Answers about Hidden Sector Online: getting started, your worlds, research, fleets, combat, alliances and how a realm ends.
Getting started
What is Hidden Sector Online?
A free browser-based multiplayer space-strategy game. You command an empire: mine resources, raise buildings, research technology, build fleets and armies, and expand across a shared galaxy alongside - and against - other real commanders.
What should I do first?
Follow the quests. They walk you through your first buildings, your first ships and your first raid step by step, and reward you along the way. The chain is built so that a commander who follows it never runs short of power or crew: whenever the next step is about to draw more than your grid makes, the step before it raises the Fusion Reactor. Power before load is the one habit worth learning early.
What are the resources?
Alloy and Crystal are your two building metals; Helium-3 is the fuel your fleets burn to fly. Crew are the people who staff your worlds, and Antimatter is an optional premium currency. Everything is stored per planet, except Antimatter, which is one empire-wide wallet.
What is energy and why is my production capped?
Almost every structure draws power, and on a planet exactly one thing makes it: the Fusion Reactor. You do not build a second one - there is only ever one per world, and you raise its level. If your structures need more than it makes, production is throttled to the share you can actually power: a grid at 80% means every mine on that world runs at 80%. Watch the energy line on the planet screen and raise the reactor before you raise the thing that will draw from it. The Solar Array is the moon version of the same idea - moons have no reactor, so they run on arrays instead.
I followed the quests and my grid still went red. What do I do?
Raise the Fusion Reactor - that is the fix in almost every case, and the quest line now asks for it at each point where your draw is about to jump. If you need production back this minute while the reactor is still building, open the planet and dial a mine down: a mine at 50% produces half, but it also draws half, and that is usually enough to bring the grid back into the green until the reactor finishes. Two technologies help permanently: Superconductor Grids cut what everything draws, Reactor Physics raises what every reactor makes.
What are achievements and daily objectives?
Two different kinds of goal, sitting above the quest line. Achievements are the long arc: permanent milestones you pass once - your first raid won, your five-hundredth hull built, your fifth colony founded - each worth a badge on the wall and a little antimatter. They are counted from your lifetime totals, so nothing you have already done is ever lost. Daily objectives are the short arc: three small tasks drawn fresh every day, each worth a little antimatter you have to press Claim to bank. They are drawn from the day and your own commander id, so you get your own three, the same three all day, and a different three tomorrow. Both read from the same tally of deeds, so a raid you win counts towards a badge and towards today's list at the same time.
What are quests?
A guided chain of objectives that teaches the game and rewards resources, antimatter and unlocks. New chapters open as your empire ages, so there is always a next goal to chase.
Your empire
What do the core buildings do?
Extractors, Synthesizers and Collectors mine Alloy, Crystal and Helium-3. Reactors make energy, Habitats grow your crew cap, and the Vault expands storage. The Shipyard builds ships, the Lab unlocks research, the Barracks trains troops, and the Observatory extends your vision. The Nexus is your command hub and speeds everything up.
What is crew and how do I grow it?
Crew are your population; buildings, ships and troops all need them to run. Habitats raise your crew cap and crew grows over time toward that cap. Crew never walk between planets - they can only travel aboard ships with berths (like Freighters and Carriers).
How do I found new colonies, and is there a limit?
Build a Colony Ark, fly it to an empty world and it settles there. The number of colonies you may hold is capped by your Astrocartography research - each level allows one more world.
Why can I not keep building on a world?
Because a world is not an infinite plain. Every level of every structure stands on one building field, and when the fields run out the world is built out. How many a world has depends on what kind of world it is - a barren rock is nearly all buildable surface, a gas dwarf has almost no solid ground, and a moon has room for an outpost and little else - and it never changes, so a world is worth scouting before you settle it. Raising the Command Nexus clears more ground as its sprawl of foundations and access roads spreads, but the Nexus level takes one of the fields it cleared, so it is a slow release valve rather than a way out. This is the rule that stops one perfect planet from being the whole answer: mines, a shipyard and a wall of guns all compete for the same ground, so every world ends up with a job it is good at, and founding the next colony is worth the trouble.
Can I tear a building down again?
Yes - every structure can be dismantled a level at a time, and that is the only way to get a building field back. The crews recover part of what the level cost, well under half, so tearing something down is a way to free ground or undo a mistake and never a way to store resources in a building and get them back. The level stops counting towards your score the moment it falls, and the salvage still has to fit in your vaults.
What does the Observatory do?
It is your sensor range. With no observatory you see only your home world; level 1 unlocks the sector view, level 2 the universe map, and each further level sees one ring further - up to the whole universe. Vision is summed across all your worlds.
What are moons and how do I get one?
A moon is forged in a battle, out of the wreckage that one fight leaves behind. Only a genuinely large engagement can do it - a small raid never will, however much debris is already in orbit - and even then it is a small chance, rolled the moment the battle ends. A moon is a forward base: it mines nothing and nobody lives there, but its structures still need power, so it raises Solar Arrays where a world would build a fusion reactor. It shares its planet's coordinates and is reached from that planet; a fleet picks the moon as its destination when it wants to go there.
What is a Jump Gate?
A ring of caged singularities, and the one structure only a moon can carry. A fleet that leaves a moon with a working gate for another moon that also has one crosses in half the usual time - the return leg too. It is built once and never upgraded, it is expensive, and it drinks more power than anything else on a moon: a gate whose grid cannot cover its draw is just a dark ring of metal, so build the Solar Arrays to run it before you build the gate.
Research
What does research give me?
Research is empire-wide and permanent: once a level is done it benefits every world and fleet you own. You research in the Lab; higher levels cost steeply more.
Which research helps in combat?
Plasma Weaponry adds 10% attack per level to all your ships and marines - it raises your Offence score. Deflector Shielding adds 10% defence per level to your ships and planetary defences - it raises your Defence score. Both count in battle and in your Combat rating.
How do I stop people scouting me?
