Alliances & Trade

No empire thrives alone. Alliances provide strength in numbers, trade fuels growth, and espionage reveals your enemies' secrets.

Alliances

An alliance is a coalition of up to 30 players working together toward common goals. Alliances provide shared intelligence, coordinated defense, territory control, and a strong sense of community.

Alliance Roles

Alliance Features

Diplomacy

Alliances can establish formal diplomatic relations with each other. Diplomacy is alliance-to-alliance, not player-to-player — every member of an alliance inherits all of the alliance's current pacts.

Relation Statuses

Who Can Do What

Diplomacy actions are restricted by alliance role (see Alliance Roles):

• Leader, Officer, Diplomat — can propose, accept, reject, and break pacts on behalf of the alliance.
• Member — can read the current diplomatic relations but cannot change them.

How Proposals Work

1. One alliance's Diplomat/Officer/Leader proposes a relation (NAP or Ally) to another alliance.
2. The proposal appears as an incoming request on the target alliance's diplomacy panel, and the target's leader gets a system notification.
3. Their Diplomat/Officer/Leader accepts or rejects. Nothing happens until they accept — a one-sided "proposal" is not binding.
4. Once accepted, the relation is symmetric and both alliances see it as active.
5. Either side can break the relation later, which removes it for both sides instantly.

Rules & Limits

• You can't have two relations with the same alliance at once — break the current one before negotiating a new one.
• You can't propose diplomacy with your own alliance.
• An alliance can maintain up to two active Ally pacts. Ending an active Ally pact starts a 72-hour replacement cooldown for both alliances; neither can form another Ally pact until its cooldown ends.
• NAP covers ordinary planet attacks and raids plus Field Attack, Attack Moon, Attack Outpost, and Attack Station. Spying and scanning remain allowed.
• Breaking an alliance or pact can automatically return defense and garrison missions that no longer have a valid relationship. Already-flying hostile missions are not generally recalled.
• Fleets inside the same alliance are always treated as allied for the purposes of blocking attacks, regardless of whether a formal pact exists.

Personal Commander Pacts

• Commanders can separately propose a personal Ally relation or NAP. Both sides need free personal-pact capacity to accept; each completed Diplomatic Embassy level across all your planets contributes two slots.
• A personal Ally relation permits eligible cross-alliance defense missions and hard-blocks attacks. It must be ended explicitly; attacks between the former allies stay locked for eight hours, and dependent defenses return.
• A personal NAP blocks hostile dispatch with a confirmation. Confirming the violation breaks that personal NAP and sends notices to both commanders. Spying remains possible.
• Same-alliance membership and eligible allied-command relations still hard-block attacks. An individual confirmation does not dissolve an alliance-level diplomatic relation.

Territory Control

Current sector control is station-based. Colonies and outposts do not accumulate a separate influence score.

How Territory Works

• An alliance that owns the sector station controls that sector.
• Each station owned by a planet owner's alliance in that sector contributes its production benefit independently; no majority-influence threshold is required.
• Changing station ownership changes the sector's control and benefits.

Sector Stations

Some sectors contain neutral stations that alliances can capture, hold, upgrade, and fight over. Stations are alliance objectives rather than personal colonies: they create territory pressure, store shared resources, and become forward bases for coordinated operations.

• Capture authority — an alliance leader, deputy, officer, or commander can start the operation. Stations in Sentinel cannot be captured.
• Vulnerability and gathering — a station can be attacked only during its daily vulnerability window. A capture begins with a 45-minute gathering operation in which eligible alliance fleets join before the assault resolves.
• Command budget — the assembled assault must stay between 500 and 8,000 command points. The limit is shared by the operation rather than applying separately to every participant.
• Defense roster — the defending station roster is snapshotted for the battle. Station upgrades are blocked while capture is active.
• Recall and aftermath — if recalls reduce the assault below 500 command points, the operation is cancelled and the alliance cannot start another station capture for 4 hours. A captured station receives at least 12 hours of protection before it can be contested again.
• Garrison — members can dock ships at an owned station. The garrison defends the station and can be repaired after fighting.
• Upgrades — owned stations can improve dock capacity, shields, defensive firepower, and storage.
• Supply and collect — only eligible cargo hulls handle station logistics, and withdrawal access depends on alliance role.
• Deep-space extraction — in Dead Space, owning at least three stations unlocks quantum extraction, four unlocks dark matter extraction, and a fifth station adds another dark matter opportunity.

How station command points (CP) are counted

CP is a roster budget for station capture and defense, not a combat bonus. For standard ships, multiply the number of each operational hull selected for the battle by its fixed value below, then add the results. The attacking and defending sides each have their own 8,000 CP limit; only the attacking side must maintain at least 500 CP.

A joined fleet is selected as a whole; it is not split to fill the remaining CP. Excluded fleets are ignored, while preferred and then automatic fleets are considered by configured priority and arrival order. A fleet that does not fit remains in reserve. On defense, the locked dock roster and ready command vessels consume the defender's budget before arriving fleets.

If Leadership is enabled, a command vessel has no fixed value in this table. Its CP is determined separately from its effective durability, shields, and attack after active modifiers, then added to its side's total. The internal formula is intentionally not disclosed.

