Welcome to Starborne: Sovereign Space. Starborne is a MMO-RTS by Solid Clouds, a Real-Time Strategy game where you play along thousands of other players against each other, until victory. The core of that game are the 4X: eXplore, eXploit, eXpand and... eXterminate the opposition.

Disclaimer: This site is not affiliated with Solid Clouds, and does not represent the opinions or policies from Solid Clouds or its employees. Nothing in this guide should be taken as a firm guarantee of any aspect of the game. Any question or complaints should be directed to Ukerric on the game boards.

When you join, you're placed along a spiral arm of the galaxy. You can pick a random one or choose a specific "sector".

The game is free to play, and includes a premium system. You can purchase similar to those in-game that can be used to compensate for bad luck or lack of time. There is nothing in those kits that you can't get in-game by playing regularly.

There's also a one-hour video on youtube that shows exactly how the game plays out the first day, so you can see for yourself. But if you don't like watching someone else playing games, this guide will provide you with everything you should need to know to start playing.

When you join, you get a starting space station. Every player gets a : 1 planet, 2 moons, your first space station, 4 asteroids for later bonus resources and a tiny weak Marauder enemy station to fight.

Further from you, there will be stars, other players' starting bases, more planets and asteroids, bigger Marauder bases, and earthlike planets that are particularly coveted.

From your base, you'll gather resources and send fleets to run scouting, spying, stealing resources, doing missions, then later making additional bases and auxiliary structures before attacking and smashing your enemies, driving them in front of you and hearing no lamentations, because in space no one can hear you screech in frustration.

Your station produces and harvests resources: gas, metal, crystal and labor. You use these to improve your station, make spaceships, and build space structures (outposts, additional bases).

Click on the Building button to look at what's inside your base. Buildings with a glowing blue "+" symbol, you have enough resources to build or improve; those dimmed you need more resources; those with a padlock are currently unavailable.

Note the mention of "Administrators: 0/0". Each level of your station offers 9 optional buildings that each require 1 administrator, but each level provide only 6. So you will have to specialize rather than build everything.

There is an achievement system that will give you resources for faster developement. Whenever you complete an achievement, you get a notification, and the top right button will flash blue and show an indicator that reminds you that you have unclaimed resources.

Each station can host a number of fleets. Each fleet has a single type of ship, but can have from 0 to 800 of these. You can see the fleets that are currently idle and docked at your station. The Fleet button at the top shows more information about each fleet: who is commanding, what it's doing, and its bonus cards (more on that in a few).

You're starting with a defense fleet to defend your base later on, an industrial fleet to build thing and grab resources, and three scout ships to have a look at what's around you.

Any ship that's currently not used in a fleet is sitting in your hangar, and remains unmanned: each ship requires 1 labor to operate, but none when it's shelved.

Once you've started playing, you'll get achievements that include cards as reward. Collectible cards are important for the game. You can have a list of your current cards by looking the "Inventory" window from top.

Each station and fleet has 5 card slots where you can place those cards. The first three are permanent cards; once played, they remain until you want to trash and replace them for whatever reason (better card, different priorities). The fourth is for a character card, which is a temporary effect that lasts for 2 to 7 days. The last one is the rune card, which is very short term boost, lasting for 3 to 16h.

Some cards can only be played on specific types of units or stations. Click on the card in the inventory window for a full description of the card.

Your first moves should be to start expanding your station. Obtaining more resources should be a priority. The left side of the buildings is all resources and storage.

Along with the buildings, you should start preparing an offensive fleet of corvettes. You will need to queue a few corvettes, and create a dedicated fleet. You use the Fleet window from the top to create a new fleet and assign ships.

The Tutorial achievements are a handy guide in your first moves.

Your second priority is to find out what's around you. Your scout fleets can be used to spy on hostile structures (like the Marauder station next door) or place probes in space to find what's going on. Select the fleet you want to use and click on a hex to see what type of operations you can do there.

The probe you place has a base strength of 100% and each scout ship adds 25% (plus any card effect). The hex you scan on will have that 125% scan strength or more, but the further from the probe, the lower the scan strength. Anything above 100% is immediate discovery, lower chances mean you may have to wait to find something about the hex.