Counter-Intelligence. Espionage is what you can see; Counter-Intelligence is what you can hide, and they are deliberately separate trades - you should not have to buy a telescope to get curtains. Every level hides more of your worlds and your in-flight fleets from hostile scouts: a probe only reads your fleet, defences and garrison if its owner's Espionage beats your Counter-Intelligence. It also puts sensors on the problem. From level one you have a chance of being told a probe came, and once you clearly out-spy the sender you can shoot it down before it reports - the sender gets a loss notice and no telemetry at all. Both odds are worked out from the gap between the two levels, so the answer to being watched is to invest in not being watched. With no Counter-Intelligence at all you are wide open, and you never even find out.
What do the other technologies do?
Swarm Robotics cuts build time; Astrocartography raises your colony limit; Conquest Doctrine unlocks the ability to besiege and seize a rival world outright. Two more work on your power grid: Superconductor Grids cut what every structure you own draws, and Reactor Physics adds to what every Fusion Reactor and Solar Array puts out. The drives are a family of their own - see the fleet questions.
How do I make my power grid go further?
Two technologies, from opposite ends. Superconductor Grids cut what every structure in your empire draws - by level 10 your buildings need about a third less. Reactor Physics raises what every Fusion Reactor and Solar Array produces by 6% per level. Both are empire-wide, so a level bought once helps every world and every moon you own; and on a planet you can always dial a mine down as the short-term fix.
Fleets & travel
What ship types are there?
From light to heavy: Probes scout, Corvettes and Interceptors are early strikers, Frigates and Shield hulls soak damage, Bombers and Cruisers and Dreadnoughts bring real firepower, Landers carry marines, Freighters and Carriers haul cargo and crew, Recyclers scoop debris, and the Colony Ark founds new worlds.
How does fuel work?
Every flight burns Helium-3 from the departing world, scaled by the ships sent and the distance. If a world has too little Helium-3, the fleet cannot launch. Distance also sets flight time, which the drive research shortens.
Can I call a fleet back?
Yes, any fleet still on its way out. The catch is the price: coming home takes exactly as long as it has already been flying, so a fleet recalled a minute after launch docks a minute later, and one recalled just short of its target repeats the whole journey. A fleet already returning has nothing to turn around.
What is an expedition?
A fleet sent into empty space rather than at anything - no destination and no coordinates. It stays out for a while and comes back with whatever it found. Most often that is nothing at all; sometimes drifting freight, a pocket of Helium-3 or hulls you can salvage back into the fleet; occasionally it loses its bearings and takes far longer to come home, or runs into something that shoots. Pirates always take at least one hull of every class they catch, so a lone probe sent out on the off-chance can simply not come back. Fuel is deliberately steep: an expedition is a gamble, not a slower mine.
What does the Sensor Phalanx do?
It is the counterpart of recon. A probe tells you what is parked on a planet; a phalanx tells you what is moving. Built only on a moon - nothing else lies still enough to hold the array steady - it listens to the drive wakes around any world within its reach and lists every fleet going to or from it: whose it is, what is aboard, and when it lands. Each level reaches one sector further, it needs Espionage behind it to make sense of what it hears, and an array drawing more power than the moon makes hears nothing at all.
Can I try a battle out before I send anyone?
Yes - the fleet panel has a battle simulator. Fill in your hulls and what you think the other side has, and it reports the verdict, the losses on both sides in ships and in resources, the wreck field the fight would leave and the odds that wreckage collapses into a moon. It runs the same arithmetic the real battle does, so the projection is exact. What it cannot know is what the enemy actually has - that is what recon is for.
Why is my fleet not getting any faster?
Because every hull flies on one specific drive, and only that drive's research speeds it up. Probes, Corvettes, Interceptors, Freighters and Recyclers run on the Combustion Drive; Frigates, Bombers, Landers and Cruisers on the Impulse Drive; Carriers, Dreadnoughts and Colony Arks on the Hyperspace Drive. A fleet travels at the pace of its slowest ship, so a single Dreadnought in a wing of Interceptors holds the whole wing to Hyperspace speed - check which drive your slowest hull needs before you pour research into another.
How does a joint strike work?
Tick "open this as a joint strike" when you launch an attack and your wing becomes a rally your alliance can fall in with. Allies then pick it from the list instead of naming a target: they inherit your target and, more importantly, your moment of arrival, so every wing lands at once and the defence faces one battle instead of a queue of separate raids it can beat piecemeal. A wing that cannot physically reach the target in the time left is refused rather than sent late. Losses are split by what each wing brought, plunder by the cargo space that survives, and the bounty by the guns that did the fighting. One wreck field, one roll for a moon. A strike raids and never seizes - a conquest is flown alone. Reputation works differently, and deliberately so. What a win pays is the defender's own weight, so a strong world rewards every commander who helped bring it down - and each wing takes that reward in proportion to what it staked, not to how big it already was. Commit the fleet you have and you earn the reward in full, however small that fleet is: this is how a young commander flying beside veterans gains standing far faster than raiding alone could ever manage. Send a token escort along behind someone else's guns while your own fleet sits at home and you earn a token cut. Fair play is judged on the whole formation: if the combined fleet outclasses the defender, everyone in it takes the dishonour, not just the biggest wing.
Can I make an attack land at a particular moment?
Yes. Tick "Land it at a chosen moment" when you send a fleet and pick the time it should arrive. The fleet does not fly slower - it waits on the ground and leaves late, so the crossing still costs exactly what a crossing costs. While it waits, its ships are held for that order: they are still docked and still count as your fleet, but nothing else can send them, and if you try you are told which planned attack is holding them. Call the order off and they are free again the same second. A muster from the Commander tab can be timed the same way, and that is what makes it land as one wave instead of arriving strung out: the nearer worlds simply hold on the ground until the furthest one has caught up.
Can I send one fleet from my whole empire at once?
Yes, from the Commander tab. The fleet figure at the top counts every hull you own; click it, name a destination and say what should be there, and your worlds fly it between them. The cheapest worlds to fly from go first, and any world that cannot fuel the trip stays home rather than being stranded. You always see the plan before anything launches: which world sends what, what each burns, and when each one lands. Read that last part before you use it in anger - a muster is several fleets, not one, and they do not arrive together. Against a defended world that means being met one wave at a time, so for a real attack a single fleet from one world is usually the stronger move.
