INTERSTELLAR
A persistent, multiplayer space strategy game. Build a ship, chart the dark, found colonies, run a real economy, fight for it — and climb the Convocation. The world keeps moving whether or not you are logged in.
A galaxy that's old, broken, and yours to hold
The map is a graph, not a plane. The civilization that once spanned it — the Meridian Compact — has fallen. What remains is the Spire, four great outposts, the player polities, and the Vael. You are a commander of one polity, in a galaxy that does not care if you log off.
01 Lane-bound space
Systems are nodes; hyperlanes are edges. You cannot shortcut across empty space — travel is lane-bound, which keeps the map legible and the chokepoints meaningful. Fog only on systems you haven't charted.
02 Discovery is a mechanic
Chart systems with Skiffs and probes — confirm the star, count the planets, report the metal. Charting is rewarded: it grants vote weight and is the precondition for claiming a region. The dark is there to be found.
03 The Vael
An expansion older than the Compact. They expand, raid, and absorb, and where they have passed the systems are quiet. They are not the enemy to defeat — they are the pressure that keeps it honest and the pacing valve on the frontier.
| Outpost | Role | What it offers |
|---|---|---|
| CALANTH | Trade hub | The Exchequer's exchange — fastest credit transfers, best loan terms. The "bank" of the galaxy. |
| KHORVATH | Great yard | The largest Shipyards — bulk weapon and hull production, priority by Convocation standing. |
| AUREL | Political seat | The Convocation convenes here — bill filing, debate, and voting. |
| DUNMIRE | Frontier anchor | The deep-space anchor — the "front door" to the dark and the Vael front line. |
The world does not pause
The server advances the universe on its own clock. A game month is a fixed cadence of 30 ticks — the rhythm of the economy. The wall-clock speed is a live operator dial: by default 1 real hour = 1 game month, so twelve hours is a year and twenty-four hours is two.
T1 The tick
- 1 game month = 30 ticks — the load-bearing cadence of the colony economy.
- 12 months make a game year; the whole galaxy shares one clock.
- Commands queue against the tick — you decide, then the world resolves.
T2 The tunable dial
- hoursPerMonth — real hours that elapse per in-game month.
- Range 0.05–168; default 1 (a real hour is a game month).
- Set it from the Command Deck — the change is persisted and pushed to every live client.
Managing is the game
A colony is not a button — it is a 19-step tick with real inputs, real outputs, and a real failure mode: Uprising. Run the sectors, watch Cohesion, and the headroom you build is the strategy.
E1 The sectors
- Mining → Refining — extract and refine metal (the base of production).
- Service, Welfare, Bureaucrats — upkeep, stability, administration (Cohesion drivers).
- Construction, Basic Industry — grow capacity to produce more.
- Armaments, Shipyards — Seekers, Lances, Aegis, Wings, hulls. The war engine.
E2 The two levers
- Tax rate — fills the treasury, but over-taxing erodes Cohesion.
- Draft rate — raises troops, and troops are a Cohesion drag.
- Push either too far and the colony rises: uprising = (tax + draft) × 4 − COH.
Colonies can also borrow from the Exchequer (Calanth) — but debt is a real, legible cost: it is serviced every tick, drags Cohesion, and cuts your vote weight.
A budget of volume and power
A ship is a hull of a size (volume) and a power ceiling (MW). You spend both on subsystems — warp, shields, fuel, crew, weapons — until it is full. A class is not a fixed kit; the budget is the only hard constraint.
S1 What the model enforces
- You cannot exceed the volume or power budget.
- Weapons need crew to man and ordnance to fire — a dry ship is a target.
- Warp burns fuel; mass slows you; warp inside 5 AU of a mass kills the ship.
- Refit moves volume between subsystems for credits — strip wings to add shields.
| Class | Volume | Role (one line) |
|---|---|---|
| SKIFF | 1 | Expendable probe / recon / charting. |
| CORSAIR | 3 | Fast recon / raider / escort — the workhorse. |
| FRIGATE | 4–5 | Light escort / picket / screen. |
| CRUISER | 6–11 | The "default" warship; balanced all-rounder. |
| DREADNOUGHT | 12–24 | Heavy fleet backbone. |
| SOVEREIGN | 25–50 | Capital ship; the center of a fleet. |
| LEVIATHAN | 51–99 | Super-capital; strategic asset. |
| COLOSSUS | 100+ | Flagship — a polity's crown jewel. |
The bottom three are your daily tools; the middle is your fleet; the top are strategic assets whose loss is a real event. And the Keel is your ship — the one that is yours, your home and your insurance policy.