The Exploration view (second of the S.E.R.P. window) shows more clearly where your probes are located and the results. Hexes with a yellow tint indicate something nearby, orange is close, red is potentially something or next door. Purplish hexes indicate that you have found something, and a larger indicator will show on normal view.

Your probes will find three different things: solar flares, missions and events. Solar flares appear on suns, and you can send a fleet of industrial ship with harvesters to get resources. Missions appear in deep space, and you can send fleets of defense, offense or scan ships to obtain random card packs. Events appear on moons and planets in your territory and can reward resource cards, which you will need to improve your structures or use to gain extra resources.

Like scouting, click on the hex to view the mission, see what is needed, and what you'll get in reward. You can select and deselect fleets to see how you can fulfill the requirements.

Events in your territory are only visible by you, but every other mission or flare can be scanned by anyone. The first fleet to reach the target gets the prize and the mission disappear.

The Maurauder camp next to you is not that dangerous: they won't attack. But any station produces resources, and you can steal unprotected resources. You can scout the station (just for an achievement) and send an attack fleet to raid the enemy. There are 5 defending ships, so it's not too hard to overwhelm them and avoid losing too many corvettes. That camp won't rebuild its defenses.

Other Marauder bases won't be that easy. The larger bases may rebuild their defenses over time. You can either raid the base, to destroy fleets and grab resources, or assault, which destroys (if possible) buildings, potentially destroying the entire base if you have gunships.

Adding or improving buildings in your station increase your influence. Once your influence goes over a certain value, you can increase your station level. Each level increase the reach of your influence: a level 1 station influences only the hex it is on, a level 2 the hexes next to it, a level 3 reaches one further, and a level 4 station reaches the maximum of 3.

You automatically harvest anything within your influence, and can only build additional structures in that area. The only thing you can build outside of your influence are new stations.

The larger your influence, the more (and better) events you may potentially get. Events only appear on planets, moons or asteroids within your influence. If you have none, you will not find events.

Once you've added the right building, or obtained the right card, you can place an "outpost", an extension to your station. You need: resources, enough space in your industrial fleet, an empty hex... and a Structure Point. Once you've all that, click on an hex within your influence (with a selected fleet) to see what you can build.

You gain structure points by gaining character levels; one point per level. You gain levels by gaining XP, like a RPG. And you gain XP based on your influence: the more influence you have overall, the more XP you gain per hour.

Outposts can fill a variety of roles: stargates to speed up friendly fleets coming in or returning to your station, fixed defenses against enemies, super-strong probes, asteroid mines, or trading posts to gain resources from other players.

Sovereign Space is a game of alliances. On your own, you are not going to prevail against thousands of rabid enemies. In fact, the game , not winning players.

Alliances are scored based on the number of strategic earthlike planet under their influence. At the start, Marauders have staked a claim on those; you will have to smash them, put a station, prevent anyone from placing one as well while defending yours, extending influence until you claim it... and repeat for as many planets you can. Alternatively, you may attempt to squeeze out the Marauder's influence if the planet is next to the border of their territory.

You should absolutely consider joining an alliance, or founding an alliance with friends and potentially recruiting. An alliance can have up to 20 players, and enters the shark tank of politics with friendly alliances, careful neutrality pacts, declarations of war, and all that exciting stuff.

The game is realtime for everyone. When you go offline, your station keeps on producing, your fleets continue to their destination and come back, your experience keeps accruing, and so on. And your enemies may attack you.

You should plan adequately before going offline. Your friends may help defend you, but they cannot command your fleets or schedule your buildings.

You start with 7 days of protection. During those 7 days, you cannot be attacked, raided, none of your stations can be destroyed. You should use that time to develop, prepare yourself, and expand. You have enough time to build additional stations, but those will be less developed than your capital.

Discuss those things with your fellow alliance members, and pick a course: wide expansion, defense in depth, dispersal, interlocking defenses with other stations... Each strategy has its advantages and disadvantages...