Features
Everything in the game today, area by area. Cosmarchy is still in development, so this list keeps growing.
Galaxies
The map is a 3D galaxy you can fly through, and a universe can hold up to six of them.
- 17
- galaxy types
- up to 6
- galaxies per universe
- 40 to 2,000
- star systems in each
- 39
- signature features
Seventeen shapes
Spiral, barred, grand design, pinwheel, flocculent, elliptical, shell, lenticular, ring, polar ring, starburst, jellyfish, Magellanic, irregular, dwarf spheroidal, ultra-diffuse and colliding pairs.
Gas and dust in 3D
Glowing arms, dark dust lanes, pink star-forming clouds and a bright bulge, with faint streams of old stars trailing off the edges. The gas slowly drifts and turns.
Other galaxies in your sky
Every other galaxy in the universe shows in the sky in the direction it really lies.
Signature features
Switch on extras per galaxy, such as Fermi bubbles, superwinds, tidal streams, dust rings, Einstein rings and runaway black holes.
Shape it your way
Change size, age, arms, winding, bar, bulge and thickness. There are 42 colour sets (natural, telescope and fantasy) and a colour wheel.
Fog of war
Space you haven’t discovered stays dark: faint, nameless stars and no hyperlanes until you know the way there.
Names with an accent
Each galaxy names its stars, regions and nebulas in its own style, and faint or dead stars carry real-style catalogue names.
Black holes and cores
Every galaxy has a core, and you can fly into it.
- 4
- kinds of core
Four kinds of core
Supermassive black holes, quasars, binary black holes and rare giant stars.
A slow reveal
From far away the core is a bright nucleus. Fly in and the black hole fades in from behind the gas: first the glowing disk, then the shadow and the light bent around it.
Enter the core
Click the core to open it as a huge system of its own, with hot stars racing round on steep orbits, captured worlds far out and a page of facts about the hole.
Quasars
From across the galaxy a quasar blazes as a star-like point with spikes and jets.
The real sky
You can start from a real galaxy, and the Milky Way holds the Sun’s real neighbours.
- 106
- real galaxies
- 143
- real star systems
- about 40
- real exoplanet systems
- 25
- real moons
Real galaxies to start from
Every Messier galaxy plus famous ones like the Needle, the Fireworks, Malin 1, Cygnus A, TON 618 and GN-z11, each with its real type, size, core, colours and features.
The Sun’s neighbourhood
The Milky Way holds the nearest stars, famous bright stars, pulsars, black holes and known planet systems, each in its true direction and in order of distance.
The Solar System
The Sun, the planets, Ceres, Pluto and Eris, the real moons, the main belt and the Kuiper belt.
Known exoplanets
Real planet systems including Proxima Centauri, TRAPPIST-1, Kepler-452 and 55 Cancri.
Star systems and worlds
Every star opens into its own system of planets, moons, belts and comets.
- 232
- kinds of world
- 17
- star types
- 60
- world traits
- 6
- hazards
Worlds of every kind
Gas and ice giants, oceans, jungles, lava worlds, ice moons, city worlds, brown dwarfs, egg-shaped giants, double planets and worlds boiling into dust tails, each with size, gravity, air, climate, temperature and resources.
Climates and who can live there
Living worlds sit on a climate grid from frozen to scorching and dry to wet, plus special climates and six other chemistries of life. Your species has a home climate, and each planet shows who could live there.
Live weather
Cloud cover builds and clears, hurricanes are born over warm seas, travel and break up, and gas giants grow great spots that live a while and fade.
Living worlds
Gas giants’ bands slide, moons cast shadows, aurorae glow round magnetic poles, volcanic moons erupt, icy moons jet, snow comes and goes with the seasons, and cities spread as their people grow.
Mountains you can see
Every rocky world has its own landscape. Close up, mountains and crater walls throw long shadows near the day-night line.
