Every system on this page is in the game now.
A slow galaxy for people who'd rather think than click. You give orders, and at a fixed, scheduled moment the galaxy resolves them all at once, every empire together. Ticks run on a schedule and every galaxy has its own tick rate. Nothing below is flavour text and nothing below is a promise. It is what the game does today, in the two alpha galaxies you can play right now.
A galaxy chooses which systems it runs. Astral Dawn runs research, fuel, races and free-form design; Sovereign Reach 1 runs without those four. A section below that needs one of them says so.
Exploration is a commitment, not a reveal
Surveying a warp node tells you exactly two things: which node it pairs with on the far side, and what class of lane it is. It does not tell you what is in the system beyond, or even its name. For that you have to warp through and scan it from the inside. The fleet that flew the link can retrace its own steps, fuel permitting; for the rest of your empire, the node you arrived at is not a route until you survey it too, from this side.
- A survey reveals the paired node and the class of the lane, nothing more
- System scans are the only way to see a system's interior, and you must be there
- Your scout keeps the right to go back the way it came (with the fuel to do it, on galaxies that use fuel) — a route for the rest of your empire takes a survey from the far side
- Survey, warp, scan, survey again. Each is one tick
- Every hop outward is a decision about how far you are willing to be from a way back
Fuel you plan around
Where a galaxy uses fuel, every warp burns it from the fleet's tank, by the fleet's mass and the class of the lane it crosses. Moving inside a system costs nothing. A fleet that cannot pay for a crossing does not make it, so the way home is part of every plan.
- Refineries at your colonies turn stored gas into fuel, and fleets parked at your colonies top up from it
- Before a warp you see the burn, the tank now and the tank after
- A better warp engine or drive makes every crossing cheaper, never faster, and the bill counts tenths of a ton, so even a small scout sees the saving
- A scout carrying a gas skimmer, a fuel converter, a tank and room in its hold can skim a gas giant and refine its own fuel. Set it to skim when low and it goes and refuels itself, or stops short with fuel still in the tank when nothing is in reach
- Attach one fleet to another and you can let fuel flow between their tanks every tick, in the direction you choose
Worlds that are hostile to you specifically
Every planet and moon is described across six environmental axes: temperature, pressure, atmosphere, gravity, radiation, toxicity. Every species has its own comfort range on each, set by the homeworld it evolved on. So habitability is relative. There is no universal good planet, and two players can look at the same world and reasonably disagree about whether it is worth having.
- Six axes on every world, and a comfort range per species on each
- A world that would kill one empire's colonists is another empire's paradise
- Settle somewhere hostile and your colonists start dying, unless you build the specific structure that answers that specific problem
- One structure answers one axis, and each protects only so many colonists — a growing colony keeps building all three answers
- A harsh world is a real option, just an expensive one
- On galaxies with races, the race you choose when you join decides the world you start on, and every comfort range is measured from it
Population that actually lives there
Colony population is simulated every tick, not stored as a number that ticks up. It grows where you have built the housing to support it, and it dies where you have not sheltered it. When it has room to grow, it never grows by exactly the same amount twice, because the world scales it and a little variance moves it again.
- Simulated every tick, not a counter climbing in the corner of a screen
- Two colonies founded on the same day drift apart
- You can load colonists onto ships and move them
- That is how you get a young colony on its feet instead of waiting years of ticks for it to grow
- Settle carelessly and a colony can die
Ground war, not just space battles
Winning the space above a colony does not take it. You train garrisons of infantry, armour and artillery, carry them on troop transports, and land them. An invasion resolves over two ticks: you establish a beachhead, and the fight resolves after.
- Garrisons of infantry, armour and artillery, trained like anything else you build
- Troop transports carry them, and you land them where you mean to hold
- The orbit has to be clear of armed defenders before troops can land
- Two ticks to resolve: beachhead first, fight after
- The defender gets a tick to react
- NPC colonies keep a garrison too, so there is no walking onto an empty world
- Invading is a commitment rather than a click, and a well-garrisoned colony is genuinely expensive to take
Fleet combat you decide before it starts
Fleets fight when hostile forces meet. You set each fleet's stance and your empire's standing toward others ahead of time, because you will not be awake for every contact. Every battle is resolved by the game itself, under identical rules for everyone, and you read the battle report afterwards.
