Alliances

Alliances

An Alliance is a group of commanders who band together for mutual benefit. Alliances share a treasury, research powerful upgrades together, capture and hold a growing territory of star systems, fly shared colors across the galaxy, and coordinate through chat and diplomacy.

Every commander can belong to one alliance at a time. You can join or create your alliance starting at Realm 1.

Contents

• Creating an alliance
• Joining & leaving
• Roles & permissions
• Communication
• The Alliance Vault
• Alliance Research
• Alliance Buildings
• Alliance Power
• Territorial control
• Bastions & doctrines
• Territory Siege
• Diplomacy & war
• Alliance relics & branding
• Leaderboards & events
• Quick reference

Creating an alliance

Creating an alliance is free. You'll choose:

• A tag (3–10 characters, unique across the galaxy).
• A name (up to 100 characters, unique).
• An optional description.

As the founder you become the Leader. New alliances start with room for 15 members and open recruitment.

Joining & leaving

How you join depends on the alliance's recruitment setting:

Recruitment	What happens
Open	You join instantly as a Member.
Invite Only	You submit an application; an officer approves or rejects it.
Closed	Not accepting new members.

A few rules:

• You can't join if you're already in an alliance.
• You can have only one pending application at a time.
• An alliance can't exceed its member limit (raised by the Recruitment Doctrine research — see below).

Alliance tribute (Realm 1–3)

Alliances that hold star systems share part of their daily harvest pool with members in Realms 1–3. In the alliance list these alliances are marked Tribute.

• Your daily tribute is cap × your score ÷ the next Realm gate, never less than a quarter of the cap and never more than the full cap.
• It only includes resources your Realm has (Realm 1: steel, quartz, gas; Realm 2 adds iridium and silicium; Realm 3 adds elerium), in the same mix as the pool.
• Your first tribute comes from the pool day that ends at least 2 days after you join.
• Tributes are paid first, before the Realm 4 split. Together they never take more than 10% of the pool.
• Collect it from the Harvest tab like a Realm 4 share. The Trade Union convoy starts at your capital, and uncollected tribute is lost on the next rollover.

Realm	Daily cap (total resources)	At the floor (¼ cap)
1	1M	250K
2	300M	75M
3	10B	2.5B

Leaving: any member can leave at any time. The Leader cannot simply leave — they must first transfer leadership to another member or disband the alliance.

Inactive alliances: if no member has played for 14 days, an alliance with Open recruitment switches to Invite Only, so new players apply instead of joining an empty alliance (the leader can open it again). If no member has played for 2 months, the alliance is disbanded.

Roles & permissions

Alliances have four roles, from lowest to highest authority:

Role	What they can do
Member	Donate to the vault, donate relics, buy items for the alliance archive.
Officer	Everything a member can, plus: approve/reject applications, remove members, edit alliance settings, send broadcasts, manage branding and diplomacy, and upgrade or downgrade alliance buildings.
Deputy	Everything an officer can, plus start and cancel alliance research, promote members to Officer, demote Officers, and remove Officers.
Leader	Full control: appoint and demote Deputies, remove anyone, transfer leadership and disband the alliance.

You can only promote, demote or remove members ranked below you, and only give a rank below your own. Nobody can change their own rank, and the Leader's rank changes only by transferring leadership.

When a Leader transfers leadership, they step down to Deputy and the chosen member becomes the new Leader.

Communication

• Alliance Chat — a real-time, members-only channel for coordination.
• Diplomacy Chat — once you form an Ally treaty, both alliances unlock a shared Diplomacy channel (Messages → Diplomacy) for cross-alliance coordination.
• FCS Chat — each open FCS rally gets a participant-only room (Messages → FCS) so the coordinating fleets can talk through the strike. Rooms remain briefly after the rally closes.
• Broadcasts — officers can send one-way mail to the whole alliance, optionally filtered by role.

The Alliance Vault

The Vault is your alliance's shared treasury, holding all six resources (steel, quartz, gas, iridium, silicium, elerium).

