Each game day is one turn. Give your orders any time during the day: every house's orders are carried out together at the nightly maintenance, and the next day you read what happened in your report.
The first time you enter, the game asks whether you will found a house. Give it a name (3 to 23 letters). You start with a home world, a rock world beside it, and three fleets:
Good first steps: send the Scouts out, settle a world near home, and order a few ships or a building.
The computer houses leave a new house's worlds alone for its first days (10 on this BBS). Your report warns you on the day the peace ends.
| Key | Screen |
|---|---|
| R | Overnight report: what happened to your house last night |
| M | Map of the Reach: the systems you know and the lanes between them |
| W | Worlds and production: your worlds, what they make, their focus |
| F | Fleets and orders: move, patrol, blockade, invade, settle, return, escort; split and merge fleets; doctrine |
| B | Build: ships at a world with a shipyard, buildings in a world's free slots |
| T | Research: choose the track your points go to |
| D | Diplomacy and treaties |
| X | Exchange: buy and sell ore, fuel and influence |
| S | Messages to and from other houses |
| N | News and standings, and the Hall of Fame |
| H | Help |
| Q | Quit to the BBS |
| Kind | Building slots | Good for |
|---|---|---|
| Temperate | 5 | People and influence |
| Rock | 4 | Ore |
| Ice | 3 | Fuel, some ore |
| Gas giant | 1 | Fuel |
| Ruin | 3 | A little of everything; may hold a relic |
Each world has a focus (Balanced, Mining, Fuel, Growth or Defence) that you set on the Worlds screen.
| Building | Ore | What it does |
|---|---|---|
| Mine | 60 | More ore |
| Refinery | 60 | More fuel |
| Shipyard | 80 | Lets the world build ships |
| Shield | 70 | Shields against attack |
| Barracks | 50 | A stronger garrison against landings |
| Academy | 90 | 10 research points a day |
| Ship | Attack | Hull | Speed | Ore | Use |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Skiff | 1 | 3 | 2 | 10 | Scouting |
| Lancer | 4 | 4 | 1 | 20 | Beats Skiffs and transports |
| Warden | 2 | 9 | 1 | 30 | Blunts Lancers |
| Breaker | 7 | 9 | 1 | 60 | Beats Wardens, shields and stations |
| Hauler | 0 | 3 | 1 | 12 | Carries 10 troops |
| Seeder | 0 | 4 | 1 | 50 | Settles an unclaimed world |
| Outpost | 3 | 12 | 0 | 40 | A station that stays where it is built |
Fleets travel along lanes, usually one lane a day. Outside your own systems each lane costs fuel. Lanes drift: a few close and new ones open every week.
Hostile fleets that meet will battle. A fleet's doctrine decides how it fights: Strike hits hard, Hold defends, Screen protects transports and pulls back if losing. To take a world, beat its shields and defenders, then land troops carried by Haulers (Fleets, Invade). A blockade stops a world's production.
Beware the Hollow: it spreads from dark nests and raids weak worlds.
Research points come from the influence you make each day, plus 10 per Academy. Each track has four levels, costing 120, 300, 600 and 1000 points. Switching tracks loses half the points saved so far; when a track is finished, research moves on to the least advanced one by itself.
| Track | Effect |
|---|---|
| Drives | 15% less fuel a lane per level; at level 3, Skiff and Lancer fleets move 2 lanes |
| Arms | 10% more damage per level; at level 2, 20 more shields on every world |
| Industry | Ships and buildings 5% cheaper per level; at level 3, one more building slot |
| Statecraft | 15% more influence per level; loyalty recovers faster |
Treaties cost influence and are kept by the game: break one and you pay. Messages go between houses on the Messages screen.
The highest score on the last day wins. A game can also end early (if the sysop has them turned on) when a house:
An open-ended game (no last day) runs until someone wins early or the sysop ends it.
If you miss several days (7 by default) your house goes on autopilot: the computer gives its orders until you come back. After a longer time away (21 days) the house leaves the game and its worlds become independent.