Classic Ruleset v0.5

New Player Guide

This is the walkthrough for your very first session in a realm. The goal of your opening ticks is simple: get your economy running, stay solvent, and learn the map before anyone has a reason to bother you. Do these things in order and you will be in a strong position.

Step 1: Read your colony

Before you click anything, look at what you have. Your starter colony shows your four resources: metal, oil, energy, and workers. Note how much you have and roughly how fast each is growing per tick. Workers are special: they do not trickle in continuously, they pay out in a batch every 24 ticks based on your economy. Knowing your numbers now means you will notice immediately if a decision later starts draining you.

Step 2: Economy structures first

Your strongest early move is almost always to invest in income, not in an army. Queue resource structures that raise your metal, oil, energy, and worker growth. Construction takes a number of ticks to finish, so the sooner you start, the sooner it compounds.

A good habit: always have something building. An idle construction queue is wasted ticks. See Structures for what each category does and what it unlocks. You do not need everything at once; raise the resources you are shortest on first.

Step 3: Recruit a small starter squad

Once your economy has some momentum, recruit a modest defensive force. You want enough to discourage an opportunist, not a war machine you cannot afford. Units take ticks to train and a small standing army costs you ongoing worker growth, so do not overspend here. A handful of basic units assigned into a squad is plenty to start.

Read Recruitment for how units are built and grouped. The key early lesson: a few units you can sustain beats a big army that bankrupts your worker growth.

Step 4: Scout your surroundings

You cannot plan around neighbors you cannot see. Your colony has radar coverage around it, which reveals nearby activity. Use scans to learn what is near you before you commit to anything. A small amount of energy spent on a scan is far cheaper than walking an army into a surprise.

Scans covers what each scan tells you. Early on, just knowing who is close and roughly how strong they are is enough to decide whether to grow quietly or prepare to defend.

Step 5: Expand to your first outpost

When your economy is stable and you have a squad to garrison it, take your first outpost. Outposts are capturable points on the map that give you reach, staging room, and the foundation for specialized roles later. A basic outpost has a real cost in metal, oil, and workers, and you can only hold so many until your power grows, so expand when you can afford to hold what you take, not the moment you can afford to grab it.

Step 6: Stay solvent

The most common new-player mistake is spending faster than you earn. Watch your worker growth especially: every unit, outpost, and standing commitment quietly reduces it. If your workers stop growing, slow down, finish economy structures, and let your income catch up before expanding again. A solvent small player outlasts a broke big one.

A simple first-session checklist

Read all four resource numbers and your growth rates.
Queue economy structures and keep the queue full.
Train a small, affordable defensive squad.
Run a scan to see who is near you.
Take one outpost only once you can sustain it.
Re-check your worker growth before every new commitment.

Do this and your first stretch of ticks will set you up well. After that, explore the rest of the wiki by whatever you want to do next: build more, fight, or gather intelligence.

Referenced by

Welcome