Ways to fill the vault:

1. Direct donations — any member can donate resources from a colony.
2. Alliance tax — officers can set a tax of 0–5% on the cargo members bring back from attacks, debris collection, exploration, and harvesting.
3. Donation missions — send a fleet to deliver cargo to an alliance-controlled system.
4. Research refunds — cancelling a research returns its cost to the vault.

Capacity: each resource starts with a vault capacity of 2 billion, and the Alliance Vault building adds +10 billion per level. If the vault is full, taxed resources stay with the member instead.

Donations also count toward your personal alliance donation score.

Alliance Research

Alliances can research upgrades that benefit every member.

To research, your alliance needs:

• An Alliance Research Lab built on an alliance colony.
• A Leader or Deputy to start it (only one research at a time).
• Enough resources in the vault to pay the cost.

Costs and times scale with each level, and a higher-level Research Lab speeds research up.

Highlights of the research tree:

Research	Benefit
Alliance Infrastructure	Lower system upkeep; higher harvest unit caps.
Supply Logistics	Lower upkeep and faster convoys.
Resource Refinements (Steel, Quartz, Gas, …)	Reduced upkeep and higher production for that resource.
Recruitment Doctrine	+1 member capacity per level.
Defense Protocols	Stronger alliance defense HP; unlocks alliance defenses.
Reinforced Armor / Deflector Shields / Weapons Calibration	Boost defense HP, shields, and weapon power.
Garrison Capacity	+1 defense build slot.

Alliance Buildings

Conquered systems host alliance buildings, paid for from the vault and upgraded by officers. Your first conquered system becomes your Headquarters (HQ) with up to 100 building slots; later systems become Divisions with 40 slots each, or Bastions with 20–60 slots depending on archetype.

Building	Where	Purpose
Headquarters	HQ only	The alliance's core; drives its level and unlocks other buildings.
Vault	HQ	Expands shared resource capacity.
Research Lab	HQ	Enables and speeds up alliance research.
Diplomacy Office	HQ	Enables diplomacy; grants treaty slots.
Archive	HQ	Stores donated relics and cosmetics; delayed territory activity Records. See Alliance Archive.
Bazaar	HQ	Shop where members buy alliance cosmetic variants.
Division Center	Division	Local command hub for a Division system.
Embassy / War / Expansion Bastion	Bastion	The main building of a standalone Bastion system; the one you build sets its archetype.
Engineering Lab	HQ + Division + Bastion	Speeds local construction.
Defense Yard	Division + Bastion	Enables alliance defenses; the Fortress doctrine's signature building. Not on the HQ, which cannot be attacked.
Common / Rare Extractors	HQ + Division + Bastion	Boost harvest and survey output (+10% per level); Production Hub's signature building.
Shipyard Outpost	Shipyard Outpost doctrine only	Activates the alliance-wide ship build-time reduction.
Intelligence Center	Anti-Intel & Sensor doctrine only	Alliance scans and counter-scouting.
Warp Gate	Logistics Center doctrine only	Hosts alliance fleet hops.

Most advanced alliance systems — buildings, conquest, and shared harvest — open up around Realm 4.

The last three are doctrine-gated: a system must carry the matching doctrine before you can build them. See Alliance Territory → Doctrines.

Downgrading and removing buildings

Officers can take an alliance building back down a level, not just up — useful for reclaiming slots or undoing a misplaced build.

Rule	Detail
Cost	¼ of the vault cost that was paid to reach the current level
Time	¼ of the upgrade time that produced the current level
Floor	Buildings can go all the way to level 0, which removes them and frees the slot
One at a time	A system can only run one build or downgrade at a time

Two things are protected:

• The Headquarters building itself cannot be removed — it is blocked at level 1. Move the HQ with an HQ switch instead.
• A Headquarters downgrade is refused if it would drop below the level your Divisions or Bastion mains require. Downgrade those first.

Alliance Power

Alliance Power ranks how much your alliance has invested in shared buildings and research — not how full the vault is. Territory empires earn a fleet title from Flotilla up through Grand Fleet (and beyond), which also sets the weekly War Guild levy on the Active Scar.