- Set each fleet's stance, and your empire's standing toward other empires
- Order a fleet to hold fire
- Order a fleet to attempt to disengage
- Your sensors decide how well your gunners hold the enemy, and theirs decide how well they hold you
- Read the battle report afterwards and work out what it cost you
- Damage sticks: shields come back by themselves, armour and hull have to be repaired
- There is nothing to out-click. No reflexes, no twitch, no reward for happening to be at the screen
Sensors that tell you what you face
Meeting a rival fleet does not just tell you an empire is there. Your sensors read it as deeply as what you flew there allows, and the same reading decides how well your gunners hold it once the shooting starts.
- A contact resolves in steps: that they are here, how strong against your own fleet, how many ships, what size classes and formation, how many designs, and, with survey gear too, what those designs carry
- Heavier fleets are harder to read, and ECM suites make a fleet read heavier still. A big enough fleet stays hard to read however good your sensors are
- In battle the reading becomes a lock: it steadies your guns and strips away up to half of the enemy's jamming
- No luck in it. The same two fleets always read the same way, and a reading that has gone out of date says so
- Fleet names are never revealed, and fighting still teaches you things no scan does
Battles leave debris
A battle leaves a debris field where it was fought: the wrecks' scrap, and whatever cargo and fuel went down with the ships. It lasts a while and then it is gone, and until then it belongs to whoever comes to take it.
- A system scan shows a field, and the map marks the systems that have one
- Any fleet standing on a field can take the abandoned cargo and fuel, with no special equipment
- The scrap needs a salvage rig aboard, and a higher-tier rig recovers more of it
- A fleet that loses every ship loses its cargo to the field, and the side that lost can come back for it
- A second battle in the same place adds to the field rather than starting another
A galaxy that is already inhabited
NPC empires are not scenery and not obstacles, they are empires. They hold colonies, expand, build, research, run supply routes, defend themselves and fight each other, giving the same orders a player gives. An NPC colony obeys the same climate and pays the same costs as yours. The one exception today is fuel: on galaxies that use it, NPC fleets do not pay for their warps. A new player arrives into a galaxy with history, not an empty board.
- Same orders as yours, checked the same way: a bad NPC order is refused just as yours would be
- They hold colonies, expand, build and run supply routes
- Their colonies keep a garrison, and they repair and refit their ships
- Different characters: some settle, some explore, some raid, some just drift
- They form factions and go to war with each other
- They are playing in both live galaxies right now, under the same order pipeline as you
Ships you design
Beyond the stock designs, you design your own ships from modules. On Sovereign Reach 1 you fit them into one of a set of hulls. On galaxies with free-form design, like Astral Dawn, there is no hull to fit: a design is whatever you put together, with no size cap, held back only by the power, crew and heat it can carry, and the yard you build it in sets how heavy a ship it can launch. Validate the design, then build it in your shipyards. What you field is what you decided to field.
- Stock designs are the starting point, not the ceiling
- Where research is on, most parts come in ten tiers, and every tier does something: better warp engines and drives burn less fuel, bigger tugs tow heavier structures, better salvage rigs recover more, better repair bays repair faster
- Higher tiers cost more, and a tier-10 fit is a real investment
- The designer says what each part buys before you build it
- Validate a design before you build it, and build it alongside the stock ones
Repair and refit
Shields come back by themselves between fights. Armour and hull do not: a ship stays damaged until you fix it. And a ship you have already built is not stuck with the design it launched with.
- Repair at a colony shipyard: the job joins the yard's queue, you are quoted the exact price first, and the ship never leaves its fleet
- A Repair Bay or Damage Control Bay aboard patches the ship's own armour and hull every tick out of combat, anywhere, for free, but slowly. A shipyard always repairs faster
- Refit at a colony shipyard: revise the design, and the yard fits only the difference. Full price for the parts going on, half back for the parts coming off
- A refitted ship keeps its name, its kills and its record
- One button brings a design up a tier, swapping every part for the next tier you have researched
Research, and tiers worth climbing
Research buildings at your colonies earn research points, and research points are the whole price of a project: no materials, and no colony to nominate. Everything above tier 1, ship parts and buildings alike, is unlocked through research.
