a raid on hull numbers alone, so send a real escort or send the cargo the long way round.
  • They pick one victim, and they pick the weakest. Each empire at the system is judged on its own. Parking a strong fleet beside an ally's convoy does not shelter the convoy — the raiders walk past your guns and take the softer target. Everyone else present is left alone unless they set Attack themselves.
  • Out in open space there is no limit. A raid that stops for cargo reads the system again every turn and stays for as long as the cargo is there and it still has the guns. Moving the cargo out, or bringing enough warships to out-gun them, is what makes them move on — waiting them out does not.
  • Running does not make you safe. A fleet leaving under fire still takes the raid's opening volley, and Freighters can be captured in it.
  • Nobody mines during a battle. If shots are exchanged in an asteroid field, every Freighter there loses that turn's mining, including bystanders who never fired.
• Their own asteroid field works differently — and you get a turn's warning. A raid musters in an asteroid field and comes home to one, and at its own field two special rules apply.
  • They are visible there for one turn. A raid reaching its home field does not disappear on arrival: it sits there for one full turn before slipping into the belt. On the turn it arrives it does not fire and ordinary gunnery cannot touch it — but an Ambush waiting on that lane still catches it. After that it is an ordinary stack, so a fleet set to Attack the Pirate Raiders will engage it. This is the last chance to take those hulls off the board before their strength returns to the pirate pool.
  • You are told a turn in advance. When they arrive, your report says whether they mean to rob you, rob a named empire, or move on. Nothing is fired until the following turn, so there is time to move the cargo out, reinforce, or change stance.
  • One stop per visit. Whether or not they stop to fight there, the raiders move on at the end of that turn — home into the belt if they were returning, out on their run if they were still mustering. That is one stop as they set out and one as they come back, and no more; the uncapped rule above applies everywhere else.
• Bottle them up. A raid that stays put for four turns runs out of patience: the fleet breaks up and its strength returns to the pirate pool. Holding a raider in place is a win even if you never destroy it — your turn report will tell you when they give up. You have to keep something holding them, though: the moment the cargo that stopped them is gone and a warp lane is open, they pick their run back up and move on.
• Hurt them badly enough and they run. A raiding fleet that is cut down to fewer than 10 ships gives up on its target and heads back to the hideout it came from — captured Freighters count toward that ten. You do not have to destroy a raid to end it; you only have to make it too expensive to continue.
• Beating a raid buys you quiet. A system that has just dealt with a raid — looted, or repelled it at your Planetary Defenses, or destroyed the fleet outright — will not be chosen as a raid target again for five turns. Winning the fight buys real breathing room, not just a turn.

11h. Rewards for Fighting Pirates

Empires that fight valiantly against pirate forces earn tangible rewards. The galaxy remembers those who stand against lawlessness, and independent systems take notice when nearby empires show the courage to engage pirates in battle.

Reputation Boost: Your galactic reputation improves by one step each time your lifetime tally of destroyed pirate ships crosses a milestone — at 10, 25, 50, and 100 pirate ships destroyed across the whole game. Every pirate hull your forces kill counts toward the running total (it does not matter whether you wipe out a whole fleet or pick off ships one at a time, nor where the fighting happens). A single big battle can cross more than one milestone at once and improve your reputation several steps in one turn. Reputation from pirate-hunting can carry you all the way up to Revered (the floor for this bonus).

Diplomatic Relations Boost: If your fleet deals significant damage to pirate forces during a turn, nearby independent systems that are currently Neutral toward you will warm to your empire. Their diplomacy level improves by one step as word of your campaign against the pirates reaches their councils. Only independent systems within a couple of warp lane hops of your battle sites are affected — and only Highly Civilized and Neutral race worlds. Lawless races never warm to pirate-hunting: the brethren are kindred spirits, and gunning them down impresses no one on the lawless fringe. The boost is also capped at Friendly (level 8) — admiration alone never hands you the system; the final push to a join must come from ongoing diplomacy or a favor.

Defending a Host: If you fire on pirates inside an independent system's home space, the grateful host improves its relations with you by one step that turn — again, only if the host is a Highly Civilized or Neutral race world. Merely being shot at earns nothing; you must shoot back.

11i. Pirate Diplomacy

For all their bluster about answering to no one, the brethren of the Black Flag are merchants in the end. They have favored ports, captains they trust, and old debts they honor. An empire that approaches them with the right coin — and the right reputation — can buy a measure of peace, perhaps even a measure of cooperation. But every coin pressed into a pirate captain’s palm sails right back out as powder, sail-cloth, and crews. Tribute does not buy the brethren’s silence; it buys their patience, and pays for the next raid landing somewhere down the lane.

This section covers your standing with the pirates — how it is earned, what it grants, and what it costs.

First Contact

You begin the game with no relationship to the pirates and you will hear nothing from them until your ships have crossed paths with one of theirs. The first turn after any of these events:

• One of your ships ends a turn in the same system as a pirate fleet (a lone probe Destroyer doesn't count — it burns up before anyone trades names).
• A pirate fleet — raider or otherwise — ends a turn at one of your systems.

… a contact message arrives from the Black Flag, and a Pirate Diplomacy panel appears at the top of your diplomacy view. Until first contact the panel is hidden — you do not yet exist to them.

Diplomacy Tiers

Your standing with the pirates is measured in diplomacy points. Every empire begins at 0. Crossing certain thresholds promotes you to a named tier with its own protections and privileges:

Points come from two sources: tribute (one mineral paid = one point, banked permanently — two points through turn 20, see The Tribute Bargain below) and reputation (your standing with the independent races shifts how the pirates see you — see below).

Reputation Caps Your Standing With the Brethren

Pirates respect outlaws and brawlers. They do not trust saints. The cleaner you look to the independent races, the lower the ceiling the pirates will let you climb to:

Reputation also adjusts your point total directly. The more feared you are, the better the pirates like you — Menacing and Reviled reputations grant a standing bonus toward your pirate diplo total, and Honored and Revered reputations carry a penalty. Your banked tribute is never lost when reputation shifts; only the displayed tier and the reputation portion of your total move.

If your reputation rises high enough to drop the cap below your current tier, the higher tier’s privileges are revoked at end of turn. Lower your reputation back into the eligible band and the tier returns to whatever your points support. (See Section 12d. Reputation for the full reputation chart.)

Pay Pirate Tribute

The Pay Pirate Tribute button on the Pirate diplomacy card opens a modal where you choose how many minerals to send. Each mineral paid is +1 to your pirate diplo points, banked permanently — +2 while the Tribute Bargain runs.

• The Tribute Bargain. Through turn 20 the brethren count every mineral of tribute twice: 2 points of standing per mineral. From turn 21 on, a mineral buys 1 point. The bargain ends on the same turn for every empire, however late you meet the pirates — their first-contact message tells you how many bargain turns you have left, and every empire hears the bargain close in the turn 20 report. While it runs, the Pirate diplomacy card shows a green Tribute bargain ×2 line, and the “Send N more tribute” figure and the modal’s To next level are already counted in minerals at that rate. Only your standing is doubled: the brethren’s raid war chest still grows by the minerals you actually send, and an Independent favor that asks you to pay the pirates still counts the minerals you send, one for one.
• Source. Tribute can only be paid from your original home system — the world you started the game on, even if you have since moved your capital. If your original home is lost or held by another empire, you cannot pay tribute.
• Production reserve is protected. The modal’s Available figure already subtracts what is needed to keep your home system’s production running this turn. You cannot stall production to bribe the brethren.
• One payment per turn. Pay the amount you want to pay; you cannot split it across multiple orders.
• Effects apply at end of turn. Tribute paid this turn does not protect you from a raid landing this turn — it sets your tier going into next turn’s targeting decisions.
• Mid-flight grace. If word reaches a raid in transit that its target has paid the brethren, the captain will swing onto a new heading rather than honor a void contract.

Of the empires that have not paid the brethren at all, those who have given the least are first to feel the brethren’s hunger. And when every empire has bought peace, the brethren turn back to the independents until fresh marks emerge.

A saint is an easy mark. The brethren pick a Revered empire for their next raid twice as often as they otherwise would, as long as it holds a system worth the trip: one a raid can reach (within five lanes of an asteroid field) and plunder, with at least 10 minerals stockpiled. A spotless record wins friends among the civilized worlds; to a pirate it means a fat merchant fleet and a navy that hesitates. Paying up to Tolerated Patrons (Lvl 1, the most a Revered empire can reach) still takes you off their list entirely.

Existential Threat — When the Brethren Hunt the Frontrunner

Late in the game the brethren stop nibbling at the edges and pick a single mark: the empire out in front. Once one empire pulls far enough ahead — a commanding lead in Victory Points, or standing one conquest away from a Vanquish Your Enemies win, or three-quarters of the way to Galaxy Domination — the Council of Captains declares it an Existential Threat. Every black flag in the galaxy turns toward that empire: raids are aimed at it, raiders already in flight swing onto it, and while marked it can neither buy the brethren off with tribute nor hire a raid of its own.

• What starts it. A large Victory-Point lead over the rest of the galaxy, or being one home world short of a Vanquish win, or roughly three-quarters of the way to the Galaxy Domination system count. (An empire that has climbed to Brother of the Black Flag, or holds the Retired Pirate Empire card, is never marked.)
• What ends it — and what does NOT. The brethren do not relent just because your margin narrows. Once you are marked you stay marked until you are genuinely knocked out of first place — another empire has to actually pass you in Victory Points (a tie still counts as leading). Sliding from a commanding lead to a razor-thin one keeps the target squarely on your back; only losing the lead outright calls the hunt off.
• Buying out early. Two things still end it before you are dethroned: climbing to Brother of the Black Flag (Lvl 3) or taking the Retired Pirate Empire card — the brethren will not hunt their own. (Elimination ends it too, for obvious reasons.)
• One frontrunner at a time. The brethren fix on a single leader. If a different empire surges into a winning position while you are still marked, the brethren wait their turn — the hunt only shifts once the current mark loses the lead.

Bribe to Raid

At Brother of the Black Flag (Lvl 3) you unlock the Bribe to Raid button: pay the brethren a small fee and the next pirate raid is redirected onto an empire of your choosing.

• Cost. The fee is computed from the current raid size at roughly one mineral per five raider ships. The exact cost is shown in the modal at the moment you open it.
• What a bribe actually does. A bribed raid is not a new raid. It is the brethren’s next scheduled raid, pulled forward and aimed at your chosen target. The raid after that one still fires on its normal schedule, so the gap between this raid and the next regular raid is larger than usual. Bribing buys timing and target selection — not extra pirate activity.
• Source & reserve rules. Same as tribute — minerals come from your original home system, the production reserve is protected, and the button is disabled if your original home is lost.
• Targets. Empires you have met. The brethren refuse to turn blades on a Brother of the Black Flag, so any target empire currently at Lvl 3 is greyed out in the dropdown. The Retired Pirate Empire Advantage card grants the same protection — a former captain of the Black Flag is never on the contract list, regardless of their current pirate-diplo standing.
• Reputation gate. Empires at Honored or Revered reputation cannot Bribe to Raid at all — the Council of Captains refuses their coin. “Your hands are too clean for our work,” the messenger replies. “Find another knife — or dirty your own.”
• Early-game lock. Bribes are unavailable until the brethren’s first two raids of the game have launched — those raids are reserved for the independent races. Early in the game, the brethren stick to the independents; they will turn their attention to empires soon enough. (No empire can plausibly reach Lvl 3 before then anyway, but the affordance exists for the rare edge case.)
• Once paid, a bribe is final. If your target reaches Lvl 3 mid-flight, is eliminated mid-flight, or your own empire falls before the raid lands, the brethren still complete the contract. Coin has changed hands; the work gets done.

The strongest practical reward for climbing all the way to Lvl 3: no other empire can bribe a raid against you. The brethren do not raise blades against their own.

Attacking Pirates in Their Lairs

The brethren take it personally when their old anchorages are violated. Combat with pirate fleets in their home turf carries a permanent diplomacy cost:

• In an Asteroid Field: −2 pirate diplo points per combat event. Asteroid fields are pirate homes — the Drift — and the brethren never forget who came hunting.
• In a Dead System: −1 pirate diplo point per combat event.
• Anywhere else (regular space, your own systems, in transit): no penalty.
• Only your guns count. The penalty fires only if your own ships fire at a pirate fleet. If you fly all your ships straight through — moving fleets never fire — and the pirates shoot at you on the way past, you pay nothing. You never raised a weapon against them, so your standing holds.
• Ambush is exempt. An ambush leaves no witness reports. The brethren cannot pin the engagement on you, so no penalty fires.

The penalty applies to every player whose ships fired on the pirate, not just the empire that fired first. Two empires both shooting the same pirate fleet in an Asteroid Field both pay −2.

At Lvl 0 or Lvl 1 you do not need to give attack orders to incur this penalty: pirates in their lairs are hostile on sight, so a fleet you leave in the system on Conditional stance will fire back at them — and that return fire is your fire, so the penalty applies. The way to avoid it is to not fire at all: move your ships through rather than leaving them to trade blows. Friendlier tiers (Lvl 2+) are spared the trap entirely because the pirate fleet will not fire on them — combat only occurs if the player gave explicit attack orders, and the penalty applies for that choice.

Common Cause

If your fleet fires on another player’s fleet that the pirates are also firing on — and you do not trade fire with the pirates yourself — the brethren reward the courtesy with +1 pirate diplo point, capped at +1 per turn no matter how many qualifying combats you fought. The Council of Captains marks the shared target.

Practical access usually requires Lvl 2 standing or higher (otherwise pirates fire on your ships on sight and the “no exchange of fire with pirates” condition collapses). One useful exception: in a system where pirates are mid-raid, they fire only on the system owner. An opportunistic attacker showing up to fight that owner — not the pirate fleet — can earn the bonus even at Lvl 0 or Lvl 1.

Permanent Decay

Captains die. New captains demand fresh tribute. Every 10 turns, every empire’s pirate diplo points fall by 1 — a slow, permanent erosion that cannot be prevented. The brethren’s leadership is fractious; standing slips just by sitting still. Plan to top up your tribute periodically if you want to hold a tier long-term.

Reputation in a Pirate Fight

Your reputation follows your gunners into battle with the brethren. Both rules apply to every ship, Starbase and D-Sat shot in rounds 1 and 2, ambush fire included (fighters and flak are unaffected), and both show as a chip in the battle replay.

• Revered Restraint — −1 to hit for a Revered empire firing at pirate ships. Pirates love to fly false colors: a trader, a refugee ship, a convoy in distress, right up until they open fire or slip away. Gunners who have earned the galaxy’s trust hold their fire rather than risk a civilian hull, and the pirates know it.
• Iron Rule — −1 to hit for pirate ships firing at a Reviled empire. A Reviled empire’s fleets shoot first and ask questions later. The old pirate tricks — false colors, a feigned surrender, the trader that turns out to have teeth — get nowhere in space ruled with an iron fist.

In a game with a Corsair, both rules count Corsair ships as pirate ships. A Revered empire fires at Corsair ships at −1 to hit, and Corsair ships fire at a Reviled empire at −1 to hit — the Corsair is a pirate faction, and neither your gunners nor theirs can tell the difference in the moment. So a spotless record is a real handicap against a human raider, and a fearsome one is a shield. See Appendix G.14 — Rules That Change Whenever a Corsair Is in the Game for everything else that shifts, and G.8 Combat for the Corsair’s side of it.

The first time either rule changes one of the die rolls in your battles, that battle’s report explains it; your reputation tooltip lists it for as long as it applies. Keep in mind that hunting pirates improves your reputation (12d): a Reviled empire that racks up pirate kills climbs out of Reviled, and loses the Iron Rule with it.

Starbases at Pirate-Held Dead Systems

At Marked Friendly (Lvl 2) and above, you may place a Starbase at a Dead System garrisoned by a pirate fleet without first destroying that fleet. The brethren let a Friend set up shop. (Previously this perk required the Retired Pirate Empire Advantage card; it is now folded into the tier system, and Retired Pirate inherits the ability via their Lvl 2 floor — see Appendix A.)

Reading the Pirate Diplomacy Card

Your total pirate standing is shown in white when nothing is shifting it. Amber means a transient modifier (usually your reputation) is dragging your total down; green means it is lifting you up. Hover the modifier list under the progress bar for the per-source breakdown and a “what if?” preview of how a reputation shift would change the picture. A red vertical line on the progress bar marks a tier border you cannot currently cross because of your reputation cap.

If You Reach for the Crown

12. Independent Systems Diplomacy

Scattered across the galaxy are independent systems — star systems controlled by minor factions that are not aligned with any player empire. They have their own fleets, defenses, and attitudes. How they react to you depends on your reputation and a bit of luck.

The Thirteen Races

Every independent world belongs to one of thirteen races. A world's race sets its temperament at first contact, how your reputation reads to it (its class — Highly Civilized, Neutral, or Lawless), and the special bonus your empire enjoys while you hold a world of that race.

Race	Special Bonus
Humans Highly Civilized	Joins fully loyal — its fleet never goes rogue
Avians Highly Civilized	Prestige world — worth 4 VP instead of 2 (at that world)
Overlords Highly Civilized	Boosted mission rewards (+1 Missile Ship, +1 mineral, +1 Ion-9 crystal added to every mission reward you earn)
Flippers Highly Civilized	Builds Novas for 1 BP (at that world)
Cephaloids Highly Civilized	Telepathic network — full intel on every Cephaloid world and its neighbours
Arachnids Neutral	Raider intelligence — your Arachnid crews in pirate service reveal where raider fleets are and where they’re headed each turn
Florans Neutral	+1 ongoing diplomacy (and no random drops in diplomacy)
Skarn Neutral	Dead-system scavenging (+5 minerals)
Stonies Neutral	+1 mineral per turn (at that world)
Insectoids Lawless	+1 Ion-9 crystal per turn, free at your home, for each Insectoid world you hold (hold 3 → +3/turn)
Lizardmen Lawless	Local pirate ties — +3 pirate diplomacy the moment the world joins you peacefully, then +1/turn for each Lizardmen world you hold (take one by force and you get the ongoing +1/turn, but not the +3 — storming a world wins you no friends in the pirate dens)
Greys Lawless	Alien targeting — +1 to-hit die roll for all your ships, Starbases & D-Sats fighting there (at that world)
Synths Lawless	+1 fighter replacement per turn

12a. First Contact

When one of your fleets arrives at an independent system for the first time, the race there sizes you up and settles on a starting attitude. That result is permanent for that system and specific to your empire — every other player earns their own separate first contact.

First contact is deterministic and reputation-free — no die is rolled and your record does not matter. The race greets you at a fixed relations level set by how its people feel about the races you already hold (its temperament), not by luck:

• Everyone starts at Neutral (5).
• A race you already hold welcomes its own kind — +2, a Cordial (7) start.
• A race that likes yours opens +1, Warm (6); a wary one −1, Cool (4); a distrustful one −2, Disgruntled (3).
• Hold several races and the friendliest applicable attitude wins. No advantage card changes the greeting — the Appealing Race card helps only ongoing diplomacy rolls, after first contact.
• No race ever JOINS on first contact — the greeting is capped at Cordial (7). A world joins your empire only later, through ongoing diplomacy or a mission.

How each race greets a fresh Human empire — the opening baseline, before you absorb any other races:

Special cases override the greeting above:

• Reviled reputation is the one time your record touches first contact: Highly Civilized worlds refuse a Reviled empire and turn Hostile on sight, while Lawless and Neutral worlds still greet you normally. A fleet that outnumbers a garrison by more than 3:1 and carries at least 5 Freighters of ground troops intimidates any world (except Gaia) into surrendering — but a surrender born of fear leaves the system with Planetary Defense 1 and its population in unrest, and only a Lawless garrison will serve you afterward (Neutral and Highly Civilized crews turn pirate). See Reputation.
• Gaia (Class A) systems always open Neutral and can be taken by conquest only — unless you hold the Cultural Hegemony legacy, the one power that can court them. See the box below.

So a first contact settles into one of:

• A starting relations level (Disgruntled–Cordial) — the faction tolerates you and ongoing diplomacy begins from there.
• Angry (2) — a resentful start from same-race resentment (you already took one of their kind by force); diplomacy can still win it back.
• Hostile — war at once, its fleet attacking on sight (a Highly Civilized world meeting a Reviled empire).

Join and Rogue Join are earned in ongoing diplomacy, not on first contact. You never win a system the turn you arrive; you climb to a Join over time (Section 12b). When a world finally joins, its fleet may go rogue — the civilian government joins but the local brass break away as hostile warlords, so you gain the system and its population while the mutinous fleet keeps attacking your ships (its new Cruiser deserts to the pirates). Exception — next door to home: if the joining system is directly adjacent (1 hop) to your Home System, half its garrison stays loyal and joins you (the defectors are rounded down, so any odd ship stays loyal to you); only the other half defects. Systems further out defect in full.