Trade

The galactic market lets players buy and sell resources through market hubs located across the galaxy.

Market Hubs

Each spiral arm has market hubs — centralized locations where buy and sell orders are matched.

• Standard hubs - located in Sentinel zones.
• Frontier hubs - located in Open zones and riskier to reach.

How Trading Works

1. Research Market Access to unlock hub trading.
2. Move resources into a hub with Market Deliver missions, or use later trade research to create some orders directly from a planet.
3. Create sell orders — list resources you want to sell at your price.
4. Create buy orders — list resources you want to buy at your price.
5. When a buy and sell order match, the trade executes.
6. Escrow — resources and payment are held at the hub until withdrawn or used in another trade.
7. Pick up hub balances with Market Pickup missions when you want the goods back on a planet.

Physical market delivery and pickup use eligible non-combat logistics hulls. A Tanker remains restricted to hydrogen. Galactic Exchange unlocks remote order interaction but does not teleport goods that still need physical delivery.

Trade Details

• Commission - the hub takes a consistent cut of every transaction.
• Galactic Exchange — advanced trade research lets you interact with hubs more flexibly, including remote order creation and cross-hub fills.
• Order limits — you can have a limited number of active orders at once.
• Minimum order — orders have a minimum resource quantity.
• Expiry — orders expire after a period if not filled.
• Tradeable resources — ore, silicates, hydrogen, alloys, and most rare resources.

Artifact Market

Artifacts can also be listed at market hubs. Listing an artifact reserves it, but the artifact still needs to physically reach the hub before buyers can complete the practical pickup flow.

• Seller delivery — list an inactive artifact, then send an Artifact Deliver mission to the selected hub.
• Buyer pickup — after purchase, the buyer sends a fleet to pick the artifact up from the hub.
• Cancelled listings — if an artifact was already delivered before cancellation, the seller must retrieve it from the hub.

Alliance Trade

Alliance trade is a private exchange board for alliance members. It supports resource offers and artifact offers, but it still uses real fleets: the filler pays up front, flies to the poster's planet, and returns with the offered goods if the route succeeds.

• Requires alliance membership and the trade research intended for alliance contracts.
• An alliance needs a Trade Hub before members can create alliance orders. Building that hub is restricted to the alliance leader or deputy.
• The Trade Hub provides commission-free trading on the private Alliance Market and expands the alliance's shared order capacity.
• It does not remove or reduce commission on the public galactic market.
• Because delivery is physical, cargo capacity, range, fuel, and security zones still matter.

Trade Routes & Logistics

Beyond the market, you can send resources directly between your own colonies using cargo ships. For manual one-time shipments, use the Transfer fleet mission.

Logistics Routes

Build a Logistics Hub to unlock automated logistics routes:

• Delivery routes — automatically send resources from one planet to another when a threshold is met.
• Return cargo — optionally bring back resources on the return trip (dual-direction routes).
• Activate/Deactivate — toggle routes on and off as needed.
• Routes execute on a schedule and the system tracks when each route last ran.

Espionage

Knowledge is power. The espionage system lets you gather intelligence on enemy empires.

Spy Missions

• Planet and moon spy missions accept Probes, Spy Probes, and Stealth Ships.
• Reports reveal resources, fleet composition, buildings, and defenses in layers. More recon power and Signal Intelligence improve detail.
• A fully blocked attempt destroys the entire ordinary recon fleet.

Counter-Intelligence

• Research counter-intelligence technologies to detect and block enemy spying.
• Higher counter-intelligence reduces the quality of intel enemies can gather on you.
• Patrol coverage and Scouts stationed on the target strengthen planet defense against espionage. A lunar Stealth Field strengthens moon counter-intelligence.
• Moon Sensor Arrays add active intelligence tools: fleet phalanx scans, activity sweeps, wormhole detection, and late-game spy sweeps.

Stealth

Stealth Ships have the strongest ship-based spy capability and are used in several covert operations. The lunar Stealth Field strengthens counter-intelligence and makes hostile espionage less effective; it does not remove the moon from the galaxy map.

Long Surveillance accepts Stealth Ships only and can target a planet or moon. It performs an initial intelligence attempt and then periodic scans while it remains active; every cycle carries detection and fleet-loss risk. Patrols, Counter-Intelligence, and a lunar Stealth Field all oppose it.

Messaging

Players can communicate directly through the in-game messaging system:

• Direct messages — send messages to any player in the galaxy.
• Conversations — messages are organized into conversation threads.
• Player blocking — block unwanted messages from specific players.
• System messages — receive automated notifications about important events.

Leaderboards

Compete for galactic supremacy across multiple categories:

Leaderboards track both individual players and alliances. Where do you rank?

Tips for Social Play

• Join an alliance early. Shared vision alone is worth it — you'll see far more of the galaxy.
• Cluster with allies. Having allied colonies nearby means faster reinforcement and territory control bonuses.
• Trade what you overproduce. If your planet mix gives you surplus silicates, sell them and buy what you actually need.
• Spy before you fight. Information wins wars. Never attack blind.
• Coordinate attacks. A single fleet can be defended against. Three fleets arriving simultaneously cannot.