22 May 2026: Empire Tiers & the XP economy
Hold systems, earn XP · Your Tier caps how much counts · Over-expand and your empire turns Unstable · Each race shows its own ladder · Feon-Tar progress on fleet strength
Hold systems, earn XP
- Every system you own now pays XP on each resource tick. 200 XP per system, awarded alongside your RP. A faster-ticking galaxy therefore ranks you up faster (the rate is per tick, never averaged out) so the pace of the game and the pace of progression move together.
- Your Empire Tier caps how many systems count. Tier 1 covers 5 systems, Tier 2 covers 10, on up to 25 at Tier 5. Hold more than your Tier allows and the extra systems pay nothing, until you advance a Tier. Advancing needs both the territory and the rank, and rank comes from XP, so the whole thing is one connected ladder rather than a runaway snowball.
- Over-expand and your empire turns Unstable. Claim past the system ceiling of the Tier you actually hold and you tip into instability (exposed to crisis events) until you either shed systems or rank up into the Tier that supports them. Previously this only triggered at the very top (25 systems); now it is enforced at every Tier's ceiling.
- Every commander starts on Tier 1. A brand-new player is a Consortium of Worlds (or their race's equivalent) from their first login and earns ownership XP for their first five systems straight away.
Each race shows its own tier ladder
- The Nation page now lists your own race's Empire Tier ladder. It used to show the Human titles for everyone: a Vatari Cult commander correctly saw "Coven" as their current title, but the ladder beneath it still read Consortium of Worlds → Imperium. Every race now shows its true progression: Coven → Crusade → Inquisition → Theocracy → Hallowed Sacrament for the Vatari Cult, and the right ladder for Knossons, Sharne, Derulons and Feon-Tar.
Feon-Tar: fleet, not territory
- The Feon-Tar progress on total fleet value. They hold no systems by design, so their Tier (and their passive XP) are keyed to the combined build cost of their active fleet instead of system count. Tier names run Starwake → Void March → Host → Exodus → Nomadic Imperium, and the per-Tier XP payout matches the territory races' so no race is left behind.