Exception — loyal races: a joining world never goes rogue when it is a Human world (the Humans' special: their fleets always come over fully loyal, whichever empire absorbs them) or when its race matches the absorbing empire's own race (nobody defects when joining their own kind). This loyalty belongs to the joining world, not to your empire — absorbing Human worlds does not protect later joins of other races, which roll the normal rogue chance.

12b. Ongoing Diplomacy

When an independent system is Neutral toward you, diplomacy is ongoing. Each turn that you have at least one ship stationed there, a diplomacy roll occurs automatically.

The system tracks a hidden diplomacy level (2–8) that shifts each turn based on a d10 roll:

• Effective roll = d10 + your reputation modifier for that race's temperament (see Race Reputation Preferences), plus any advantage-card or same-race kinship bonus
• Friendly neighbors: an independent system one warp hop from your Home System gets +1 to the effective roll, and never rolls a natural 1 (any 1 is rerolled). Your founding neighbors already know you — relations there climb faster and can never crater on a single bad day. Every empire gets this at its own neighbors.
• A natural 10 always shifts +1 (toward friendship) — it rises through any penalty, but never more than +1.
• Effective roll of 9+ shifts +1 (improving relations).
• Effective roll of 1 or less shifts −1 (worsening relations).
• Everything else: no change that turn. Each Independent's Diplomacy card shows exactly which rolls will move relations, given your current modifiers.

The diplomacy level has named stages so you can track how things are going:

• If the level drops below 2, the faction goes Hostile and declares war.
• If the level rises above 8, the faction joins your empire and you gain control of the system on the following turn. However, there is a 33% chance that the system's fleet defects to the pirates instead of staying under your command (a "rogue join"). You still gain the system, but the fleet is lost — unless the system is directly adjacent to your Home System (half the fleet stays loyal), or the joining world is Human or of your own race (the whole fleet stays loyal — see the Rogue Join and Loyal Races notes in Section 12a above).

12c. Gaia Systems — Fiercely Independent

Class A systems — known as Gaia Systems — are the rarest and most powerful independent worlds in the galaxy. They boast the highest population limits, the strongest industry, the most defense satellites, and the fastest population growth of any system type. They are major strategic prizes. They are also the only independent systems that ordinary diplomacy cannot touch.

The rules that govern every other neutral independent system do not apply to Gaia Systems. Every aspect of the diplomatic process — first contact rolls, ongoing diplomacy shifts, aggression ripple, pirate-fighting relation bonuses — is either fixed or skipped entirely for these worlds. Understanding exactly what that means is critical before you build a strategy around one. A single Tier 4 legacy, Cultural Hegemony, is carved out of every rule in this section; everything below assumes you do not hold it.

First Contact: Always Neutral (one exception — a Reviled tyrant)

When your fleet arrives at a Gaia System for the first time, no d10 is rolled. The outcome is determined before the dice even hit the table: the system is always Neutral — no matter how good your reputation, or how bad, up to Menacing. The sole exception is a Reviled reputation, which is met with hostility even here (see below).

• An empire with Revered reputation does not get a chance for the Gaia System to Join.
• Reviled is the one exception: a Gaia System meets a Reviled tyrant with immediate hostility (and never bows to intimidation regardless). See Reputation.
• At any reputation up to Menacing, the Gaia System’s government acknowledges your presence and nothing more.

This also means that a Reviled empire cannot use overwhelming force to intimidate a Gaia System into submission. Even if your fleet outnumbers the Gaia garrison three to one, the defenders will not surrender. These civilizations are old, proud, and do not yield to tyrants.

Ongoing Diplomacy: Frozen in Place

After first contact, other neutral independent systems enter the ongoing diplomacy cycle — each turn you station ships there, a diplomacy roll shifts the relationship level up or down until the faction eventually joins or turns hostile. Gaia Systems are entirely exempt from this cycle.

• No diplomacy roll occurs at a Gaia System, ever.
• The relationship level never changes. It starts at Neutral and stays at Neutral.
• Stationing ships at a Gaia System has no diplomatic effect whatsoever.
• The relationship will not drift Warm, Cordial, or Friendly no matter how long your fleet sits there or how good your reputation is.
• The relationship will not drift Cool, Disgruntled, or Angry from bad luck rolls, because there are no rolls.

Immune to Aggression Ripple

When you attack a Neutral independent system, a solidarity ripple can spread to the neutral systems you’ve visited within one warp lane of it, dropping their diplomacy levels (see Section 12e). Gaia Systems are immune to this ripple. Even if you go on a rampage against every other independent system in the region, the Gaia System’s relationship with you does not change as a result.

Immune to Pirate-Fighting Bonuses

Destroying pirate fleets near a neutral system can boost that system’s diplomacy level by +1 as a reward for protecting the region (see Section 11 — Pirates). This bonus does not apply to Gaia Systems. Their relationship level is fixed and cannot be shifted upward by any diplomatic mechanism.

The Only Path to Control Is Conquest

Because ordinary diplomacy can never move a Gaia System’s relationship level, the system will never voluntarily join your empire. There is no diplomatic endgame here. Unless you hold the Cultural Hegemony legacy — see The One Exception below — the only way to take control of a Gaia System is to attack it, destroy its defenses, and invade.

1. Destroy the fleet. Gaia Systems have large independent garrisons and can support up to 20 Defense Satellites — the highest of any system type. You will need a substantial combat force to crack their defenses.
2. Eliminate the Defense Satellites. D-Sats fire on attacking ships each turn as long as they survive. Bring enough firepower to eliminate them quickly.
3. Invade. Once all defending ships are destroyed, land your ground troops. Gaia Systems have high populations, so expect a tough ground fight.
4. Pay the reputation cost. Attacking a Gaia System that is Neutral toward you costs you one reputation step, exactly as it would for attacking any other neutral independent system. Plan for this before committing — if your reputation is already low, a Gaia conquest can push you into territory where other systems become even harder to deal with.

The One Exception: Cultural Hegemony

There is a single path that can win a Gaia System without a shot: the Cultural Hegemony Tier 4 Political legacy (see Section 14c). It is the only force in the galaxy that moves a Gaia’s relations at all — no roll, no mission, no favor, and no other empire can shift them by so much as a single step. It works two ways:

• A rival-owned Gaia System bordering the hegemon’s territory accumulates Cultural Influence like any other populated world and can revolt and defect to the hegemon.
• An independent Gaia System bordering the hegemon’s territory is courted directly. It begins at Neutral and climbs +1 step per turn for as long as the border holds — reaching Join, and pledging itself to the hegemon, on the fourth turn. No fleet need ever visit.

Two things end the courtship for good. Attack that Gaia and it turns Hostile permanently — no amount of culture un-burns that bridge. And a hegemon who lets their reputation rot to Reviled is refused on sight by any Gaia they have not already met: a world waiting for a benevolent unifier does not yield to a tyrant, however large the fleet parked in orbit.

About Gaia Systems

Gaia systems are rare survivors of the great war. They have turned inward to study the arts and the universe and desire to be left alone. They have built up large enough defenses to keep Pirates away and until recently — smaller feudal empires such as your own. They judge all smaller empires and are waiting for a peaceful and benevolent unifier. They will join that hegemony freely with a shared goal of unifying the galaxy under one Imperium of peace and prosperity.

12d. Reputation

Your reputation is a permanent, empire-wide score that tracks how you have treated independent systems — and other decisions you make with regards to your empire, such as using Forced Labor in the build menu. It is shown in the top bar of your player portal. Everyone starts at Neutral.

First contact with an Independent is now reputation-free — how a race first greets you depends on its temperament and your shared history, not your record (see Race Reputation Preferences). Your reputation instead shapes ongoing diplomacy, and each race reads it differently — the three numbers below are the roll modifier for Highly Civilized · Neutral · Lawless worlds. The lone exception is Reviled; see the note beneath the table.

Disruptive events — the rot within. Once your reputation sinks to Dangerous or worse, the galaxy’s contempt begins to corrode your own empire. Each turn there is a chance — the “event chance” column above: 10% at Dangerous, 20% at Menacing, 40% at Reviled — of a disruptive event, such as palace corruption draining minerals at your home system, an officer leaking your fleet’s movements to a rival, or a desertion.

Admiral desertion. The ugliest of these is a desertion. A senior officer, disgusted with serving a despised regime, turns his coat at your next major battle — an admiral and the ships loyal to him break from the fleet just before the fighting begins and sail off to join the pirates. A small slice of the fleet is lost (roughly 5–10%, at least one ship and at most one Cruiser), and any cargo aboard deserting Freighters is spilled into space. Only fleets of 10 or more ships are large enough to hide a conspiracy — smaller fleets are safe.

The pirates see things upside down. Where the independent races read your reputation as a measure of trust, the brethren of the Black Flag read it as a measure of how easy it will be to do business with you. The worse you look to the independents, the better the pirates like you — Menacing empires earn a +5 standing bonus in pirate diplomacy and Reviled empires earn a cumulative +10 (another +5 on top of Menacing), and both may climb all the way to Brother of the Black Flag. Honored empires carry a −3 penalty and Revered empires carry a cumulative −6 (another −3 on top of Honored); both are capped at Tolerated Patrons (Lvl 1). Climbing high with the brethren requires a willingness to keep your hands dirty in front of the galaxy at large; you cannot have it both ways.

The extremes carry into battle too. To the brethren a Revered empire is an easy mark — rich, trusting and slow to shoot — so their raids pick it twice as often while it holds a system worth plundering, and its gunners, unwilling to risk a civilian hull when pirates so often fly false colors, fire at pirate ships at −1 to hit (Revered Restraint). A Reviled empire is the opposite: its fleets shoot first and ask questions later, and the old pirate tricks get nowhere in space ruled with an iron fist, so pirate ships fire at it at −1 to hit (Iron Rule). In a game with a Corsair, both rules count Corsair ships as pirate ships. See 11i. Pirate Diplomacy and Appendix G.14. The first turn you reach Revered a message lists what it brings, and the first turn you reach Reviled your report does the same; both include these rules.

What damages your reputation:

• Attacking an independent system that is Neutral toward you. Each attack damages your reputation by one step (e.g. Neutral → Questionable). Exception: attacking a Lawless-race independent system costs no reputation — the civilized worlds count a broken raider haven a service rendered. The attack still lands and the system still turns hostile; only the reputation penalty is waived.
• Surprise attack on a Neutral human player. Attacking another player's fleet or system before declaring war on them costs −1 reputation step per pair per turn. Ambush orders are exempt (see Section 13b).
• Breaking a Non-Aggression Pact damages your reputation by 1 and your credibility by 2. The galaxy notes which empires tear up their own pacts.
• Declaring war on an empire you have, or ever had, a Non-Aggression Pact with this game damages your reputation by 2 and your credibility by 3. This applies whether the pact is currently in force or ended cleanly earlier in the game — coming back to attack a former pact partner is a galaxy-level betrayal. (A clean declaration of war against an empire you never had a pact with costs 1 credibility and no reputation.)
• Using Forced Labor — the home-system build option that squeezes out +1 BP for an extra mineral (see Section 8a) — costs 1 step each turn you use it. (An empire already at the lowest tier, Reviled, can keep using it with no further drop — a small mercy for tyrants.)
• Certain missions given by Lawless independent systems can cause a drop in your reputation (e.g. sacrificing your own people).

What improves your reputation:

• An independent system joins your empire through diplomacy. When you keep a ship present and push a Neutral independent's diplomacy track to level 9, its council votes to join you. What that does to your reputation now depends on the joining race's class:
  Highly Civilized joins improve your reputation by one step (e.g. Questionable → Neutral). A Neutral-race join leaves your reputation unchanged — a welcome addition, but unremarkable to the wider galaxy. Absorbing a Lawless-race system — by any method — lowers your reputation by one step: the civilized galaxy recoils at the company you keep. In every case the system still joins normally. An initial reaction roll of Join never changes your reputation; only ongoing diplomacy counts.
  One step per turn, regardless of how many join: if two or three systems all vote to join on the same turn, your reputation still only moves one step that turn (up for a Highly Civilized join, down for a Lawless one). The extra joins are still great — you get the systems, fleets, and population — but you cannot chain them for multiple rep tiers in a single turn.
• Hunting pirates: Your reputation improves by one step each time your lifetime tally of destroyed pirate ships crosses a milestone — 10, 25, 50, and 100 pirate hulls across the whole game. The galaxy takes notice when an empire has the courage to take the fight to the pirate scourge. A single big battle can cross more than one milestone at once (see Pirates — Rewards for Fighting Pirates).
• Forming a Non-Aggression Pact with another human player improves your reputation by 1 and your credibility by 1. Both signatories receive the bonus when the pact takes effect at rollover. Treaty-signers are seen as builders, not aggressors.
• These sources do stack in the same turn. A pirate-kill milestone, an independent-system join, and a NAP signed on the same turn could move you up three reputation tiers at once. Only multiple independent-system joins in one turn are capped.

Race Reputation Preferences

The independent races don’t all read your reputation the same way. Every race has a temperament that decides which direction of reputation warms it fastest during ongoing diplomacy. This replaces the one-size-fits-all modifier in the table above: the clean, honorable record that delights a Highly Civilized race unsettles a Lawless one, and vice-versa. First contact is unaffected — it is reputation-free. A race’s preference is shown on its portrait tooltip on the system card, directly above its special ability.

Reputation Pref	Warms fastest when your reputation is…	Races
Peaceful Highly Civilized	A good record — the better your reputation (up to Revered), the faster relations climb. A bad record slows them.	Humans Cephaloids Avians Overlords Flippers
Balanced Neutral	A moderate record — steer clear of both extremes. The middle tiers climb fastest; only Revered or Reviled slows them.	Arachnids Florans Skarn Stonies
Aggressive Lawless	A fearsome record — the worse your reputation, the faster relations climb (short of Reviled, which closes diplomacy for everyone). A good record slows them.	Lizardmen Insectoids Greys Synths

Same-Race Resentment & Kinship

When you take over an independent system, you gain its race — and how you came to hold that race colors how the rest of its kind greet you:

• Kinship. Win a race over by diplomacy and their kin greet you as friends — a newly-met world of that race opens warmer (a Cordial start).
• Resentment. Conquer one system of a race by force and the other systems of that same race hear of it — a newly-met world of theirs starts at Angry.

Hold a race both ways — some by force, some by diplomacy — and the peaceful tie redeems you, so their kin greet you as friends rather than resent you.

12e. Consequences of Attacking Neutral Systems

If you attack an independent system that is currently Neutral toward you and score at least one hit, several things happen:

1. Your reputation is damaged by one step — unless the system's native race is Lawless, in which case there is no reputation cost (the galaxy counts a broken raider haven a service rendered). Everything below still happens either way.
2. That system's reaction flips to Hostile — they will fight you from now on.
3. Any ongoing diplomacy with that system is destroyed (diplomacy level reset to Hostile).
4. Solidarity rolls occur at nearby independent systems (see below).
5. Diplomacy levels at other independent systems you've visited that lie within one warp lane of the attacked system may drop by one step. Word of an attack travels one jump — independent systems two or more jumps away do not hear of it.

Who Takes Offense — Race Loyalties & Quest Givers

Not every independent system cares when word of your attack spreads. Whether a bystander drops its relations with you — or rolls solidarity against you — depends on its race, and on whether it sent you to war in the first place:

• Lawless races shrug at lawless behavior. A Lawless independent system (Lizardmen, Insectoids, Greys, Synths) doesn’t care that you attacked some other race’s system. No solidarity roll, no drop in relations — violence against strangers is simply how the galaxy works, as far as they’re concerned.
• Every race protects its own. Attack an independent system and every other system of that same race takes offense — Highly Civilized, Neutral, and Lawless alike. Kinship outweighs philosophy: even the most lawless world bristles when its own people burn.
• The quest giver never complains — the single exception to the kinship rule. If a system asked you to fight — a Blood Debt giver whose marked rival you strike, or a Warmonger’s Favor giver urging you to wage war — it will never turn on you for that attack, even when the victim is its own race. They gave the quest; the blood is on their hands too.

12f. Hostile Independent Systems

Once an independent system is Hostile toward you, there is no going back:

• Their fleet will attack your ships on sight every turn.
• Diplomacy is no longer possible with that system.
• Hostility is per-player — another player may still be Neutral or friendly with the same system.
• The only way to control a Hostile independent system is to conquer it by force (destroy all defenders, then invade).
• Hostile independent systems will command their nearby independent neighbors to set up ambushes along the warp lanes back from their territory. If you push a fleet through a hostile independent's space, expect to be ambushed when arriving at the next independent system over.

12g. Joining & Integration

When an independent system joins your empire (via a Join reaction roll or completing diplomacy), the transfer happens on the following turn:

• You gain full ownership of the system, its population, and its mineral stockpile.
• The system's former defense fleet joins your empire — you gain its ships. (Only a rogue join is different: there the garrison defects to the pirates instead.)
• If the join was earned through diplomacy, its effect on your reputation depends on the joining race's class: a Highly Civilized join improves your reputation by one step, a Neutral-race join leaves it unchanged, and absorbing a Lawless-race system lowers it by one step (by any method — the system still joins normally). Capped at one reputation step per turn from diplomatic joins — see Reputation.

12h. Independent System Missions (Favors)

Each independent system you meet offers a single ongoing favor — a small task voiced in its people's own character. There is nothing to accept or decline: the favor is always active, and every bit of progress you make raises that system's relations toward Joining your empire. Favors run until the system joins; you never lose one by ignoring it.

Favors come in two shapes:

• Ongoing favors pay a little relations each time you do what they ask — defend their skies, study a nearby nebula, avenge a pirate raid, deliver resources, and so on. Enough of them and the system joins on its own.
• Join quests are a single deed whose completion is the join — conquer the rival system they’ve marked (it counts the moment you own it, no matter who was holding it), build them a Carrier, and the like.

You can see a system's current favor on its card in the Diplomacy panel (the Indies filter), alongside its relations bar.

No two alike. When you are the first empire to meet an independent system, it never asks you for a favor you have already been asked this game while a different one is available — whether the earlier favor is still running or has ended. A favor repeats only as a last resort, once every favor that system could ask has already been asked of you. If a rival empire reached the system first, you are asked the very same favor it was, so the race between you is out in the open — even if you have been asked that favor before.

Holding station. The Gaia-world favors (such as Host a Delegation) ask you to keep a Cruiser at any Gaia (type-A) system, and they pay for every turn that Cruiser does not move. The turn it arrives never counts. Other ships arriving at or leaving the same system do not interrupt it: send reinforcements in, or pull a second Cruiser out, and the one that stayed still earns the turn.

13. Player Diplomacy & Communication

The other empires in the galaxy are real people. This chapter covers how you talk to them, make formal agreements with them, send them minerals — and how your conduct follows you from game to game.

13a. Player-to-Player Communication

The sections above cover diplomacy with independent systems. Diplomacy with other players is entirely up to you.

The Comms panel in the game UI lets you write short free-form messages (up to 160 characters) to empires you have met — proposals, threats, trade offers, or anything in your own words. Messages are delivered when the turn processes (limit one per recipient per turn), and you can edit or delete a message any time before it is delivered. Formal actions like Non-Aggression Pacts and war declarations are made on the Diplomacy panel (Section 13b), not by message.

For free-form, real-time conversation, W.E.B. can create a private Discord channel for your game where you can write your own messages, negotiate in your own words, and scheme to your heart’s content. See Appendix D — Discord Integration for details on how game channels work, who has access, and privacy policies.

13b. Player-to-Player Formal Diplomacy

Every pair of player empires has a formal diplomatic state, visible in the Diplomacy panel. The state changes at turn rollover, not instantly, so both sides have at least one turn's warning before a transition takes effect.

That panel is where every diplomatic act happens. It lists one card per empire you have met, filtered by the chips across the top (N.A.P., Neutral, At War, Indies), with your own reputation and credibility in its header. Each player's card carries your current state with them and the buttons that change it — Propose N.A.P., Declare War, End N.A.P. and Demand withdrawal, each greyed with the reason when a cooldown or a pact commitment blocks it — plus Send to write to them. An AI's card also shows how it feels about you, and the Indies filter swaps in the independent systems you have met, each with its relations bar and the favor it is currently asking of you.

Diplomatic States

Attack Order Effects

* Ambush fire never incurs penalties (and has no effect in the N.A.P. state).

