Colonization

Colonization arrives this weekend. You will found colonies on habitable systems across the galaxy, grow them, and reinvest what they produce into permanent skills for your whole account. You play it on your own: no squadron needed and no PvP. Here is how it will work.

Found your first colonies

• Every habitable system on the Galaxy Map will show an economy (the one material it produces) and an efficiency from 0 to 100. Higher efficiency means a bigger, sturdier colony.
• You park your ship in a free system and press Found colony. Your first colony of each economy will be free, and every new colony will arrive with a starting stock of its material.
• Develop missions (about 4h or 12h) will bring the colony to 100%. You only travel there once: after the first mission you can queue the rest from anywhere, so your ship stays free to explore.

Six economies, six skills

• Agricultural, Industrial, Research, Military, Manufacturing and Commercial systems will each produce their own material.
• Each material levels one account-wide skill: Population, Storage, Development, Logistics, Defense and Productivity.
• There will be no buildings to manage colony by colony. You level a skill once and every colony you own, now or later, grows with it.

Production while you are away

• Active colonies will grow their population and turn it into material every hour, even while you are offline, until their storage is full.
• One Claim all button will move everything into your account pool, ready to spend on skills and on new colonies.

Alien invasions

• A galaxy-wide invasion wave will hit all your colonies on a fixed schedule, with a countdown on the Colonization page.
• Each colony compares its Defense against its Threat, which grows with its population. If Defense holds, nothing is lost. If not, the colony loses part of its population, which grows back over time. A colony is never wiped.

Cosmic dust upkeep

• Active colonies will cost a daily cosmic dust upkeep: a share of your daily dust income that grows with each active colony, up to a cap.
• If you cannot pay it, your colonies stop producing until you can. Two new Technology skills will help: one lowers the upkeep and one raises colony storage.

Empire Power and the XP bonus

• Your active colonies and skill levels will add up to Empire Power, with its own category on the Rankings page.
• Empire Power will grant an account-wide XP bonus for exploring (manual travel), gathering, battling, crafting and your pets. It never caps: the more you expand, the higher it climbs.

The full guide will be in the in-game wiki at launch, under Colonization.