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 (Explore Rolls)¶
These are the values a planet can arrive with from exploring — not the land it can ultimately hold. Gordos grow a colony far past any of them; see Artifacts → Land caps.
- 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 (single-planet Major Gordo cap: 21,495 — caps rise with planet count). Raw infrastructure powerhouse and a top Tax colony once matured; 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 the base U-class planets for income (infection/assimilation is required) — they have their own T. and A. prefixed variants instead (see Planet Types). Both races can use U.Spazial for digging regardless, 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 runs on fleet scanning power — most races get it from Scouts (expensive ships built for the purpose), while Marauder and Collective have no scouts and scan with regular combat ships instead.
- 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.
Built from explored planets alone:
- Solid C3: ~100,000 land
- Large C3: ~130,000 land (requires being very selective with planet rolls)
These are exploration results, not ceilings — gordos grow a cluster well past them.
Gordo path (Patch 106): Clusters can also be grown with Minor/Major Gordos. A Gordo fills a colony's land up to a threshold, then adds planets; crossing a cluster's planet ceiling converts it up a level (a C1 gordoed past 25 planets becomes a C2). Max-level clusters cap at ~2× their base planet count, and land itself caps per colony type (a maxed C3 tops out at 375,000 land; a Fertile cluster maxes at 40,000 via Minors, 67,625 via Majors). See Artifacts → Gordos & Planetary Fracture.
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.
Clusters vs U-Class: Spending Your Colony Slots¶
Every race has a hard colony cap (10–15 slots), and each slot holds either one U-class planet or an entire cluster. That single fact drives most build decisions.
From exploration alone the gap is stark, because a cluster stacks the land of every planet inside it while a U-class colony is a single planet:
| One colony slot spent on… | Holds | Land from exploring |
|---|---|---|
| A U.Large | 1 planet | ~15,000 |
| A C3 | 125 planets | ~100,000 |
If your goal is maximum land, clusters are the answer — C3s are the backbone of any large empire.
Gordos grow both sides, so the gap narrows a little but doesn't close. Fully gordoed, a C3 reaches 375,000 land (~250 planets), while the best-documented U-class ceiling is a maxed U.Fertile at 67,625 land across 50 planets. Clusters stay far ahead at every stage. Most U-class caps are still unconfirmed — see Artifacts → Land caps for what's known.
That doesn't make U-class planets junk. They cannot be clustered, but they carry type bonuses no cluster can match — U.Fertile's +175% agriculture, U.Large's +75% industry and enormous population ceiling, U.Spazial's artifact digging. You keep them for what they do, not for their land. Since Planetary Fracture they can also be gordoed into U-Class Colony Clusters, which grow while keeping their base type bonuses.
The practical shape most established empires land on:
C3 / C3 / U.Spazial / U.Large / U.Large
Clusters as the land engine, one U.Spazial for digging, and a couple of special-purpose U-class colonies alongside — agriculture races often run U.Fertiles in place of the U.Larges. The trap to avoid is filling a tight colony list with U-class planets: they get you land quickly early on, but they cap out, and every slot they occupy is a C3 you never built.
For the explore-phase version of this decision — which discoveries to keep and which to plunder — see Exploration → Which Planets to Keep.
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.