What missions can I fly?
Attack (raid a world for loot), Transport (send resources or crew to a world), Harvest (scoop a debris ring with Recyclers), Recon (send a Probe to scout), Colonise (settle an empty world with a Colony Ark), and - with the doctrine - Conquer (besiege a world to seize it).
Can I save a fleet composition I fly often?
Yes. In the dispatch panel, fill in the hulls you want and press "Save this composition", give it a name, and it becomes a chip above the quantity boxes. Tapping the chip later fills those boxes again in one go; if the world you are launching from is short of a hull, it fills what it can and says so. A composition is deliberately nothing but a named list of hulls - it remembers no target, no mission and no cargo, because those are the parts that change and the parts that are dangerous to get wrong out of habit. Loading one never launches anything. You can keep a dozen, and saving over a name replaces it.
What are the anomalies on the sector map?
Short-lived contacts the sensors cannot place, sitting in an otherwise empty slot: a drifting cargo hulk, a pocket of Helium-3 the survey charts missed, an unplaceable relic, a derelict warship, or a gravitic shear that will tear hulls apart. They last a few hours and then they are gone, whether anyone went or not, and there is exactly one thing to do at one - send an Investigate. What you bring matters: a haul is limited by the cargo space of the fleet you send, and towing a derelict home takes tonnage a probe does not have. They are deliberately modest - a good evening, not a shortcut - and one of the five will cost you a quarter of your fleet. Everyone in sensor range sees the same anomaly at the same time, so it belongs to whoever gets there first; the second fleet arrives at empty space.
Can crew and resources travel between my worlds?
Yes, with a Transport mission. Resources ride in any ship with cargo space; crew can only move aboard ships that have berths, such as Freighters and Carriers.
What does Espionage research do?
Espionage is what you can see. On the sector and universe maps you always see fleets you send and fleets inbound to your own worlds; another commander's fleet appears only when your Espionage beats their Counter-Intelligence - not their Espionage, because seeing and hiding are separate trades and a commander who has bought neither is wide open to anybody. A defender who beats the attacker's Counter-Intelligence can click the incoming fleet to read exactly what it carries; peering inside a fleet you have nothing to do with needs that and Espionage 8, which is deliberately a feat.
How much does scouting a planet reveal?
A recon probe always reveals a world's resources. Its building levels resolve once your Espionage reaches level 5. Its fleet in orbit, defensive structures and garrisoned troops show only when your Espionage exceeds the defender's Counter-Intelligence - so what hides a world is what its owner spent on curtains, not on telescopes, and a world with no Counter-Intelligence at all is wide open to any probe that reaches it.
Combat
How does a battle work?
First the orbital clash: your attacking hulls against the defender's docked ships and defence structures. The two lines exchange fire over six rounds, and each round costs a side in proportion to how far the other side outguns it - so a fleet that is merely ahead trades evenly and takes the field bloodied, while a fleet that is far ahead walks away almost untouched. Losses are applied between rounds, so an advantage compounds: every hull you destroy is a gun that never fires at you again. If you win the skies and brought marines, a ground assault follows for the planet itself.
How do I read a battle report?
Under the losses you get the line of battle: a table per side, a row per hull type. It says what stood in the line when the shooting started, what survived, what it cost, and then how many of that hull were still standing at the end of every round. That last part is the fight itself - it tells you which round your bombers died in, whether the wall was worn down early or held to the last, and where an advantage started to compound. Emplacements are rows in it too, at the level they were built to, because they stood in the line as units of their own. Reports written before this was recorded show their totals and no table.
Does it matter which ships I bring, or only how many?
It matters enormously. Some hulls tear through a particular class of target - a Battle Cruiser gets four shots for one against a Corvette, a Bomber ten against an Autocannon Turret - and that rapid fire counts for as much of the enemy as is actually made of that class. Sixty Cruisers and six hundred Corvettes cost about the same to build, and the Cruisers annihilate the swarm while barely losing a hull; send the swarm the other way and it is wiped out to the last ship. This is why scouting is worth the Probe: knowing what is down there tells you what to build, and the battle simulator will show you the trade before you commit anyone.
Can defence structures be destroyed?
They are knocked out, not demolished. Emplacements fight in the line and are worn down with it - that is exactly what the Bomber is built for - and the report tells both sides how many were silenced. But the ground crews have them firing again before the next fleet arrives, so their levels never drop and you never pay to rebuild them. Silencing the wall wins you the battle in front of you, not the war.
What are troops and defence structures?
Troops (marines) are trained in the Barracks; they garrison a world on the ground and, carried by Landers, storm a world you have beaten in orbit. Defence structures - Autocannon Turret, Missile Battery, Ion Cannon and Planetary Shield - add orbital firepower that never leaves the planet.
How much can I loot from a raid?
A won raid loots a share of the target's stored resources, capped by your surviving fleet's cargo space. Beware the anti-farming rule: each repeat raid on the SAME world the same day hauls far less than the last, dropping toward nothing.
What is debris and how do I harvest it?
Every ship destroyed in a battle leaves a share of its metals as a debris ring around the world. Build Recyclers and fly a Harvest mission to scoop the Alloy and Crystal and haul it home. Leaving a ring up there earns you nothing - it will not turn into a moon, it only waits for someone else's recyclers.
How do I conquer a planet?
You need Conquest Doctrine research. Declare a Conquest attack, wipe the target's fleet, garrison and defences, then hold it under siege. Land a Colony Ark in the final hours of the siege and the world becomes yours - as long as you can still support another colony.
Terraforming
What does the Terraforming Array do?
Two things, and the second is the reason for the first. Every level flattens, drains and warms enough ground for four more building fields - more than anything else in the game clears, because that is what the array is for and it costs a great deal to run. And once the array is deep enough, it can begin reshaping the world itself: a gas dwarf becomes barren, barren becomes ice, ice and ember become jungle, and jungle becomes an ocean world. Every road ends at ocean, the balanced world every commander starts on, and nothing leaves it - there is no step beyond "good".
What does reshaping cost me, and can I undo it?