- Queue projects, and the next one starts on the tick the last one finishes, with the leftover points carried over
- Ten tiers, with big steps at 3, 5, 7 and 9. Tier 10 is the long goal of a whole galaxy
- A higher tier costs more and does more
- Upgrade a building you already have in place: you pay only the difference, and it keeps working while the upgrade runs
- Upgrade several identical buildings in one go
Officers you recruit and post
An Officer Academy at one of your colonies offers a few candidates at a time. Hiring one costs people as well as materials. Post them to a fleet or to a colony's industry, and they gain experience for the battles, journeys and production they take part in, and their bonuses grow with them.
- A fleet officer needs a Command Bridge aboard, and makes every ship in the fleet a little sharper in a fight
- An industry officer raises a colony's extraction and its shipyard's output, on a small yard too
- You can hold two officers, plus one more for every academy you run
- An officer whose last ship is retired at your own colony steps ashore; one whose bridge ship is destroyed is lost with it
Structures in orbit
Not everything you build sits on a planet. Research unlocks structures that stand in orbit or at a warp node: an Orbital Shipyard that builds ships of any size with no colony underneath, depots that hold cargo and fuel, a refinery that draws gas from a gas giant, listening posts and warp watches that report what passes, and sentries that fight. On galaxies with free-form design, a design with no drive is an orbital platform of your own, built at an Orbital Shipyard.
- Crew a structure from a fleet; without its crew it stands by
- A tug tows it into the orbit you want. A tug's tier sets the heaviest structure it can pull, and two tugs pull together
- A structure never crosses a warp node, and cannot be fitted with a warp drive
- Where a structure stands decides what it does: one parked at the wrong kind of place waits instead of working
Automation, so having a job is not a disadvantage
A tick-based game should not punish you for sleeping. Colony managers and standing logistics keep your empire developing while you are doing something else, and Caretaker covers you when you are gone a long time.
- Colony managers: hand a colony a build priority and it keeps developing without you
- Saved plans: draft orders ahead and reorder them freely — they submit only when you say so
- Convoys, patrols and standing routes re-issue themselves each tick, including routing across multiple warp jumps
- Standing cargo: tell a fleet to wait at a colony for a resource, and it tops up as the resource appears and sets off when the hold has what you asked for
- Convoys hold a tick or two for a full load instead of leaving half empty
- The convoy network moves surplus from colonies that can spare it to colonies that are short, and by default it only uses fleets you have handed it
- A build a colony cannot pay for yet waits at the front of its queue and starts by itself when the materials arrive
- Caretaker: if you are away a long time your empire is looked after and kept developing rather than left to rot
- Caretaker hands your empire straight back the moment you return
Browser or app, and alerts you choose
The game runs in your browser at play.astralsovereignty.com, and the Android app on Google Play is the same game in an app: the same galaxies, the same empire, and an update reaches it the moment the game updates.
- Three layouts: the classic one, in a wide version for a computer and a version for a phone held upright; Mint; and Concept 02, a denser layout still being tried out
- Alerts can reach your phone or browser with the game closed: battle results, fleet contacts, retreats, invasion landings, a colony under siege, an installation under fire, a warp early warning
- You choose which kinds, how strong a contact has to be before it counts, whether NPC empires count at all, and your quiet hours
- In the app, reminders before the orders lock and when a tick has resolved
- Switching an alert off hides nothing: every report still arrives in your mailbox
Play by Discord
Discord is not just the community, it is a second way to play. Link your account, and you can give orders from Discord without opening the game.
- Link your account once
- Check galaxies, and join one
- Submit and cancel orders, and review what is pending
- Design ships and list your blueprints
- Run convoys, patrols and travel plans, and manage your alliance
Accessibility as a way to play, not an afterthought
Nothing in the game is told apart by colour alone: every status carries its word, and every meter states its level. The tick already means a player in a different timezone is not at a disadvantage, and a slow game with alerts you choose does not ask you to sit at a screen.
- Five colour-vision modes: standard, deuteranopia, protanopia, tritanopia and monochrome
- Six colour schemes, including one of your own that keeps your text readable
- Every scheme and every mode works in every layout
- Supported, not bolted on
- Fair to players in any timezone, and to players who cannot sit at a screen
Join a galaxy, or follow along
The Discord is where development happens in the open, and where new galaxies are announced.
Free in your browser and on Android — the same galaxy and the same empire either way. Sign in with a mailed code or Google; there is no password to choose or forget.