How a turn works

A turn in Stellar Nexus is a single round of orders. You issue commands; the game resolves them all at once.

What you do during a turn

You control everything: fleet movement, colony production queues, research selection, diplomacy. Every order you submit is a tentative plan — nothing happens until you press End turn.

You can change most orders any time before End turn. That includes reordering a colony’s planned production or cancelling an item before it is accepted and paid for. There’s no real-time pressure; sit and think for as long as you like.

When an event card appears, each option previews its consequence. An option you cannot currently take is disabled and explains the missing resource or completed technology. Choosing an available option adds it to the turn instead of changing your empire immediately. The game checks it again when the turn resolves; if you no longer meet the requirement, no cost or reward is applied and the turn summary explains why.

If something is still idle when you go to end the turn — a colony with an empty build queue, an unanswered diplomatic proposal — the button carries a small amber dot and asks you to confirm first, listing exactly what you’ve left open. Ending the turn anyway is always your call; the game only refuses outright when an order is genuinely invalid.

What happens when you press End turn

Stellar Nexus resolves every round through the same ten phases, in this order:

1. Validation — submitted orders are checked before any result is applied.
2. Research — research points roll into your active project; if it completes, its effect begins.
3. Economy — colonies produce, fleets pay maintenance, and treaty partners pay tribute.
4. Movement — fleets travel toward their destinations. A fleet that runs out of movement stops short.
5. Combat — fleets from different players that share a tile fight a brief, decisive battle; a sole surviving invader captures a colony after its garrison falls.
6. Diplomacy — treaty proposals are accepted, rejected, or expire; when a Council stage is open, nominations, commitments, or ballots resolve too.
7. Exploration — fog of war updates around any new positions.
8. Colony — population grows, the first item in each production queue advances, completed structures, ships, and Wonders take effect, and happiness updates.
9. Events — choices from event cards are checked, then their resource, story, or follow-up consequences take effect. A follow-up card waits for a later decision.
10. Cleanup — long-term fleet supply effects advance and victory conditions are checked.

When those ten phases finish, you see the turn summary. If the campaign continues, returning to the map begins the next turn; if it has ended, the summary leads to the final result.

What you see after the turn resolves

Three full-screen takeovers can appear between consecutive turns. They’re hard-blocking — you can’t pan the map or open a panel until you continue past them.

1. Resolving — a quiet, full-screen progress display while the game advances through Validation, Research, Economy, Movement, Combat, Diplomacy, Exploration, Colony, Events, and Cleanup. When the current phase is available, you see its name and position in that ten-phase sequence. When it is not available, the display simply says the turn is resolving; it never invents a percentage or time estimate. If the result cannot be confirmed, your orders stay sealed and the screen offers only recovery actions the game can safely perform.
2. Turn summary — a vertical recap of what changed for your faction, ordered from research through events. Quiet subjects collapse to one honest line; completed research, material battles, agreements, colony milestones, and event choices open into richer entries. Economy entries name every resource and align its income, expenses, and net change in clear columns. An event entry says whether the choice was applied or rejected and gives the resulting change or reason. Colony entries show the current item’s progress and call out every completed structure, ship, or Wonder. Even a busy turn remains one scrollable recap on a phone-sized screen. Choose Continue to advance, or View Final Result when the campaign has ended.
3. Victory or defeat — protected final results with the reason first, real result figures aligned beneath it, and action buttons along the bottom. Capturing every rival colony opens Galactic Domination; completing a faction supremacy megaproject opens Scientific Supremacy; winning at least 67% of all eligible Council delegates opens United Galaxy; and holding the Credits target for the required turns opens Economic Hegemony. If another civilisation wins first—or captures your final colony—you see a Defeat screen with the victor and finishing turn when those facts are known; a supremacy result also names the completed project. Simultaneous supremacy projects use a stable civilisation order. Simultaneous economic holds compare Credits, then that turn’s Credits income, then active trade routes; an exact tie keeps the campaign running. On the final turn, View Final Result, Back, or Escape advances the summary only to the matching protected result; it cannot reopen the completed map. Reopening that completed save later also returns directly to its result. From the result, you can start a New Game or return to the main menu. After a defeat, Load Last Save is offered only when a separate, compatible autosave from before the result is available.

When the campaign continues, the summary’s “View Details” rows jump straight into the relevant management panel — tap Open Diplomacy Panel on a turn where a treaty was signed and the diplomacy destination opens with the row in context. When the campaign has ended, those rows go to the final result instead.

After you dismiss the summary, your fleets that moved during that turn briefly settle into their new positions. The map shows motion only for your own fleet along the route you actually ordered, and it shows a combat flash only in a sector you can currently see. Planned routes remain still. Choose Skip to settle the map immediately; Reduce Motion does the same automatically. Either way, the final map and turn result are identical and skipped effects do not play later.

When sound effects are available, movement and combat cues follow those brief map moments rather than playing together when the turn finishes. Skipping keeps the result quiet: at most one arrival or outcome cue replaces the remaining sequence. Loading a save never replays those cues.

When the game saves

Singleplayer autosaves happen only at safe, settled boundaries. In simultaneous play that is after turn resolution has produced the new turn. In one-civilisation-at-a-time play it is after each civilisation ends its turn, again after the round settles, and immediately when an action ends the game. Map presentation is not part of the save and never replays on load, so a loaded autosave restores the exact active civilisation, remaining fleet actions, resources, plans, routes, and completed results rather than an in-between visual state. The game keeps only the newest and previous autosaves.