It is priced off the array itself, so it scales with the economy that built it, and it is steep on purpose: reshaping a world is a season's project, not a click. It is also one way. What it does not do is take anything from you - the world keeps every structure standing on it and every building field it already had. If the new class happens to be worth less ground than the old one, the world simply keeps the higher figure: an improvement may never pull the ground out from under something you already built. A moon is never reshaped at all, since there is no atmosphere to give it.
The order book
What is the order book, and how is it different from the trade board?
The trade board does one thing well: "I have this, I want that, take it or leave it." What it cannot tell you is what anything is WORTH, because every offer is its own little negotiation and nothing compares to anything else. The order book makes everyone quote the same number instead. There are two markets - crystal and Helium-3 - both priced in alloy, per hundred units, because alloy is the thing every commander mines first. You say how much you want and what you will pay; either somebody is already offering it at that price or your order rests in the book until they are. Out of a hundred such orders comes a price, and out of a price comes the ability to plan.
What happens to my resources when I place an order?
They leave the world immediately - a seller's goods, or a buyer's alloy - and that is the point: an order in the book can always be honoured, so every quote you see is real rather than a hope. Cancel and you get back exactly what is left of it. Orders match at the resting order's price rather than the incoming one, so the commander who was there first and set the price gets it, and crossing the spread never does better than the quote you crossed - if you bid far above the market you simply get the difference back. Best price goes first; among equal prices, whoever waited longest.
Does the broker take a cut here too?
Yes, the same distance-based cut the trade board takes, on both halves of the deal. A market you could reach from anywhere for nothing would make the map meaningless - the whole point of a universe with coordinates in it is that where you are matters. Fills are brokered rather than flown, so the goods land on the world the order was placed from, and both sides get a message when an order fills: a resting order fills while its owner is asleep, and a deal you never heard about would read as a bug.
Supply routes
What is a supply route?
A delivery you write down once instead of typing it in every three hours. Name two of your own worlds, commit the freighters, say how much of each resource to move and how much the source world should always keep back, and the route flies itself: it launches an ordinary convoy, the ordinary fleet engine carries it there and brings it home, and the moment the hulls are docked again it goes round once more. Nothing about it is a new kind of flying - it is a thing that presses the dispatch button for you, with your ships and your fuel.
What can stop a run, and can I abuse it?
Everything a hand-flown convoy is subject to. If the committed hulls are not docked at the source, or there is nothing above the reserve to take, or the tanks cannot pay for the crossing, the run simply does not happen and the route tries again shortly - it never breaks. Both ends have to be your own worlds, because a route flies unattended and quietly shipping resources into somebody else's orbit every few hours is not something anybody should be able to set up and forget. If one of the two worlds changes hands, the route stops itself rather than feeding its new owner. You may keep five routes open, and any of them can be paused and resumed without losing what it was set up to do.
Two-factor sign-in
What is two-factor sign-in, and should I turn it on?
It means signing in asks for a six-digit code from an authenticator app on your phone as well as your password. Turn it on if your empire is worth anything to you. A password is one secret, and secrets leak: they get reused on some other site that gets breached, or guessed, or typed on a machine that was watching. A code that changes every thirty seconds and lives only on the phone in your pocket is a second lock that a leaked password does not open. It applies at every door, including signing in with Google or Apple - a second factor you can walk around is decoration, not protection.
What happens if I lose my phone?
You use one of your recovery codes, which is exactly why you were given ten of them the moment you switched two-factor on. Each one works once, in place of a code from the app. Losing a phone is the ordinary case, not the exotic one, and a system that turns a lost phone into a lost empire should not have been built. Write them down somewhere that is not your phone - that is the whole point of them - because they are shown once and once only: the game keeps nothing but their fingerprints and genuinely could not show them to you again. If you run low you can ask for a fresh set at any time, which retires the old ones.
Which apps work, and why is there no QR code to scan?
Any of them. This is the ordinary, standard scheme - the same six digits every thirty seconds that your bank uses - so Google Authenticator, Aegis, 1Password, Bitwarden, Authy and the rest all handle it. Getting the secret in works two ways: on a phone, tap the link and your app opens with everything already filled in; anywhere else, type the letters in by hand, which is why they are set out in groups of four in a typeface where a B cannot be mistaken for an 8. There is no QR code because drawing one would mean shipping a code library we could not verify by looking at it, and a subtly wrong QR would quietly enrol a secret that does not work - which you would only find out at the door, locked out.
Your data and your way out
Can I get a copy of everything you hold about me?
Yes, from your profile, in one click, without asking anybody. It is the whole file rather than a summary: every world with everything standing on it, every hull, every research level, every message you have ever been sent, every trade, every order, and every daily score ever recorded. It comes as JSON, because a copy of your data you cannot read with a program is not really a copy of your data. It is put together the moment you ask - there is no second copy of your empire sitting in a table somewhere waiting for something to go wrong with it.
How do I delete my account, and what actually happens?
From the same panel. You type your own handle to confirm - not as a hurdle, but so that "delete everything" can never be what a stray tap did - and the request stands for a week. During that week nothing has happened yet: your empire runs exactly as it did, and one button puts it back. When the week is up it is real. Worlds are released back to the universe, and fleets, research, your inbox, your standing and your scores are erased. There is no deactivated state, no shadow row kept for statistics, no tombstone with your call sign on it. Nothing comes back.
Does deleting my commander delete my login too?
Only when the login is plainly nothing but a game account: a plain player with no other role on the site and no commander left in any other realm. If you also write on the site, moderate it, or run it, the login stays and only the commander goes - deleting a site's own administrator because they quit a game would be a catastrophe rather than a courtesy. If you want the login gone in that case, ask whoever runs the site.
One person, one empire
Am I allowed to run a second account?
No, and the reason is not that the rules say so. A second account is not a second player: it is a farm that feeds the first one, a scout that can be thrown away, a vote in an alliance that cost nobody anything. Every point it earns comes out of the ranking of somebody playing with one pair of hands. So the game watches for pairs of accounts that look like one person and puts them in front of an operator.
My brother plays from the same house. Are we in trouble?
