Questions people ask
Do I really not have to sign up?
Really. One click and you are in your own province with a port, credits and a map. If you decide to stay, you pick a name and a password later and nothing moves — it is the same account, it just gains a password. If you decide not to, you have lost nothing but the click.
What if I close the tab before claiming an account?
Come back in the same browser and it is all still there. Lose the browser and that empire returns to the galaxy within a day. Claiming an account is the fix, and it takes about fifteen seconds.
What happens while I am offline?
Cargo keeps piling up on the pads, flights already in the air still arrive and pay, and upkeep keeps falling due. When you come back you get a summary of what changed — including anything that went wrong while nobody was watching.
Do abandoned empires clutter the map forever?
No. Unpaid upkeep decays a structure until it is demolished, and a long-absent player who has lost everything releases their capital and their province back into the pool.
Can somebody just outspend me?
They can outbuild you, and you can undercut them — the fee exponent beats the size exponent, deliberately, so a smaller cheaper port takes traffic off a bigger complacent one. That rule is published on the About page rather than hidden, because a game about competing on price is unplayable if the price rule is a secret.
Is anyone else actually playing?
Yes — the map you are looking at is live, and everything moving on it belongs to a company that is not you. Their ports, their fees and their routes are all real, and all of it is takeable if they stop looking after it.
Should I build a port or just rent one?
Rent, at first. A port gets dearer the further it is from what you already own, and a rival's fee is almost always cheaper than construction. Build when the fees you are paying over a month start to look like the price of the port.
When is a wormhole worth it?
Over long distances, and almost never over short ones. The price grows faster than the distance but so does the time it saves — and what makes a short link a mistake is the upkeep, not the build cost.
My ship got slow. What did I do?
Nothing wrong — ships wear with use. Past a point they crawl instead of refusing to fly, which is worse, because you keep paying full upkeep while earning a fraction. Any port you own can repair one; a repair dock just does it cheaper.
How much time does this need?
Ten minutes gets you a ship, a route and your first paid run. Half an hour gets you a second route and a sense of whether you like it. After that it is yours to pace — nothing you own acts without you, so a day away costs you upkeep and nothing else.
Can I script it, or use a third-party client?
Nothing here rewards it, so nobody bothers to police it. Every price, distance and delivery is decided by the server, so a script cannot lie about any of them — it can only do what the interface already lets you do, more tediously. And if you want a ship to keep working while you are away, that is a captain: you hire one, it flies for you, and it takes a cut. Automation is something the game sells rather than something it hunts. What is not welcome is hammering the server, and that is bounded for everyone rather than judged case by case: too many requests too fast get refused, whoever is making them.
Can I delete my account?
Yes, from your profile, and it is immediate and irreversible. Your name, your address and your picture go; your province, ports and wormholes are dissolved and returned to the pool, and your ships are retired. What stays is the accounting record of trades you were party to, because other players' books refer to them and would develop holes otherwise — but nothing in it identifies you afterwards.