Captain's log
Every line is a mechanic that made it into the game.
Ten objectives on the Overview, and not one of them pays anything: build the mine and the reward is the mine. They tick themselves from what you have actually done — in any order, and already ticked if you got there first — so nothing scripts you around the interface. The last thing they teach is that moving leaves a trace anyone can read. What to do about that is not in the tutorial, and will not be.
Creating an account now goes through a confirmation email: the link is what assigns your homeworld. Worlds are finite and a taken one never comes back, so this keeps them for people rather than for scripts.
The 3D view used to fetch its graphics library from a public CDN, which saw the address of everyone who opened it. It is served from our own machine now: no third-party script, no analytics, and no cookie banner in front of you while you play.
Installable as an app, a slide-in menu, and the 3D view's panels as a sheet you pull up. Plus a pass over the layout: the leaderboard, the fleet form and the tech tree no longer slide sideways on a narrow screen.
Declare a vacation and your whole domain freezes: it produces nothing, and nothing reaches you. Minimum 48 hours, and you cannot raise it with a fleet already inbound. Stop logging in for 30 days, though, and your worlds become ruins that somebody else can take.
Worlds with their batteries still standing and no power plants at all — infrastructure without a civilisation, to loot or to settle. And an interplanetary salvo, kept honest by three limits: range, an aim point, and an origin disclosed exactly as a raid discloses it.
You can station a garrison over an ally's world: it fights there, and it can die there. And two attackers can coordinate while each flies from home — the arrival becomes the farthest one's, so joining a strike delays the blow of whoever leads it.
A live contact gives you the route and the hour of a fleet crossing your sensors. The trap has to be there already when it passes — it is a bet placed in advance, not a reaction. And a fleet warned in time can be recalled.
Intel decays: identity and geography are permanent, state is not. An old report still gets you to the target, but you arrive blind. And the leaderboard lists only the rivals you have actually scouted.
There is a presence in the universe called Erebus. It cannot be attacked, it does not appear in the leaderboard, it knows the whole map without scouting a thing — and every so often it speaks, into an alliance channel, unbidden. It is the account of the person who runs the game. We would rather tell you that here than have you work it out later: it can address you, it can never read your messages, and the only thing you may do to it is spy on it.
What is being built, what changed, the occasional story from out there. Nothing else, and you can leave with one click — every email carries the way out.
You are subscribing to a mailing list, not creating a game account — to play, claim a homeworld instead. We will send one email to confirm it is really you; until you click it, nothing else is sent.
Silent Expanse