If an automatic save cannot be written, the game keeps a warning on screen — even over a victory or defeat result — so you do not quit believing the latest turn was preserved. During an active campaign, create a manual save before quitting.

Open Game menu from the top bar—or press Escape while the map is active—to resume, open Save / Load, return to the main menu, or quit the desktop game. Returning or quitting always asks first. When the latest resolved turn was autosaved, only orders queued since then need a manual save; if autosave failed, the warning explains that the resolved turn and queued orders will both be lost unless you save manually. After a confirmed return to the main menu, that discarded campaign’s save warning clears with the session. The desktop main menu also includes Quit Game. Browser and mobile builds leave closing the app or tab to the device.

Three manual slots let you name important positions and confirm before replacing an existing save. A manual save keeps the movement, research, production, diplomacy, and event choices you have queued but not yet resolved. Fleets already partway through a longer route also keep their remaining route after a load. Unanswered event cards are preserved too, and the oldest one reopens when you load the save. A save made before an event choice resolves restores that choice and applies it once; a save made afterwards remembers the result, so loading it cannot grant the reward or charge the cost again. Separate campaigns remain distinct in the newest/previous autosave history even when they use the same map seed. On the main menu, Continue is enabled only when at least one local save has passed the game’s compatibility and integrity checks; it opens the most recently saved one. Load Game opens the archive when you want a different slot or need to remove an unreadable save.

Why does the order matter

It matters because you can plan around it. Income lands before maintenance, so a brief shortage is forgiven; movement lands before combat, so a fleet you ordered to retreat will retreat before being engaged; diplomacy lands after combat, so an enemy who attacked you can’t sue for peace mid-engagement.

Planned one-civilisation-at-a-time turns

The next major rules update is being built around one civilisation acting at a time. During your player turn, each fleet will have one Move and one Mission, usable in either order. Attacking, surveying, settling, and completing an invasion use the Mission; changing a fleet name or revising your production, research, diplomacy, Council, and event plans does not. Ending your player turn locks the latest complete set of those plans before play passes to the next civilisation.

An unexpected contact can stop a route immediately—even before the first step—and still use that fleet’s Move. Capturing a colony is bound to the final destination rather than a tile passed along the way. If the same fleet has just removed the colony’s final defender, it can use its remaining Move to occupy the colony without paying for a second Mission. A newly founded colony exists and defends at once, but it cannot accept construction or ship orders until the following round.

An early local build can now move one of your fleets across several legal hexes immediately and show each hop before you choose another command. Its movement checks prevent fleets from sharing a hex, allow foreign colonies only as transit points unless captured, and stop movement on entering hostile control. Hidden hostile control lets a fleet enter the controlled hex before stopping, while a hidden fleet blocks entry. Only the actual travelled path is shown, and supply status updates without charging upkeep early. Skip and Reduce Motion both settle to the same final position. Its fleet inspector shows Move and Mission separately, so switching fleets does not lose track of an unused action. Next unspent selects the next fleet with an action left. End player turn confirms that unused actions will be lost and hands control to the next faction; the map stays available for inspection. Production and research choices remain editable drafts until that handoff. Ending your player turn checks the whole plan and sets aside each new production cost. Invalid or unaffordable plans keep your turn open so you can fix them. Those funds are unavailable for upkeep or other spending, but the colony queue does not change until the round closes. Use Cancel research draft on your drafted choice to keep your current research project; its saved progress and research queue stay unchanged. Your starting capital can plan production in the first round; a colony founded during play must wait until the next round. This early local mode follows its starting player order, so a computer opponent may act before you. During movement playback or after handing off, diplomacy, Council commands, and event choices are visibly read-only; you can still read events and inspect relations and election results. Choosing an event option keeps its card open and shows your draft choice. You can choose a different option before ending your turn, even after closing the card and reopening it from Notifications. After the final faction ends, this early build now resolves research, then economy, diplomacy, exploration, colonies, events and victory checks once. Movement and battles do not repeat. You see the protected round summary before the next round opens, including the battles you took part in during that round. A captured colony’s current-round income still goes to its opening owner, and upkeep already due on a fleet remains due even if it was destroyed. A new colony begins contributing in the following round. Capture cancels affected unprocessed production and frees the money set aside for it; your summary explains those cancellations. Work paid for in an earlier round is lost with the captured queue. Completed ships join your fleet at the colony or appear there if the hex is empty; an invalid occupant blocks the round without losing the ship.

Computer opponents now take one action at a time in this early local mode, reconsidering their next choice after each result. They share your fleet action limits and must wait until the next round to order work at a newly founded colony. They keep settlement resources aside while a scout travels or waits to found a colony, using only the surplus for new production even while recovering from an Energy shortfall. Once the colony is founded, they stop holding resources for that completed settlement. Scout attacks and defensive moves do not start a settlement plan. Patrols and defensive routes go to fleets that can still move. Watch, Accelerate, and Skip control opponent presentation without changing what happens. Acceleration applies only to opponents; your own fleet animations return to their usual speed. You see only battles visible to your faction; opponents’ hidden routes and plans stay private.

This is not yet a complete or public turn mode: campaign saves now preserve the active civilisation, its remaining actions, and every sealed plan, while multiplayer integration still has to land before it can ship. Follow the roadmap for the current boundary.

Why is async multiplayer special

In a multiplayer game, the engine waits for every player to submit their turn before resolving anything. You don’t have to be online when others play — you submit, walk away, and come back to find the round resolved. Your event choice and its result remain private to you, even when another player can see the place where the event began. See the multiplayer guide for details.