Your first game

This guide describes the current development build. Stellar Nexus is not yet a public release, so menus and availability can change as release work continues. In that build, Quick Play on the main menu starts a fresh small galaxy with you against a single rival — no configuration screen, a new map every time. When you want full control over galaxy size, opponents, and faction, use New Game instead.

In a typical first game you’ll:

1. Choose a faction.
2. Watch a procedural galaxy generate around you.
3. Send your starting fleet to scout nearby star systems.
4. Survey a suitable system and found your second colony.
5. Pick a research project.
6. Meet another civilisation, decide whether to talk or fight.
7. End the turn. Repeat.

The game opens on a full-screen view of deep space — dark sky, distant nebula light, a scatter of stars — with the title and menu kept crisp on top. That mood carries into play: your hex galaxy sits on layered starfields, and as you pan the map the layers drift at different speeds, so deep space reads as genuinely deep rather than flat. It stays quiet on purpose, setting the scale without ever pulling focus from your fleets, your colonies, or the map.

Throughout the command surfaces, symbols are paired with readable control names and distinct shapes. You never need to tell two actions apart by colour alone.

Management panels for colonies, research, diplomacy, and fleets follow the same rhythm: indexed section controls, aligned readings, written status labels, and clearly marked unavailable values. Section names flex across narrow panels, and returning from a relationship detail places keyboard focus back on the relationship you opened.

If you choose something on the map while browsing one of those areas, that area stays open and shows your map selection near its heading. Choose Inspect to switch to the selected fleet, colony, or location. Back closes a detail first, then its main panel; Escape follows the same order. After an ordinary turn, play returns to the map with your last selection ready to inspect again. A decision that needs your answer opens over Notifications and stays there until you choose; routine reports remain available in the notifications history for you to read when ready.

When you inspect a fleet or colony, its panel keeps the owner’s full name in view while its frame takes on that civilisation’s own cut and line treatment. The readings and controls stay in the same places for every civilisation, so an unfamiliar frame never changes what a command does. Panels that compare several civilisations use the same clear name-and-marker treatment without taking on one side’s frame.

For a steadier backdrop, enable your device’s Reduce Motion setting. The map still responds when you move the camera, while ambient star twinkle and cloud drift settle.

Open Settings from the main menu to adjust Master, Music, and SFX levels. Each channel has its own mute switch and short preview, and Reset audio defaults restores the starting mix. These controls remain available while the production soundtrack and effects library is still being completed.

The soundtrack is still in preparation. A planned sound becomes part of the game after its finished file and playback have been reviewed; missing sounds leave the visible controls and outcomes available.

Important effects can briefly lower the music and background ambience so the action stays clear. Visible effects can also follow their position across the stereo field on supported devices; mono playback keeps them centred. Compatible desktop audio output keeps layered music together and uses its composed full mix if that alignment cannot be maintained. If audio work becomes too heavy, the game keeps the core mix and drops the extra terrain ambience for the rest of that session.

The adaptive score follows the screen you are using, visible battle pressure, the terrain currently revealed in the map view, and your chosen civilisation. It waits through brief changes and lets quieter passages linger so the music does not chatter between moods. Completed games choose a matching victory or defeat form. While commissioned layers are still being completed, any missing part falls back to the current core track.

The current single-player campaign has four enabled endings: capture every rival colony for Galactic Domination, complete your faction’s late-game supremacy megaproject for Scientific Supremacy, win a Galactic Council supermajority, or hold the campaign’s Credits target long enough for economic victory. A capstone unlocks its megaproject but does not win by itself.

Step 1 — Choose a faction

The opening menu shows four civilisations, each with different starting fleets, starting research, and bonuses. Pick the one whose flavour speaks to you:

• Terran Directorate — industrial, methodical, with research built around administration and reliable output.
• Nyx Collective — tech-rushers whose discoveries compound into a powerful research economy.
• Orion Hegemony — early military pressure backed by minerals and fleet logistics.
• Vanguard Nomads — mobile traders whose research links exploration, energy, and influence.

Each faction page lists the full bonus suite — see Factions.

Step 2 — The galaxy

The map is a hexagonal grid. Each tile is one of seven terrain types: empty deep space, nebulae, asteroid fields, ion storms, star systems (where you can settle), black holes, and rare wormholes. Black holes and wormholes occupy their own tiles away from star systems, so their event horizons and bright vortices stand out clearly on the map. Black holes block passage, while wormholes are quicker to cross. Precursor ruins and derelict fleets can still turn up among the stars.

Nebulae and ion storms don’t stop at tile edges. They drift across the map as soft, continuous clouds — flowing from hex to hex, merging where they meet, and dissolving into the deep-space background rather than ending at a hard border.

Your starting fleet begins on the same star-system tile as your home colony. Its ship silhouette stays visible over the star and colony marker. A small coloured mark beside it shows ownership; two marks mean two friendly fleets share the tile, while three marks mean three or more. The fog of war hides everything you haven’t yet seen.

