Colonies & Clustering¶
What is a Colony?¶
A colony is a group of planets under a single entry in your empire list. Each race is allowed a maximum number of colonies, with some races designed to hold more land than others.
Planets¶
Planets have a land value that determines how useful they are for infrastructure and clustering. Land is the only stat that matters for clustering — planet type is irrelevant.
Land Ranges¶
- Floor: 1 land
- Ceiling: ~1,500 land (requires an extremely rare "S-class" roll on top of an already high roll — never plan around this)
- Target for clustering: 1,000+ land
- Acceptable: 800+ land
- Discard: anything below 800
Planet Types¶
Most planet types are irrelevant to income and clustering. The exceptions:
| Type | Notes |
|---|---|
| Barren | Highest possible land mass. Most likely to push 1,000+ land. Primary clustering target. |
| Balanced | Can reach 850–900 with a good roll. Acceptable clustering candidate. |
| U.Spazial | Best planet for artifact digging. Seek out 2-land copies specifically. |
| U.Large | 5,000–10,000+ land. Excellent for infrastructure but cannot be clustered. |
| U.Fertile | Very high food/agriculture output. Cannot be clustered. |
| U.Eden | Bonus to population growth. Useful for Tax players. Cannot be clustered. |
| U.Rich | High ore content but very low land. Generally not worth keeping. |
U-class planets cannot be clustered but are kept for their unique bonuses. Viral and Collective cannot use U-class planets for income (infection/assimilation is required) but can use U.Spazial for digging since digging does not require infection.
Full numeric reference for all 30+ planet types — including population growth, agriculture, and mining modifiers, plus cluster-type modifiers — lives on the Planet Types page.
Exploring¶
Players start by exploring to build up their planet count. Exploration requires Scouts — expensive ships that improve scanning power.
- Players can explore approximately 55–60 planets before exploration becomes impractical
- Bad planets should be destroyed (via plunder) and replaced with better rolls
- Only planets you keep count toward your total
- After ~60 planets, further growth requires combat
Full mechanics — explore costs, the land-roll multiplier, classification rules, and the post-cluster burst — are covered on the Exploration page.
Clustering¶
Clusters are groups of colonies merged into a single, larger colony entry. Clustering requires researching the cluster project first.
Standard Clustering (all races except Viral and Collective)¶
| Cluster Level | Planets | Notes |
|---|---|---|
| C1 | 5 | Base cluster |
| C2 | 25 (5 × C1) | |
| C3 | 125 (5 × C2) | Endgame target |
Land is purely additive. A C3 made of 125 planets averaging 800 land each = 100,000 land exactly.
- Solid C3: ~100,000 land
- Large C3: ~130,000 land (requires being very selective with planet rolls)
Viral & Collective Clustering¶
Viral and Collective use infection/assimilation instead of standard clustering and use 4 planets per cluster instead of 5.
| Cluster Level | Viral (Tainted) | Collective (Similare) |
|---|---|---|
| C1 | 1 planet | 1 planet |
| C2 | 4 planets | 4 planets |
| C3 | 16 planets | 16 planets |
| C4 | 64 planets | 64 planets |
| C5 | N/A | 256 planets |
Collective is the only race with access to C5, allowing for massive land totals. Viral's cluster cap is significantly smaller.
Viral and Collective can also infect/assimilate clusters taken from other races. These retain their original planet count (5, 25, or 125) and can be further clustered with matching infected/assimilated clusters.
Note: Unassign Agriculture and Industry infrastructure before infecting a cluster — these cannot be unassigned after infection.
Colony List & Defense¶
Your colony list order determines what you lose when attacked. Attackers always take the outermost (topmost) colonies first.
- New colonies (explored or won in battle) always appear at the top of the list
- Clustering consumes the 5 deepest eligible colonies and places the result where the deepest one was
The standard defensive setup uses junk colonies as ablative armor to protect clustered assets:
Junk
Junk
Junk
Junk
Junk
Junk
Junk
Junk
Junk
U.Spazial
C3
List order cannot be manually rearranged — it must be managed indirectly through acquiring, destroying, and clustering colonies strategically.
How Many Colonies Can You Lose Per Attack?¶
| PR Killed (player vs player) | Colonies Lost |
|---|---|
| ≥30% of defender's ship PR (win threshold) | 1 |
| ≥55% of defender's ship PR | 2 |
| ≥75% of defender's ship PR | 3 |
A maximum of 3 colonies can be lost in a single Damage Protection period. Each attack's colony count is reduced by however many you've already lost that period, and once 3 are gone further attacks are blocked — so 3 is the hard ceiling (a single full fleet wipe can take all 3 at once). Against NPCs the per-attack tiers are lower (≥10% → 1, ≥50% → 2, ≥60% → 3).
Population¶
Population is the workforce of a colony — it produces tax credits, consumes food and goods, and is capped by Housing buildings and Housing research.
Maximum population:
Max Pop = (10 + Housing Research) × Housing
Each level of Housing Research adds 1 to the population multiplier per Housing building. Collective doubles this cap (Max Pop × 2).
Staffing — every building needs population to operate. Each unit of infrastructure (housing or otherwise) consumes 1 pop. Housing provides (10 + Housing Research) pop each — so the net free pop available to staff non-housing buildings is (9 + Hr) per housing at low research, growing with research investment. The minimum housing needed to fully staff a colony of N total infrastructure is:
housing_min = ceil(N / (10 + Hr))
If you build more non-housing than your housing can support, non-housing output scales down by max_pop / total_buildings. This is why the income-meta sets housing research at a low integer like 5–10 then dumps everything else into the chosen income research — at e.g. Hr=7, each housing supports 17 pop, so a 255-land colony only needs ~15 housing for full staffing. The rest (~240 land) goes into your income building. See Formulas for the full math.
Growth requires food ≥ floor(population / 10) × turns (Guardian colonies are exempt — they don't consume food and cannot starve). When fed and below cap:
new_population = population + floor(
(floor(population × (2 × planet_pop_mod / 100) / 100) + 1) × turns
)
Starvation triggers when food runs short for non-Guardian colonies:
- 15% population loss (
floor(population × 0.85)) - 10 loyalty loss (down to a minimum of 0)
See the Formulas page for the canonical versions of all population calculations.
Plundering¶
Plundering is the only way to destroy a colony. It converts the colony's value into a one-time credit payout and removes it from your empire. Players use plunder to:
- Discard low-value planets during the exploration phase
- Deny captured colonies to other players (scorched earth)
- Manage colony list order indirectly
The payout is computed from population, infrastructure-squared-over-land, and planet count, then scaled by your race's plunder modifier — see Formulas → Plunder Payout for the math. Marauder (+1,900%) and Collective (+1,100%) are the only races that turn plunder into a meaningful credit source; everyone else takes a deep penalty.