Alliances
Orbitarion can be played solo — but it's designed for alliances. The endgame belongs to coordinated groups. The rankings are dominated by players who fight together, share intelligence, and cover each other's weaknesses.
An alliance isn't just a social club. It's a force multiplier.
What is an alliance?
An alliance is a group of players from across different galaxies who cooperate throughout the season. Alliance members can coordinate attacks, send defend fleets to each other's planets, share intelligence, and work toward a combined ranking.
At the end of every season, the best alliance is one of the three winner categories — alongside best planet and best galaxy. Alliance score is the sum of all member scores.
Persistence across seasons
Unlike your planet — which resets completely when a season ends — your alliance persists.
If you fought alongside people in Season 1, your alliance is still there when Season 2 starts. You don't rebuild the social layer from scratch every season. The relationships, the trust, the coordination patterns you developed carry forward.
This makes alliance membership a long-term investment. The best alliances in Orbitarion aren't formed in a week. They're built over multiple seasons.
Galaxies vs alliances
Galaxies and alliances are different things.
Your galaxy is your local neighborhood — the 5–9 planets you share a coordinate cluster with. You interact with galaxy members constantly. They're your closest neighbors, potential allies or enemies, and the people who can send defend fleets to you fastest (shorter ETA within the same galaxy).
Your alliance spans across galaxies. Alliance members might be in completely different clusters, requiring longer ETA for fleet coordination — but they bring more resources, more ships, and broader coverage across the universe.
The best players leverage both: strong galaxy relationships for local defense and rapid response, and a powerful alliance for large-scale coordinated warfare.
What alliances do in practice
Coordinated attacks — The most powerful thing an alliance does. Target a specific planet, coordinate fleet arrivals so kill fleets and pod fleets arrive in the same tick or back-to-back ticks. A properly coordinated strike by three or four alliance members is nearly impossible to defend against.
Mutual defense — When a member is attacked, others can send defend fleets. A defending fleet that arrives at a planet before or during the tick of the attack fights alongside the defender's own ships.
Intelligence sharing — STC Infiltrators, Deep Space Scanner results, and player observations shared in alliance chat paint a picture of who is strong, who is weak, and who is worth targeting.
Diplomatic cover — Being in a known, respected alliance deters attacks. Players think twice before raiding a planet whose alliance will retaliate.
Fleet coordination — The EMP + kill fleet combination that defines late-game Orbitarion warfare requires multiple players acting in sync. One player freezes with ATH. Another destroys with UEC. A third follows up with pods. This is alliance warfare.
Alliance communication
All alliance communication happens on Discord. There is no in-game chat.
Every alliance has its own Discord server or channels. This is where attacks are coordinated, targets are discussed, defend requests go out, and the social fabric that holds an alliance together is built between sessions.
If you're serious about alliances, Discord is not optional. Join the Orbitarion Discord server to find groups, recruit members, or get picked up by an alliance looking for players.
Galactic Commander
Within each galaxy, players elect a Galactic Commander (GC). The GC coordinates the galaxy's shared interests — who to target, how to respond to attacks on galaxy members, and how the galaxy positions itself relative to neighboring galaxies and alliances.
The GC role is social and strategic, not mechanical. There are no special in-game powers attached to it — the authority comes from trust and coordination.
Nebula War and Victory Points
Every galaxy has a nebula — a contested zone with 10 defense slots held by Void Raider NPCs at season start. Alliances compete to capture and hold these slots, earning Victory Points that accumulate across the entire season.
VP comes from two sources: a one-time capture bonus when your alliance takes a slot, and recurring holding VP awarded daily for every slot you control. Holding more slots in the same nebula triggers escalating control bonuses — full control of all 10 slots in one galaxy is worth roughly three times what partial control earns.
For the full mechanics — adjacency rules, garrison system, lockdown, attack cap, NPC fleets — see the Nebula War guide.
Alliance tiers
Your alliance's total accumulated VP across all nebulae determines your tier. Each tier unlocks passive bonuses for every member:
| Tier | VP required | Build time | Ship cost | Research time | PDS time | Free scans/day |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Unranked | 0–199 | — | — | — | — | — |
| Bronze | 200–799 | −5% | — | −5% | −5% | — |
| Silver | 800–1,999 | −10% | −5% | −10% | −10% | — |
| Gold | 2,000–4,999 | −15% | −10% | −15% | −15% | 1 |
| Platinum | 5,000–9,999 | −20% | −15% | −20% | −20% | 2 |
| Diamond | 10,000+ | −25% | −20% | −25% | −25% | 3 |
Diamond also grants −1 tick fleet ETA when the target is in a cluster where your alliance controls at least one nebula slot.
Tiers are sticky — once earned, they persist for the rest of the season even if you lose the territory that earned them. You stop gaining VP, but you keep your bonuses.
Season-end titles
Two separate alliance titles are awarded at the end of each season:
Strongest Alliance — highest combined total score (fleet value + orbitals + buildings) across all member planets.
Nebula Overlords — highest accumulated Victory Points from captures and holding.
Both are permanently recorded on stats.orbitarion.com.
Alliance strategy tips
Communicate before attacking. A surprise attack launched without alliance coordination burns the opportunity for a properly timed multi-player strike. Tell your alliance what you're planning.
Specialize by race. An alliance with multiple ATH players can layer EMP freezes across multiple ship classes simultaneously. An alliance with UEC players has a near-unbreakable defensive anchor. Build a roster that covers different roles.
Protect your small members. A fleet sent to defend a smaller alliance member costs you almost nothing — and it signals to the universe that attacking your alliance has consequences.
Intelligence is shared power. If you scan a valuable target, tell your alliance. Don't just use it yourself. Shared intelligence enables coordinated attacks that are worth far more than a solo raid.
Late game is all about alliances. In the early game you can grow solo through scanning. By mid-game, alliance warfare becomes the primary growth engine. The planets that top the final rankings almost always belong to active alliance members.