Alliances with no territory are unranked and cannot fight in Riftwake.

Full formula, title thresholds, and examples: Alliance Power.

Territorial control

Territorial control is the long game of alliance play: the more star systems your alliance holds — and the longer it holds them — the bigger your shared advantage. A single system is useful, but a territory of many systems compounds into a serious economic and military edge: more harvest and survey deposits, a larger daily resource pool for every member, more building capacity across your HQ and Divisions, and more ground a rival must fight through before they can hurt you.

The winning strategy is to conquer aggressively, defend relentlessly, and keep expanding:

• Conquer. Alliances capture star systems through coordinated (FCS) assaults on the system center. With Territory Siege enabled, that is a staged campaign (Contest, then one or two Takeover windows) — see Territory Siege. You must be in an active alliance to participate.
• Hold. Control fades if a system is left undefended, so treat every capture as territory you must keep — station Guardian fleets and build alliance defenses to secure it for the long haul.
• Expand. Keep pushing into neutral and rival systems; the alliances that hold the widest territory the longest dominate the galaxy.

Once captured:

• Your first system becomes the HQ; the rest are Divisions, or Bastions when you anchor a system far from your existing space. A Deputy or Leader can later move the Headquarters to a connected Division or an Expansion Bastion — see Alliance Territory → Moving the Headquarters.
• Each Division and Bastion carries one Doctrine — production, shipbuilding, defence, logistics, or intel — and connected nodes pay alliance-wide bonuses. See Alliance Territory.
• Controlled systems support a shared harvest & survey pool: production each cycle is split between the runner, guardians, and an alliance daily pool that members collect their share from. The runner's and guardians' shares ride home in their fleet cargo and are credited when the fleet returns. Each share is capped by free cargo space, and anything that does not fit goes to the alliance pool. A full Harvest/Survey fleet ends its run early and flies home; a full Guardian keeps guarding for its whole station time but earns nothing more. The pool pays out in full only once 15 eligible (Realm 4+) members are on the roster — a 1-member alliance receives 1/15; the rest is discarded. Before that split, members in Realms 1–3 receive a capped alliance tribute.
• Controlled systems can be dressed up with system themes and monuments (see below).

Your territory cap is 1 + 4 per Territorial Expansion research level, plus the capacity each Bastion grants (War +2, Expansion +5).

Bastions & doctrines

Once Alliance Territory is enabled, your holdings gain shape and specialisation:

• Bastions are secondary anchors you plant on a standalone system — one not bordering anything you already hold. Three archetypes: Embassy (1 system, max 8), War (root + 2 Divisions, max 3), and Expansion (root + 5 Divisions, max 2). Every Bastion is always conquerable, and capturing a Bastion root hands over its entire cluster.
• Doctrines give each system center — HQ included — exactly one job. Fortress feeds tonnage capacity and projects defence to neighbours, Production Hub raises resource output, Shipyard Outpost cuts ship build time, Logistics Center hosts a Warp Gate, and Anti-Intel & Sensor scans and blinds enemy scouts. The HQ is limited to Production Hub or Shipyard Outpost, and can build that doctrine's signature building alongside its normal HQ buildings.
• Connection decides value. Only systems that chain back to your HQ or to one of your Bastions pay alliance-wide bonuses, project defence, scan, or route warp hops. Orphaned systems keep their buildings and harvest but contribute nothing.

Doctrine choice, Bastion founding, and abandoning are Deputy or Leader actions. Full rules — the bonus curves and ceilings, placement requirements, instance caps, Embassy stun, abandon cooldowns — are on the Alliance Territory page.

Territory Siege

When the Territory Siege feature is enabled, taking a system is a multi-stage campaign, not a single fight.

1. Contest — win an FCS assault at the system center → the system becomes Contested. Ownership does not change; that system's pool, harvest, and survey income drop to ×0.5.
2. Vulnerable — after a reinforcement gap of at least 24h, a random 2-hour window opens inside the defender's 8-hour defence window. Only the Contester can clear the stage.
3. Ownership flips on the final stage only — stage 2 for a Division or Bastion child, stage 3 for a Bastion root (which hands over the whole cluster).
4. Fail, lose, or miss a window → the campaign ends, the holder keeps the system, and a 24-hour re-contest cooldown applies.

