The Seven Classes
Every planet belongs to one of seven classes, and the class decides how many colonists it can support in each working role, how much raw production it can stockpile, and how fast (or whether) that population actually grows.
Claiming a World
Land on any unclaimed planet in your current sector and claim it — no cost, no minimum cargo or colonist requirement. It's named "{Your name}'s Claim" automatically unless you rename it. Ownership can belong to you personally or, once you're in one, to your corporation.
Colonists & Production
A planet tracks colonists in five separate pools: Ore, Organics, Equipment, and Military — the working roles — plus Unassigned, the pool colonists actually arrive and depart through.
- Load colonists from a planet's Unassigned pool into your ship's cargo (100 colonists = 1 hold), fly them anywhere, and unload them into another planet's Unassigned pool — this is literally how you seed a new colony.
- As the owner, assign Unassigned colonists into a working role, capped by that planet class's own limit for that role.
- Every working colonist produces one unit of its matching resource every ten minutes (Ore colonists produce Fuel Ore, and so on), capped at the planet's own storage limit — collect it into your ship's hold whenever you're docked there.
- Population in a working role grows (or, for Gas Giants and Ice Worlds, shrinks) continuously at that class's own rate, compounding over time.
Citadels
A Citadel is a planet's real defensive and economic upgrade path — six levels, each unlocking something new, each paid for out of that planet's own on-hand production and Unassigned colonists (never your ship's cargo directly), and each taking real days to complete once started.
| Level | Unlocks |
|---|---|
| 2 | Military Reaction — the planet automatically fires on hostile ships that enter its sector |
| 3 | Quasar Cannon — adds real firepower to that Military Reaction defense |
| 5 | Shield Generator |
| 6 | Interdictor — blocks every ship's warp out of the sector, including your own |
Terraforming & Multi-Planet Sectors
A Genesis Torpedo — bought at the Hardware Emporium for 25,000cr, one at a time (your hull caps how many you can carry) — creates a brand-new planet of random class in your ship's current sector, and is consumed the moment you use it. Buy another if you want to terraform again. It works on a truly empty sector or one that already has a planet in it, up to five planets per sector. This is the only way a sector ends up with more than one world.
Destroying a Planet
This requires the Sovereign Flagship's Atomic Detonator, consumed the moment you use it — and it only works on a planet with zero colonists left, across every role. If anyone's still living there, it backfires and destroys your own ship instead of the planet. On a truly empty world, it works: the planet is deleted outright, your alignment drops 50 points, and any other ship still landed there is destroyed along with it.