[ Guides ]

If you want to operate an economy on a union scale then you will be needing a system. It is the home of your people and base of your economy. The rules for the creation of a system are listed in System Creation.

There are a set amount of resources that you can use to build your system, these are used up by stars and planets but also by improvements which give bonuses. These resources are firstly Gas Mass , secondly Rock Mass and thirdly Bio Mass .

System creation is split into three different phases according to which of the three resources are spent. Any resources that are unspent carry over to the next phase.

The choices for what you want to place into your system can be influenced by your race or an overarching idea or just getting a maximum output for your economy. This guide will attempt to walk through the process of system creation and present knowledge of this but also present some of the considerations you should have when making a system.

Let us start with the creation of the Sol system.

You start this phase with 50 for buying a star and gas giants. Stars are the core of your system, they will limit how many other objects such as planets you can place in your system.

Say we pick a Yellow Main Sequence Star for our Sol system. This costs 34 leaving us 16 to spend on gas giants or carry over to the next phase. We still have some and a lot of left with this star so we can place down some Gas Giants. We now place 2 Jovian Giants and 2 ice giants. This takes up 14 and so we now have 2 left. These gas giants give us zones that can be built on and plenty of that moons can be placed in during the next phase.

We place these into four (this is because the cold orbit gives a bonus to production and this is the only thing that can be produced on gas giants, but you could conceivably change put gas giants into a goldilocks orbit because you will utilize this for their moons or put them into a hot orbit because you want to use a special point on them to make them produce . There are many ways to design a system and none of them are wrong).

orbit	type	body	name
0		Main Sequence Star	Sun
1		empty
2		empty
3		empty
4		empty
5		empty
6		Jovian Giant	Jupiter
7		Jovian Giant	Saturn
8		Ice Giant	Uranus
9		Ice Giant	Neptune
10		empty	empty

Because we had 2 left it transfers over and we now have a total of 102 to spend on things such as terrestrial planets, Moons and astroid belts. Planets and moons are your main source of zones on which you can build anything, where as the gas giants and astroid belts and rings are limited in what you can later get them to produce.

We now have 2 , 2 and 2 left from the star we have picked and the gas giants we have placed. We can now fill these with 2 medium planets, and 2 small planets and 2 astroid belts for a total cost of 58 .

One thing to watch out for when placing planets are the large planets. These require 2 orbits of the same type, for example we could place a large planet into orbit 1 & 2 of our system, or 3 & 4 but not 2 & 3 and no other planets could be placed into either of the orbits taken up by the large planet. But because it takes up two orbits it will generate double the power of a normal planet in that orbit (the exact amount varies from star to star).

Now we place these into the system according to the next table.

orbit	type	body	name
0		Yellow Main Sequence Star	Sun
1		Small Planet	Mercury
2		Medium Planet	Venus
3		Medium Planet	Earth
4		Small Planet	Mars
5		Asteroid Belt	Main Asteroid Belt
6		Jovian Giant	Jupiter
7		Jovian Giant	Saturn
8		Ice Giant	Uranus
9		Ice Giant	Neptune
10		Asteroid Belt	Kuiper Belt

We still have 44 left so and we can give our planets some more moons. We can put a single medium moon around orbit 3 of our . Now we have 41 left. We place 2 large moons and 2 medium moons around Jupiter and a large moon, 2 small moons and 3 rings around Saturn and then 2 small moons around Uranus and a medium moon around neptune. This costs a total of 36 , leaving us 8 . We place 2 more small moons in orbit 10 (the Kuiper Belt). Leaving us 6 that can carry over to the next phase.

orbit	type	body	name
0		Yellow Main Sequence Star	Sun
1		Small Planet	Mercury
2		Medium Planet	Venus
3		Medium Planet	Earth
3.1		Medium Moon	Moon
4		Small Planet	Mars
5		Asteroid Belt	Main Asteroid Belt
6		Jovian Giant	Jupiter
6.1		Large Moon	Ganymede
6.2		Large Moon	Callisto
6.3		Medium Moon	Io
6.4		Medium Moon	Europa
7		Jovian Giant	Saturn
7.1		Large Moon	Titan
7.2		Small Moon	Rhea
7.3		Small Moon	Iapetus
7.4		Rings	C Ring
7.5		Rings	B Ring
7.6		Rings	A Ring
8		Ice Giant	Uranus
8.1		Small Moon	Titania
8.2		Small Moon	Oberon
9		Ice Giant	Neptune
9.1		Medium Moon	Triton
10		Asteroid Belt	Kuiper Belt
10.1		Small Moon	Pluto
10.2		Small Moon	Eris

