Short Sunday dispatch from Command. Colonisation is no longer a bench demo - the full path works: scan, occupy, fly a colonizer, wait out the claim timer, and wake up a blank-slate HQ on a new world. That is a real milestone. It is also where the honest part begins.
Colonisation works - empires still need hands
I am calling the colonisation loop playable. The gates, the six-hour claim, and the empty starter colony on the other side behave like a product, not a sketch. What it is not yet is a babysitter. Maintaining and growing several colonies is primarily manual today: mines, energy, storage, fleets, frurozin for beacons, and the constant choice of which world deserves the next hour of your attention. That is intentional for alpha - I want commanders to feel the weight of expansion before I sand the edges with automation.
What I will spoil for later
Later stages will add systems that keep a multi-planet empire alive without turning every login into a second job. I am not shipping these tomorrow, but I want the direction on the table:
blog.posts.colonisation-live-universe-allocation-july-2026.blocks.b5
I published a new reference page on how the universe scatters wealth: /docs/universe-allocation. It uses offline test generations - same generators as live materialization, different seed - so you can see the shape of density tiers, then flip to gold worlds and legendary ultra veins. Treat the screenshots as validation of rarity, not a treasure map of your live round.
Gold exists only on dedicated gold worlds (~0.1% of planet slots). Legendary ultra veins (~0.1% of planets) can shove pig-iron, crystal, or frubin ceilings into the 25-30k/h band. They are hard to find on purpose. They are also worth the hunt - which is why colonisers, explorers, traders, and fighters all belong in the same empire story. Sitting on three comfortable homeworld-adjacent bodies is a nice economy; it is not domination.
If you want the ladder to plant that second world, keep /docs/colonization-path open. If you want the beacon paint that makes the claim legal, read /docs/space-occupation. Then go stretch your footprint - carefully.
Thank you for breaking the colonise path and filing the ugly bits. Manual empires first. Automation with teeth later.
Sebastian "Degola" Lagemann