Actions

Cooldowns

Two cooldowns prevent diplomatic whiplash:

• After peace is agreed — neither empire may declare war again for 5 turns. The Declare War button shows the remaining turns. You can still fire on a former enemy during this window, but doing so betrays the fresh truce and carries a stiff extra penalty — see Surprise Attacks below.
• After a Non-Aggression Pact ends — neither empire may propose a new pact for 5 turns. The Propose N.A.P. button shows the remaining turns.

Cooldowns are shown on the Diplomacy panel and enforced server-side — the buttons disable automatically when a cooldown is active.

Surprise Attacks — Attacks without a Declaration of War

Declaring war on another Empire takes effect at the end of the turn, after combat resolves. That means the turn you queue a war declaration, you are still Neutral during that turn's battles. If your fleets attack an enemy system on the same turn you declare, the galaxy sees it as a Surprise Attack:

• Every Surprise Attack in the Neutral state incurs a −1 reputation (Empire) and −1 credibility (Player) penalty — charged once per victim per turn.
• The Appealing Race card: if your target holds it, the reputation penalty (only) is increased by 1 — an additional −1 to your reputation level.
• Every Surprise Attack during the 5-turn cooldown of a Peace Treaty incurs a −2 reputation and −2 credibility penalty.
• Attacking Pirates incurs no reputation or credibility penalty. Attacking Independent systems incurs its own penalties (see Section 12e — Consequences of Attacking Neutral Systems).
• Exception — the right of expulsion: attacking a player who ignored your demand to leave your space, in your own systems, is not a Surprise Attack (see Demands).

Demands — Ordering a Fleet Out of Your Space

When another player’s ships stand in one of your systems, you can demand that they leave. Use Demand withdrawal on their card in the Diplomacy panel, or the DEMAND button on their fleet in your system’s card. A demand covers your whole space — every Star System and Dead System you own — and every one of their ships in it, so moving from one of your systems to another is not leaving. It works between any two players who are not at war, human or AI, and AI players send demands too (see AI players below).

Sending a demand. Either button opens a DEMAND window first: the demand itself in quotes, the turn they must answer by, what agreeing commits them to (the turn every ship must be out, and how long they must then stay out), what ignoring you lets you do, and what your N.A.P. with them changes, if you have one. Nothing is sent until you click Send Demand; Never Mind closes it. Once sent, the demand is a DEMAND line in the Diplomacy block at the top of your Orders panel and an OUTGOING DEMAND on their Diplomacy card, and the fleet’s button reads DEMANDED. To take it back, delete the Orders line or click Withdraw on the card — any time until you submit the turn. When the turn processes it reaches them and stands. Your answer to a demand made of you shows in the same Orders block as an ANSWER line; change it on their card.

The timetable, turn by turn. An example: Orion Republic owns Vega and Tabit, and your fleet stands at Vega, one jump from the edge of Orion’s space.

How the deadline is worked out. The deadline is the turn you answer plus 2 turns, or plus one turn per jump when your ships stand more than 2 jumps from the nearest system outside their space (a black hole never counts as a way out). The stack furthest from the edge decides. One or two jumps deep: answer on turn 11, out by the end of turn 13. Three jumps deep: out by the end of turn 14. “By the end of turn N” always means your turn-N orders are the last that count. The player who sent the demand sees the same numbers.

Your choices and what they cost.

Leaving, once you have agreed.

• Every ship must go. Partial compliance is not compliance: ships left behind in any of their systems break your word at the deadline.
• Never deeper, never behind. No fleet that can move may end a turn deeper in their space, or with more jumps still to go than turns left. A sideways step with time to spare is fine. The MOVE ORDER window turns amber before you send a move that would break your word, and the Diplomacy card turns amber on the turn a fleet must move to stay on pace.
• Ships that cannot move. Destroyers, Missile ships or Freighters with no Cruiser, Nova or Carrier to lead them wait for the deadline like the rest, then get up to 3 extra turns. If they still cannot leave, they are stranded: no promise is broken and you pay nothing, but they can be fired on without a war — and if you have a N.A.P. with that player, they may end it for free. The report names them, and their last turn, from the start.
• Going in to fetch them. You may send a Cruiser, Nova or Carrier into their space to lead stuck ships out — that is a rescue, not going deeper. The rescuer must end every turn one jump closer to the stuck ships; if it stops or turns aside, it is judged like any other fleet. Once it reaches them, the joined stack walks straight out, one jump a turn, with a deadline of its own if it needs one. Example: three Freighters are stuck two jumps inside Orion’s space. Your Cruiser enters on turn 12, reaches them on turn 13 and leads them out by the end of turn 15 — no promise broken. Your report tracks the rescue every turn, and the MOVE ORDER window does not warn about a step toward your stuck ships. A rescue still on its way when the extra turns run out leaves them stranded.
• When their space grows around you. If an Independent joins them, or they take a system, and that makes your way out longer while you are leaving, you get a new deadline — the longer road is not your fault. Moving deeper still breaks your word.

After you leave: the promise. Until the promise ends, moving into a system your map shows as theirs breaks your word, with the same costs as above; the MOVE ORDER window, the map arrow and the Orders line all turn amber to warn you. Once the promise has ended you may go back, and they would have to send a new demand.

The right of expulsion. After a demand is ignored, or a promise to leave is broken, the player who sent it may attack the other’s ships in their own systems without declaring war: it is not a Surprise Attack, it costs no reputation or credibility, and it does not start a war. Their ships may fire back without penalty too. It lasts while any of those ships remain and for 10 turns after the last one leaves, so stepping out and straight back in does not reset it. Your turn report says so every turn it applies, and the ATTACK row in the orders window shows it. Stances last one turn, so give the ATTACK order each turn you want to fire.

Every place that shows an attack says when this applies: the ATTACK button on their fleet reads “Right of expulsion … costs no reputation and does not start a war”, the ATTACK ORDER window marks the row, the Orders line carries a green RIGHT OF EXPULSION tag, and after the battle both reports say it was no surprise attack and no war, and why.

Pact partners. You may send a demand to a N.A.P. partner, but partners cannot fire on each other while the pact stands — not even under the right of expulsion. If they ignore your demand, agree and then break their word (stay past the deadline, move deeper, or come back too soon), or leave ships stranded in your space, you may end the pact for free: no reputation, no credibility, no 5-turn wait, no AI counts it against you as a broken pact, and the pact is wiped as if it had never been signed. An example — you have a N.A.P. with Orion and demand that its ship leave Rapture:

• Stranded ships free the pact too. If they agreed but their ships simply could not move (no Cruiser, Nova or Carrier to lead them) and were stranded, you may end the pact for free as well. Their owner pays nothing for it: stranded ships break no promise, unlike a Cruiser left behind.
• How long it stays free. As long as the right lasts: while any of their ships stay in your space, and for 10 turns after the last one leaves.
• Only in your own systems. An ATTACK on them anywhere else is a Surprise Attack as usual.
• As if it had never been signed. A pact ended this way is wiped from the record: either of you may offer a new one at once (no 5-turn wait), the cards no longer say a pact ended, and a later declaration of war costs only what a war on a player you never had a pact with costs. Both reports say so.

AI players.

• They answer your demands. An AI that is outgunned in your space agrees, pulls out and keeps its word; one that is stronger there ignores you. So does one whose mood toward you is Cool or worse, however outgunned — unless its ships there cannot fight at all. One that is Cordial or better toward you agrees whatever the odds.
• They send demands. When your ships stand in a system an AI owns, it sends you the same demand the first turn it sees them, with the same buttons, timetable and costs. If it sends it on turn 10, you see it in turn 10’s report and answer on turn 11, as above.
• If you ignore an AI’s demand and stay. From turn 12 it may fire on your ships in its systems without declaring war, if its fleet there is at least half as strong again as yours. It goes to war over your presence only once its mood allows (Angry or worse) and its ships there at least match yours, and not before turn 13 — two turns after the demand reached you — or turn 12 if it is Hostile toward you. The War watch line on its card shows the turn.
• It fetches its own stuck ships. When an AI agrees to leave your space and some of its ships there cannot move, it sends a spare Cruiser in to lead them out — one jump a turn, as the rescue rule above allows — if one is close enough to arrive in time. A lone Destroyer it leaves to its fate.
• Its Dead Systems count. An AI’s demand covers its Dead Systems as well as its Star Systems, and it enforces it in either.
• Its border warning is not a demand. When an AI stops expanding it sends every empire it has met one message warning them off its borders, ending “Our space:” and the systems it owns. It goes out wherever your ships are; it starts no clock and gives it no right to fire. Only a demand, with its buttons and timetable, does that.
• Its mood remembers. Leaving as promised: “You honoured our request”. Ignoring it, or breaking your word, costs you its mood as well as your reputation.
• An AI you have a N.A.P. with sends you no demand. A system next to an AI’s home that it does not own still gets a warning in Comms, not a demand.
• AI players make demands of each other too, by the same rules, so a fleet of one AI standing in another’s space is asked to leave before it is fought over.

Limits. No demands between empires at war — attack instead; a declaration of war by either side ends a demand. One open demand toward each empire at a time, and 3 turns after one ends before the next. You can withdraw a demand only on the turn you send it, before it reaches them.

AI Relations — How an AI Player Feels About You

Every AI player keeps a relations score toward each player it has met, shown as a mood on its card in the Diplomacy panel: Relations, a chip such as Warm +12, with a small arrow for the change since last turn and the AI’s Personality beside it. Relations are not your reputation: your reputation is how the whole galaxy sees you; relations are how one AI player feels about you.

• Why. Hover the chip to see the reasons, each with its value; they add up to the score. Some describe the situation and last while it holds — a shared border, a pact in force, your reputation, your lead on the Victory panel. Others remember what you did — your fleet standing in its systems, a broken pact, a demand you ignored, a gift of minerals — and fade a little every turn once it stops.
• The RELATIONS window. Click (or tap) the chip for every reason, a chart of the mood over the last 40 turns — hover a turn to see what moved it — and how this AI feels about the other empires you have met.
• Bottom and top. The score stops at −40 and +40: once there, nothing more counts that way, so it starts to recover the turn the cause ends. At war it is held at Hostile until the war is over, then climbs back step by step.
• Personality. Every AI player has one: Sentinel, Statesman, Pragmatist or Marauder (see Personalities below). An aggressive personality starts lower and takes bad news harder; a peaceful one the reverse. Hover Personality on its card for all four at a glance, with this AI’s marked.
• Looking to expand. An AI that is out of room to grow picks one player to expand toward, and its relations with that player sour a little every turn. A war does not stop it — unless enemy ships are massed at its border: more than 5 within a jump of its systems, or more than its own in one of its systems. It never picks a player it is already at war with. Its card says Looking to expand but never says toward whom — if it is you, your list of reasons says so.
• Your turn report tells you, on its Diplomacy card, whenever an AI’s mood toward you moves to a new mood, and names the biggest change that turn. The AIs decide this while you are already reading your report, so the line can appear a few seconds late (reload the page to see it), and it is repeated on your next turn’s report so you never miss it.
• Mood dots. A coloured dot beside an AI’s name in Comms and on the Victory panel shows its mood toward you; hover it for the word.

What moves it. The reasons below are for an even-tempered AI. A Marauder counts every minus ×1.25 and every plus ×0.75; a Sentinel the reverse (×0.75 and ×1.25). The Why list shows each reason in whole points that add up to the score.

Most memories fade 1 point a turn; a broken demand, a broken pact with it and a system you took fade at half that speed. A situation reason counts once however long it lasts; only the reasons marked “a turn” — and an AI looking to expand toward you — keep adding up while they go on. So a mood that holds steady from turn to turn is not drifting toward war.

Personalities. How each one plays, and how it scores you. An AI with a custom mix of traits shows the nearest of these four.

What the mood decides. An AI player acts on how it feels about you. Firing on an AI is always war at once, whatever its mood; otherwise:

• The leader near the end. In the last 15 turns, if you lead the Victory panel, even an AI that likes you may join a coalition or an endgame strike against you.
• Making peace. During a war its mood stays Hostile. It makes peace only once the grievances under the war — a broken pact, your fleet in its space — have faded back to Disgruntled or better, so a war over a broken pact lasts longer than a border scrap.
• A war that has served its purpose ends sooner. Every AI at war has an aim: a system it wants, room to grow, a choke point, your home. Once it holds what it came for, We have what we came for joins its reasons (+12, fading 1 a turn) and it is readier to make peace. A war that drags on with heavy losses and no gains wears it down the same way. While its campaign is still taking ground it holds out, and an AI fighting the leader in the last 15 turns is slow to let go.
• Survival comes first. An AI that has lost half the fleet it started the war with, whose home is threatened, or that is fighting on a second front makes peace whatever its grudge.
• War watch. When an AI's mood toward you is one step from war territory (Cool or worse), or it has demanded you leave a system next to its home, its card shows an amber War watch line and its Relations window a War watch section: how many turns at this rate until the next mood, what that mood allows, and the turn from which staying in a demanded system means war.
• What a friendly AI does for you. At Cordial or better it offers you a Non-Aggression Pact if you have none (again a few turns after you turn one down), and it agrees when you demand it leave your space, however strong its fleet there. At Ecstatic it warns you in Comms when another empire gathers a war fleet one jump from your border.
• It tells you its aim. An AI at war with you says in Comms what it is after — the system is named once, when the war begins or its aim changes — and tells you again, without naming it, when it has what it came for or when the war is no longer worth it. Defend that system to wear it down, or give it up for peace.

13c. Sending Minerals to Other Players

You can gift minerals to any met human-player empire directly from the Diplomacy panel. Each empire's card has a Send button; click it, enter an amount, and confirm. The transfer is queued as an order and resolves at turn rollover — you can cancel it any time before then.

How it works

• Minerals are drawn from your capital. If you lose your capital before rollover, the transfer is cancelled and nothing is sent.
• The recipient receives the minerals at their capital at rollover. If they lose their capital before then, the transfer is cancelled and you keep your minerals.
• Transfers are abstract — no freighter, fleet, or warp-lane route is required. Treat it as a diplomatic bank wire, not a physical shipment.
• Your maximum send is your capital's minerals on hand minus what your capital needs to feed its own production this turn. Minerals reserved for your own factories can never be gifted away.
• If you queue multiple transfers to different empires in the same turn, they all draw from the same pool — the Send form shows what's left after other pending sends.

Restrictions

• You cannot send minerals to an empire you are at war with. If war is declared between you and the recipient before rollover, the transfer is cancelled.
• You can only send to empires you have met.
• One pending transfer per recipient per turn — cancel the existing order first if you want to change the amount.
• If your capital has fewer minerals on hand at rollover than the amount queued (e.g. you spent them on production), the transfer is cancelled and nothing is sent.

Both sender and receiver see an event-log line after a completed (or cancelled) transfer. No mid-turn preview is shown to the recipient — they only learn of it when it arrives.

13d. Lifetime Credibility — Your Reputation Across All Games

Reputation (Section 12d) tracks how you have behaved in this game. Lifetime Credibility is a separate score that tracks how you have treated other human players across every game you have ever played. Other players see your tier next to your empire name in the Diplomacy and Comms panels — so if you build a reputation as a treaty-honorer or a serial backstabber, that reputation follows you from game to game.

Lifetime Credibility is only affected by your dealings with other human players. Independent and Pirate interactions do not change it. Practice / solo games do not change it. Co-op alien invader games do not change it. Only ranked, multiplayer human-vs-human actions matter.

The Eight Tiers

Everyone starts at Pragmatic (0 points) — the neutral middle. Your points can climb up or fall down without limit. Long histories of good behavior build a cushion that absorbs occasional bad acts; long histories of betrayal take a long, slow climb to repair.

Color key: each tier has its own color in-game. Broadly: greens for the trusted tiers (Loyal Friend, Honorable, Dependable, and the Pragmatic default) · yellow for Opportunist (one step below neutral) · orange/red for the bottom tiers (Schemer, Treacherous, Diabolical) — so you can recognize a player's standing at a glance.

What earns you Credibility points

• +1 — Forming a Non-Aggression Pact with another human player (both signatories earn the point when the pact takes effect at rollover).
• +1 — Finishing a game (natural game-end only) without ever declaring war on another human player.
• +1 — Finishing a game (natural game-end only) without ever firing on another human player without first declaring war. Ambush orders are exempt — they do not disqualify you from this bonus.
• +1 — Finishing a game (natural game-end only) without ever breaking a Non-Aggression Pact with another human player.

All three end-of-game bonuses count human dealings only. Declaring war on an AI empire, firing on one undeclared, or tearing up a pact with one costs you reputation in that game exactly as it would against a human — but it leaves these bonuses intact, because Credibility is a score about how you treat people.

A perfect pacifist who never declares war, never breaks a pact, and never fires without a declaration earns the full +3 end-of-game bonus in addition to any +1's they earned along the way for signing pacts.

What costs you Credibility points

• −1 — Declaring war on a player you never had a Non-Aggression Pact with this game. A clean, telegraphed declaration costs a single point.
• −1 — Firing on a human player's fleet or system without first declaring war (per pair, per turn). Ambush-stance fire is exempt (see Section 13b).
• −2 — Unilaterally breaking a Non-Aggression Pact (End N.A.P. with no war declaration).
• −3 — Declaring war on a player you have, or ever had, a Non-Aggression Pact with this game. The galaxy remembers who came back to attack a former pact partner. A pact you ended for free because they ignored your demand to leave your space, broke their word, or left ships stranded there does not count — it is as if it had never been signed (see Demands — Pact partners).

War declarations are always either −3 (had a prior pact) or −1 (never had one) — never both. Breaking a pact and declaring war are separate actions: if you End N.A.P. one turn and Declare War on a later turn, you pay both costs (−2 then −3). Declaring war while still in a pact pays only the −3.

Where you can see it

• Your own tier: visible on your Portal Profile page, in your Diplomacy panel header right below your in-game reputation, and on hover over your own empire name anywhere in-game. The hover shows both your tier name and your exact point total.
• Other players' tiers: visible only in-game, as a chip next to their empire name in the Diplomacy panel and the Comms message headers. Hovering the chip shows their tier name and exact point total.
• AI-controlled empires (whether always-AI or human-then-AI-takeover) show [AI] instead of a tier — the rating system doesn't apply while AI is in control.

AI takeover details

If your empire goes inactive long enough that the AI takes over, the trust system stops counting individual actions for or against you from that point forward. Any Credibility points you earned or lost while you were still in control — signing pacts, breaking pacts, declarations of war, firing without warning — are kept in your lifetime ledger. The AI's later moves do not add or subtract anything.

However, the three end-of-game peaceful bonuses (+1 each) require you to finish the game yourself. If your empire is taken over by the AI at any point, you forfeit all three bonuses for that game, even if no warlike action ever occurred during your tenure. Finishing what you started is part of the reward.

14. Missions

Missions are short-term objectives handed to your empire by one of four galactic factions. Completing them earns you ships, minerals, and Victory Points — and at the highest tier, permanent empire-wide bonuses that can swing the entire game.

Every game deals you up to 20 missions across four tiers:

Maximum VP from mission completions is 15 (5 + 10 from Tiers 2–3). Tier 4 awards no completion VP — the permanent reward is the payoff — though one Legacy reward (Dead System Network) goes on to generate ongoing Victory Points every turn (see Section 14c).

14a. Faction Types

Every mission is sponsored by one of four faction types. The type is shown by a colored dot on the mission card and dictates the flavor of the mission, the named faction sending it, and (at Tier 4) which permanent reward you can claim.

Each faction draws its named sponsor from a pool of in-game factions (e.g. the Iron Talon Marshals for Military, the Helion Conclave for Science). You see the faction name in flavor text; the colored dot tells you the underlying type.

14b. The 28 Missions

* Ongoing Victory Points, recalculated every turn for as long as you hold the systems — see Section 14c.

Reward abbreviations: CR Cruiser, DD Destroyer, FR Freighter, N Nova, Mi Missile, Min Minerals, Ion-9 Ion-9 crystals.

14c. Tier 4 — Legacy Missions (Exclusive Race)

Tier 4 is fundamentally different from the lower tiers. It is a race — the first empire to complete a Tier 4 mission of a given faction type claims that type’s reward, and no other empire can ever claim it for the rest of the game.

• Exactly 5 missions are dealt — one per faction type. Every player sees the same 5.
• The first Tier 4 mission you complete triggers that type’s reward. Your other 4 Tier 4 missions immediately close (status: “You have already claimed a Legacy.”).
• For every other player, the Tier 4 mission of that same type is locked out forever (status: “Another Empire completed this.”).
• In an 8-player game, at most 5 players can ever earn a Tier 4 reward.
• If multiple players complete different Tier 4 types on the same turn, all of them claim their respective rewards.
• If two or more players complete the same Tier 4 type on the same turn, only one can claim it — decided by tie-break, not by luck of processing order: Conqueror’s Crown goes to the player with the most enemy-player ship kills (then, if still tied, the most Victory Points); the other four types go to the player with the most Victory Points. A dead-even tie on those values is broken at random. The losing contenders are locked out of that type for the rest of the game, the same as any other empire.