This is a very complicated system though, and for building a system yourself you may want to take a lot less separate objects, here this could be accomplished by collapsing some medium and small moons into larger ones to start. This is mostly for managing such a large number of planets and moons.

We now have a total of 206 that we can spend on improvements such as Oceans, Atmospheres and Natural Life. Anything leftover is converted to additional population that you can place down.

Oceans and Atmospheres both improve the production of goods on a planet or moon. This is where the three orbit types start to matter more though. The type of ocean that can be placed depends on the orbit type, and that determines what bonuses it gives. Atmospheres range from atmosphere IV through I, but you can only place atmospheres III through I on a planet/moon that is in goldilocks orbit . Additionally atmospheres II and I on a planet means that population on that planet grows faster and atmosphere I means that zones can be specialised. If a world is in goldilocks and has an atmosphere than you can place up to three climates on that world, these show the special climatological features of a world and give a production bonus and detriment to specific products.

If you want to place atmosphere II and I on a world then it will need to have Natural Life. To do this a planet must be Habitable, which means it has to be in goldilocks and have either a type IV or better atmosphere or have oceans. Natural life allows you to construct and upgrade zones for half the normal price which is a very big advantage early on.

We can now go and give the Earth atmospheres IV through I and oceans and natural life. This will cost a total of 76(atmospheres)+19(natural life)+19(oceans)=114 . This is quite expensive, but it will allow quick placement of high production zones to start, and these features give bonuses to every type of zone unlike population which only gives bonuses to a small set of production zones depending on the species. This leaves 92 to spend so that we can place an atmosphere IV on Titan for just 7 and then another atmosphere IV on Mars (another 7 . This leaves 78 left that can transfer over into population.

With the starting 2.0 and 78 that gets converted to 7.8 give a total of 9.8 and all of this could be placed on Earth.

Having done that you can divide 5 special points to spend on specials, these are supposed to give your system a unique feel and as with everything else making custom specials is encouraged. In our system you could place a homeworld special on Earth, retrotrade axis spin on Venus. This leaves 3 special points that can be spent on jackpots.

Now you want to decide where and which zones you want where. To decide this, and to help with decisions made before this point you should read the Economics guide. As listed in the System Creation page you get 12 First Tier Zones (these produce raw materials like metals , 6 Second Tier Zones (these take 2 raw materials and turn them into a product like , an augmentation zone (this increases raw material production on a planet), a Power Zone, a Open Market Zone. You can place these anywhere.

After you have decided this you may want to present it all on the forum, or on the forum refer to a wiki page, and have the system checked. Examples of how people have represented this before can be found aplenty on the forums. This prevents a lot of work editing the wiki if there is anything wrong and other people may have suggestions or remarks you wish to consider.

The How to use the Wiki guide teaches the basics of the wiki. So when the basics of your system is checked you can start making all the wiki pages for your system. The best way to see how to do this is to look at some of the existing systems like the Smi-Halek System.

A quick summation is that you will want a wiki page for the system, it may be useful to automatically construct a list of all planets for this (Copy pasting of the table code should work). This page also holds your power overview for your system, although care is due to make sure that you list the power correctly for every individual orbit and not the total of the system. After this you will need a wiki page for every object (such as planet, star, moons, asteroid belts and gas giants) in your system, these can also hold the data for all zones on that particular object.

After this is done you make the bookkeeping page, this contains the data for all the assets of your faction, which on start will only include 3 Trade Fleets (these are used to trade with other factions) and a holonet relay station placed in your system. Take care that one of the trade fleets is supported by the open market zone you start with, the other 2 do not require an open market zone. Again this is all best done by looking at another factions bookkeeping page.

Having done all this you will have your very own faction, enjoy!