Getting Started

Create Your Account

Navigate to app.planetia.org and register with an email address and password. Verify your email — unverified accounts cannot join active rounds. Choose a commander name carefully: it appears on the leaderboard, kill reports, and diplomatic messages. You cannot change it mid-round.

If you own a subscription tier (Explorer, Commander, or Admiral), link it before signing up for your first round to unlock the additional starting resources and cosmetic slots that come with it.

Choose a Round

From the lobby, you see all rounds: active, upcoming, and archived. Each round listing shows galaxy size, speed modifier, player cap, current tick, and estimated end date. Key things to check:

• Speed — a 2× speed round ticks twice as often. Good for active players, brutal if you go offline.
• Galaxy size — smaller galaxies mean faster contact with enemies. Beginners benefit from larger maps.
• Player count — check how many spots remain. Rounds close when they hit cap.

Click Join Round on an upcoming round to lock in your slot before tick 1. You can browse ongoing rounds but cannot join one already in progress.

Select Your Race

You pick one race per round. Each race has unique base stats, ship bonuses, and starting tech. For beginners:

• Terran — balanced stats, easiest learning curve. No major weaknesses.
• Catari — economic powerhouse, fast income growth but weaker early military.
• Zikoan — aggressive raiders, high fighter attack bonus, good for early aggression.
• Xantha — swarm tactics, cheap fleet upkeep lets you outnumber opponents; individual ships hit softer.

You cannot change your race after the round starts.

Claim Your Home Planet

At tick 1, your home planet spawns in a random quadrant. You receive it already named after your commander, pre-built with a basic mine and energy plant. Your first action: open the Planet view and verify your starting resources.

You start with:

• Metal: 2,000 units
• Crystal: 500 units
• Deuterium: 100 units
• Energy production already running from your starting Solar Plant
• One colony pod queued in construction

Name your home planet something memorable — you will see it on attack reports and in diplomatic messages.

Build Your First Mine

Open Planet → Construct. The build queue accepts one item at a time at the basic tier (subscribers get two slots). Queue a Metal Mine Level 2 first. Metal is your primary construction resource; faster income means faster everything else.

Construction completes at the next tick. While it builds, move to Research.

Queue Your First Research

Open Research and queue Basic Metallurgy. This cuts metal construction costs by 8% and is a prerequisite for the Mine upgrade chain. Research time is shown in ticks; at 1× speed each tick is approximately 5 minutes.

Keep your research queue full at all times. Empty research is wasted time.

Send Your First Scout

At tick 2 you have a colony pod and three fighters. Open Fleet → Dispatch and send one fighter to the nearest unoccupied system shown on the galaxy map. Fleet travel time is displayed before you confirm. The scout returns with an intel report: planet class, any structures, current owner, and any asteroid deposits in the system.

Never send your only ship — keep at least one fighter home to trigger defense bonuses.

Join or Found an Alliance

Open Alliances → Browse after tick 5. Joining an alliance gives you access to the shared bank, diplomatic chat, and coordinated defense. Solo players survive in the early game but rarely win. Look for alliances that have:

• Active members in your timezone
• A shared bank already seeded with resources
• A stated policy on new-member attacks (some alliances protect newbies)

If no alliance suits you, found one and recruit.

Your First 48 Ticks — Priority Checklist

Continue to Resources & Economy to understand how income scales.