Rejecting a Legacy (Opting Out)

Every Tier 4 mission card carries a small Reject button in its title row. Rejecting a Legacy permanently takes you out of that race: after a confirmation prompt, the mission is disabled for your empire for the rest of the game and can never complete — even if you later meet its condition. Since you can only ever claim one Legacy and the first one you complete claims it automatically, reject a Legacy you don’t want so it cannot fire first and lock you out of the one you are actually chasing. Rejecting is irreversible, and it does not slow the other empires’ race for that type.

The Five Legacy Rewards

Conqueror’s Crown (Military) — Permanent. Every ship in your fleet, present and future, fires with +1 accuracy — excluding fighters, Starbases, and D-Sats, whose crews are not part of your battle fleet. Your battle-hardened crews have forged elite officers in the fires of conquest, and morale across your armada has never been higher. This stacks with all other to-hit modifiers (advantage cards, ship type bonuses, etc.). A natural roll of 1 on the d10 still always misses, regardless of stacked bonuses.

Cultural Hegemony (Political) — Permanent. Your civilization becomes a gravitational force. Each turn, every populated rival system adjacent to any system you own (Starbase-claimed Dead Systems count as yours) gains one level of Cultural Influence. Influence adds directly to that system’s unrest pressure — each level is +10% unrest chance per turn — and when an influenced system tips into unrest it does not merely riot: it revolts, declaring independence for one turn and then joining your empire, bringing its Starbases, Fighter Bases, and Defense Satellites with it (mobile ships stay loyal to their old owner; the revolt costs the system 20% of its population and resets Planetary Defense to 1). Rivals can fight the pull by garrisoning more Planetary Defense — but influence keeps building every turn the border stands, so given time, the flip is inevitable. Their own system cards warn them with REBELLION RISK. Influence resets to 0 whenever a system changes hands and decays by 1 per turn if your border retreats.

Exceptions: Home Systems never rebel; Appealing Race empires are fully immune; and Reviled empires never flip — fear and elite stormtroopers hold their worlds — though every other effect still lands in full: influence keeps building, the unrest pressure applies, and the intel keeps flowing to the hegemon (and if their reputation ever climbs out of Reviled, the stored pressure goes live one turn later). Independent Systems on your border are courted instead: contact is established automatically the moment they touch your territory, and their relations climb a guaranteed +1 level per turn on top of normal diplomacy. This is the only power in the game that moves a Gaia System — a bordering independent Gaia opens at Neutral and pledges to you four turns later (see Section 12c), provided you have never attacked it and your reputation is not Reviled. Finally, every system with even 1 level of your influence reports live intel to you each turn, exactly like a planted spy.

Industrial Supremacy (Trade) — one delivery, then a lasting edge. 20 minerals and 20 Ion-9 crystals are delivered to your Home System, and your engineers retool the empire: every Quality A, B or C system you own gains +1 industry on the spot, and so does every Quality A, B or C system you gain for the rest of the game, by any means — conquest, a peaceful join, a Starbase claim — the moment it becomes yours. Each system can receive this bonus only once per game: losing a world and taking it back grants nothing new, and an enemy who takes it from you keeps the factories. Dead Systems and Quality D/E worlds are never modernized. The new industry is normal — it still needs population and minerals to produce.

Dead System Network (Science) — three rewards. By restarting and networking the computers on all of our Dead Systems at once, we were able to unlock an ancient technology.

1. One-time galaxy chart. The ancient network charts the full galactic map for you — every star system and warp lane you had not yet discovered becomes visible, with each newly charted system card showing the galaxy as it was recorded at Turn 1 (marked "Last Seen: Turn 1"). This chart is an archive, not a live feed: current defenses and fleet compositions remain hidden — charted systems show "Turn 1 galaxy chart — no ship data" in the fleet section, the same pattern used by Ancient Archives — and any system you already have fresher intel on (visited, probed, spied, or otherwise known in detail) keeps that better information untouched.

2. One additional Empire Advantage card — permanent. The reawakened machines hold a working blueprint of a lost art: you pick any one additional Empire Advantage card and keep it alongside your own for the rest of the game. The choice is yours, from every card no empire in this game already holds — yours included, and whether or not you have met the holder (fighter-only cards appear only in Play-with-Carriers games; if more than 15 cards qualify, the least-chosen ones are left out). The Legacy Achieved screen is the chooser: on a desktop or tablet the eligible cards are laid out in a grid (hover to enlarge, click to choose), on a phone as a list with each card's bonus text; press SELECT to lock it in. The game never waits for you — turns keep processing — but the screen returns every time you open the game until you have chosen, and your turn report reminds you. Afterwards the Advantage Cards panel shows both cards (the new one on top, a dropdown to switch), every other player sees your second card once they have met you, and a card with a one-time power (Call in a Debt) is fresh in your hand even if your first card's power is spent. A card with a start-of-game effect (Retired Pirate's reputation, Ancient Archives' chart) applies the moment you pick it.

3. Keepers of the dead — permanent. Every Dead System you hold with a Starbase is worth +1 Victory Point, recalculated every turn for as long as you hold it. These points are counted in the Missions line of your Victory Point total.

Pirate Influencer (Pirate) — Permanent. The villain’s path. To claim it you must hold all four of these at once, tracked live on the mission card as a four-box checklist: a Reviled reputation, pirate diplomacy Level 3 (Brothers of the Black Flag), at least 1 ship in any Asteroid Field, and be at war with the 1st place empire (by Victory Points — a tie for 1st counts, and the box tracks whoever is 1st right now: if your enemy slips to 2nd, the box unchecks until they — or a new leader you are at war with — hold 1st again). Note the deliberate tension: Reviled makes your own worlds immune to a Cultural Hegemon’s flips but is required here, and pirate Level 3 is only reachable at Menacing or worse — this legacy belongs to committed villains only.

The reward: a permanent pirate war fleet (5 Cruisers, 25 Destroyers, 20 Missile Ships, 5 Nova Ships) assembles at your Asteroid Field under the Brethren’s own black flag. Your turn report tells you to pick a destination — the mission card opens a picker of every system you know. The fleet sails there by the shortest route (never through a Black Hole, one jump per turn) and once it arrives it never leaves, attacking every fleet that anchors there each turn — sparing only empires the pirates already refuse to attack (pirate diplomacy Level 3 or the Retired Pirate card). Three warnings for the wise villain: (1) the Brethren will not choose for you — until you name a destination the fleet simply rides at anchor, turn after turn, doing nothing; (2) you may change their course on any turn you have not yet submitted, right up until they arrive — but the moment they reach the system in your picker they take permanent station and never move again; and (3) the fleet spares the Brethren’s friends, not yours — if your own pirate standing ever slips below Level 3, it will attack you too.

Reputation and Cultural Hegemony

Completing Cultural Hegemony is not gated by reputation — the requirement is a flat 1 Quality A + 1 additional A-or-B system (plus the races) at every reputation tier. Reputation matters on the defensive side instead: a Reviled empire’s systems never revolt to a hegemon (fear and elite stormtroopers see to that), though the unrest pressure from Cultural Influence still applies in full. See Section 12d — Reputation.

Galaxy-Wide Announcements

When a Tier 4 mission is completed, every other player in the game receives a turn report entry naming the empire and the legacy they have claimed. Once the announcement fires, that path is closed for everyone else.

15. Carriers & Fighters

Carriers add a whole pre-combat fighter phase on top of the normal two rounds of fleet fire. You unlock them partway through the game by placing a Starbase on a Dead System, after which any system can build them.

Carriers (CV)

Fighters — CAP and Strike

Deep dive: every fighter-phase die roll and every modifier that changes it — with worked examples — lives in the Carriers & Fighters guide. This chapter is the summary; that page is the full chart set.

Fighters are not built or moved individually — they live inside a Carrier's hangar (or a fighter-capable base) and launch automatically when battle is joined. Each fighter has 1 HP. When fighters launch, they split into two roles:

• CAP (Combat Air Patrol) — a defensive screen. CAP launches whenever your side is in the fight and the launcher is staying put (the same two rules as Strike — a battle raging nearby that doesn't involve you keeps your fighters in the hangar, and so does a move order). Once up, CAP intercepts incoming enemy fighters and then stays on station to absorb hits for your fleet in both Round 1 and Round 2 (CAP fighters soak damage but do not fire the main guns).
• Strike — offensive fighters that fly out and attack one chosen enemy ship type. Strike fighters only launch when your side is actually in combat (you are attacking, or being attacked) — simply naming a strike target does not start a fight.
• A move order grounds the wing. Being in the fight is necessary but not sufficient: a Carrier ordered to move out this turn launches nothing — see the box below.
• Close air support — during an invasion, the fighters aboard your invading Carriers give your Freighters a to-hit bonus against Planetary Defense (Carriers themselves never land troops). See Invasion & Conquest.

A Carrier's default split is 6 CAP / 6 Strike. Click a Carrier in the Ships Present panel to change its split or set a strike target. Fighter-capable Starbases and Fighter Bases default to all CAP (5/0).

Strike target “Auto” picks the first enemy ship type present, in this order: Carriers → Missile ships → Nova ships → Starbase → Freighters → Cruisers → Destroyers → D-Sats. Groups of fewer than 3 ships are skipped (a lone Carrier or Starbase still counts); if nothing qualifies, the walk repeats with no minimum. If the chosen group is wiped out by another wave mid-round, the leftover fighters fall through to the next type. Pick a specific empire or ship type in the Carrier panel to override.

A Carrier under a move order launches no fighters — not even to defend itself. If you give a Carrier a move order this turn, that Carrier launches zero CAP and zero Strike, and it stays that way even if it is attacked while trying to leave. Withdrawal fire, an ambush sprung on the way out, a hostile fleet that opens up as you go — none of it wakes the hangar up. There is no "defensive scramble" exception.

Why: a ship ordered to move out fires in no combat round, and the fighter phase happens inside Round 1 — before your Carrier leaves. A moving Carrier has already stood its wing down. This is also true when the move fails: if the move is canceled by combat (your last Cruiser dies, or the warp lane collapses) the Carrier stays in system and fights on in Round 2, but its fighters are still in the hangar — the fighter phase is over by then and does not re-run.

• It is per Carrier, not per fleet. Only the Carriers actually named in the move order are grounded. A second Carrier sitting the turn out at the same system launches normally and its CAP screens the whole fleet — including the one that's leaving.
• Starbases and Fighter Bases never move, so they are never grounded by this rule. If you own the system and you're in the fight, they scramble.
• The play: if you expect to be shot at on the way out, either leave the Carrier in place for a turn and let its CAP work, or move it with a friend whose wing can cover the withdrawal.

Fighter roll	Number of dice	Hits on
CAP intercept (dogfight)	The smaller of CAP or Strike	8+ (30%)
Strike return fire (dogfight)	The smaller of Strike or CAP	9+ (20%)
Strike on ships	One per surviving Strike fighter	6+ (50%)

The dogfight — one die per duel

When a Strike wave meets CAP, both sides fire at the same instant and both roll the same number of dice: one die per duel, where the number of duels is whichever is smaller, the CAP or the Strike. Every Strike fighter has exactly one die rolled against it, and every CAP fighter has exactly one die rolled against it.

Extra CAP does not buy extra dice — it stacks up on individual Strike fighters and makes those dice better. Line your CAP up against the Strike, spread as evenly as possible with any remainder going to the front, and every extra CAP stacked on a Strike fighter adds +1 to that one die:

Dogfight	Pairing	CAP needs
7 CAP vs 5 Strike	2 – 2 – 1 – 1 – 1	7+ 7+ 8+ 8+ 8+
7 CAP vs 3 Strike	3 – 2 – 2	6+ 7+ 7+
8 CAP vs 4 Strike	2 – 2 – 2 – 2	7+ 7+ 7+ 7+
3 CAP vs 5 Strike	1 – 1 – 1	8+ 8+ 8+ — and 2 Strike fly on unopposed

Strike fighters beyond the CAP count are unopposed: nobody shoots at them and they don't shoot back. They fly straight on to the flak — and if the wave met no CAP at all, its fighters press the attack unharassed and hit ships at +1 (5+ instead of 6+). A single CAP fighter is enough to deny that bonus to the whole wave.

Surplus Strike does not gang up the way surplus CAP does: 5 Strike against 3 CAP rolls 3 dice, period. The CAP is the side that gets worn down over a battle, while each Strike wave arrives fresh and fights exactly one dogfight before it is done. That fiction is also the balance: wave 1 belongs to the defender in almost every matchup, and the only way an attacker turns a dogfight around is sustained pressure — from the second wave on the defending CAP is fatigued and fights at −1 (see CAP fatigued in the modifier chart below).

Natural 1s and natural 10s

As in every other combat round, a natural 1 always misses — no stack of bonuses can make a 1 land, on a fighter roll or a flak roll.

And throughout the fighter phase — CAP, Strike return fire, flak, and the strike on ships — a natural 10 always hits, no matter how many penalties have piled up. A fighter-phase die is therefore never shown as needing better than 10, or better than 2: if the modifiers would push the number past either end, it stops there. Ordinary ship fire in Rounds 1 and 2 shares the ceiling: its to-hit is capped at 10, so a natural 10 always hits there too (9c). The one exception is a pirate Freighter fighting far from the asteroid fields, which needs an 11 (the Exposure penalty). Ship fire has no floor at 2, though a natural 1 still misses. The cap does not extend to fighters firing during an ambush — that volley uses the natural-1 rule alone, and there enough penalties really can make a shot impossible.

Damage — the critical-hit table

When a Strike fighter hits a ship, roll again for damage: 1–6 deals 1 HP, 7–8 deals 2 HP, 9 deals 3 HP, and 10 deals 4 HP (critical hits). Critical damage is capped at the target's maximum HP — a crit cannot spill over to a second ship. A Carrier that takes a critical suffers escalating hangar damage — the harder the hit, the uglier the story — and the heaviest criticals can destroy Fighter Squadrons caught aboard (grounded squadrons and CAP cycling through the deck are at risk; squadrons away on a strike are not). Watch your turn report and the battle replay for the grim details.

Two things improve that damage die, and they work differently. The Advanced Fighter Design card shifts the result up a tier, but 4 HP still needs a true unmodified 10 — the card widens the 2 and 3 HP bands instead. An Elite wing (XP ≥ 25) gets a true +1 to the die, so a 9 becomes a 10 and it lands 4-HP criticals twice as often. They stack:

Wing	1 HP	2 HP	3 HP	4 HP
Regular	60%	20%	10%	10%
With the card	50%	20%	20%	10%
Elite	50%	20%	10%	20%
Elite + card	40%	20%	20%	20%

Fighters firing during an ambush use a deliberately weaker table of their own (1–8 = 1 HP, 9 = 2 HP, 10 = 3 HP, no 4-HP tier) and get no Elite die bonus.

Critical hits on a Carrier — wrecked sections

A Carrier is a big, complicated ship, and the rules track it as nine named sections: the two Weapon Arrays (the bow forks), the Landing Bay and the left and right Launch Tubes, the Flak Guns, the Bridge, and the two Engine Pods. A critical hit that the Carrier survives can tear one of them open — which one is random, and a section already wrecked is never picked twice. The killing blow wrecks nothing: at that point the whole ship is the wreck.

Not every critical gets through to something vital. A 3 or 4 HP critical always wrecks a section. A 2 HP critical — the lightest one — only manages it about half the time; the rest of the hit spends itself on hull plate and empty corridors. So the heavy criticals are the ones that cripple a Carrier, not just the ones that hurt it.

As an example in the diagram — both of these extra-damage attacks (the x2 and x4 dice) achieved a critical hit on the Carrier, taking out an Engine Pod and the Bridge.

Wrecked sections are permanent damage until the hull is fully repaired — usually that means at a Starbase — every section comes back at once the moment the Carrier reaches maximum HP, and not before. They are visible as breaches on the ship's portrait (yours and your enemies'; torn-open hull is not a secret), and the Carrier's detail card lists what each one costs you under Critical damage effects:

Section wrecked	What it costs
Flak Guns	The Carrier throws no flak at all. It keeps its slot in the firing order, so nothing covers for it — the defence simply throws one fewer die, and it was the best one.
Bridge	Every CAP fighter defending this Carrier intercepts at −1, and a Veteran crew's coordination bonus is lost outright. Strike fighters are unaffected, including this Carrier's own.
One Weapon Array	Its standard gun fires at 5+ instead of 3+ in Rounds 1 and 2. Fighters and flak are unaffected.
Both Weapon Arrays	It fires no standard weapons at all.
Landing Bay / Launch Tubes	Each of these three costs a third of the Carrier's maximum flight operations. Lose all three and it launches nothing.
One Engine Pod	The Carrier can no longer warp itself. It travels like an ordinary ship: a Cruiser in the same move, or an active Starbase warp lane.
Both Engine Pods	It cannot move under its own power at all — it must be towed. See below.

Towing a crippled Carrier. A Carrier with both engine pods wrecked still travels if you send an empty Freighter along in the same move — empty meaning it carries no population, minerals or Starbase kit, because it is hauling the Carrier instead. That is on top of the usual requirement: a Cruiser in the move, or an active Starbase warp lane. Two crippled Carriers need two empty Freighters. If the tow is lost before the fleet leaves — the Freighter destroyed in that turn's battle, or loaded with cargo — the rest of the fleet departs and the Carrier stays behind, where it fights on as a defender. It never blocks the fleet. And a Carrier that moves, towed or otherwise, does not fire that turn, exactly like every other ship under a move order.

Damage bites immediately: a Carrier that loses its Flak Guns to the first wave of a battle throws nothing at the second one, and a wrecked Weapon Array spoils that same battle's Round 1.

Flak — Shooting Down Fighters

The Round-1 Lockout

Fighter-Capable Bases

When a Carrier Goes Down — Orphaned Air Groups

Repair, Rearm & Experience

Maintenance — The Ion-9 Surcharge

When Fighters Can't Launch

All Fighter-Combat Modifiers

Two Empire Advantage Cards boost a carrier fleet: Advanced Fighter Design — +1 to every fighter to-hit roll (CAP and Strike) plus a sharper critical-hit table; and Armored Carriers — +2 hull on every Carrier (stacking with the Veteran +2 for 14 HP), +1 to the Carrier's own gun, +1 HP repair every turn, and hull repair to full even away from a Starbase. Both are listed in full in Appendix A — Empire Advantage Cards.

16. Lost Fleets — Derelict Ships

Drifting in the heart of every Nebula and Ion Nebula is a Lost Fleet — a squadron of Ancient warships, stranded during the great war long ago, their crews dead and their reactors cold. You can’t see them at first. But if you keep ships in the cloud, your sensor crews will eventually find them — and if you come prepared, you can bring them back to life.

17. Empire Advantage Cards

At the dawn of each game, fate deals you two Empire Advantage cards. You must choose one — and that choice will define your empire’s identity for the entire war. These are not minor bonuses; they are fundamental asymmetries that shape your strategy, diplomacy, and destiny. Choose wisely. There are no second chances — with one exception: the Dead System Network legacy (Section 14c) lets its holder add a second card mid-game, chosen from every card no empire in the game holds.

Cards fall into four categories: Combat (red), Economic (amber), Intelligence (blue), and Command (purple). Each category reflects a different philosophy of empire-building. There are 21 cards in total — two of them, the carrier cards Advanced Fighter Design and Armored Carriers, reward empires that invest in a Carrier fleet.

The full card catalog — card text, art, and designer’s notes for all 21 cards — is in Appendix A.

Appendix A — Advantage Card Catalog

Elite Troops

Card Text

Your planetary defenses are fortified — each PD unit takes 3 hits to destroy instead of 2. Your Freighters carry elite marines that deal 3 damage per hit instead of 2, making them the most effective invasion force in the galaxy. Upon capturing systems, the conquered population does not start the next turn in a state of unrest. Unrest is less likely and recovers faster when it does occur. Pirates plunder only half of the minerals.

Deeper Understanding

• Normal PD takes 2 hits to destroy. Your Elite Troops PD takes 3 hits — enemies need 50% more firepower to crack your defenses.
• Normal Freighters deal 2 damage per invasion hit. Your Elite Freighters deal 3 damage — enough to one-shot even enemy Elite PD (which also has 3 HP).
• When you capture a system through conquest, it normally enters unrest the following turn (population refuses to work, no production). Elite Troops completely negates this penalty — your troops are so disciplined that conquered populations fall in line immediately.
• Beyond conquest, random unrest events from other causes (pirate raids, etc.) are also less likely to trigger, and when they do occur, your systems are more likely to recover each turn (+1 to the recovery roll — a probability boost, not a guaranteed turn saved).
• When pirates raid your systems, they steal only half the minerals they normally would. This stacks well with large mineral stockpiles.