No. Households are the common case, not the exception, and the game knows it cannot tell two brothers apart from one person with two accounts - the evidence looks identical. That is exactly why nothing here is automatic: there is no ban, no penalty, no flag on your account that a machine can set. A pair that shares an address is a question put to a human being, and "these two live together" is the answer they give most often. Once an operator clears a pair, that settles it: the same evidence never comes back. The only thing that would raise you again is the case getting markedly worse than what was already looked at and dismissed.
What does the game actually store about where I play from?
Not your address. What is written down is a one-way hash of it, salted with a secret this installation keeps to itself. That hash can answer exactly one question - "did these two accounts come from the same place?" - and nothing else. It cannot be turned back into an address, it cannot be put on a map, and there is nothing in it to hand to anybody. Sightings nobody has refreshed in weeks are deleted outright, and when a commander is gone, everything the game noticed about them goes with them.
Word from the operators
What is the notice at the top of the page?
A broadcast: one of the few things in this game written by a person rather than by the engine. When the universe is going down for maintenance, or a realm is about to reset, or something has gone wrong and everybody's numbers have moved, the operators say so here. The same words land in your inbox as an ordinary message you can read, keep or delete - and, when it matters enough, sit above the sign-in card as well, because during an outage the people who most need telling are exactly the ones who cannot get in to read their inbox.
I just started - did I miss the ones sent before I signed up?
Not the ones that still matter. A new commander arrives with every broadcast that is still live, so a maintenance window announced on Saturday reaches somebody who signs up on Sunday. Notices that have already run their course are not delivered - a first inbox full of old news would bury the things that actually concern you. Every notice comes down by itself after the number of days the operator set for it.
Alliance ranks
What are alliance ranks for?
For telling apart the things an officer used to have to be trusted with all at once. An alliance has three standings - member, officer, leader - and for a handful of people that is plenty. At fifty it is hopeless: the commander you trust to run the forum is not the one you want declaring war, and your recruiter has no business spending the depot. So the leader writes their own ranks - Recruiter, Quartermaster, Warmaster, whatever the alliance calls them - and ticks, one power at a time, what each rank may actually do. There are six powers: admit members, remove members, moderate the rooms, declare and end wars, commit the depot, and edit the alliance.
Do I have to set this up before my alliance works?
No, and that is deliberate. An alliance that never opens the Ranks tab behaves exactly as it always did: a member may do nothing in particular, an officer admits and removes members, moderates the rooms and commits the depot, and the leader does everything. Those defaults are printed at the bottom of the Ranks tab so you can see what happens to anyone you never give a rank to. Note that declaring war is leader-only by default - if you want a war council, write a rank that grants it.
Can somebody use a rank to take my alliance from me?
No. Three things are nailed down. Writing the ranks is the leader's pen and nobody else's - a power that could hand out powers would be a way around every other check, so it is not one of the six. The leader always holds every power regardless of what any rank says, because an alliance that could lock its own founder out of its own controls would be a support ticket rather than a feature. And a rank never lets you act on someone at or above your own standing: a rank carries a standing with it, so a Quartermaster written on the officer rung makes its holder an officer, and a Recruiter on the member rung cannot remove officers no matter what is ticked. Delete a rank and everyone holding it falls straight back to what their standing allows - nobody is ever left in an undefined state.
Veteran crews
What is crew veterancy?
Your crews get better at the hulls they actually fly. Experience is tracked per commander and per hull type - not per ship, because a fleet in this game is a count in a stack and pretending otherwise would be a fiction. As a type banks experience its crews rise from Green through Blooded and Veteran to Elite, and each rank adds a few per cent to that hull's attack and defence. It shows as a badge on the hull's card in the shipyard, and the battle simulator flies with your crews aboard, so what it projects is what you would actually get.
How do I earn it, and can I lose it?
You earn it by fighting, and only by fighting - it is the one advantage in the game that cannot be bought or researched. Only hulls that come home learn anything, a wreck teaches nobody, and what a battle teaches is measured by what it was up against: slaughtering defenceless freighters is worth almost nothing, standing in front of a real wall is worth a great deal. One enormous fight is capped, so nobody gets an elite fleet in an evening. And yes, you can lose it: when hulls of a type are wrecked, the crews that knew the ship go with them and the experience left is the share that survived. Lose the whole stack and you are back to Green. That is what makes an elite fleet something you can be afraid to risk.
Does a veteran fleet beat a bigger one?
No, and it is not meant to. The top rank is a genuine edge and nowhere near a replacement for numbers - a green fleet twice the size still wins comfortably. What veterancy does is reward the commander who has been fighting all season over the one who bought a fleet last night, and give an experienced raider a reason to think twice before spending crews they cannot replace.
Realm events
What are realm events?
Weather for a whole universe. Every so often something turns up that changes the rules for everybody in the realm at once for a few hours: a solar flare that costs everyone production, a rich seam that hands it to everyone, an ion storm that makes every crossing crawl, clear lanes that make them fly, a war footing that races the yards while stripping the mines, a deep survey that speeds up every laboratory. You are told when one starts, it shows at the top of your screen with a countdown, and it lifts on its own.
Does an event give somebody an advantage over me?
No - it falls on the whole realm at once, so nobody is ahead of anybody because of it. What changes is which plans are good this evening. An ion storm is the difference between a raid that lands before your target logs in and one that does not; a war footing is worth building a fleet around; a solar flare is the evening to spend what you have rather than mine more. Events are deliberately mixed - the good and the bad are equally likely - so a realm that has weather is not a realm that keeps getting presents.
How often does the weather turn, and can an operator set it?
Only one event runs at a time, and there is a long quiet spell after each one before another can begin - the multipliers are meant to be something that happens in the game, not the game itself. On top of that, an operator can start or end any event by hand from the Realms page, so an event weekend can be planned, and a realm that has had a miserable week can be handed a rich seam on purpose. Nothing an event does is permanent: when it lifts, the realm is exactly as it was.
Fleet postures
What are fleet postures?