Stars with a surface
Granulation, spots, flares and prominences, plus white dwarfs, pulsars, magnetars, black holes and Wolf-Rayet stars.
Belts, comets and debris
Ragged asteroid belts with named fields you can click, comets on real oval orbits with gas and dust tails, Trojan swarms and debris discs around young stars.
A profile for every world
Plain-word traits (ocean world, tidally locked, diamond rain…), hazards with their reasons, a living-conditions score and how people could live there: open surface, sealed domes, under the ice or orbit only.
Rename anything
Galaxies, systems, stars, planets and moons.
Exploring
The galaxy starts dark, and you chart it with probes and surveys.
- 297
- survey events
- 3
- survey stages
- 7
- steps of reach
Probes
Send a probe and click the map to set its path. It discovers what lies within its radius, inside a reach that grows in seven steps and with research. Probes are one-way: they never come home.
Surveys
A survey from range shows a world’s richest deposits and its traits. A probe sent there stays and digs deeper in three stages, with events that can turn up on the way.
A Discovery panel
Your probes, surveys and finds in one place, with what you know of space shown as a map and as numbers.
Expanding
Borders spread out from your systems and stations, and claiming space costs Cohesion.
- 8
- station types
- 113
- station modules
- 10
- ways to settle
Control and Cohesion
Control radiates from your systems, and you claim what it touches by spending Cohesion. Claiming is cheaper near your capital and stations.
Empire values
Cohesion, Momentum and Preparedness are values for the whole empire. You set a budget for each, and you can see how each one is worked out.
Space stations
Eight types, eleven roles and six layouts, fitted from 113 modules. Stations upgrade in place, fight with gun modules and can hold people.
Settling
Ten ways to settle a world, from outposts to colony ships, and any species in your empire can found a colony.
Supply
Food and people move along a supply network between your worlds.
Economy
Prices come from supply and demand, and nearly everything in the empire follows them.
- 52
- materials and currencies
- 152
- buildings
- 12
- professions
- 9
- kinds of need
Living prices
Every material’s price follows what is asked for, what comes in and what its inputs cost. Goods cross open borders to where they are dear.
Chains of goods
Raw, complex, industrial and rare materials are made from each other through recipes. Buildings use goods every month, and a stand-in can cover a shortage.
People who buy
People buy by wealth level across nine kinds of need, choosing between goods by what is on sale.
Jobs and pay
Twelve professions, each with its own pay and schooling.
Wards and buildings
Wards make the everyday goods and building slots hold the specialists, limited by the size and type of the world.
The Budget
Charts of Credits and Gross Product over the whole game, booms and slumps, a tax rate for each sector, investment, grants, bonds with a credit rating, and debt at your own risk.
Trade
Once two empires’ markets connect, trade houses carry goods to where they are dear. A Trade law sets how far tariffs and subsidies may go, and you set tariffs, subsidies and embargoes yourself.
Numbers with reasons
Hover a colony’s Food, Stability or anything else to see each reason behind it, live.
Research and great projects
A tech tree with no eras, terraforming, and megaprojects that give you new choices in a crisis.
- 475
- technologies
- 28
- ways to terraform
- 14
- great works
- 4
- megaprojects
No eras
Anything whose parents are done can start. Five classes set the price, and seven Milestones mark the big steps.
Terraforming
Twenty-eight ways to change a world, and its traits follow.
Megaprojects
Four so far: a Dyson Swarm that grows into a Sphere, a Stellar Engine, an Ergosphere Engine and a Planetary Shield Grid, each built in tiers. AI empires build them too.
A Projects panel
A timeline of what is under way, a map of your works’ reach, a ladder of tiers, crises and terraforming.
People and politics
Your people split into groups that want different things and push for the laws they want.
- 204
- events
- 41
- situations
- 6
- crises
Interest groups and laws
People split into groups by what they do, each with clout and Approval. You choose who governs, and laws take years to pass, in stages.