Lore — “The Iron Legions”

Long before the warp lanes connected the galaxy’s great empires, your people fought a hundred colony wars across their home cluster. Generation after generation was forged in the crucible of planetary assault — orbital drops into hostile atmospheres, urban warfare through alien megacities, the grim calculus of occupation.

Other empires rely on automated defenses and orbital bombardment. Your soldiers do the work face-to-face. They’ve learned how to pacify a world in days rather than months, how to turn a conquered population into productive citizens before the smoke clears. Your planetary defense garrisons dig in so deep and fight so ferociously that attackers often break before the fortifications do.

Even the pirates have learned: raiding your worlds yields slim pickings. The garrisons are ready, the stockpiles are hidden, and the local population fights alongside their occupiers rather than against them. Your people have made an art of holding ground.

Nova Research

Card Text

Nova ships get a +1 to-hit modifier (d10), lowering the required roll by 1.

Deeper Understanding

• Nova ships normally hit on specific d10 rolls depending on the target (see the Combat section). This card lowers the required roll by 1, meaning your Novas hit more often in every engagement.
• This applies to all combat phases — whether your Novas are firing first in an ambush or exchanging fire normally.
• Novas are already the most powerful combat ship; this card makes them devastating. Even a small Nova fleet becomes a serious threat.

Lore — “Project Helios”

The anti-matter beam was the most destructive weapon ever conceived — a lance of annihilation that could crack a starship’s hull in a single discharge. But the technology was crude, wasteful. Most of the beam’s energy scattered into space, lighting up entire sectors with each firing.

Your empire poured three generations of research funding into Project Helios, a classified weapons program buried deep in an asteroid laboratory. The breakthrough came from an unlikely source: a junior physicist studying Precursor artifacts recovered from a Dead System. She discovered that certain crystalline lattice structures could focus an anti-matter beam with almost zero energy loss.

The result was terrifying. Where other empires’ Nova ships fire a blinding flash that might hit its target, yours fire a needle-thin beam of absolute destruction. Your Nova captains don’t hope to hit — they choose where to hit.

Bastion Protocol

Card Text

Starbase and D-Sat get a +1 to-hit modifier (d10), lowering the required roll by 1. Starbases have +3 hit points, making them significantly harder to destroy, and they self-repair twice as fast — 2 HP per turn instead of the usual 1. Their hangar crews also work faster: 1 extra fighter is replaced per turn (total 3/turn).

Deeper Understanding

• Both your Starbases and your Defensive Satellites benefit from the +1 to-hit accuracy bonus.
• Starbases normally have a base HP. This card adds +3 HP on top, making your Starbases require significantly more firepower to bring down.
• Starbase hangars replace fighters faster — 3 per turn instead of the usual 2 — so a Bastion Starbase rearms its fighter screen a turn quicker after a fight. (Fighter Bases are unaffected; this is a Starbase perk.)
• This is a defensive card — it doesn’t help your attacking fleets at all. Its value comes from making your systems extremely costly to assault.
• A system with a Bastion-buffed Starbase plus a few D-Sats becomes a fortress. Attackers need overwhelming force to crack it, buying you time to reinforce or counterattack.
• Consider building Starbases at key chokepoint systems where warp lanes converge — the card makes them nearly impregnable.

Lore — “The Doctrine of the Anvil”

Your empire’s military philosophy was born from necessity. Surrounded by hostile neighbors in the early expansion era, your admirals couldn’t afford to project power — every ship sent raiding was a ship not defending the homeland. So they built walls instead.

The Bastion Protocol began as a set of defensive engineering standards: reinforced hull plating, redundant shield generators, predictive targeting arrays that could track and destroy incoming ordnance before it reached the station. Over centuries, these standards evolved into a doctrine. Your Starbases aren’t just orbital platforms — they’re self-sustaining battle stations with armored cores designed to absorb punishment that would vaporize lesser structures.

“Let them come,” the old admiral’s saying goes. “The anvil does not fear the hammer.” Your enemies have learned the hard way that assaulting a Bastion station is like throwing ships into a furnace. The targeting arrays lock on faster, the guns hit harder, and the station is still firing long after it should have been destroyed.

Shield Harmonics

Card Text

Cruisers and Nova ships absorb 1 extra hit before being destroyed.

Deeper Understanding

• Cruisers and Novas each gain +1 HP, meaning they take one additional hit to destroy in combat.
• Destroyers and other ship types are not affected — only your capital ships (Cruisers and Novas).
• This is a straightforward but powerful durability buff. In a fleet-on-fleet engagement, your ships survive longer, which means they get more rounds of firing. The extra HP compounds — a ship that survives one more hit might fire two or three more times before going down.
• This card is excellent for aggressive, fleet-heavy strategies. It makes your attack fleets significantly more resilient when pushing into defended systems.

Lore — “The Resonance Discovery”

Standard shield technology works on a simple principle: a projected energy field absorbs incoming weapons fire until it collapses. Every empire uses the same basic design, and every empire’s shields fail at roughly the same threshold.

Your scientists discovered something different. By synchronizing multiple shield generators to oscillate at precisely matched frequencies, they created a resonance effect — a harmonic standing wave that reinforced itself. When one generator weakened under fire, the others compensated, pouring energy into the gap faster than weapons could drain it.

The synchronized shields shimmer with an iridescent quality that enemy captains have learned to dread. A ship wreathed in harmonic shields can wade through fire that would shred an unprotected vessel, absorbing hit after hit while its own weapons continue to fire.

Focused Beam Research

Card Text

All your Destroyers have a +1 modifier to hit, striking with surgical precision.

Deeper Understanding

• Every Destroyer in your fleet gets +1 to hit on all combat rolls.
• Destroyers are your most numerous combat ship — they’re cheap to build and you’ll have many of them. A +1 bonus across your entire DD fleet adds up to significantly more damage per engagement.
• This card is especially strong in the early game when fleets are mostly Destroyers, and remains relevant all game because DDs continue to form the backbone of your navy.
• Pairs well with aggressive expansion strategies — your cheap, accurate DDs can overwhelm independent-system defenders and rival fleets cost-effectively.

Lore — “The Kessler Doctrine”

Admiral Kessler was a heretic. While every other military mind in your empire obsessed over bigger ships — heavier armor, more powerful Nova beams — Kessler argued that the future of naval warfare was the Destroyer.

“Give me a hundred precise knives over ten blunt hammers,” she famously told the War Council. She redirected your empire’s entire military-industrial complex toward a single goal: perfecting the Destroyer’s beam weapon.

Kessler’s program produced a focused-aperture beam with a targeting system so precise it could hit a specific hull plate from across a system. Your Destroyers don’t fire salvos and hope — they fire single, surgical shots that find their mark. A swarm of Kessler-doctrine Destroyers fills space with a web of perfectly aimed beams, each one threading through shield gaps and striking critical systems. Quantity has a quality all its own — especially when every shot counts.

Advanced Fighter Design (Carrier card)

Card Text

All fighter rolls — CAP, dogfight, and Assault strike — get a +1 to-hit, and fighter critical hits land one step easier, so more strikes punch through for extra hull damage. Stacks with Elite carriers.

Deeper Understanding

• The +1 applies to every fighter to-hit roll: CAP intercept (normally 8+), Strike return fire (9+), and the Strike-on-ship attack (6+). Each becomes one step easier across the board.
• It does not touch your flak rolls — this card sharpens your fighters, not your anti-fighter gunnery.
• The critical-hit table also shifts one step easier, so the 2- and 3-HP bands widen and your fighters carve through hulls noticeably faster. It is a tier shift, not a die bonus: 4 HP still needs a true unmodified 10, and this card can never buy one. Only an Elite wing’s +1 on the damage die can.
• Stacks with an Elite Carrier’s own +1 to hit die roll (XP ≥ 25) and with a Strike wave’s 2:1 bonus over the CAP — an Elite, outnumbering, Advanced-Design strike is brutally accurate.
• Only pays off once you field Carriers — unlock them by placing a Starbase on a Dead System, then build a fighter wing to put it to work.

Lore — “The Razor Wings”

Your scientists developed far more agile Fighters and installed advanced targeting systems, making your Fighter Squadrons the deadliest in the Galaxy.

Where rival hangar crews bolt a gun to a thruster and call it a fighter, your engineers obsessed over every gram and every microsecond. Reflex-linked canopies, predictive lead-computers, frames that turn tighter than physics should allow — your pilots don’t chase a target, they simply arrive where it will be. When your wings launch, the enemy’s screen breaks before the first pass is over.

Armored Carriers (Carrier card)

Card Text

Your Carriers are hardened warships: +2 hull (12 HP), fire their gun at 2+ instead of 3+, repair +1 HP per turn, and ignore the 80% self-repair cap — they repair to full anywhere, not just at a Starbase. A full strength Armored Carrier can take 2 direct hits from a Nova ship and still keep fighting.

Deeper Understanding

• Every Carrier is built with 12 HP instead of 10. This stacks with the permanent Veteran/Elite +2, so a veteran Armored Carrier reaches 14 HP.
• The Carrier’s own gun fires at 2+ (a +1 to-hit on its ship-combat shot, after Destroyers). Note this is a ship-fire bonus — it does not change your fighter or flak rolls.
• Your Carriers repair +1 HP per turn on top of the normal rate at every tier — moving, holding station, or docked at a Starbase — and the bonus keeps repairs going even when the out-of-supply penalty would otherwise stall them. (A carrier that fought this turn still repairs nothing.)
• Out of combat the normal rule pauses hull repair once a Carrier is back above 80% unless it sits at a friendly Starbase. Armored Carriers ignore that cap and repair all the way to full anywhere they hold station.
• A Nova antimatter strike deals up to 5 damage. A 12-hull Armored Carrier rides out two strikes (12 → 7 → 2) and is still flying — and with +1 repair per turn it climbs back fast.
• Only pays off once you field Carriers — unlock them by placing a Starbase on a Dead System, then build a fighter wing to put it to work.

Lore — “The Ironbacks”

Reinforced spinal plating and redundant reactor shielding — your Carriers were built to take a beating and keep launching.

Other admirals treat the carrier as a fragile queen to be hidden behind a wall of escorts. Your shipwrights refused the premise. They wove armor through the keel, tripled the damage-control runs, and hardened the hangar decks so a breached bay could still cycle fighters. Your Carriers wade into the line and stay there, guns barking, flight decks roaring — the anvil and the hammer in a single hull.

Merchant Economy

Card Text

Freighter deliveries add 50% more minerals (minimum +1). A full freighter is worth more in your empire.

Deeper Understanding

• When your Freighters unload minerals at a system, the delivered amount is increased by 50%, with a minimum bonus of +1 mineral.
• Example: if your Freighters drop off 4 minerals in a single delivery, the system receives 6 instead (4 + 50% = 6).
• The bonus is calculated once per system per turn on the combined total of all minerals delivered there that turn — Freighter unloads and Local Trader shipments along your active warp lanes both count. If 6 minerals arrive at a system this turn, the bonus is applied to the full 6 (bonus = 3, total = 9). The minimum +1 applies once per system per turn, not once per order.
• The minimum +1 bonus means even a single mineral delivery yields 2. Small deliveries are proportionally more efficient than large ones.
• This only applies to Freighter unload orders — it does not affect natural mineral production from systems.
• The card rewards active logistics play. Players who efficiently shuttle minerals from rich systems (like Asteroid Fields) to industrial centers will get dramatically more value.

Lore — “The Guild Compact”

While other empires built warships, yours built trade routes. The Merchant Guilds were the true power in your civilization long before the first warp lane was mapped — vast trading houses that controlled the flow of every mineral, every resource, every finished product across your home cluster.

When the warp lanes opened and the galaxy beckoned, the Guilds saw not an empty frontier but the greatest marketplace in history. They invested heavily in Freighter technology: optimized cargo holds, mineral compression techniques, automated loading systems that could strip-mine an asteroid and have the cargo moving within hours.

A Freighter bearing your empire’s Guild insignia carries more than raw materials. It carries an entire logistical ecosystem — traders who know how to extract maximum value from every ton, compression technology that packs more into every hold, and trade networks that ensure nothing is wasted. Where other empires move rocks, your Guilds move wealth.

Industrious

Card Text

Systems with 4 or more factories produce +1 Build Point per turn (no extra minerals needed).

Deeper Understanding

• Any system you own with 4 or more Industry generates 1 extra Build Point each turn for free — no mineral cost.
• This effectively means those systems can build slightly more each turn than their mineral input would normally allow.
• The threshold is 4 Industry — lower-industry systems don’t benefit. This makes the card stronger on high-quality systems (A and B) that naturally have higher industry.
• Over the course of a game, that +1 BP per qualifying system per turn adds up enormously. If you have 5 qualifying systems, that’s 5 free BP every turn — equivalent to 5 free minerals of production.
• Encourages investing in factory construction to push systems to the 4-industry threshold.

Lore — “The Builder Caste”

Your people are born builders. It’s in the blood — literally. Three thousand years of selective social structure created a civilization where the most respected members of society aren’t warriors or politicians, but engineers and fabricators.

Your orbital shipyards run triple shifts around the clock. Where other empires lose efficiency to shift changes, maintenance downtime, and bureaucratic delays, your factories hum with a continuous rhythm of production. Quality never drops because the workers take personal pride in every hull plate welded, every circuit board placed.

Visitors to your industrial worlds describe it as almost eerie — the perfect choreography of thousands of workers moving in synchronized efficiency, the complete absence of idle machinery, the relentless pace that never seems to exhaust anyone. Your people don’t work hard because they’re forced to. They work hard because building things is who they are.

Asteroid Immunity

Card Text

Immune to asteroid damage. Any system you own with a Starbase adjacent to an Asteroid Field gains +1 mineral per turn.

Deeper Understanding

• Asteroid Fields normally damage ships that enter them. With this card, your ships take zero damage from asteroids — you can move through and station fleets in Asteroid Fields freely.
• Every system you own that has a Starbase and sits one warp lane from an Asteroid Field gains +1 mineral per turn, added directly to the system's mineral stockpile. Works for both inhabited Star Systems and Dead Systems — any system that can hold a Starbase.
• The bonus is +1 mineral per system (not per adjacent field), and your turn report lists every system collecting the tax under the General section.
• Other players still take asteroid damage, so your Asteroid Fields are naturally defended — enemies need to accept losses to contest them.
• Strategically, this card rewards building Starbases in the systems ringing Asteroid Fields. A well-placed Starbase pays for itself in guild tribute over the course of a game.

Lore — “Children of the Debris Field”

Your ancestors didn’t evolve on a planet. They evolved in the Shattered Ring — a vast debris field left behind when an ancient moon was torn apart by its gas giant’s tidal forces. For millennia, your people lived among tumbling rocks the size of continents, navigating by instinct through fields of spinning death that would pulverize any outsider’s ship.

What other species see as an asteroid field — a navigation hazard to be avoided — your pilots see as home. They read the spin patterns of thousand-ton boulders the way a sailor reads ocean swells, threading through gaps that close in seconds with a casual confidence that terrifies their passengers.

The independent mining guilds that work the debris fields know exactly whose flag keeps them safe. Wherever one of your Starbases stands watch over a neighboring asteroid field, the guilds pay tribute — a steady trickle of refined ore delivered to your stockpiles in exchange for your pilots’ escort through the tumbling rocks. The galaxy’s asteroid fields aren’t obstacles for your empire. They’re the foundation of your economy.

Salvage Experts

Card Text

After surviving a battle where enemy ships are destroyed, gain 20% of the total value of all ships destroyed in the battle — every side’s losses, including your own — as minerals. At your own systems, minerals are added directly. At other systems, requires freighters with available cargo space.

Deeper Understanding

• When you survive a battle in which the enemy lost at least one ship, you recover 20% of the total build cost of every ship destroyed in that battle — enemy wrecks and your own. Your recovery teams don’t care whose hull it was.
• An enemy must lose at least one ship for the salvage operation to trigger — you can’t salvage a battle where only your own ships died. Hulls captured by pirates are excluded (they sail away; nothing to strip).
• At your own systems, salvaged minerals are added directly to the system’s stockpile — no Freighter needed.
• At enemy or neutral systems, you need Freighters with available cargo space present at the battle to collect the salvage. No Freighters means no salvage at foreign systems.
• The salvage is based on the total value of destroyed ships — expensive wrecks (Novas, Cruisers, Starbases) yield more than Destroyers.
• This card rewards aggressive, combat-heavy play. The more you fight and win, the more your economy benefits. Wars partially pay for themselves.
• Tip: bring Freighters along with your attack fleets to capitalize on salvage at enemy systems.

Lore — “The Wreck Walkers”

Every battle leaves a field of twisted metal, vented atmosphere, and drifting hulls. Most empires see a graveyard. Your recovery teams see a warehouse.

The Salvage Corps evolved from your empire’s early days, when resources were so scarce that every scrap of metal was precious. Specialized recovery vessels would follow your war fleets into battle, hanging back at safe distance until the shooting stopped, then swarming the debris field with cutting torches and tractor beams.

Over centuries, salvage recovery became a science. Your teams can strip a destroyed cruiser to its frame in hours, sorting useful components from irradiated waste with practiced efficiency. Hull plating gets reforged. Intact circuits get repurposed. Even the exotic alloys in Nova beam focusing arrays can be reclaimed and recycled.

“War is expensive,” your Fleet Marshal once observed, “unless you’re shopping in the debris.” Your enemies have learned that defeating your empire in battle doesn’t just cost them ships — it funds your next fleet.

Galactic Spy Network

Card Text

Auto-plant spies at Independent systems whenever you have at least 1 ship over the system and is not given move orders that turn. Permanent intel even after withdrawal. 50% spy loss on ownership change. 50% chance gain a spy when you lose a system to another Empire. Your spies also report on pirate-diplomacy activity galaxy-wide — you learn the named details of every other empire’s payments, tier crossings, and bribes to the brethren. Your spies will alert you of all incoming Pirate raids! Your spies will also obtain and report each turn some important intel about other players and/or the Pirates.

Deeper Understanding

• A spy is planted whenever at least one of your ships that started the turn at an Independent system is still there after movement — even if the rest of the fleet moved on. Ships that all arrived this same turn plant nothing yet; keep at least one ship through a full turn to establish the spy.
• Once planted, the spy provides permanent intel on that system — you continue to see its status even after you move your ships away.
• If the system changes ownership (another player conquers it), there’s a 50% chance your spy is discovered and eliminated.
• This effectively gives you a free, passive intelligence-gathering network. Just by parking ships at Independent systems for a single turn, you build up a web of informants across the galaxy.
• The intel persists through fog of war — you’ll see fleet movements and system changes at spied systems even if they’re far from your borders.
• Works well with a scout-heavy early game strategy: send ships to many systems, pause for a turn, then move on. The spies remain behind.
• Pirate-diplomacy intel. Your network has ears in the Drift as well. Each turn, an event-log entry tells you when any other empire pays tribute to the pirates, crosses a tier threshold up or down, or bribes the brethren to raid a target — complete with names and amounts. Other empires only see anonymized rumors of these events; you see the ledger.
• One fresh intel report every turn. Beyond the pirates, your agents file one report each turn in the Reports panel, marked with a 🕵️. Your network reports whatever story it can actually get that turn, chosen at random from what is available:
  • Fleet strength — an estimate of a rival’s total ship count. Your analysts are good, not perfect: the number is always off by 5–10%, high or low, never exact. It counts warships and Freighters only — Starbases, Defense Satellites, Fighter Bases and fighters are not in the tally.
  • A Non-Aggression Pact signed or broken between two other empires this turn.
  • A declaration of war, or a peace ending one, between two other empires.
  • An intercepted message sent between two other players this turn, quoted to you in full.
  • The location of a rival’s Carrier — named, and wherever it happens to be sitting.
  • A newly commissioned Carrier — word that a rival launched one this turn.
• What limits the report. Your spies only name empires you have met; anyone else in a report is simply an Unknown Empire, never named. Diplomatic reports cover other empires’ dealings, not your own — you already hear about your own wars and pacts directly. A Carrier sighting is a written report only: it does not reveal that system on your map.
• Pirate news takes priority. On a turn when your network is already reporting pirate activity to you — a payment, a tier crossing, a bribe, or a raid warning — that takes the slot, and there is no additional report. The one exception: if a race ability of yours already told you about that same raid (Arachnid Raider intelligence tracks every raider fleet’s position and destination), the raid warning is not news, so you keep your report and get intel on another player instead. Pirate payments and bribes are never covered by raider intelligence, so those still take the slot — and can leave you holding two genuinely different pirate reports in one turn.

