Verified against the live game, August 2026. Costs and timings can shift with balance patches, and each galaxy's host sets its own pace — the numbers below are the defaults.
Minute 0 — what you're given
You spawn into your home star system with a treasury of 6,000 RP (Resource Points — the game's one currency) and your race's starting hand. As a Human commander that's three Deliverer Mk II Colonising Craft — three chances to put down roots. Other races start differently (the Knossons get a single enormous Worldship; the Feon-Tar get freighters that never settle at all), but the shape of the first hour is the same: turn ships into infrastructure, and infrastructure into income.
First five minutes — plant your Colony
Open your home system, expand the Deliverer group, and hit Transform on the first ship. This permanently converts the Deliverer into a Colony — it grounds itself and becomes the administrative heart of the system, which marks the system as yours on every player's map. The in-game tutorial walks you through exactly this, step by step.
One ship spent, one star system claimed. That trade — a ship for a foothold — is the core loop of the early game.
Minutes 5–15 — make the system pay
Your Colony has a Build action. Open it and queue three Refineries. Refineries mine the system's resource reserves on every mining cycle — a couple of real-world minutes each — and deposit RP straight into your treasury. Every system has a finite reserve and its own yield, so where you settle matters, but your home system is always worth working.
Then queue a Shipyard. It's your fleet factory: corvettes, freighters, more colonisers. It takes a while to finish — queue it now so it's working while you explore.
Minutes 15–30 — claim your second system
Select your second Deliverer and hit Jump. The galaxy map shows your jump range as a circle; pick a promising neighbour — the map shows which systems are unclaimed. A short hop lands in a few real-world minutes (hyperspace takes genuine time in Planet Epoch; long crossings are measured in hours, and you'll learn to plan around it).
When it arrives: Transform, again. Two systems now fly your flag. Keep the third Deliverer in reserve — or spend it immediately if you've scouted somewhere rich. Empires that hesitate get surrounded.
Minutes 30–60 — look around, and look at yourself
- The galaxy map is real and shared: 400+ named systems, and every border you see belongs to an actual player or NPC faction. Zoom into any system for the full 3D view.
- State of the Nation (your empire dossier) shows your Tier — your empire's rank. Growing past what your Tier sustains makes you Unstable, and unrest follows. Expansion is the goal; overreach is the trap.
- Comms collects your reports: mining, arrivals, intel. Email alerts can warn you when someone moves on your space — turn them on.
- Diplomacy is directional. You decide who's an ally, a neutral or an enemy — and everyone else decides the same about you, without asking.
What good looks like after one hour
Two claimed systems, refineries paying out on cycle, a shipyard nearly online, and one coloniser in reserve. From there the questions get more interesting: warships or more mines? Push toward the rich systems in the core, or fortify the rim? Introduce yourself to the neighbours, or start charging tolls?
That's the game. Choosing your race changes almost every answer.