Every raid you send is flown in one of four postures, chosen at launch, and it decides how the fleet fights when it arrives. Balanced is the ordinary fight. Aggressive brings a fifth more guns to bear and loses half again as many of your own hulls doing it - it wins fights you would otherwise lose and makes the ones you were going to win expensive. Cautious is the mirror: you hit for less and lose far less, which is the posture for a raid you mean to fly again tomorrow. Evasive is not a way of fighting at all - see below.
Which posture is the best one?
None of them, and that is deliberate. Whatever costs you less also does less, at every strength - if one posture were simply better there would be no decision to make. What changes is which fight you are in. Against a wall you are just short of breaking, aggressive is the difference between a win and a wasted fleet. Against a target you can already beat, cautious keeps enough hulls alive to go back tomorrow. The battle simulator answers under the posture you pick, so you can see the trade before you pay for it.
What does the Evasive posture do?
It refuses the fight. The fleet flies out, reads what is actually waiting in orbit, and if the numbers are against it, turns for home without firing a shot - no losses on either side, and no plunder either. You pay the flight and keep the fleet, which is exactly the trade you want when you are scouting an unknown wall with real hulls, or raiding somebody who might have reinforced since your last probe. If the fleet would have won, it fights the battle like any other. Your target still hears about it: a fleet that arrives and leaves tells them somebody has their coordinates.
Can a wing in a joint strike fly its own posture?
No. A strike is weighed as one force, so it is flown as one formation: every wing fights the way the strike does. A formation where each commander fought differently would be a different battle than the one everybody agreed to join. If the posture matters more to you than the numbers, fly the raid alone.
Covert operations
What is a Sabotage mission?
The quiet way of hurting somebody. Research Covert Operations, load Recon Probes - and nothing else, warships would only be seen - and pick one of three things for the team to do: torch the largest stockpile on the world, quietly undo a share of the work on everything it is building, or drop its reactor hall to half output for a few hours. Nothing is fought and nothing is stolen. That is the point: a commander who cannot break a defended world can still make holding it expensive.
What does a sabotage run cost me, and what stops it?
The probes. They are spent whether the operation lands or not - an infiltration is one way, so what you risk is paid up front rather than left orbiting a rival world. Whether they get in is your Covert Operations against the target's Counter-Intelligence, with a little in your favour for every extra probe: a team beats a lone operative, with diminishing returns. Nothing is ever certain in either direction. And a world that was hit recently is on alert: while its crews are still awake, the next team walks straight into them, so you cannot grind somebody down by sending probes at them all evening. Allies, commanders on holiday and anybody the anti-bullying rule protects are all out of reach, exactly as they are for a raid.
Somebody sabotaged my world. Can I find out who?
Only if your own sensor work earned it. You are always told what happened and what it cost, but a name appears in the report solely when your Counter-Intelligence out-ranks the saboteur's Covert Operations - the same bargain scouting makes. Below that all you have is the damage and a suspicion. The world also goes on alert afterwards, which is real protection: for the next few hours anything else sent at it is caught on the way in.
Combat points & fair play
What are Offence, Defence and Combat?
They rate your military might, apart from how big your empire is. Offence is the attack strength of every warship and marine you own, plus offensive research and honourable raids. Defence is the defensive strength of your ships, troops and defence structures, plus defensive research. Combat is the average of the two.
How do I raise my Combat scores?
Build and keep military - losing ships in a failed raid lowers your Offence. Research Weaponry and Shielding. And win honourable fights: beating a worthy opponent earns Offence reputation on top of your live military tally.
What is a dishonourable raid, and what does it cost?
Farming the same world a third time in a day, or a far stronger commander punching down, is dishonourable. It forfeits Offence reputation (which can push your Offence negative) and pays that reputation to the victim as Defence - making their wall look bigger than it is, so raiders must scout to tell.
Why can I not attack a certain player?
Three shields protect the weak: new commanders are under beginner protection, targets far below your empire size are off-limits, and a target far below your Combat strength is barred outright. The map shows a shield icon and, on hover, the exact reason.
How long does beginner protection last?
It is not a clock, and that is the thing most often got wrong about it: nothing anywhere counts the days since you signed up. The shield holds until your own score passes the realm's beginner mark - 800 points in a standard realm, which is roughly twelve times the resources you are handed to start with. So it lasts exactly as long as you are genuinely small: building hard is what ends it, not the calendar, and a quiet week does not spend it. It holds against everyone above that mark, AI rivals included.
Why does raiding the same player over and over stop paying?
The bashing rule: each repeat raid on the same world the same day hauls only a fraction of the previous haul, so a commander cannot be milked into oblivion. Bot worlds are exempt - farming AI opponents is deliberately unthrottled.
What happens if I keep bullying weaker players?
Persistent dishonourable raiding rouses the galaxy's hard bot - the AI opponent above the strongest player - which begins hunting you with reprisal fleets until you reform with honourable play. Conquer that enforcer and a hard bot from another galaxy takes over the pursuit.
Alliances
What is an alliance and how do I join one?
An alliance is a player-run faction with a shared roster, chat and forum. Apply from the alliance directory and a leader or officer admits you, or found your own. You may belong to one alliance per realm.
What are the ranks?
Leader, Officer and Member. Officers and the leader admit and remove members; the leader can promote, demote, transfer leadership and disband. A manager can only act on ranks below their own.
Can I attack my own alliance mates?
No. Members of the same alliance cannot raid or conquer one another - your alliance is a safe haven.
Can I defend an ally's world?
Yes - send a Guard mission. The fleet flies to one of your own worlds or an alliance member's and stays in its orbit instead of turning for home, and if a raid lands there it stands in the line beside that world's own ships and guns. Whatever it carried is unloaded on arrival, so a garrison can bring its own supply. The hulls never change hands: they keep your research, their losses are yours, their battle report is yours, and you can recall them at any moment. What it costs is fuel, and the world being guarded pays it - every hour, out of that world's own Helium-3. Let those tanks run dry and the guests break station and go home, which is deliberate: cover for a friend under threat is worth paying for, and a second fleet parked over somebody else's colony forever is not. A world can shelter five fleets at once, none while it is under siege, and a probe that out-spies the defender sees the guests as plainly as the owner's own ships.
How does a war between alliances work?