Lore — “The Whispering Web”

Your empire’s intelligence services don’t operate like other nations’ spy agencies. There are no dramatic infiltrations, no single master spies risking everything behind enemy lines. Instead, your operatives work like a fungal network — quiet, patient, everywhere.

Wherever your fleets linger, even for a single rotation, agents slip into the local population. They set up shop as traders, mechanics, bartenders — unremarkable people in unremarkable positions who happen to notice everything. They recruit locals with modest payments and smaller promises. They tap into communication networks with devices no larger than a grain of sand.

The brilliance of the Whispering Web is its persistence. Long after your warships jump to the next system, the agents remain. They report through encrypted subspace bursts disguised as background radiation — invisible to anyone not listening for them. A system you visited three turns ago still whispers its secrets to you.

Even when empires change hands, the Web endures. Agents go dark, wait for the occupation forces to settle in, and resume their work. Only the most thorough purges root them out — and even then, only about half the time.

The Web reaches further than the independents. Your operatives have followed the coin into pirate ports too — the dock-masters who tally tribute, the bookkeepers who record bribes, the crews who whisper over their cups about which captain is sailing for which patron. Every payment passed across a pirate captain’s palm is logged twice: once by the brethren, once by you.

Enhanced Sensors

Card Text

Your ships detect stargate activations across every warp lane. When ambushing, you may safely watch all lanes — fire splits only across the lanes ships actually arrive from, with no accuracy penalty. Ships already immune to ambush fire (e.g. cloaked) stay immune. Your sensors also find more Derelict Ships in Nebulas, and locate them faster.

Deeper Understanding

• Normally, ambush fire is divided equally across all watched lanes, even empty ones. With Enhanced Sensors, your fire is only split across lanes where enemies actually arrive. If you watch 4 lanes but enemies only come through 1, you concentrate 100% of your firepower on that gate.
• Normally, ambush fire suffers a −1 die roll penalty (harder to score hits — firing from concealment is less precise). Enhanced Sensors removes this penalty entirely — your crews know exactly when and where ships will emerge from the stargate.
• This means you can safely select “All lanes” without any downside — you get full firepower on whatever actually shows up, at full accuracy.
• If fleets arrive from multiple lanes simultaneously, your fire splits across only those active lanes (not all watched lanes). You still benefit from no accuracy penalty.
• Ships that are immune to ambush fire (e.g. fleets with Nebula Cloaking exiting a nebula) retain their immunity. Enhanced Sensors does not override other cards’ protections.
• All other ambush rules still apply: ambush fires in Round 2 only, cannot be set in nebula systems, and Freighters/D-Sats/Starbases do not participate.
• Nebula derelicts — find them faster. When one of your fleets searches a Nebula or Ion Nebula for a Lost Fleet, your discovery chance each turn is improved — you turn up derelicts noticeably sooner than empires without the card.
• Nebula derelicts — locate more. If one of your fleets is present when a wreck is discovered, your arrays map hulls other empires can’t see: the derelict fleet is reinforced with additional ships before anyone claims it. Whoever ends up restoring the fleet gets the bigger prize — so it pays to be the one holding the claim.

Lore — “The Resonance Arrays”

Standard ambush tactics are a gamble. You pick the lanes you think the enemy will use, spread your guns across them, and hope you guessed right. Get it wrong, and half your firepower is pointed at empty space while the real attack comes from the other side.

Your scientists solved this problem by studying the subspace resonance patterns that propagate along warp lanes when a stargate activates. Every gate activation sends a distinctive energy pulse back along the lane — a signature your tuned arrays can detect in the seconds before ships emerge. Your ambush crews don’t have to guess anymore. They know exactly which gate is about to open, exactly when the first ship will materialize, and exactly where to aim.

The result is devastatingly efficient ambush fire. While other empires scatter their guns and fire blind into the flash of an opening gate, your crews are already locked on target, timing their volleys to the millisecond. Nothing gets through your lanes unannounced.

Ancient Archives

Card Text

Start with full intel on all systems within 2 hops. Get waypoint trails toward nearest Asteroid Field and Gaia System.

Deeper Understanding

• At game start (Turn 1), all systems within 2 warp lane hops of your home system are fully revealed — you see their type, name, and all details as if you’d visited them.
• You also receive waypoint trails — directional hints pointing toward the nearest Asteroid Field and the nearest Gaia System (the most valuable system type in the game).
• The 2-hop reveal gives you a massive head start on exploration. You can see your immediate neighborhood and plan your first several turns of expansion with full information.
• The waypoint trails don’t reveal the destination systems directly — they show you which direction to travel. Think of them as breadcrumb trails on the map pointing toward strategic objectives.
• This card is strongest in the opening turns and on larger maps where blind exploration is costliest. Its value diminishes as the game progresses and exploration fills in naturally.

Lore — “The Precursor Vault”

Deep beneath your home world’s oldest mountain range, your archaeologists discovered something that changed the course of your civilization: a Precursor data vault, sealed for longer than your species has existed.

The vault contained star charts — not of the galaxy as it is now, but as it was when the Precursors walked among the stars. Most of the data was corrupted beyond recovery, eaten by entropy over the eons. But the charts of your local region were still readable, preserved in crystalline storage matrices that defied time itself.

More intriguing were the navigation logs. The Precursors had marked certain systems with priority designations — resource caches and what the translation algorithms rendered as “garden worlds.” By cross-referencing the ancient coordinates with modern stellar cartography, your scientists identified probable locations of Asteroid Fields rich in minerals and Gaia Systems teeming with life.

The archives don’t provide complete maps — too much has shifted in the intervening millennia. But they provide something almost as valuable: direction. While other empires stumble blindly into the void, your ships launch with ancient wisdom guiding their course.

Nebula Cloaking

Card Text

Invisible in Nebula systems. Cannot fire or be fired upon. Full intel on all ships present while cloaked. Ambush immune when exiting a nebula. Can still search and claim/repair derelict ships in Nebulas even when hostile ships are present.

Deeper Understanding

• When your ships are in a Nebula or Ion Nebula system, they become completely invisible to all other players. No one can see your fleet there.
• While cloaked, you cannot fire and cannot be fired upon — you are completely removed from combat. This means you can’t be attacked, but you also can’t defend or attack.
• While cloaked, you gain full intel on every other fleet in the same system — you can see exactly what ships everyone has there, even though they can’t see you.
• When you leave a Nebula system, you are immune to ambush at your destination. Enemies cannot ambush-fire on your arriving fleet.
• This card turns Nebulas into safe havens and forward observation posts. You can park ships in a contested Nebula, watch enemy fleet movements with impunity, and leave when the time is right — ambush-proof.
• Be aware: while cloaked you cannot defend the Nebula system. You’re a ghost — present but powerless. (You can, however, decloak just long enough to claim a Lost Fleet — see below.)
• Your invisibility makes you the perfect salvager of Lost Fleets: because nothing can see or shoot you, you can keep searching a Nebula — and even claim and repair a derelict fleet — while hostile ships are present, when any other empire would be driven off. If you decloak to restore a wreck while a rival watches, all they’ll glimpse is a freighter flickering into view, claiming the ships, and vanishing again.
• Ion Nebulas (which normally scramble sensors) work the same way for you — your cloaking technology uses the ionization to your advantage.

Lore — “The Ghost Fleet Doctrine”

Nebulas are anathema to most navies. The ionized gas clouds wreak havoc on sensors, scramble communications, and play tricks on navigation systems. Standard military doctrine is simple: avoid nebulas when possible, transit them quickly when not.

Your engineers saw something else entirely. They discovered that your hull alloy — a composite developed centuries ago for a completely different purpose — resonated with nebula ionization fields in a peculiar way. Instead of reflecting sensor pulses, your hulls absorbed them, scattering the energy harmlessly into the surrounding gas.

The effect was absolute invisibility. Not reduced sensor signatures, not electronic countermeasures — true disappearance. A fleet sitting in a nebula becomes indistinguishable from the gas cloud itself. No scanner in the known galaxy can find them.

The downside was equally absolute: the same resonance effect that hid your ships also scattered your own weapons fire. You couldn’t shoot while cloaked. But your sensors worked perfectly — better than perfectly, in fact, since the nebula’s energy amplified your passive detection arrays.

“The ghost fleet sees everything,” the saying goes. “And nothing sees the ghost fleet.”

Appealing Race

Card Text

+1 to ongoing diplomacy rolls with Independent Systems. Rivals who attack you without first declaring war suffer double the reputation loss (−2 instead of −1). You begin the game halfway to Tolerated Patrons standing with the pirates — word of your charm has reached the Drift, and the brethren are inclined to give you the benefit of the doubt. Your systems are fully immune to a Cultural Hegemon’s influence, and you need only 4 unique races (instead of 5) to complete Cultural Hegemony yourself.

Deeper Understanding

• Your species’ natural charm shines in negotiation: you get a +1 bonus to all ongoing diplomacy rolls with Independent systems, accelerating the path to integration.
• You also start the game with a head start on pirate diplomacy — banked points equal to half the threshold for Tolerated Patrons (Lvl 1). One modest tribute payment finishes the climb to Lvl 1 and earns you raid immunity. Other empires need to pay the full threshold from scratch.
• The +1 ongoing diplomacy bonus compounds over the course of a game. Independent systems progress toward joining your empire faster than for other empires.
• Your good name is also a deterrent: any rival who fires on you while you are not at war (a surprise attack, with no declaration of war in effect) takes a doubled reputation penalty — −2 instead of the usual −1. Because your card is recognised the moment another empire meets you, would-be attackers are warned of the steeper cost before they strike.
• The pirate head start does not grant raid immunity by itself — it shortens your path to it. Until you actually reach Lvl 1, raids can still target you. Pay tribute early to lock in the protection.
• Cultural Hegemony works both ways for you. On defense, your charm is an anchor: your populations never build Cultural Influence, so a rival hegemon’s border pressure simply does not exist for your systems — no rebellion risk, no intel leak (see Section 14c). On offense, your knack for integration means the Cultural Hegemony legacy itself requires only 4 unique races in your empire instead of the usual 6.
• This card rewards a diplomatic playstyle — building your empire through negotiation rather than conquest, with the pirates and the independents alike.

Lore — “The Golden Ambassadors”

Something about your species puts other races at ease. Xenobiologists have debated the reason for centuries — is it your body language, your vocal harmonics, the subtle pheromone signatures that even alien biochemistry seems to respond to? Whatever the cause, the effect is undeniable: doors open for your ambassadors that remain firmly shut for everyone else.

Independent systems that would greet other empires with suspicion or hostility receive your envoys with curiosity and cautious optimism. Trade negotiations that would take other species months conclude in days. Even the most isolationist worlds find themselves warming to your overtures, as if some deep evolutionary instinct recognizes your people as… safe.

Word of your charm has even reached the Drift. Pirate captains who would shake down anyone else’s envoys instead pour your delegates a drink and ask after their health. “The pretty ones are easy to talk to,” the saying goes in the brethren’s ports. “Hear them out before you reach for the knife.” Your captains arrive at the Black Flag’s table with a measure of goodwill already extended — nothing earned, nothing owed, just an opening hand the rest of the galaxy will not be dealt.

Retired Pirate

Card Text

You begin the game at Marked Friendly (Lvl 2) with the pirates, and your standing with the brethren can never fall below this floor. You also begin with 10 points of banked tribute — old debts the brethren have not forgotten — trimming the climb toward Brother of the Black Flag. Pirate raids skip your worlds, pirate fleets will not fire on your ships, and you may build Starbases at pirate-occupied Dead Systems without first destroying the garrison. The brethren consider you one of their own — even should your empire come to dominate the galaxy, the Black Flag will not turn on you. Your Reputation starts at Dangerous (−2 to diplomatic rolls) and can never rise above Neutral — no matter what good you do, the independent races will never trust a former Brethren captain that far.

Deeper Understanding

• Tier 2 floor. You start the game at Marked Friendly, and your pirate-diplomacy tier can never drop below Lvl 2. Reputation deltas and standing penalties still affect your underlying point counters, but the displayed and applied tier is clamped at Marked Friendly. You inherit all Lvl 2 protections automatically: raids skip you, pirate fleets will not fire on you, and you may build Starbases at pirate-held Dead Systems without first clearing the garrison.
• 10-point tribute head start. You begin the game with 10 banked pirate diplo points — exactly at the Tolerated Patrons threshold. Combined with the Tier 2 floor, you only need to earn another 20 points (through tribute or a Menacing/Reviled reputation bonus) to reach Brother of the Black Flag, instead of the 30 every other empire faces.
• Path to Lvl 3. Pay tribute or earn reputation bonuses to push past 30 banked points and you reach Brother of the Black Flag with all its privileges — bribe-to-raid, active pirate defense in your systems, and immunity from being bribed against by other empires.
• Immune to the late-game crackdown. Other empires that grow too powerful become a target the brethren will cross any tier to break. Not you. The lifelong pact protects you even at the height of empire — the Black Flag does not raise blades against one of their own.
• Reputation starts at Dangerous, capped at Neutral. The −2 diplomacy penalty applies on all independent-system rolls from turn 1. Worse, your reputation can never rise above Neutral — pirate kills and independent-system joins still recover lost ground, but any event that would push you into Trustworthy or higher is silently dropped. The galaxy will never grant a former Brethren captain Honored or Revered standing.
• Strategic implication. The reputation cap means peaceful integration of independents is harder, and the maintenance / unrest perks of Honored and Revered are off the table for you. Conquering Independent systems by force or buying them with prolonged diplomacy at Neutral is the realistic path. In exchange, the pirates are a permanent ally rather than a permanent threat.
• Synergy with the tier system. The card’s Tier 2 perks — raid skip, no-fire, Starbases at pirate Dead Systems — are now the same effects every empire can earn by climbing pirate diplomacy normally. What Retired Pirate uniquely guarantees is that you start there from turn 1 with a head start banked, you cannot fall back to Lvl 0 or Lvl 1 no matter what happens, and you cannot be the target of another empire’s bribed raid.

Lore — “Drake Remembers”

You were once feared across a dozen systems. Before your empire discovered the warp lanes, before diplomacy and governance replaced plunder and intimidation, your people were raiders. Your ancestors boarded merchant ships, sacked orbital stations, and held entire colonies for ransom.

Those days are over — officially. Your empire has reformed, built legitimate institutions, joined the galactic community as a respectable power. But the pirate clans remember. Captain Drake, the ancient AI that coordinates the pirate empire’s endless raids, has your species flagged in its deepest protocols: “Do not engage. Former kin. Standing truce.” The Council of Captains will never raise a blade against you, and the brethren extend the courtesies due a Friend — their fleets stand down at sight of your hulls, their dock-masters wave your Starbases through to anchor at the old Dead Systems they hold.

This cuts both ways. Every Independent system in the galaxy also remembers what you were. Your ambassadors arrive at independent worlds and find cold shoulders, locked doors, and trade terms weighted against you. No matter how many decades pass, no matter how many good deeds your envoys can list, the door to genuine trust never opens past Neutral. “Once a pirate, always a pirate,” they mutter, and they will not be moved.

And maybe they’re right. But when your fleets glide past pirate armadas without a shot fired, when Dead Systems other empires wouldn’t dare approach become anchorages for your Starbases, when the brethren stand by you even as the rest of the galaxy turns against your rising banner — it is hard to argue that the old ways don’t still have their advantages.

Advanced Starbases

Card Text

Dead Systems with Starbase gain +1 mineral/turn. Gain free probe reports every turn from any systems adjacent to your systems with Starbases.

Deeper Understanding

• Any Dead System you own that has a Starbase generates +1 mineral per turn. Dead Systems normally produce nothing — this card turns them into modest resource generators.
• Every turn, you automatically receive free probe-level intelligence on all systems adjacent to any system where you have a Starbase. This happens passively — no probe ships needed.
• The mineral bonus on Dead Systems incentivizes building Starbases at Dead Systems you control — turning empty territory into productive assets.
• The free probe intel makes your Starbases function as sensor platforms. Place Starbases at strategic locations and you get persistent, free surveillance of the surrounding area.
• This card rewards building Starbases widely, not just at your most important systems. Each Starbase extends your sensor network.
• Combines well with defensive strategies — your Starbases both defend key systems and provide early warning of approaching threats.

Lore — “The Sentinel Stations”

Other empires build Starbases as weapons platforms — floating gun emplacements to defend key systems. Your engineers had grander ambitions.

Your Starbases are engineering marvels — self-sustaining platforms packed with mineral recyclers, subspace telescope arrays, and autonomous maintenance systems. When deployed at a Dead System — a blasted, lifeless ruin that other empires write off as worthless — your Starbases can extract trace minerals from the debris field, recycling the remnants of whatever catastrophe killed the world into usable resources.

More impressively, each Starbase bristles with long-range sensor arrays that continuously sweep adjacent warp lanes. The data these arrays collect is equivalent to a full probe report — fleet compositions, system status, ownership changes — all gathered passively and beamed back to your command network in real time.

Your empire doesn’t just control the systems where your Starbases orbit. You see everything around them, turning each station into a node in a vast surveillance web. An approaching enemy fleet might pass through three or four sensor zones before reaching your borders — giving you ample warning to prepare your defense.

Call in a Debt

Card Text

Once per game: Call in a Pirate Reinforcement fleet of:
2 Cruisers, 5 Nova, and 5 (+2 per turn starting turn 5) Destroyers
These ships will arrive next turn at any system you currently have ships. The Pirate fleet will attack all ships except your own and cannot be moved.

Deeper Understanding

• One-time use — once activated, the card is spent for the rest of the game.
• You choose a system where you have at least one ship. The pirate fleet arrives there on the next turn.
• The Cruisers and Novas are fixed at 2 CR + 5 N. Only the Destroyers scale with the game turn: 5 Destroyers through turn 4, then +2 for every turn from turn 5 onward. Examples: Turn 4 = 2 CR + 5 N + 5 DD. Turn 5 = 2 CR + 5 N + 7 DD. Turn 10 = 2 CR + 5 N + 17 DD. The later you wait, the bigger the fleet.
• The pirate fleet attacks all ships except yours at that system. It treats every other empire’s ships as hostile.
• The fleet cannot be moved — it stays at the summoned system permanently, acting as a garrison that attacks anyone who enters.
• This is a devastating defensive or offensive tool. Use it to break a siege on your system, crush an enemy fleet at a contested location, or create an impregnable fortress.
• Timing is key: using it early gives a smaller fleet; waiting gives a bigger one, but you might need it before then. The strategic tension is real.
• The pirate fleet is a separate entity — it fires independently in combat and can be destroyed by concentrated enemy fire.

Lore — “Drake’s Marker”

Long before you were a ruler, you saved the life of a now notorious Pirate Lord. Before you built an empire, before the warp lanes and the diplomacy and the grand strategy — you did someone a favor. A very dangerous someone.

The details are classified at the highest levels of your government. The official record simply notes a “strategic intervention” during the Pirate Consolidation Wars, when the scattered pirate clans were being unified under a single AI coordination network. What actually happened involved your special forces, a stolen encryption key, and a desperate rescue operation deep in hostile space.

Captain Drake — the ancient tactical AI that now commands the pirate empire — doesn’t forget debts. It can’t; debts are tracked in its core priority matrix alongside targeting solutions and raid schedules. Your empire holds the only outstanding marker in Drake’s ledger.

One transmission on a specific encrypted frequency is all it takes. Drake will marshal a personal fleet — Cruisers from the elite guard, a Nova wing off the flagship’s own escort, Destroyers pulled from a dozen raid groups — and dispatch them to any system you specify. They’ll arrive fast, they’ll attack everything that isn’t you, and they’ll hold position until they’re destroyed.

It’s a one-time deal. Once the marker is called, the debt is paid. Use the marker wisely. You only get one.

Appendix B — Quick Reference

The most-needed numbers in one place, pulled straight from the game engine. All combat rolls use a d10: a shot hits when the roll meets or beats the firing ship’s to-hit number. Modifiers below are written from the attacker’s point of view — +1 means your shots land more easily, −1 means they miss more easily (the same convention the battle replay’s modifier chips use).

