Planets

Planets are a way to protect your fleet, make cash and experience, and build ships.

Unclaimed planets are scattered around the universe at the beginning of the game. You can also capture planets from other players. Each player can only have 2 planets at a given time. You must be in the game for 1 game day before you can claim your first planet, and 2 game days before you can claim your second.

You can Release a planet you own if you would prefer to claim a different one. Released planets will lose their defenses.

Colonists will grow and reproduce on your planet without any intervention. The displayed growth rate refers to the increase in colonists per hour. The growth rate is fast at first, but will slow to zero as the population on the planet reaches 100 million. You can also add colonists to your planet by transporting them from Sector 1, but to make a significant impact this is best done very early in the round.

Like colonists, your planet's Defenses will increase automatically. Capacity for shields and drones will increase as the population increases, but will never exceed 10 million shield capacity and 1 million drone capacity. Shields also regenerate, at a rate of 1 shield per 125 shield capacity per hour. Drones, however, are your own responsibility. You can transport both shields and drones to your planet to augment your defenses. Keep in mind that you always want to stock at least enough drones to destroy attacking ships in one hit - at least 1000 drones is good, and 5000 is very safe.

Your planet can generate cash and experience for you through Interplanetary Trade. This will only occur if you have at least 2 planets in your clan. The amount of cash generated on each planet will depend on the size of the planet and the size of the other planets you own. The owner of the planet will also earn 1 exp for every 100000 cash generated.

Building ships on planets can be a key strategy, especially for clans. A player can start construction of ships available to their race, but can assign them to be built for another clan member. This allows clan members to have ships normally only available to a different race. Some special ships like the Dreadnaught can only be built on planets. Building ships on a planet requires that you transport the required goods to the planet from a port. Bigger planets can build ships faster.

Attacking planets can be expensive but also potentially lucrative. Every point of experience that a planet owner earns is also added to the planet's bounty. The planet bounty is the amount of experience that a player will get for successfully attacking and claiming the planet. Attacking planets should be done with fleets of ships equipped with primarily shield-damaging weapons, until the shields are destroyed - then use armor damage weapons to defeat the drones.

Two planet strategies should be considered. One strategy is to own a single planet, for your protection. This strategy will not generate cash or experience, but will also not attract as much attention from other players who hope to capture your planet bounty. The other strategy is to own many planets, and generate as much cash and experience as possible. In this case, you can also spread your ships around the many planets so that losing one will not cause you to lose all of your ships.