A leader declares war on another alliance in the same realm, and that is that - the other side cannot refuse, because being attacked never was optional. What a war changes is how the galaxy reads the fighting. Raids between the two alliances stop counting as bullying: the dishonour rule exists to protect commanders who never asked for a fight, and a war is one both leaderships walked into with their eyes open. Instead, every hull destroyed and every load hauled off is written to the war score. That score is a ledger, not a balance - each side's column only grows, so a war reads as what the two took off each other rather than as one number hiding a bloodbath. Peace needs both leaders: one offers, the other accepts. Surrender is one-sided and immediate, and the win goes into the record as theirs. After any war ends there is a couple of days' cooling-off before the same two can go at it again, so nobody can keep a weaker alliance permanently under siege by re-declaring.
Who keeps order in the alliance chat and forum?
The alliance does, first. Officers and the leader can take a chat line or a forum post down, close a topic to new replies, pin a topic to the top of its category, and silence a member for anything from a quarter of an hour to a week - the same judgement as kicking someone, with a smaller hammer. Rank decides who may act on whom: nobody can moderate their own rank or above, so this can never become the tool one officer uses to shut another out of the room. A removed message keeps its place and loses its words, so a conversation still reads in order and nobody has to wonder what they missed.
What if the alliance leadership is the problem?
Then you go over their heads. Every message carries a Report button that files it with the game's operators, outside the alliance entirely - which is exactly the case it exists for. The text is copied into the report when you file it, so a message cannot be quietly removed to empty the evidence, and the operators can take it down whatever the alliance thinks. Reporting the same message twice does nothing extra; one report is enough.
What is Mentorship and what is a protégé?
Alliances earn Mentorship prestige for taking in low-point rookies and growing them: when a member who joined small crosses a growth milestone, the alliance banks prestige and the rookie is congratulated. A protégé is such a mentored newcomer, badged in the roster. It pays to recruit and raise new players.
Realms & the Hidden Sector
What are realms?
Realms are parallel universes, each its own galaxy with its own players, economy and speed settings. You choose which realm to play, and admins can run several at once - some faster, some slower.
What is the book of records?
Every realm keeps one page of superlatives, shown above the leaderboards: the largest battle ever fought here, the fattest haul ever carried off a world, the richest expedition, the biggest salvage run, the highest standing anyone has reached, and who got the realm's first moon and first colony. It is not a leaderboard. A leaderboard says who is ahead right now and forgets you the moment somebody passes you; a record says what the biggest thing that ever happened here was, and it stands until somebody beats it. Records nobody has claimed yet are shown blank on purpose - an empty page is an invitation. The holder's name is written into the book at the time, so it still reads correctly after a rename, a reset, or a commander leaving the galaxy.
Can I use a different name in each realm?
Yes, and that is how it works by default. A commander belongs to a realm, so the name you pick when you walk into a galaxy is that commander's alone - nothing ties it to the name you fly under anywhere else, and nobody can look you up across realms. It is what makes it possible to be a trusted officer in one galaxy while quietly reporting to a rival alliance in another. Your account keeps its own login, which is only ever used to sign in and which no other player sees. Changing a name afterwards is possible but costs a change of callsign from the store: a commander who could rename themselves for free could walk away from a reputation they spent months earning.
What is on my commander profile?
Your card in this realm: the name, the points you hold here, the alliance you fly with, the day this commander was founded and the day the person behind it first played at all. Underneath it is the wall of achievements, and that one part is counted across every realm you play - a thing you managed is something you managed, wherever you were standing at the time. Anybody in the same realm can look at your card. It only ever shows the one realm, so it says nothing about where else you fly or under what name.
How do I invite somebody, and what do I get for it?
Invite, in the menu at the top, holds one link that is yours alone. Anybody who opens it is woken out of their bed, told that you abducted them, and offered the only sensible reply: go and take a world of your own. The first press pays you a little antimatter, once per address per day. The account it eventually creates pays far more - but only once that newcomer has built something worth a thousand points, because paying on registration is paying for empty accounts. Share it with the buttons on that page: they are ordinary links to WhatsApp, Telegram, X, Facebook, Reddit and mail, so nothing from those networks is loaded into the game and nobody is tracked.
What are the medals and stars on a profile?
What that link has brought in. Medals count strangers you have woken: one bronze at 1, two at 10, three at 100, then the oldest turns silver at 250, the next at 500, the third at 1000, and gold follows at 2500, 5000 and 10000. Stars count the ones who stayed - people who made an account through your link and then reached a thousand points - and because that is a far harder thing to earn, the rungs sit roughly ten times lower: 1, 3, 10, then 25, 50, 100, then 250, 500, 1000. A row never grows past three; it is the metal that changes, so three bronze and three gold are the same count of medals and could never be mistaken for each other.
Can I hide my medals, stars or achievements?
Yes, each of the three separately, on the Commander tab of your profile. They are all counted across every realm you play, which is what makes them worth showing and also what makes them a fingerprint: two commanders wearing the same row of gold are visibly the same person, and this game deliberately lets you be two different people in two different galaxies. A switched-off row is left out of what the game sends about you rather than merely hidden by the page - and nobody else is told that you switched anything off. On your own card it still shows, marked, so you can see what you are keeping back.
Do my purchases work in every realm?
Yes. What you buy belongs to you, not to one of your commanders, so a fleet trail or a Saturn ring bought last month is waiting for you in the next galaxy you walk into, and a Fleet Commander subscription runs in all of them at once rather than being spent on the first. Which of your things a given commander is actually wearing stays that commander's own business. Items also outlive the shop: nothing about what you own is checked against what happens to be for sale, so an item withdrawn from the store keeps working for everybody who already bought it. Antimatter is the exception to none of this, because it is never sold - it is earned in the game and spent in the realm that earned it.
Why can I not join a realm yet?
A new realm always starts in closed testing, with a small group shaking it down before anybody else is let in. Making an account does not wait for that: sign up whenever you like, and the account works on the forum from the moment it exists. What waits is the realm. Until one is open to you - open to everybody, or opened to you as a tester - the game has nowhere to put you, so the picker has nothing in it. Tick 'tell me when a realm opens' on the sign-up form and that address gets the signal the day one does.