Turn Sequence

When the turn processes, everything resolves in this order (full detail in Chapter 4 — The Turn):

1. Load / Unload / Place Starbase — Freighters load and unload cargo; Starbases are placed.
2. Local Traders — 1 mineral per turn flows along each active warp lane.
3. Starbase repairs — a damaged Starbase repairs 1 HP (2 with Bastion Protocol), or nothing at all in a turn its crews are patching up damaged Carriers in the same system.
4. Combat Round 1 — fighter combat resolves first, then ship fire; withdrawal fire hits fleets leaving a contested system.
5. Movement — fleets depart and arrive. A ship that moves cannot fire again this turn.
6. Combat Round 2 — normal fire, then ambush fire, then invasion. Ships that just arrived cannot fire, and only ambush fire can hit them.
7. Production — systems spend Build Points on ships and improvements.
8. Fleet maintenance — Ion-9 crystals are consumed; an empire that cannot pay is Out of Ion-9 supply starting next turn.
9. Mining — systems produce minerals.
10. Population growth, then the unrest check.
11. Asteroid field damage — each ship parked in an asteroid field risks 5% destruction (Carriers take 1–3 hull damage per strike instead).
12. Ownership changes — conquests from invasion are applied.
13. Mineral transfers & pirate payments settle.
14. NPC diplomacy — relations rolls, joins, and reactions.
15. End of turn — new Starbases become active; wormholes, lost-fleet searches, and spy reports resolve.

Combat Order of Operations

1. Fighter combat (once per turn, before Round 1): fighters launch → dogfights (CAP vs. incoming strike waves, simultaneous) → flak → surviving strike fighters hit their target ships. Surviving CAP stays up and absorbs hits ahead of Cruisers for the rest of the battle. Full rules: Chapter 15.
2. Round 1 fire, by ship type: Missile → Starbase → Cruiser → Carrier → Destroyer → D-Sat → Nova → Freighter — casualties apply between types (in a Nebula, all fire is simultaneous instead). Ships with move orders don’t fire. Then withdrawal fire spills leftover hits onto fleets moving out.
3. Movement.
4. Round 2: lone Destroyer probes are destroyed → normal fire (same order) → ambush fire (the only fire that can hit ships that arrived this turn) → invasion, only if the defender has nothing left that can fire.

Screening order (who absorbs hits first): Destroyer → Nova → Missile → Cruiser → CAP fighters → D-Sat → Starbase → Freighter → Carrier. Nova antimatter strikes ignore screening — each hit deals 5 damage to one random enemy ship (lethal to everything but a healthy Starbase or Carrier).

Ship Stats & Costs

Ion-9 Usage Breakpoints

The fleet size at which Ion-9 usage ticks up to the next tenth of a crystal (full rules in 8g — Fleet Maintenance):

Every 5 ships add 0.1 crystals. Each Carrier adds a flat 1 crystal per turn on top.

Fighter & Flak Rolls

• CAP dogfight: 8+. A strike wave fighting through CAP fires back at 9+ (8+ if the wave outnumbers the CAP).
• Fighter strike on ships: 6+, then a crit die — 7–8 = 2 damage, 9 = 3 damage, 10 = 4 damage.
• Ambush fighter fire: half the surviving fighters fire at 7+.
• Flak (anti-fighter): Carrier and Starbase 4+, Cruiser 8+, Destroyer / Nova / D-Sat / Missile Ship 9+, Freighter 10.

To-Hit Modifiers

Victory Points

Values on this page were pulled from the game engine on 07/11/2026. If a battle replay ever disagrees with a number here, trust the replay — and please report the difference through Feedback.

Appendix C — Glossary

One-line definitions of every term you’ll meet in the game. Each term links to the chapter where its full rules live.

Active Warp Lane

A warp lane that glows mint green and lets any of your ships travel it without a Cruiser — activated by owning Starbases in both systems it connects.

Advantage Card

One of two cards dealt at game start, of which you keep one permanent empire-wide bonus that shapes your whole strategy. The Dead System Network legacy adds a second card mid-game.

Ambush

A stance that holds fire in Round 1 to watch chosen warp lanes, then fires (at a −1 penalty) on ships arriving from those lanes in Round 2 — the only fire that can hit arriving ships.

Arrival Immunity

Ships that just warped in can neither fire nor be targeted by normal fire in Round 2 — only ambush fire can hit them.

Asteroid Field

A resource-rich hazard where each ship risks 5% destruction per turn, only Freighters can mine (+1 mineral per turn each), and Starbases cannot be placed.

Black Hole

A gravity well (one per galaxy) that instantly destroys any fleet entering it, relaying back only the names of its neighboring systems.

Build Points (BP)

The production currency for everything you build; each BP requires 1 population + 1 industry + 1 mineral, and only the mineral is spent.

CAP (Combat Air Patrol)

The defensive fighter role: CAP intercepts incoming enemy fighters, then stays on station absorbing hits for your fleet.

Carrier (CV)

A 10-HP flagship carrying 12 fighters that strike before normal combat; +1 Ion-9 crystal per turn upkeep; unlocked by placing a Starbase on a Dead System.

Close Air Support

An invasion bonus of +1 or +2 to your Freighters’ rolls against Planetary Defense when your fighters outnumber the defending Fighter Base’s by 6 or more.

Course

A standing instruction that walks one group of ships and its cargo to a system 2–4 jumps away, one jump per turn, as ordinary Move orders you can change or cancel each turn; it never routes to or through a hostile or unexplored system.

Cruiser (CR)

The backbone warship (3 HP, hits on 5+, 2 BP) and the only ship whose warp field generator can gate an entire fleet through a warp gate.

Dead System

A lifeless, war-blasted world with no population or industry, claimable only by placing a Starbase; may hold a one-time mineral stockpile and ancient ruins.

Defense Satellite (D-Sat)

An immobile 1-BP orbital platform (3 HP, hits on 5+) that automatically defends its system but can never move, ambush, or run out of Ion-9 supply.

Demand

An order to another player to take their ships out of your space. It reaches them with that turn’s report; they have the next turn to answer “We agree” and leave by a deadline, or “We ignore your threats” and lose reputation while you gain the right of expulsion.

Derelict Ships

The powered-down wrecks of a Lost Fleet, shown as a faded grey faction once discovered; they never fire and can’t be attacked until claimed.

Destroyer (DD)

The cheap (1 BP, 2 HP) workhorse that screens first in every fleet and can sacrifice itself as a one-way scouting probe.

Exposure Penalty

The −1 die roll penalty on the ship fire of Pirate Raiders and Corsair ships fighting 3 or more warp-lane hops from the nearest asteroid field; an exposed Freighter can’t hit at all without a bonus.

Favor

An always-active task offered by an independent system, voiced in its people’s character; progress raises that system’s relations toward joining your empire.

Fighter

A 1-HP small craft carried by Carriers, Fighter Bases, and Starbases; launches automatically when battle is joined, flying either the CAP or Strike role.

Fighter Base

A 2-BP fixed installation (max 1 per system) with up to 5 fighters defending its system; it opens with 1 fighter and rearms to 5 over the next two quiet turns. It can’t be targeted in battle and is lost only when the system changes hands.

Flak

Anti-fighter fire thrown up by defending ships against each incoming strike wave — Carriers and Starbases are best at it (4+).

Fog of War

Map concealment: you see only systems you own, have visited or probed, or that sit one warp lane from a system you have intel on.

Freighter (Fr)

The 1-BP transport with a 3-unit hold (3 minerals, or 1 population, or 1 Starbase) that mines asteroids and is your best invasion ship (2 damage per hit).

Gaia System

A rare, powerful world permanently locked at Neutral — diplomacy can never move it, so conquest is normally the only way to take one.

Galactic Ranking

Your Hall of Fame score: the average number of players you beat per finished game (minimum 3 completed games to be ranked).

Galaxy Domination

The victory condition of controlling 30% of the galaxy’s ownable systems — Star Systems and Dead Systems claimed with a Starbase both count.

Home System

The world each player starts with — higher starting population, industry, and defenses — and the anchor for the Vanquish victory count. Its Starbase is the only one in the galaxy that begins with an Ion-9 Refinery.

Independent System

A star system controlled by a minor faction aligned with no player, with its own fleet, defenses, and attitude toward each empire separately.

Innocent Entry

Moving, while you have promised to stay out of a player’s space, into one of their systems your map did not show as theirs. No promise is broken and nothing is charged; you get a fresh deadline to leave.

Invasion

The Round-2 assault on a system’s Planetary Defense, possible only when the defender has nothing left that can fire; at 0 PD the system is conquered.

Ion Nebula

The deadliest terrain in the game: all Nebula rules apply, ion storms reduce every ship to 1 HP, and fighters cannot launch at all.

Ion-9 Crystal

The fleet-supply resource (1 BP each, buildable only at a system with an Ion-9 Refinery, never transportable) consumed each turn to keep your fleet supplied.

Ion-9 Refinery

The level-2 Starbase upgrade (3 BP, needs 3 industry) that lets a system build Ion-9 crystals; every home starts with one, and a refinery is destroyed along with its Starbase.

Lifetime Credibility

A cross-game score of how you treat other players (pacts kept vs. betrayals), shown as an eight-tier chip from Loyal Friend down to Diabolical.

Local Traders

Passive civilian commerce moving 1 mineral per turn along each of your active warp lanes, flowing mostly toward your home system.

Lost Fleet

A squadron of ancient warships hidden in every Nebula and Ion Nebula — find it by keeping ships in the cloud, then claim it with a lone Freighter carrying 2–3 minerals.

Missile Ship (Mi)

A fragile (1 HP, 1 BP) warship that fires first each combat round but needs a Cruiser to move and is nearly useless in asteroid fields.

Missions

Faction-sponsored objectives dealt across four tiers; completing 3 of a tier’s missions unlocks the next tier, up to the exclusive Tier 4 Legacy race.

N.A.P. (Non-Aggression Pact)

A signed, galaxy-visible pact between two empires under which neither side’s ships can fire on the other; breaking one costs reputation and Lifetime Credibility.

Nebula

A gas-cloud system imposing −1 on all fire, no ambush, no Starbases, simultaneous fire, and a small-vs-large rule favoring fleets of 20 or fewer against fleets of 40 or more.

Nova (N)

An expensive (2 BP), inaccurate (8+) warship whose anti-matter beam destroys one random enemy ship outright on any hit — even a Starbase or Carrier.

Out of Ion-9 supply

When your crystal stockpile can’t cover the fleet’s supply cost, all mobile ships fire at −1 (Starbases and D-Sats exempt) until supply is restored.

Outnumbered Bonus

A +1 to all your mobile ships’ fire when enemy combat ships outnumber yours by more than 3-to-1 (Freighters, D-Sats, and Starbases aren’t counted, and immobile Starbases and D-Sats don’t share the bonus). The underdog gets the edge — the bigger fleet gets nothing.

Pirate Diplomacy

Your standing with the pirates, built from tribute and reputation, climbing tiers that buy raid immunity and privileges.

Pirate Raider

An organized pirate fleet that launches from asteroid fields to plunder player systems with mineral stockpiles, moving one hop per turn; 3 or more hops from the nearest asteroid field it fires at a −1 die roll penalty (the Exposure Penalty).

Pirates

The lawless red faction lurking at Dead Systems and asteroid fields: they raid for plunder, capture half the ships they destroy, never take territory, and can be bargained with but never controlled.

Planetary Defense

A system’s ground garrison (1 BP each; each unit soaks 2 hits): the target of invasions, the shield against plunder, and the anchor that keeps population out of unrest.

Plunder

A pirate raid’s payoff: with no opposition on station they steal minerals, halve your Planetary Defense, and tip the system into unrest. Taking more than 1 mineral also costs the system 1 VP of value, down to half.

Probe

A one-way jump by a lone Destroyer that burns up on arrival but transmits full intel on the destination — undetected, and immune to combat and ambush.

Relations (AI players)

How one AI player feels about you, from Hostile (−40) up to Ecstatic (+40), shown as a mood chip on its Diplomacy card with the reasons behind it. Contrast with Reputation, which is how the whole galaxy sees you.

Relations (diplomacy level)

Your per-independent-system standing on a named scale from Angry up to Friendly — higher is better; at the top the system joins you. Contrast with Reputation, which is empire-wide.

Reputation

Your empire-wide standing with the galaxy’s independent races, from Revered down to Reviled — aggression against neutrals drives it down. Contrast with Relations, which is per-system.

Right of Expulsion

After a player ignores your demand to leave, or breaks a promise to, you may attack their ships in your own systems without declaring war — no reputation or credibility cost, and no war.

Rogue Join

The chance that a system joining your empire through diplomacy sees its garrison defect to the pirates — you gain the system, but not its fleet.

Screening Order

The fixed sequence in which ships absorb hits: Destroyers first, then Novas, Missile Ships, Cruisers, CAP fighters, D-Sats, Starbases, Freighters, and Carriers last.

Solidarity

The ripple after you attack a Neutral independent system: each adjacent Neutral independent may turn Hostile in sympathy.

Stance (Attack / Ambush / Conditional)

Every fleet’s posture: Attack fires on named enemies in both rounds, Ambush waits for arrivals from watched lanes, and Conditional (the default) fires only in retaliation.

Starbase

The most powerful unit in the game (10 HP, hits on 3+, two shots per round, 4 BP, 1 per system): claims Dead Systems, activates warp lanes, hosts up to 5 fighters (opening with 1 and rearming to 5), and repairs Carriers.

Strike

The offensive fighter role: strike fighters fly through enemy CAP and flak to attack one chosen enemy ship type, locking ships they hit out of Round-1 fire.

Surprise Attack

Firing on a player you’re merely Neutral with (no declared war): it costs reputation and Lifetime Credibility each turn — ambush fire is exempt.

Tribute

Minerals paid to the pirates from your original home system, each worth +1 permanently banked pirate-diplomacy point (+2 through turn 20, the Tribute Bargain).

Turn Processing

The moment the turn deadline passes and all queued orders resolve together in a fixed phase sequence; diplomacy changes also land at the rollover, not instantly.

Unrest

A troubled state (from conquest or overcrowding) that halves a system’s industry and mining and nearly stops population growth until Planetary Defense catches back up.

Vanquish Your Enemies

The victory condition of controlling 3 original home worlds including your own (4 in games of 7+ players) on any turn.

Vanquished

An empire that loses its last star system: its surviving ships defect to the pirates, and the player is locked out until the game ends.

Victory Points (VP)

The tiebreaker score at the turn limit — from systems held, population, minerals at home, missions, and combat glory (full table in Appendix B). The Victory panel’s VP Breakdown shows your own score line by line.

Warp Gate

A dormant ring-structure orbiting near every star, built by a forgotten race; a warp field generator activates it to open a near-instant corridor to the next gate.

Warp Lane

A connection between two warp gates shown as a line on the star map — the only route fleets can travel, always one hop per turn.

Withdrawal Fire

The risk of leaving a contested system: departing ships can’t fire in Round 1, and if all your staying ships die, leftover enemy hits carry over onto them.

Appendix D — Discord Integration

W.E.B. integrates with Discord to give players a direct communication channel during active games. While the in-game Comms panel lets you send short written messages in your own words (up to 160 characters, delivered when the turn processes), Discord channels allow free-form, real-time conversation between the players in a game.

How It Works

1. Link your Discord account on your W.E.B. profile page before joining a game. You only need to do this once.
2. When a game starts, if more than half the players have linked Discord accounts, the system automatically creates a semi-private text channel on the official W.E.B. Discord server.
3. Only players in that game (who have linked Discord) can see and post in the channel. Other server members cannot access it.
4. The bot posts a welcome message with the game name, player list, and a link to the game.

What You Can Use It For

• Negotiate non-aggression pacts, trade agreements, and ceasefires in your own words
• Coordinate joint military operations with pact partners
• Bluff, deceive, and engage in the full spectrum of diplomacy
• Discuss strategy and share intel (or disinformation)

Limitations & Policies

• Discord linking is optional. Players who haven’t linked their Discord account before the game starts will not have access to the game channel. Link your account before joining your next game to ensure access.
• Threshold required: A channel is only created if more than half the players in the game have linked Discord. In small games where few players have linked, no channel is created.
• AI takeover / departure: If your empire is taken over by the AI or you leave the game, you retain read/write access to the channel. You can still chat about the game with the remaining players.
• Auto-deletion: Game channels are automatically deleted 48 hours after the game ends. This gives players time to discuss the final outcome, congratulate the winner, and debrief — but channels do not persist indefinitely.
• Private games: When creating a private game, the host can check the “Create Discord channel” option to guarantee a channel is created regardless of how many players have linked Discord.

Privacy Notice

Notifications via Discord

Separately from game channels, W.E.B. can send you direct messages on Discord for game events — turn reminders, new turn results, diplomacy messages, and more. Configure which notifications you receive on your Profile page under Discord Notifications.

Appendix E — Index

Every chapter, rule section, and Advantage Card in this manual, alphabetically. (Looking for a definition instead? See the Glossary.)

Appendix F — List of Tables

Every table in this manual, in page order, linked to the section that contains it.

Appendix G — Player Factions

Some games are set up with Player factions. When you join one, you choose a faction. Normal Empire is the default faction type, and everything in this rulebook outside this appendix describes it. The other factions play by different rules, set out below. More factions will be added over time.

• Each faction other than Normal Empire can be picked by one player per game. Once someone has it, the join dialog shows it as (Taken already).
• If nobody picks a special faction, the game starts and plays as a normal game.

G.1 The Corsairs

The Corsairs are raiders, not rulers. They hold no worlds. They live in a hidden Den deep in the asteroid belts, take what they want from the galaxy's richest systems, sell their services to the highest bidder, and win on Victory Points alone.

G.2 The Corsair Den

• Hidden. You name your Den when you join. Only you can see it. No other player ever learns which system it is, where it is or what is in it, not even after the game ends. It sits in the upper-left corner of your map as the DEN tile. Its card always heads your list of system cards, followed by the systems holding your fleets, biggest first.
• Your fleets at a glance. Under the DEN tile, a button for each of your five biggest fleets shows its ship count and where it is. Click one to turn the map to that fleet and open its system's card; the system flashes in your colour. Every player has these buttons; on a phone they are your three biggest fleets, in one row across the top of the map, with the DEN tile under them.
• Linked to every asteroid field, both ways. Any of your ships can jump from the Den to any asteroid field, or from any asteroid field back to the Den, in one turn, with no Cruiser needed. Leaving an asteroid field down one of its ordinary warp lanes follows the normal movement rules.
• Unseen arrivals. Your fleets come out of an asteroid field without crossing any warp lane, so an ambush can't catch them arriving.
• Safe. The Den can never be attacked, invaded, captured or plundered. It scores no Victory Points.
• Building. At the Den every mineral is 1 Build Point. You can build Cruisers (2 BP), Destroyers (1), Missile Ships (1), Novas (2) and Freighters (1), and nothing else: no Carriers, Defense Satellites, Starbases, Fighter Bases, Planetary Defense, industry or refineries. You don't have to spend everything; unspent minerals stay in the Den.
• Loot in, payment out. Unload your Freighters at the Den to turn loot into Build Points. Load minerals to carry them out again, for example to pay for recruits (G.7).
• A missed turn builds nothing and your fleets hold position. Draft orders you saved still run.

G.3 Starting Out

• You start at the Den with 3 Cruisers, 12 Destroyers, 2 Novas and 4 Freighters, and no minerals.
• Recruits: word of a new crew spreads. If you are short of ships on these turns, recruits arrive at the Den:

  Turn	If you have fewer than	You get
  5	20 ships	1 CR, 5 DD, 3 Fr
  10	50 ships	1 CR, 9 DD, 5 Fr
  15	60 ships	1 CR, 15 DD, 7 Fr

  Every ship you own counts, Freighters included. So do your minerals ready to build, one ship for each mineral: the minerals in your Den, the minerals aboard your Freighters there, and the minerals aboard your Freighters in any asteroid field where you are not outnumbered: where the other players' warships there, all together and leaving out any player you hold a Do Not Raid contract with, are no more than yours. Freighters are not warships. A hoard can't wait out a wave and be built the turn after. Each wave is checked once, at the end of its turn.

G.4 What You Can See

• Your Den, always.
• Every asteroid field, once. At the start of the game you know what is in every asteroid field. That knowledge is not kept up to date: from Turn 2 each field shows what you saw on Turn 1 until you look again.
• The black hole, always. Your charts show where the galaxy's black hole is from the start of the game, so you never fly into it by accident.
• Wherever the static pirates are holding. The static pirates share what they see with you, so any system where they hold position is live for you, every turn. A pirate band still travelling to a new hideout shares nothing until it arrives.
• Your spy network. Each turn your network of spies and collaborators reports systems holding large mineral stockpiles, whoever owns them. Only settled worlds, star systems with industry, are reported: never a Dead System (the static pirates already watch most of those for you), an asteroid field or a nebula. A system with 10 minerals has a 25% chance of being reported, plus 2% for every mineral over 10, and 5% less if it lies next to an original home system. Original home systems themselves are never reported. You always hear of at least one system: if no roll succeeds, you hear of the largest stockpile on a settled world. The report is in the General section of your turn report, and every system ever sighted is listed in the Mineral Stockpile Sightings card on your Empire tab with its newest sighting, marked current when it was reported this turn. A row drops off once it is out of date: you have plundered that system since, or seen it with your own eyes. A sighting tells you the stockpile; it does not show you the system. Systems you have plundered that can't be plundered again yet are listed there too, in amber, with 0 minerals, a plunder skull with the number of times you have plundered them, and when you can plunder them again (for example Ankh: 0 ☠x1 (eligible for ☠ again in 3 turns)); their tooltip says how many times you have plundered them, when you last did, and the turn they open again. The map's tooltip and the plunder skull on the system card say the same. Click a name in the list to find the system: one you have visited or have intel on is selected, as anywhere else; one you can see on the map but have never visited turns the map to it and flashes it, without changing the selected system card (on a phone the Empire tab closes so you can see the map); one with no dot on your map plays a short warning sound and nothing moves.
• Other empires' Advantage Cards. You hold no Advantage Card yourself, but your A-Cards panel lists every other player empire, each with its card face up once you have met that empire and face down until then, as for any player. Select an empire to see its card full size.
• Everything else works as for any player: wherever your ships are, any battle you fight in, and so on.