Tactical, readable, settled
Every ship has a stat block, every weapon has a distinct role, and every battle can be reconstructed from its log. There is no hidden RNG on core outcomes — the same inputs always give the same result.
W1 Lances
Line attack. Pierce — hits every ship in the line. The fleet-thinner. Medium range.
W2 Seekers
Precision strike. High per-round damage on a single target — the "big gun". Long range.
W3 Beams
Close suppression. High rate; only matters in-system. Cannot hit ordnance or wings.
W4 Wings
Expendable swarm. Each craft is cheap and disposable — mass is the whole point.
W5 Aegis
Point defense. Intercepts incoming ordnance and wings by its rating. A defense, not an attack.
W6 Damage
Aegis → shields → hull. Shields absorb first and regenerate; hull is permanent until repaired at a yard.
C1 Fire order
- PHASE 1 — LONG: Seekers pick off high-value targets.
- PHASE 2 — MEDIUM: Lances thin the line.
- PHASE 3 — CLOSE: Beams fire, then Wings swarm.
- Must-stay-and-fight: within 50 AU you can't just warp out — Hold, or take the flee penalty.
C2 Loot & the log
- Destroying a ship yields 60–100% of its value in credits/materials.
- Unspent ordnance is salvaged in full.
- All loot is logged — a readable battle is a settled battle. No black box.
Two ways to take a world
Do not confuse them. Settle is expansion; Seize is war. One claims the empty, the other breaks the defended.
S-A Settle — claim the unclaimed
Found a colony on an empty planet. Requires a colony ship and crew; no assault, the planet is unheld. This is how a polity grows — and it is the atomic unit of territory (claiming the first system in a region).
S-B Seize — break the defended
Land an assault force that overcomes the planet's garrison. Troops are consumed in the assault (attrition); failed assaults bleed troops and punish the defender's Cohesion. This is how a polity wars.
The dark is there to be found
There are systems nobody has charted. Charting pace is gated by Skiff production and lane travel, so the frontier recedes as the polity grows — not instantly. And at the edge, the Vael keep the pressure on.
F1 Chart
Send a Skiff or probe to an uncharted system. Confirm the star, count the planets, report the metal. Charting pays in vote weight and is the key to claiming.
F2 Claim
Settle a planet to claim its system and earn region rights. Territory is the unit of the galaxy — every node you hold is a vote, a tax base, and a front.
F3 Hold the line
A focused fleet can drive the Vael back from a system — but they keep coming. Holding a frontier is a sustained commitment, the "wilderness" against which a polity proves itself.
Power is two-axis
You can win by being rich (fleets, colonies, credits) or by being well-liked (teams, the Convocation, the Spire) — ideally both. There is no state; there is only standing, and standing is earned.
G1 Vote weight
Your weight is how much you count in the assembly, and it changes as you play: wealth plus record (kills, hulls, deaths) plus colony health, with debt as a drag. A dead, debt-free commander with a healthy colony outweighs a rich but dead one.
G2 Bills & teams
Band into a team to pool weight and wage war together. Propose bills at Aurel (presence required), debate for a fixed window, and pass by weight. No veto, no term limits — whoever holds the weight when it's voted decides.
The Spire is the surviving core of the Compact — the place that is not anyone's, and therefore belongs to everyone and no one. It hosts Aurel (the Convocation), Calanth (the Exchequer), Khorvath (the great yard), and Dunmire (the frontier anchor). It cannot be Seized, and it enforces the rules — the debt, the votes, the standing.
Your first campaign
Onboarding is short and diegetic — the game trusts you and rewards reading. Here is the shape of a first run.
Take command
Connect, find your colony, and read the log. Understand your people, your treasury, your Cohesion.
Run the economy
Assign workers to sectors, set tax and draft within your headroom, and start producing.
Build & chart
Commission a ship at the yard, send a Skiff to chart the dark, and Settle a new world.
Prove yourself
Fight the Vael, learn the fire order, and — when you're ready — Seize a defended system.
Climb the Convocation
Grow your weight, join or found a team, and shape the galaxy's rules from Aurel.
Steer the world
For the operator: sign in at the Command Deck and hold the timescale, the time, and the balance.
The Command Deck
The live universe, and the operator's controls — the metrics dashboard and every adjustment dial. Steer the whole galaxy, not just your own ship.
Authorized access only
This console reads the live metrics and can change the timescale, advance time, and edit colony and player state. Enter the SYSOP password to unlock it.