Codex Entry
Claims & Colonies
Charting, surveying, colonising and releasing systems.
Lifecycle of a claim
- Chart the star. Any fleet that flies past auto-discovers a star; you can also dispatch an Espionage Probe specifically to chart distant ones.
- Survey. A Research Ship survey mission reveals every orbit — planet types, asteroid belts, moons, anomalies.
- Colonize. Send a Colony Ship to the planet orbit you picked. Once it arrives, the landing takes 10 minutes, then the colony stands.
- The system is yours. Your first colony in a system claims the whole system, with its own resource stockpile ready to build from.
- Expand. Follow-up colonies and stations fill out the remaining orbits. Choose SETTLE AN ORBIT on your system's card on the galaxy map, or click a free orbit in the System Overview. A Colony Ship already in the system only needs the 10-minute landing.
Note·How many systems can you hold?
Your home system is always yours. Every level of Astrophysics lets you hold one more system and there is no other ceiling (so Astrophysics L10 → 11 systems). Releasing a claim frees a slot again.
Per-system resources
- Metal, Crystal, Aetherium — continuous, decremented by production tick.
- Storage caps — set by the level of Metal Storage / Crystal Storage / Aetherium Tank.
- Population — the system's workforce. Every building except housing employs workers; a system short of them still builds, but its mines run at the share it can staff.
- Energy — produced and consumed locally. Negative net energy throttles production proportionally.
Colonies vs. stations
- A colony sits on a planet and supports the full set of buildings.
- A station sits on an asteroid belt or empty orbit. Stations host every specialty too — including a Belt Habitat (Population) on asteroid belts. No orbit is wasted.
Note·Black holes replace the sun, not a slot
A small fraction of systems (~2-3%) have a black hole as their central body instead of one or more stars. Planets, asteroid belts and empty orbits all orbit the black hole exactly the way they would orbit a star — same nine orbits, same nine sub-orbits, same rules. Black holes are no longer a slot kind, so there are no "undevelopable" slots in any system anymore.
Releasing a claim
You can release a claim from the Galaxy › System detail panel. Any colonies, stations and on-claim resources are forfeited. Use this carefully — there is no undo.