Sound starts after your first tap or keypress. Music pauses with the game.

Tap or click a ship to select it. Fleet selects all of your ships. Choose Move, then tap a destination. Choose Attack, then tap an enemy or a destination to advance while engaging enemies. Stop sets a guard position. Idle or holding ships respond to attacks on themselves or nearby allies, then return; direct Move orders keep priority.

Touch: drag the map to pan; pinch or use +/− to zoom. Mouse: left-button or middle-button drag pans; right-button drag selects your friendly ships in a box; Shift adds to the selection. Wheel zooms; a stationary right-click moves or attacks a visible enemy. Dragging never gives an order. Right-drag selection keeps a pending construction or rally preview; stationary right-click cancels it.

Keyboard: Ctrl or Command + S saves your manual checkpoint. Save is also available below the command panel; Menu → Saved game / files contains load, backup, download and import. F or 1 selects your fleet, 2–4 recalls a saved fleet group, Ctrl + 2–4 assigns your selected ships to that group, M chooses Move, A chooses Attack, S stops, Arrow keys pan, Home centers your base, Space pauses, Escape cancels an order or opens this menu. During construction or rally selection, Enter confirms a chosen position; Escape or right-click cancels it. Select any of your ships and choose Fleet groups to assign, recall or clear groups on touch screens. Selecting a group changes your selection without issuing an order. Move and Attack orders for several ships use loose formation guidance without waiting for distant or engaging members; selecting a ship individually lets it leave the formation while keeping its saved group membership.

Select a deposit to build a mining facility. Select an owned planet, choose Build, then choose a shipyard or defense. Tap the map to position its ghost, then Confirm to spend resources; Cancel leaves your resources unchanged. Drag and pinch still navigate during placement. Select a shipyard to add fighters, bombers, destroyers and costly additional cruisers to its queue. Each yard builds one ship at a time, up to six paid orders; yards work independently. Queue opens all construction and production, with progress, waiting order and individual refunds. Construction has eight slots and ship orders twelve empire-wide, subject to fleet capacity. Queued costs are paid immediately; canceling refunds that order once. Set its rally point on explored terrain, then Confirm; newly built ships gather there. Clear rally returns new ships to the shipyard. Every shipyard has its own saved rally point. Select the Resolute or a cruiser for its own turbolaser and missile refits; each purchase installs one mount immediately on that ship. Newly built cruisers start with one heavy laser and no missiles. Fleet research applies to every allied ship. Fighters fire rapid light lasers and have no shields. Bombers launch guided splash missiles. Escort destroyers carry one heavy and four light laser batteries. The Resolute begins with its Mark I turbolaser; its larger hull turns more slowly than an interceptor.

Exploration reveals terrain permanently; enemies disappear into the fog when unobserved. Select a discovered neutral planet to claim it once its orbital defenders are cleared and your fleet is close. Select your Command Center for Mark II and III weapons, shields and sensor research. Only one research project runs at a time; canceling refunds its paid cost. Select an owned planet and choose Develop to advance from Settlement to Colony, Trade World and Core World. Completed development increases that planet’s credits per second; canceling its active project refunds the paid cost. Homeworld provides a base 0.5 Metals and 0.5 Crystals per second while your Command Center survives, so a resource shortage can recover. Mines remain the faster source. Your active captain can change income, ship handling and work speed; displayed income and job times include those modifiers. Each resource in the top bar shows its reserve and income per second. Costs list Credits, Metals and Crystals separately; missing resources show how much more you need. Select a ship or armed structure to see per-hit weapon damage, firing cycle and weapon ranges. Damage is before armor; nominal DPS assumes all weapons can fire and hit. Green solid lines show allied lasers, yellow dashed lines show allied missiles, and red lines show a selected enemy’s weapons. Use Map to focus explored territory, or Planets to cycle your owned worlds. Protect your Command Center, hold Haven and secure at least three planets. Ion storms drain 10 shields per second and stop shield recovery inside; hull is safe. Movement routes around discovered storms unless you deliberately choose a point inside one. Storms affect rival ships too. The rival earns resources from its base and mines, spends them on construction and ship production, and attacks from its shipyard; destroying its facilities disrupts that economy. Structure art and balance remain provisional.