Pre-alpha codex — written from the build in internal testing. Systems, numbers and features can change before launch. · Found Your Empire

Thirteen empires were already old when your ark arrived. The Kavreth, the Selvara, the Miravel — between them, the thirteen hold roughly a sixth of all charted space. Their colours mark their borders on the map, and a diamond marks each capital.

Borders are final

Imperial space can never be taken — and neither can yours. There is no conquest in this galaxy, in either direction. Expansion means colonizing unowned stars, not flipping somebody else's. An empire's territory is exactly as old as the galaxy itself, and it will outlive every war fought over it.

Garrisoned space

Every imperial system defends itself, and the defense has a shape: it deepens toward the capital. The system card grades what you are looking at before you commit a fleet:

• Outpost — the frontier ring, far from the capital. Lightly held, raidable — never undefended.
• Garrisoned — the empire's settled march, a real fight for a real fleet.
• Fortified — the heartland. Well armed, and getting worse the deeper you push.
• Citadel — the core around an imperial capital, and the capital itself. Another order of magnitude. Bring a reason.

The grade follows the map: count the hyperlane hops to the empire's capital and you know the ring. For exact numbers there is exactly one honest source — fly a spy mission. Your intel shows on the system card once the probe reports back, and a battle plan built on stale intel is its own kind of lesson.

Living empires, honest books

Spy an imperial system and the report shows real development: the same buildings you build, at levels that track the strongest commanders in the galaxy — always a few steps ahead, rising as the leaderboard rises, never falling back. The production in the report follows from those buildings by the same formulas this codex teaches, so you can check the empire's books yourself. Their garrisons fight at their empire's own research levels, and a deep enough Intelligence Service reveals that research sheet — each empire runs a little ahead in its own specialty.

The ladder

Every empire keeps a personal standing with every commander — yours is yours alone, moved only by how you treat them, and shown openly on the map and the relations board. Seven rungs, top to bottom: Allied (a real pact — comes with the alliance system), Trusted, Friendly, Neutral (where everyone starts), Unfriendly, Hostile, At War. Standing fades toward Neutral when you leave a faction alone for a few days — friendships and grudges both need feeding.

• Up: trade runs at their ports climb slowly (with a daily cap), time heals, and reparations buy a grudge down. Faction missions and alliances add more paths later.
• Down: crossing their territory is free at Friendly and above, costs a little goodwill at Neutral, and counts as a provocation below. Assaulting their systems is always a provocation, at every rung.
• Sideways: courting one empire cools its nearest rivals — you cannot be everyone's friend. The drag stops at Unfriendly; only your own acts go deeper.

Every change is messaged with its reason. Nobody ever wonders why an empire hates them.

Heat — the faction alert

Provocations also raise heat: the faction's alert against you, personally. A hot faction hardens every garrison it owns against your fleets — the spy report shows the alert band, and the strengthened number a provocateur scouts is exactly the fight their fleet finds. Heat cools on its own over a few days of peace, and a resolved strike discharges half of it: retaliation delivered, grievance answered.

Punitive strikes

From Hostile downward, provocations earn strikes — real fleets, launched from the faction's nearest system, flying at their empire's own research. The rulebook is fixed and public:

• Provoked only. Strikes answer your acts — no faction ever attacks an unprovoked commander, and earned retaliation is marked openly on the relations board.
• Capped. At most one strike per day and two per week against any one commander, all thirteen factions combined. No pile-ons.
• Winnable, but it hurts. Strikes are sized against your account's military strength and clamped at arrival against what actually defends the target — never past roughly one and a half times your local defense, never below a token force. A prepared defender is expected to hold; even a won defense costs real ships. The angrier the faction, the bigger and meaner the wing.
• No free warnings. An incoming strike is visible exactly as far as your own Sensor Arrays reach. No array, no warning — offline protection is the immunity rulebook, not a courtesy ping.
• Hiding pays nothing. A strike that finds the target undefended pillages half the stockpile and leaves. Defenses down is a choice with a price.
• The map never moves. Strikes break ships and take loot — they never take systems, and garrison kills never feed the main score.

Immunities and the way back

Young and small accounts are never struck — until their first offensive act against any empire, which forfeits that protection for good. Vacation mode and long inactivity always protect; the strike waits, it does not evaporate. And de-escalation is always possible: after every resolved strike the faction offers a truce window, and below Unfriendly you can buy one with reparations — a tribute of metal, crystal and aetherium carried by envoys from one of your colonies, weighed by how hot the grievance runs and rising with every repeat. Reparations climb toward Neutral but never past the Unfriendly line — the last stretch is walked with time and trade, not bought. A truce never cancels retaliation already earned, and provoking under one voids it at double the heat.

Raids and plunder

Assaulting an imperial system is a raid: break the garrison and your fleet plunders half of what is actually in the vaults — the same fraction their strikes take from you, one rule in both directions. The stores are real and finite. They fill from the system's own production between visits, they empty when raided, and a farmed system is simply empty — no magic refills, ever. A spy report shows the actual holdings, and a rich vault hires real guards: the fuller the stores, the stronger the watch. The plunder rides home with your fleet and is yours when it docks — though freshly looted goods are marked for a few days, and no port will fence them until they cool off.

• Loot fatigue is yours alone. Hitting the same system again within three days halves your take (recovering over time, floored low) — and nobody else's raids ever shrink yours.
• Raided systems harden — gently. A real attack stiffens that system's defenses for two days and reshuffles its emplacements, so stale intel ages. The frontier stays raidable by design; no system ever bricks itself shut.
• From Hostile, expect response wings. The empire commits ambush detachments against commanders it counts as enemies: at arrival, a wing joins the defender's side of your own battle — sized against the fleet you brought, heavier the hotter the grievance. It never travels and is never announced. Battles run to annihilation here: a raid with a thin margin is how fleets die. Bring real margin, or mend the relationship first.
• NPC warfare has its own stage. Ships and emplacements destroyed in imperial space, and everything you steal, feed the dedicated NPC Warfare boards on the leaderboard — weekly, monthly and all-time — never the main empire score. Garrison hunting cannot buy the general leaderboard, but the best raiders get their own spotlight, and repelling a punitive strike counts too.