G.5 Plunder

• Where: any populated star system, a player's or an independent one, or a Dead System, where you have a fleet with Destroyers. Never a player you have a Do Not Raid contract with (G.9).
• Pirates first. You can't plunder a Dead System while a static pirate band holds it. You won't fire on the pirates (G.8), so buy them instead: recruit every one of their ships (G.7). A band with a single ship left still blocks you. Recruits join your fleet at the end of the turn, after the plunder is checked, so recruit the last of the band one turn and plunder the next. A Dead System with no pirates is plundered as usual. The system card tells you when pirates hold a Dead System, and how many ships you must recruit; your turn report tells you when the last of them joins you.
• Too little to take, no plunder. A system can be plundered only if it has at least 2 minerals on hand, or if it is a Dead System holding a relic your plunder would seize (see Dead Systems and relics, below). With 0 or 1 minerals and no such relic, there is nothing worth taking. The PLUNDER button on the system card’s Defense row is grayed out with the reason as its tooltip, and the Attack / Plunder row’s tooltip gives it too: “Plunder: Alphard has no minerals on hand — there is nothing to plunder.” or “Plunder: Alphard has only 1 mineral on hand — too little to plunder (it takes 2 or more).” The row stays open if there is something to attack, and the ATTACK ORDER window shows (no plunder this turn) with the same reason. If the system has too few minerals when the turn runs, the plunder fails with the same words.
• How: give an Attack order on the system's owner. Your fleet plunders whenever it can, unless you tick Don't plunder this system this turn. Attacking anyone else never plunders. Your one combat order, in the system's menu and the Orders panel, is always called Attack / Plunder: it is greyed out when you can do neither, and hovering it (tapping on a phone) gives two lines, what an attack would do here or why it can't, and what a plunder would take or why it can't. Hover the amber Attacking or Plundering on the system card to see what you expect to take. Where nothing defends a system, including a Dead System nobody owns, the card's Defense row also has a PLUNDER button: one click orders the plunder, and it reads PLUNDERING until you click it again.
• Clear the defenders in round 1. The plunder happens before the second combat round, and only if the system's owner has no ships left (ships that arrived this turn don't count), no Defense Satellites and no Starbase. Your attack fires on them in round 1; if they all fall, you plunder that same turn. If any survive, there's no plunder and your fleet fights on.
• Only Destroyers already there plunder. Destroyers you move in this turn can plunder next turn.
• The take: your Destroyers there, minus the system's Planetary Defense, up to the minerals the system holds. A Dead System counts as 1 PD. Planetary Defense doesn't stop a plunder, it cuts it: with as much PD as you have Destroyers there, you take nothing, though the plunder still halves the PD (rounded up) and costs the system its production. An owner holding the Elite Troops card keeps half of what you would have taken.
• Hauling: each of your Freighters there carries 3 minerals. Whatever they can't carry is spent on partying and lining pockets. Your VP counts the whole take, carried or not. Freighters destroyed on the way home lose their loot.
• No last-minute rescue: while you plunder a system, nobody can load or unload minerals there that turn, its owner included.
• The victim loses the minerals and that system's production for the turn. A player's populated system falls into unrest. An independent system you plunder turns hostile.
• Your plundering fleet doesn't fire in the second combat round.
• Plunder and invasion: if another empire invades the same system the same turn, you plunder first and then their marines land, against the Planetary Defense your plunder halved. Corsairs never take a system themselves.
• Small plunders don't count: a take under 2 minerals earns no VP and starts no timer. A take can still be that small: at a well-stocked system when its Planetary Defense cancels all but one of your Destroyers, or at a Dead System you plunder for its relic.
• The same system again: after 5 turns, for 1 VP less each time, down to 0.

Dead Systems and relics. Plundering an unclaimed Dead System that holds a dug-up relic seizes the relic's effect, whatever its minerals, even none: Ancient Mining Drones, the Ancient Orbital Shipyard (its ships appear at your Den), the Precursor Ion-9 Catalyst, Alien Phase Distortion and the Ancient Sentinel Network. The plunder has to get in: you need more Destroyers there than the system’s Planetary Defense, and a Dead System counts as 1, so 2 Destroyers will do. Such a relic, one you can steal, with turns left, that you don’t already hold, keeps the system open to plunder however few minerals it has. The plunder tooltip (on the PLUNDER button and the amber Plundering) then adds “Relic: a plunder that gets in seizes the relic’s effect, whatever the minerals.”, and the Attack / Plunder row says what you would take, for example “Plunder: the relic (no minerals to take).” or “Plunder: up to 3 minerals and the relic.” You keep the effect until someone builds a Starbase there. Other relics can't be stolen. The Mining Drones and the Ion-9 Catalyst do nothing for you, since you have no mines and burn no Ion-9, but while you hold one nobody else can use it, and its clock runs down in your hands. Your report says so when you seize one.

Enemy cargo. When you destroy an enemy Freighter, its mineral cargo goes into your Freighters' free space in that battle.

G.6 Captures

• Like the pirates, your Destroyers capture enemy ships in battle: half of what you destroy, per ship type and per combat round, scaled by the share of your hits that came from Destroyers and rounded to the nearest ship (a half rounds up). Only Destroyers take prizes: a fleet with none captures nothing, and the more of the hits your Destroyers land, the more ships you take. The battle replay shows each capture on the Destroyer volley of the round it was taken in. Carriers, Defense Satellites and Starbases are never captured.
• Captured ships join the fleet that took them. If that fleet is destroyed, the captures are lost.
• Cargo: when your fleet destroys or captures enemy Freighters, you take the minerals they carried, as much as you can carry: first into your fleet's free Freighter space, then into the captured Freighters themselves, which keep their cargo (3 minerals each). Only what doesn't fit is lost to space. Any of your ships can win the cargo, not only Destroyers, and you never turn it into Destroyers as the pirates do. Population and Starbase packages aboard are lost.
• 1 VP for every 25 ships captured, from players and independent systems alike. Recruited ships and recruit waves don't count.

G.7 Recruiting Static Pirates

• In a system with a static pirate fleet, your fleet can recruit its Cruisers, Destroyers, Missile Ships, Novas and Freighters, all or some.
• The price is half their build cost, rounded up, paid from the mineral cargo on your Freighters in that system. The recruits join your fleet at the end of the turn.
• Recruiting takes the whole turn. The minerals that pay for it, and the Freighters carrying them (one for every 3 minerals), stay in the system that turn, like a Freighter placing a Starbase. A Move order from there can take the rest of your fleet and cargo, but not those. Give the Move order first and the recruit can spend only the minerals left behind.
• Call in a Debt fleets and the Grey Company can't be recruited.
• Recruiting a Dead System's whole band is also how you open it for plunder (G.5).
• Where to click: Recruit in the system's menu, or the RECRUIT button on the pirates' row in Ships Present, which opens the order with the whole band picked (as much of it as your cargo pays for). Both are greyed out, with the reason, when your fleet there has no minerals aboard, or when a Move order is taking all of them out. Hover the pirates' row to see the truce, the price and whether they are blocking a plunder. In the order, ALL picks the whole band, and at a Dead System a line says whether your pick opens it for plunder.

G.8 Combat

• Anyone may attack you, and it costs them no reputation or credibility, unless it breaks a contract with you (G.9).
• The static pirates leave you alone, and you never fire first on pirates. An Attack order on a pirate fleet is refused. If a pirate fleet fires on you, your ships fire back. The one pirate fleet that may fire first is a Call in a Debt fleet defending its patron while you attack that patron's system.
• Hiding: every ship firing at Corsair ships in a nebula, Ion Nebula or asteroid field takes a −1 die roll penalty. In a nebula this stacks with the nebula's own −1.
• Their reputation cuts both ways. The two reputation rules in 11i count your ships as pirate ships, so an opponent’s record changes the odds before a shot is fired. A Revered empire fires at you at −1 to hit (Revered Restraint) — its gunners will not risk a civilian hull, and that is your edge against the galaxy’s saints. A Reviled empire is the reverse: your guns fire at it at −1 to hit (Iron Rule), because the old tricks get nowhere in space that shoots first. Pick your marks accordingly: the cleanest empire in the game is the easiest to hit, and the most feared is the hardest.
• Flak gunners: Corsairs can't use fighters, so their crews train on anti-fighter fire: your ships get a +1 die roll bonus on every flak roll. Flak is your only answer to Carrier fighters.
• Cohesion penalty: right now you are an unruly mob of treasure seekers and space dogs, and a big fleet falls apart under fire; every turn your captains learn to hold a few more ships together. A Corsair fleet with more than 20 + the turn number warships (Cruisers, Destroyers, Missile Ships and Novas; Freighters don't count) fires its guns with a −1 die roll penalty, and one with more than twice that many fires them with a −2. The limit is 21 on Turn 1, 30 on Turn 10 and 50 on Turn 30, and it counts everything you have in one system: on Turn 5 (limit 25), 26 to 50 warships fire at −1 and 51 or more at −2. Only the ships that fire are counted, round by round: ships ordered out of the system don't fire in the first round and ships arriving this turn don't fire in the second, so neither counts. Your flak is never affected, however big the fleet. Captured ships join the fleet that took them, so a good battle can push it over. Your fleet's row in Ships Present shows an amber count (such as 26/30 warships) as it nears the limit, a −1 to hit badge once it is over, and −2 to hit past twice the limit (one more when the fleet is also exposed, below). Split into smaller raids to avoid it.
• Exposure penalty: supplies run short far from the belts, and your crews hate being out in the open with no easy escape route; this close to civilized space, far from the asteroid fields they can vanish into, morale drops. A Corsair fleet fighting 3 or more warp-lane hops from the nearest asteroid field fires its guns with a −1 die roll penalty, in every round, ambush fire included; at 0 to 2 hops there is no penalty, so fight within 2 hops of an asteroid field to avoid it. Hops are counted along the warp lanes as they stand that turn: a lane severed by the Precursor Stargate Virus is no route, a lane opened by the Precursor Wormhole Generator is one, a route through the black hole doesn’t count, and your Den’s links are not warp lanes, so they never shorten the count. If no asteroid field can be reached at all, your fleet is exposed. Your flak is never affected.
  • It stacks with the cohesion penalty. A fleet over the limit and exposed fires at −2, or −3 past twice the limit. The red badge on your fleet’s row in Ships Present shows the total of both (for example −2 to hit), and its tooltip explains each penalty on its own line. A fleet that is only exposed shows −1 to hit. Every player who can see your fleet sees the same badge and tooltip, without the advice meant only for you (how to shake each penalty off).
  • Freighters can’t hit. A natural 10 still has a chance to hit for every exposed ship except a Freighter, which already needs a 10: an exposed Freighter needs an 11 and can’t hit at all, unless a die roll bonus such as the Outnumbered bonus brings it back to 10 (9c).
  • Out in the open: a one-time briefing. The first turn one of your fleets moves into a system where it pays the Exposure penalty (3 or more hops from the nearest asteroid field, or with no lane route to one), that turn’s report carries a briefing titled OUT IN THE OPEN., filed on that system’s card. It tells you how far the fleet is from the nearest asteroid field and why your crews hate it there, sets out the rule (your guns at a −1 die roll penalty, ambush fire included, on top of any cohesion penalty; your Freighters lose the natural 10 and can’t hit; your flak unaffected), and points you to the red badge. It appears once per game.
  • In the battle replay it is its own red chip with the distance, for example −1 Exposed: 5 hops from asteroid fields.
• No Ion-9 supply needed: Corsairs steal Ion-9 from every ship they meet in space, so they are never out of supply.
• At home in the belts: your ships take no asteroid damage and no losses on arrival in an asteroid field. Your Freighters can't mine there.
• No Carriers, fighters, Starbases or Lost Fleets salvage.
• Destroying ships scores you nothing. For everyone else, Corsair ships they destroy count as player kills, and as pirate kills for pirate missions and pirate-fighting reputation.

G.9 Contracts and Relations

• No diplomacy. No player can be at war, at peace, allied or in an N.A.P. with the Corsairs, and nobody can send them minerals or demands.
• Meet them first. As with any empire, you deal with the Corsairs once one of your fleets has met one of theirs. That turn a message introduces them (who they are, what they do, and how their contracts work); from then on the Corsairs have a row on your Diplomacy panel, and Comms is open. The Corsairs, in turn, can only make offers to empires they have met.
• Contracts are offered from the Corsairs' own panel, CONTRACTS (its button reads Offers): + New Contract, to all the players they have met or to some. Offered to some, each of those empires gets its own offer. Every offer, request and contract is its own card there, filtered by the Offers, Contracts and Player offers chips (Player offers are the requests players send), and a signed contract glows green. Players can also ask for one.

  Contract	The Corsairs promise
  Do Not Raid	not to fire on, ambush or plunder the client for a number of turns; their ships also let the client's Local Traders pass
  Hit: plunder	to plunder a named player for at least a set number of plunder VP by a deadline
  Hit: kill	to destroy or capture at least a set number of a named player's ships by a deadline

• Asking for a contract: on the Corsair row, ＋ Request a contract. Name the contract, the target and goal for a hit, the turns, and the price you offer. You can have one request open at a time. Your offered price is set aside from your capital as soon as you send it, so you can't spend it on builds. The Corsairs accept or reject it as it stands; to haggle, use Comms and send a new one. If they haven't answered by the end of the next turn, it expires and your minerals are free again.
• Paid up front. The price moves from the client's capital to the Den at the next turn's processing. You can't accept a contract you can't pay for.
• One side per empire. The Corsairs can't promise Do Not Raid to an empire they hold or offer a hit on, or take a hit on an empire that holds Do Not Raid with them. On their screens, every choice this rules out is greyed, and its tooltip says why.
• Private. You see only your own contracts with the Corsairs. Nobody can see who else has hired them, or whom they have been hired to hit.
• Breaking. Only a targeted Attack order on the Corsairs breaks Do Not Raid, and the order itself is the break, whether or not a Corsair fleet is there to shoot: the client loses 1 credibility and one reputation level, and the Corsairs keep the price. While it runs, your ambushes let Corsair ships through. Corsairs who miss a hit deadline lose 2 credibility and refund the price in full.
• The Retired Pirate card is not dealt in games with a Corsair.
• Independent systems never deal with Corsairs. They are hostile from first contact and stay hostile, except Lawless races, who stay neutral until attacked or plundered. With nothing to negotiate, a Corsair sees no Independent diplomacy at all: no Independent cards, no relations readout on their system cards and no favors.
• Fear and hate. A hostile Independent both hates and fears you. Every turn your ships are in its system, its garrison decides again:
  • If its warships number at least twice yours there, it fires first, both combat rounds.
  • Otherwise it keeps its distance and only fires back: it shoots only at ships that shoot at it. Attack or plunder it and its whole garrison fires back that same round, Defense Satellites and Starbase included.
  • Only warships count: Cruisers, Destroyers, Missile Ships, Novas and Carriers. Freighters, Starbases and Defense Satellites don't. A garrison with no warships never fires first.
  • Ships you order to leave that turn don't count, because they can't fight. Ships arriving that turn count from the next turn.
  • It decides once, at the start of the turn's first combat round, and sticks to it for both rounds.
  Example: a garrison of 14 warships fires first on your fleet of 7 (exactly twice), but holds its fire against a fleet of 8. Bring a fleet of 1 Cruiser and 4 Freighters and any armed garrison of 2 or more fires first, since only the Cruiser counts.
• What they tell you. When you first meet one, its greeting shows which way it leans: scorn and "They are powering up their weapons!" when it outnumbers you two to one, a plea and "They are fearful of our strength and are keeping their distance from our fleet" when it doesn't. After that your turn report has a line whenever a garrison changes its mind.

G.10 Corsair Missions

• The Corsairs have their own mission tree, from the Free Captains: Tiers I to III, five missions dealt per tier, with no Tier IV.
• Rewards are ships, delivered to your Den. Tier II missions are worth 1 VP each and Tier III missions 2 VP each.

G.11 Scoring and Winning

Corsair VP = plunder + captures + missions + standing fleet. You win with the most Victory Points at the turn limit, or as the last empire standing: the Den keeps you standing until you are eliminated. Your VP Breakdown, at the bottom of the Victory panel, shows every part. Its Factions Plundered row lists each player you have plundered, with the +3 your first plunder of them scored.

Watch the Domination races. You can't win by Galaxy Domination or Vanquish Your Enemies, but your Victory panel still shows how close every other empire is to winning that way, so you can go and stop them.

Your top bar. In place of Systems, Population and Reputation, which never change for a Corsair, your top bar shows Captured, the ships you have captured, and Plunders, the number of systems you have plundered (for example ×4). Hover Captured to see how close you are to your next VP, Plunders to see each system you have plundered and when you can plunder it again, and VPs to see the four parts of your score. On a phone the second row shows the same, with a plunder skull for Plunders.

On the map. Under the name of every system you have plundered, where other players see their build orders, a red skull and a number show how many times you have plundered it (for example ×3). Only a plunder that counts toward your score counts here, so the numbers add up to your Plunders total. Hover it (tap it on a phone or iPad) to see the turns you plundered it and when you can plunder it again; click it to select the system. The Plunders map filter (the skull; on a phone, Reports → Map Options) hides and shows them.

G.12 Elimination

You are eliminated when you have no warships anywhere, no minerals in the Den and no mineral cargo on any Freighter, all at once. Any Freighters you have left are scuttled. A missed turn never eliminates you.

G.13 Facing the Corsairs

• You will never learn where the Den is. Corsair fleets come out of asteroid fields without crossing a lane, and the asteroid field cards warn you: “Hidden Corsair base nearby: their ships can appear without warning.”
• Only a defender that survives stops plunder: the Corsairs plunder in the same turn they wipe out your ships, Defense Satellites and Starbase in the first combat round. A token defender buys you nothing; a garrison that outlasts round 1 does. Ships arriving that turn don't count.
• Planetary Defense cuts the take: each point of PD cancels one plundering Destroyer, and the Elite Troops card halves what they carry off. The plunder still halves your PD.
• Big fleets shoot worse: a Corsair fleet of more than 20 + the turn number warships fires its guns with a −1 die roll penalty (the cohesion penalty, G.8), and one of more than twice that with a −2; its row in Ships Present shows a −1 to hit or −2 to hit badge. Its flak is not affected, so Carriers still face its full flak.
• Far from the belts they shoot worse too: a Corsair fleet fighting 3 or more warp-lane hops from the nearest asteroid field fires its guns with a further −1 die roll penalty (the Exposure penalty, G.8), on top of any cohesion penalty, and its Freighters can’t hit at all without a bonus. Its badge in Ships Present shows the total, and hovering it tells you which penalties it is paying. Its flak is not affected.
• You can't empty the vault at the last moment: on the turn the Corsairs plunder a system, loading and unloading there fails.
• Big stockpiles draw them. Their spies hear of large mineral stockpiles on any settled world except original home systems.
• Their ships stop your traders. Corsair ships at either end of one of your warp lanes blockade your Local Traders (7i), as pirate ships do, unless you hold a Do Not Raid contract with them.
• Pay them, or hire them: a Do Not Raid contract buys peace and lets your traders pass; a hit contract turns them on a rival (G.9).
• Informants: hold a Lizardmen world and the clan brokers tell you whenever a large Corsair fleet (10 or more ships) is organizing in an asteroid field. Hold an Arachnid world and your kin aboard Corsair ships tell you every system the Corsairs have been ordered to plunder.
• Fire at will: attacking the Corsairs costs no reputation, and their ships count toward your pirate missions and pirate-fighting reputation.

G.14 Rules That Change Whenever a Corsair Is in the Game

The rest of this rulebook describes a game without a Corsair. The following rules change whenever a Corsair player is in the game, for every player. If nobody picks the Corsair, none of them change.