Colonies

Your colonies are how you turn star systems into income, ships, and tech. Without them, your fleets starve.

Planet classes

Every star system you scout will surface one of six planet types. The class drives habitability, the resource bonuses you’ll harvest, and how the system shows up on your map.

Founding a colony

First, survey the star system with one of your fleets containing a Scout Corvette. Once the survey is complete, Colonize appears when that fleet is still on the system, an open habitable planet is available, no rival controls the system, and you have the resources shown for the action. You can return later to settle another open planet in a system you already control.

The settlement cost follows the configured logistics cost of a Scout Corvette. Colonization resolves when you end the turn, and the cost is taken exactly once only if the colony is successfully founded. If the situation changes before resolution — for example, the planet is no longer available or you can no longer afford the cost — the order is rejected and nothing is taken.

A new colony starts at population 1. From there, it grows on its own based on:

• The system’s base habitability (low/medium/high — shown in the system info panel)
• Building bonuses (greenhouses, hydroponics)
• Faction modifiers (the Nyx Collective gets +10% growth)
• Adjacency to friendly colonies (small bonus from logistics chains)

Population caps are determined by buildings — without housing infrastructure, growth slows and eventually stops.

Every visible system with a colony carries an open colony symbol and a narrow ownership key in its player’s colour. The matching territory border keeps the main map and minimap aligned without painting over the star or planet beneath. Rival ownership appears only while that system is in sensor range; previously explored terrain does not reveal an unseen capture.

A newly founded colony appears on the galaxy map and in the turn summary after the order resolves.

What a colony does

Each turn, a colony:

1. Produces resources based on its terrain bonuses, buildings, and population.
2. Pays maintenance for itself and any units stationed there.
3. Advances the first item in its production queue.
4. Updates happiness based on services, garrison, and recent events.

Drop the maintenance bill below the income line and you have a viable colony. Drop the population above zero and you keep it.

On the map

Colonies and their key structures use open, light-coloured symbols beside the star or planet art. A small outlined key carries the owner’s colour without covering the world beneath, while each structure keeps its own shape:

• A colony marker uses a shallow dome and mast on every settled system.
• A mining station adds a pointed drill head.
• A research laboratory adds crossed orbital loops.
• A shipyard adds split dock brackets around a small hull.
• The system you’ve currently selected is framed by a slowly rotating highlight ring, so it stays easy to find even when you zoom out.

Prefer a cleaner board? The map’s layer control lets you hide structure markers (and the other overlays) whenever you want.

Specialisation

Generalist colonies underperform. The best players pick a focus per colony and build around it:

• Industrial — orbital foundry, recycling plant, deep-core mining. Outputs minerals and ship-build speed.
• Research — research lab, university, biological-survey post. Outputs research and rare-resource discovery.
• Defensive — keep production flexible and station a fleet beside the built-in garrison. Expensive to reinforce, hard to surprise.
• Population — habitats, hydroponics, immigration office. Grows fast and feeds the rest of the empire.

A four-colony empire of specialists out-produces a six-colony empire of generalists. Pick a role per colony and commit.

Production queue

Open a colony and choose Production to browse Structures, Ships, and Wonders. Every item you can build has a Queue action, with its resource cost, requirements, and build duration shown beside it. Once queued, its projected completion turn appears with its progress. A locked item explains exactly what you still need. The Wonders category includes the Founders’ Beacon and, in the late game, your faction’s scientific supremacy project.

You can line up several items, but the colony builds only the first one. That item gains one turn of progress each time you end the turn; everything behind it waits. Reorder or cancel planned items before End turn to set the order you want.

Nothing is charged for a plan you cancel before ending the turn. Once the turn accepts an item and deducts its cost, cancelling it later does not refund those resources. When production finishes, the structure, ship, or Wonder takes effect and appears in the Turn Summary alongside the colony’s latest progress.

Selecting one of your colonies also gives a short current readout: the item at the front of its queue and remaining turns, its population, and the latest growth result. If it says Idle, open Manage production from that readout to choose the next item. This helps you catch an empty queue without guessing at future output.

A supremacy project uses these same rules. Reordering pauses it without losing completed work, and its projection moves later while other items are ahead of it. If an enemy captures the colony, every unfinished item—including the project—is destroyed with no refund. Saving and loading preserves an accepted project and its exact remaining turns.

Strategy: Always have something queued. An idle colony is wasted income.

Defending colonies

Every colony has a built-in garrison — a small permanent defence force that engages attackers before the colony falls. Its nominal strength grows with the colony’s population.

If an invasion is under way against one of your selected colonies, its readout warns Invasion in progress. The warning tells you where attention is needed; choose the invading fleet to stop an attack you own or to give other fleets their orders. Rival movement and colony changes remain hidden outside your current sensor range.

When an enemy fleet enters the system:

1. Combat triggers between the attacker and the garrison plus any friendly fleets in the system.
2. If the defenders win, the colony is unaffected.
3. If the attacker wins, they can occupy the colony — taking its income, blocking its production, and slowly converting its loyalty.
4. You can liberate it later by re-taking the system. Loyalty resets but population may have declined.

Strategy: Don’t leave a colony with only its garrison if you suspect attack. Station a defensive fleet and develop the shared capital-ship or carrier research paths when a border needs heavier protection.

Happiness

Each colony tracks happiness from 0 (revolt) to 100 (joy):

• High happiness produces small income bonuses and faster growth.
• Low happiness drags production and triggers events (strikes, riots, secession threats).
• Garrisons and entertainment buildings raise happiness; tax raises lower it.

Most factions can ignore happiness if their colonies are well-fed and well-defended. The Nyx Collective trades a baseline happiness penalty for raw research output — pick your trade-offs.