Field manual 01 New command protocol
This is not a catalog of everything you can build. It is a plan for the decisions directly in front of you: what to inspect, what to protect, what to unlock, and how to leave your first world with a purpose.
Before construction Choose with intent
Read the cultures, choose the people whose future you want to shape, and then learn the planet you receive. A strong opening comes from responding to local conditions—not copying a build order without looking at the world beneath it.
Culture and homeworld context make a commander memorable. The dedicated chronicles explain what each civilization values; Explorer holds the factual record.
Read the seven chroniclesFirst login scan
Seven phases The first-command sequence
The story campaign supplies direction and timely rewards. Use this plan to understand why each objective matters, and how to know you are ready to move on.
Origin · Before minute zero
Begin with identity, then switch immediately to evidence. Your homeworld is not an abstract backdrop: its deposits and your starting inventory determine which queue is comfortable and which will leave you waiting.
You can name the next building, its purpose, and which resource will become scarce afterward.
Foundation · The Listening Foundry
The opening campaign first asks for a Manufacturing Plant, then a Mining Facility. That order introduces both layers of the economy: raw materials come out of the planet; manufactured components turn that stock into specialized capability.
You can replenish core materials, hold useful surplus, and explain the difference between raw stock and components.
Science · The Impossible Instrument
Build the Research Lab and follow the opening signal through Spacecraft Engineering, Enhanced Weapons Systems I, Electromagnetic Pulse Weapons, and Hyper-drive Technology. It is an unusual path because the campaign is teaching a connected technology graph, not handing you isolated upgrades.
Spacecraft construction and a practical drive path are unlocked, with enough stock left to use them.
Logistics · Prepare before the Shipyard
A Shipyard without components is a monument. Use the Manufacturing Plant to prepare structural frames, control circuits, fuel cells, and drive cores. Consult the spacecraft record for your exact Scout rather than guessing its requirements.
Your component inventory, building costs, and fuel reserve can all coexist without one queue starving another.
Construction · A Hull for an Echo
Build the Shipyard when the technology and supply chain are ready. The campaign then asks for Command Center levels three and five, turning the settlement’s central structure into a long-range radar platform capable of fixing the signal.
The Shipyard can accept your Scout order and radar reveals a destination worth investigating.
Commission · The Quiet Pathfinder
Your Scout is an information instrument. Commission the race-specific design available to you, verify its drive and systems requirements, then leave enough hydrogen uncommitted to operate it. A finished hull with no viable route is not readiness.
The Scout is available, fueled, and expendable only by a deliberate decision—not by accounting.
Expedition · Follow the Echo
The opening campaign concludes with a successful returned Spy expedition. Select an occupied settlement in the carrier’s path, study distance and travel time, review fuel, and send the smallest force that fulfills the mission. The report is the beginning of strategy, not the end of the tutorial.
The Scout returns successfully, the report is read, and one concrete follow-up action enters your queues.
Supply doctrine Six materials, three jobs
Do not evaluate a resource only by its current total. Ask what must remain liquid for construction, what must feed production, and what must be protected for movement.
Buildings, frames, and almost every early expansion compete for it.
Less abundant and increasingly important as hulls and heavy projects mature.
A frequent input across buildings and component production; easy to underestimate.
Research facilities, electronics, and precision systems turn it into a quiet bottleneck.
Construction may consume it, but flight gives it strategic value. Keep a mission reserve.
Scarce, powerful, and better held for known advanced requirements than casual spending.
Before you click build The three-balance test
The displayed cost is covered right now.
Its prerequisites, inputs, and follow-up queue are ready.
Mining, storage, and reserves remain healthy afterward.
Failure analysis Common opening mistakes
Recovery is possible. It is also slower than pausing long enough to see the second consequence.
A zero balance removes choices and can strand several queues at once.
Course correctionKeep a working reserve in the materials your next two objectives share.
Production that cannot be held does not become future capability.
Course correctionExpand capacity before a long absence or a major extraction increase.
Interesting nodes can delay the unlock your current plan actually needs.
Course correctionTrace prerequisites backward from one named capability.
The structure does nothing if hull components, drive research, or fuel are missing.
Course correctionStage the Scout recipe first; build the yard when it can receive work.
A construction spree can leave the first fleet unable to travel usefully.
Course correctionCreate a visible mental reserve for the planned route.
Several hulls multiply component and fuel pressure before information justifies them.
Course correctionOne Scout should answer the question that defines the next fleet.
Visibility is not suitability; distance, mission, timing, and risk still matter.
Course correctionCompare nearby targets and preview the complete order before dispatch.
Your economy and movements continue while you are away.
Course correctionLeave queues, capacity, and return times in a state tomorrow-you can understand.
After first contact Strategic branches
Your first report should narrow the next question. Pick a doctrine, strengthen the systems it depends on, and let other capabilities remain merely adequate until the plan has momentum.
Turn extraction, storage, and manufacturing throughput into the engine every later strategy can borrow.
PrioritizeImprove radar, drives, Scout coverage, and mission cadence until uncertainty becomes your best resource.
PrioritizeProduce intentional surplus, watch scarcity, and use trade to avoid building every supply chain yourself.
PrioritizeProtect what would be costly to replace, then make aggression an informed choice rather than a reflex.
PrioritizeTreat information, agreements, and reliable support as assets that compound across several commanders.
PrioritizeResearch colonization, prepare a Colony Ship, and choose the next world for what it adds—not because it is empty.
PrioritizeWhen detail matters Open the field records
Recipes, resource costs, technologies, spacecraft designs, defenses, buildings, and civilization records belong in the living catalog.
Orders are yours End of briefing
Choose your people. Read your world. Build the capability you can sustain—and send something into the dark.