I was let into the closed testing - where do I sign in?
The same place as everybody else: the sign-in card on the front page, next to the one that makes an account. Being let into the testing does not change how you get in, only what you find once you are in - the realm being tested appears in your picker where for everybody else it is still hidden. Pick it and make your commander in it as usual.
What is the newsletter, and how do I stop it?
A separate tick on that same form, off unless you ask for it, and written in English. Being told that a realm opened is not the newsletter - that one letter goes to everybody waiting, because it is the thing they signed up for. Every letter of either kind carries a link at the bottom that turns the newsletter off again, and it only works for the address it was sent to.
Can I play more than one realm?
Yes. The same account can hold one commander per realm - alternate-reality doppelgangers of each other. Which one is live follows your realm choice. It is not multi-accounting and is never treated as such: the rule against multiple accounts is about two commanders meeting in the same universe, and yours never can.
How is a realm won?
Late in a realm's life a sector that has stood empty since the realm was founded fills with seven gas giants: the Hidden Sector. Alliances take the giants, wind up the methane extractor on each one, and fight one another for the ground. When every giant reaches its breaking point the whole sector goes up at once - and the alliance holding the most of them at that moment wins the realm and enters the hall of fame. What is counted is worlds held, not what was poured into them: a giant changes hands with its extractor intact, so a nearly finished one you lose the day before is worth nothing to you and everything to whoever took it. A sector can also go up with nobody holding a single world in it, and then the realm is simply over with no victor - inventing one would be worse.
What is a gas giant?
A world that exists nowhere else in the game: the Hidden Sector is made of them and nothing else has one. Nothing is mined on a gas giant and nothing can be built on one but a methane extractor, so every unit that goes into it has to be flown in by convoy. Settle one with a Colony Ark or take it by siege - and a giant changes hands with every extractor level its last holder paid for, which makes a nearly finished one the most valuable thing in the realm.
When does the Hidden Sector wake?
On its own, and nobody is told the date - not the players, not the operators. What you get is warning. Three times as the moment approaches, the realm sends word: first that deep-range instruments have picked up a tremor nobody can place, then that the tremor is growing, and last that the sky is bending. Everybody gets the same three at the same time, so nothing is hidden from you that a rival knows. Build for it when the first one lands.
What happens when the sector goes up?
Everything in it ends, and that is deliberate. Every gas giant goes, and with it every colony standing on one, every building, every unit ever flown there, and every fleet still in orbit. Nothing is salvaged and no wreck field is left - there is nothing there to harvest afterwards, because there is no longer an afterwards for that sector. Anything you sent into the Hidden Sector you sent to stay. What remains is the sector's own star, collapsed into a black hole, hanging where the sector was.
Whose black hole is it?
The alliance that held the most of the Hidden Sector when it went up. The black hole is the portal, and it answers to them alone: nobody else can cross, whatever their fleet, and that includes everyone else in the winning realm. It is the prize for winning, not a road the realm opens for everybody. If the sector went up with nobody holding it, the portal is nobody's and stays shut.
How do realms connect?
The portal is the endgame; travelling between realms is the aftermath. A black hole leads nowhere until a second realm has finished its own Hidden Sector - then the two dimensions bridge, and the alliance holding each side may cross to raid, scout and supply. Three things keep a bridge shut. There may be no other finished realm yet, in which case yours is simply alone. The other realm may be tuned differently: two realms bridge only when the build, production and research speeds they are SET to are identical, because crossing between a slow realm and a fast one is not a raid, it is a bulldozer. What they happen to be running at does not count - a storm that speeds a realm up for an evening is weather, not tuning, and has no vote. Or the realm may be sealed: a test realm never bridges to anything. Whichever it is, the screen at the black hole says which.
Store, account & help
Something says it is closed for repairs. What does that mean?
One part of the game can be closed on its own while it is being repaired, so that a fault in one feature does not take the whole game down with it. Everything else keeps running and everybody keeps playing. Nothing is deleted while a part is closed: your orders, routes, ranks and cases all stay exactly where they are and are still there when it opens again. Anything already under way finishes normally too - a fleet you sent before the closure still lands. The controls for a closed part simply disappear from your screen until it is back.
Why did the game tell me to slow down?
Because something was sending requests far faster than any person can click. The game answers a large budget of requests a minute - a commander playing hard, with the map open and the state refreshing, never comes near it - but a script, a stuck key or a client caught in a loop can, and one runaway loop is enough to slow the galaxy down for everyone. If you ever do see it, the message says how many seconds to wait, and it clears itself. Nothing is lost and nothing is held against you: the request is simply not answered, and the next one is.
What is Antimatter and what can I do with it?
Antimatter is a premium currency kept in one empire-wide wallet. You earn it in-game - by winning honourable raids, founding colonies and completing quests - and spend it to finish a build or a research instantly. It is not for sale: Hidden Sector never sells power.
Is the game pay-to-win?
No. Nothing that affects the game is for sale. The store has two shelves and neither of them holds power: cosmetics - a coloured debris ring, a fleet-trail colour, an interface accent, all purely visual - and the Fleet Commander subscription, which unlocks a read-only overview of your own empire on one screen and puts a crown beside your name. It changes nothing you could not already work out by clicking through your worlds. Antimatter is earned in-game and cannot be bought at all: there is no product, no pack and no setting that turns one on. Battles are decided by fleets, tech and tactics, not by your wallet.
What are bots?
Every galaxy is seeded with three AI opponents: an easy one just below the weakest local player, a medium one at the average, and a hard one just above the strongest. They exist to be scouted, raided and measured against - and the hard bot also polices persistent bullies.
Is my progress saved if I stop playing?
Yes - your empire persists between sessions and keeps producing while you are away. Note that other commanders can raid you while you are offline, so leave defences and do not hoard resources on an undefended world.
How do I get help or report a problem?
Check this FAQ first. For anything it does not answer - a bug, a payment that did not arrive, or a rules question - contact the operator through the website; the Privacy statement and Terms & conditions in the footer list how to reach us.