Headquarters cannot be sieged. An alliance may have at most 5 systems Contested or Vulnerable at once. Station Guardians before the window; amber/red borders on the galaxy map and live countdowns in Alliance Systems / Division Center mark the siege.

Deputies set the alliance's defence window start hour in Alliance → Admin → Settings (once per week, and never during an open siege), so Vulnerable windows land in your members' waking hours.

Full rules — stage scheduling, Graveyard debris rates, the building −3 penalty, diplomacy cancels — are on the dedicated Territory Siege page. In-game: Settings → Quick Guides → Alliance Territorial Control.

Diplomacy & war

With a Diplomacy Office, officers can manage relations with other alliances.

Relations:

• Non-Aggression Pact (NAP) — neither side can attack the other.
• Ally — a closer protective relationship.
• War — declared immediately and unilaterally; it ends any existing treaties.

Combat protection:

• You can never attack members of your own alliance.
• You can't attack alliances you're allied with or have a NAP with (though you can still scout them).

NAPs and alliances consume treaty slots (one per Diplomacy Office level); war does not. Ending a war requires a peace proposal.

Alliance relics & branding

Alliances fly their own colors using relics donated by members. (For how relics are collected and forged, see the Relics page.)

Four relic types are used by alliances:

Relic type	How it's used
Alliance Badge	One active badge represents the alliance on leaderboards and alliance lists.
Alliance Flag	One active flag flies on members' planets.
System Theme	Attached to a controlled system to tint its appearance (one per system).
System Monument	Attached to a controlled system as a standing monument (one per system).

How it flows:

1. A member forges an alliance-type relic and donates its base cosmetic to the alliance (free, and they keep the relic).
2. Donating unlocks the alliance Archive, where members can buy alternate variants for the alliance with Quantum Shards. See Alliance Archive.
3. Officers then activate the active badge/flag, or attach themes and monuments to controlled systems.
4. Officers can keep a wishlist of cosmetics the alliance wants next.

See Relics → Alliance Relics for the donating commander's perspective. The Archive also keeps territory Records — Alliance Archive → Territory Records.

Leaderboards & events

• Alliance leaderboards rank alliances against one another by the sum of members' empire scores. See Score.
• Alliance Power is a separate investment ranking (buildings + alliance research) with fleet titles — see Alliance Power.
• Weekly alliance events offer alliance-tier rewards for collective effort (a separate event-score, not empire total).
• Riftwake Incursion is a weekly AvA assault on a rotating alien scar — the winner becomes Realmwarden. The War Guild levy to contest the Wakeheart scales with Alliance Power. See Riftwake Incursion.
• Your active alliance badge appears beside your alliance name across these screens.

Quick reference

Thing	Value
Alliances per player	1
Create cost	Free
Tag length	3–10 characters
Name length	up to 100 characters
Starting member limit	15 (+1 per Recruitment Doctrine level)
Harvest pool full payout	15 eligible (Realm 4+) members
Realm 1–3 tribute cap per day	1M · 300M · 10B (at least ¼ of the cap)
Roles	Member · Officer · Deputy · Leader
Max alliance tax	5%
Vault capacity (per resource)	2 billion base, +10 billion per Vault level
HQ building slots	100
Division building slots	40
Bastion building slots	Embassy 20 · War 40 · Expansion 60
Diplomacy relations	Non-Aggression Pact · Ally · War
Territory cap	1 + 4 per Territorial Expansion level + Bastion grants
Bastion instances	Embassy 8 · War 3 · Expansion 2
Doctrines per system	1, HQ included (first pick free; 72h switch cooldown)
Siege stages	Division 2 · Bastion root 3 (whole cluster)
Territory Siege Vulnerable	Random 2h inside the defender's 8h window
Max open Contests	5 per alliance