Votes and revolution
Each government votes in its own way and at its own pace. Unhappy groups form movements, and a furious movement can bring revolution.
Leaders and sectors
A ruler, ministers, governors and other named people, and sectors that slowly want more self-rule.
Peoples, faiths and customs
Each colony holds groups with a species, a culture and a Mood, plus faiths and customs.
Classes
Worlds have Lower, Middle and Upper classes that follow the jobs there.
Events, situations and crises
Situations and crises run for years and show as chips under the top bar. Amounts grow with your empire.
Ships and war
You design your own ships, and wars are fought in space and on the ground.
- 27
- hulls
- 57
- weapons and parts
Ship designer
Fill the slots yourself, or use Auto-fit and the ready-made designs. Ships are drawn flat in the designer for now.
Fleets
Fleets move along known lanes, with orders, supply, crews, morale and upkeep.
Battles
Shields, armour and hull, tactics you can change as the battle runs, ships fighting in the star system, and a report card afterwards.
Ground war
Hold the orbit, land troops, occupy and claim. Worlds can be bombarded.
Rival empires and diplomacy
AI empires play by the same rules as you, and you can read why each one feels the way it does.
- 4 to 8
- AI empires
- 8
- personalities
- 31
- diplomatic actions
- 11
- spy actions
AI on your commands
AI empires research, build, claim, settle, build fleets and declare war through the same commands as you. They name ministers, answer their interest groups and send you a message when something important happens between you.
Relations you can read
Relations and Trust with every empire you have met, each explained line by line. You see their answer as a sum of reasons before you send anything.
Friendly and hostile actions
Gifts, envoys, guarantees, shared charts and research; insults, demands, threats and claims; rivalries ended by agreement, and favours called in.
Envoys
A corps of three to five named envoys carries your gifts, offers, demands and treaty drafts. They grow more skilled with the work and earn traits.
Custom treaties
Built article by article with a binding period of 5, 10 or 15 years. A refusal can come back as a counter-draft.
Intel and spies
What you know of an empire comes in five levels, with ranges that narrow as you learn. Spy networks are led by named agents, with counter-spying at home, and caught agents can be swapped back or turned.
Starting a game
Six pages take you from a galaxy to an empire of your own.
- 60
- species
- 234
- species traits
- 30
- beginnings
- 3
- ways to win
Galaxies
A live 3D preview, the real-galaxy presets, advanced options and colour tools.
Your empire
A flag maker with layered symbols, names and titles, 8 governments, 10 ideologies and traits. Empires can be saved and loaded again.
Your species
Fifty species to choose from, or build your own from the trait list.
A beginning
Thirty starting situations shape your home, stockpile and knowledge.
Rivals and rules
Random or chosen AI empires with difficulty and personality, and rules for fog of war, events, starting resources and crises.
Ways to win
Conquest, economic and domination, or play on forever.
Interface
Every number in the game can show you where it came from.
- 14
- panels
- 4
- themes
- 5
- game speeds
Tooltips you can dig into
Underlined words explain themselves, and words inside a tooltip open their own. Cards are built from the game’s data, so their numbers always match the game.
A menu of panels
Fourteen panels, always on the menu, from Economy and Research to Diplomacy. One you can’t use yet says how to open it.
The outliner
Your worlds, fleets and things that need you, at the top right, inside star systems too.
Real time with pause
Five speeds, and a pause whenever you need to think.
Borders, saves and scale
Empire borders on the map in three styles, saves with autosave, and an option to scale the interface and text.
Made to be modded
The game reads its content from plain data files.
Data first
Adding a building, material, technology, star or balance number means editing a data file. No code is needed.
The same seed, the same universe
A seed always gives the same galaxies, systems and worlds.
Not in yet
None of these are in the game yet.
- A released or downloadable build
- First contact and a Galactic council
- Most species portraits (one is done so far)
- 3D ship models (ships are flat in the designer)
- Systems with two stars