Step 3 — Move and explore

Select one of your fleets, then choose Move in the fleet inspector — or toggle Show range there — to enter movement targeting. On a phone or tablet, the inspector opens as a compact strip with an essential fleet reading and action while the map remains usable; expand it to see the full roster and operating details. The hexes your fleet can reach this turn light up, but you can also choose a farther destination. The full route stays visible on the map wherever your scouts have charted it: a thin, dark-backed command line marks the plotted course without glowing or moving over the galaxy. A course you are considering is a continuous brass line; a journey already queued or under way settles into a dashed sage line with angular waypoints. The map never invents connections between nearby star systems. The inspector shows remaining jumps and estimated turns to arrival for a fully charted route. Estimates stay hidden while a route enters unexplored space. Your fleet follows as much of the route as it can each turn, then continues on later turns; the route remains in place when you save and return. If you change your mind before End turn, choose Cancel move. Once a journey is under way, choose Move again to plot a replacement or Stop route to hold position.

Keep the Fleet paths map layer on to see every course you have plotted, even when another fleet is selected and even at the farthest map view. Switching it off removes only the route lines; visible fleet markers stay on the galaxy map at every zoom.

Fleet lists and stacked-hex choices use the same names you see in the fleet panel. If two otherwise identical fleets share a hex, a small number after the name distinguishes them. Their written status tells you whether each is Idle, Moving, Waiting, Holding, Route invalid, Survey queued, Colonization queued, Invading, or Stopping invasion, so you can choose the intended fleet without relying on hidden technical labels.

Another empire’s planned route is never shown to you, and unexplored portions of your own course remain a gap rather than revealing terrain ahead. If one of your routes can no longer be followed, the fleet inspector explains the problem and End turn waits for a valid replacement. A pending move can be cancelled, and an invasion already under way can be stopped with its existing order control.

The movement view uses the Movement & Terrain Cost map layer to show how terrain shapes your moves. Each fleet has a movement budget per turn. Some terrain is faster (deep space) and some is slower (nebulae) — but each faction has different penalties, and the Vanguard Nomads barely notice nebulae at all. Costly regions show a small cost number on a dark plate, while denser nebulae and ion storms visibly shrink the highlighted range because they cost more to cross. Selection, hover, territory, and fog edges keep a dark outer line so they remain clear against bright stars and clouds. Hover an explored hex to read its terrain and travel cost. A route’s movement-point total appears only when every step has been charted.

Step 4 — Found your second colony

Bring a fleet containing a Scout Corvette to a visible star system with an open planet. Queue Survey, end the turn, then return on a later turn to pay the settlement cost and found the colony. Surveying charts the system and its surrounding space; settling is available only while the planet remains open and you still have the required resources.

Computer empires expand through those same steps. They reveal suitable systems, send a Scout Corvette, set aside settlement supplies during the journey, survey on arrival, and pay before settling. Both you and your rivals can grow from one home world into an empire of several colonies, so taking a capital does not necessarily end a conquest.

New colonies start small but grow each turn. Queue buildings to specialise them in industry, research, or defence, and ship resources between them.

Every fresh empire also begins with Credits. A Trade Hub is an ordinary colony project that spends some of those Credits now and produces more each turn after it is built. Open the Credits breakdown in the resource HUD to see your current amount, this turn’s income, the victory target, your hold progress, and warnings when a rival is close to winning economically.

Step 5 — Research

Open Research and choose a branch. Every faction begins with Warp Theory; Nyx also knows Deep Space Sensors, while Vanguard also knows Xenolinguistics. The panel shows only your faction’s projects, their actual cost, effects, and anything still required.

Applied Sciences opens the Research Laboratory, which gives you a renewable research income through ordinary colony production. Until you finish Applied Sciences, enough research points to complete it stay protected; other projects can spend only the points above that reserve. Progress is saved by project, so switching priorities pauses the old project instead of erasing your work. Choosing a project that is already queued moves it into active research without leaving a duplicate behind.

Later, complete Carrier Doctrine and Quantum Research Arrays to make Mobile Habitat Architecture available. Finishing that late Exploration project unlocks the City-Ship in ordinary colony ship queues; it does not end the campaign.

For the scientific route, use several branches to reach your faction capstone and the shared Quantum Research Arrays technology. Build a Quantum Research Array, then queue the faction project under Production → Wonders. The panel shows its 600-energy, 400-mineral cost, 12-turn duration, and projected finish. If you prefer conquest, use your research to field fleets that can break colony garrisons—and to stop a rival project before it completes.

Step 6 — End your turn

When you’ve issued your orders, click End turn. The game resolves combat, applies income and maintenance, advances research, and ships you back to the map with everything updated. An active Trade Agreement raises both partners’ Credits income; a newly accepted agreement starts paying during the following economy step.

If you’ve left something idle — a colony with nothing queued, a proposal you haven’t answered — the End turn latch stays available but prints an advisory and its reason. Pressing it asks you to confirm before the turn resolves. You can end the turn anyway, or go back and issue those orders first. Only a genuinely invalid order (say, a move with no destination) locks the latch outright. After you commit, the control stays read-only while the turn resolves. When it changes to Resolving, a full-screen progress view takes over until the updated map is ready. Async multiplayer is still in development, so this single-player loop is the way to play today.

What next

Read How a turn works to understand what happens between “End turn” and the next round, then Economy and resources to start optimising your empire.