Your First 48 Hours — A Commander's Survival Guide

Welcome to Orbitarion, Commander. You've just landed on your planet with 96 ticks (48 hours) of protection. Unlike old MMOs that drop you into nothing, you start with a working economy, a small fleet of orbitals already running, and your first Commander point ready to spend.

This guide walks you through the first 48 hours: what to research, when to scan, when to build, and how to choose a Commander. By the time protection drops, you'll have a real economy, a small fleet, and a clear strategy.

How the game works

Orbitarion runs on ticks. Every 30 minutes, the universe updates: resources flow in from your orbitals, research progresses, ships finish building, fleets move, battles resolve. Between ticks, you plan. When the tick fires, everything happens at once across the entire game.

Your goal: grow your planet, build a fleet, climb the rankings. The strongest commanders at season's end win.

Speed rounds run faster

Between regular seasons, the game runs Speed Rounds — same mechanics but with 5-minute ticks instead of 30 minutes. Tick counts stay identical — protection is 96 ticks in both formats — but wall-clock time compresses dramatically. A regular season's 48-hour protection becomes 8 hours of real time in a speed round, and a full season runs in about a week. Great for testing strategies, learning the game faster, and the Havoc-style chaos that pure speed brings. The rest of this guide is written assuming 30-minute ticks; divide all the wall-clock times by 6 if you're in a speed round.

What you start with

When you land, you already have:

Resource	Stockpile	Income per tick
Titanium	5 000	200 (core) + 450 (3 orbitals) = 650
Silicon	3 000	200 (core) + 300 (2 orbitals) = 500
Uranium	1 000	200 (core) + 100 (1 orbital) = 300

Plus 2 uninitiated orbitals sitting in your queue, ready to be assigned a resource type, and 3 fleet slots prepared for use.

You also have 1 Commander Point available — you can spend it on a Tier 1 trait the moment you've picked your archetype.

This is enough to act immediately. No waiting around. Don't waste it.

Tick 0–6: First research, first scan

Your absolute first move every season is to research Basic Sweep Sensors. It costs 500 Ti / 1 500 Si and takes 6 ticks. Without it you cannot scan for orbitals — and scanning is the foundation of your economy.

Start it immediately. You can afford it from your starting stockpile alone.

While that runs, do two things:

Initiate your 2 uninitiated orbitals. Each one costs 300 + (current orbitals × 30) Ti and 200 + (current orbitals × 20) Si. With 6 orbitals already running, your first initiation costs 480 Ti + 320 Si, your second costs 510 Ti + 340 Si. Cheap and worth it — you immediately add another +150 Ti or Si or +100 Ur per tick.

A reasonable early split for those first two: one Titanium, one Silicon. You'll consume Ti and Si fastest in the first 30 ticks.

Pick your Commander archetype and spend your first point (see the Commander section below).

By tick 6, Sensors is done.

8-tick boosts

The Overview screen offers 8-tick boosts to production, research, or resource income — short, paid surges that compress a key phase. They cost resources but cut clock time on whatever's bottlenecking you. Useful when racing protection's end, or when one specific research is one tick short of unlocking a key ship before an attack lands. Don't spam them; use them when a tick matters.

Tick 6–12: Scan, scan, scan + unlock fighters

Sensors is complete. Time to scan.

Buy a scan immediately. Cost is 1 000 + (orbitals × 50) Silicon — so at 8 orbitals it's 1 400 Si. Base success chance is 80% minus 0.5% per orbital you already have, so at 8 orbitals you're at 76%. Each successful scan adds one uninitiated orbital to your queue.

Then start your next research: Fighter Operations (400 Ti / 400 Si, 6 ticks). This unlocks your first combat ships. You don't need them during protection but you need them ready when it ends.

Keep scanning every chance you get during this phase. Scanning is cheap and reliable while you're small. As you grow, it gets harder and more expensive — so frontload it.

Free scans every 4 hours

You can claim one free orbital scan every 4 hours in addition to your paid scans. Free players claim by watching a short rewarded ad. Premium subscribers claim with a single confirmation tap — no ad. The free scan goes into the same queue as a normal one and rolls the same success chance, so this is a small but real edge for keeping pace with bigger players. Set a reminder.

Pity bonus

If you fail three scans in a row, your scan chance gets a +10% bonus per additional failure, up to +30%. The game softens long unlucky streaks. Don't stop scanning just because two in a row missed.

Race is hidden until you're scanned

Other commanders' race is hidden in your galaxy view until they reveal it. There are two ways races become visible: someone is attacked by them (the attack reveals their race), or an alliance member sees them and the reveal spreads through the alliance — once one of you knows, everyone in the alliance knows. Combined with combat power being hidden until you actively scan a planet, this means intel is a network effect: alliances that scan and share dominate galactic awareness. Solo players are mostly blind.

By tick 12, Fighter Operations is done and you've probably initiated 4–6 more orbitals.

Tick 12–22: Economy boost

Now invest in income.

Research Titanium Processing (1 500 Ti / 1 500 Si, 10 ticks). When it finishes you permanently boost your base Titanium production — it pays for itself within ~10 ticks and compounds from there.

While it runs:

Keep scanning every tick if you can afford it
Initiate orbitals as they come in
Build a few fighters — they're cheap (25–40 Ti each), they protect you against light scouts, and they take Shipyard slot 1 only

By tick 22 you should have roughly 10–14 orbitals, ~150–200 fighters, and a healthy stockpile of resources.

Tick 22–32: Silicon income + second Commander point

Research Silicon Refinement (1 500 Ti / 1 500 Si, 10 ticks). Permanent Si boost — this pays directly for more scans.

By now your Commander should be earning XP from research completions and any nebula attacks you've done. You'll have a second Commander Point ready — spend it on Tier 1 or save toward a Tier 2 trait.

Keep scanning aggressively. At this stage, every successful scan compounds — more orbitals means more income means more scans means more orbitals.

Tick 32–44: Unlock corvettes

Research Corvette Engineering (2 500 Ti / 2 500 Si, 12 ticks). Corvettes are your first real combat tier — they counter fighter swarms cleanly and serve as fleet escort for capture ships later.

While that runs, build a buffer of fighters. You want roughly 300–500 fighters in your defense by the time corvettes unlock.

You can abort a build

If you start a ship build and realize you need something else more urgently, abort it and reclaim the slot. Resources spent so far are not refunded, but you free the shipyard immediately. Useful when an alliance member calls for emergency reinforcement and you need to start frigates instead of corvettes.

Tick 44–66: The big one — Frigate Engineering

Frigate Engineering is the longest single research at 22 ticks (5 000 Ti / 5 000 Si). It unlocks:

Frigate-class kill ships (your race's heavy attacker)
Capture ships — your race's orbital pod or transport
Shipyard slot expansion

This is the gateway to real attacks. The moment Frigates unlock, you can build capture ships and steal orbitals from defeated enemies. Until then, you're scanning and scanning only.

If you're racing protection's end, this finishes around tick 66 — about 30 ticks of frigate production before protection drops. Plenty of time.

Tick 66–96: Build your protection-end fleet

Frigates unlocked. Time to spend everything on ships.

What to build:

Capture ships (Orbital Pod, Infiltrator, race-equivalents) — required for orbital theft
Frigates for kill power — Sentinel (UEC), Mantis (ODO), Volt (ATH), Black Frigate (STC)
More corvettes and fighters for fleet mass

A reasonable protection-end fleet: 8–15 frigates, 50+ corvettes, 200+ fighters, 5–10 capture ships. Race-dependent — check the Ships & Fleets guide for exact stats.

Consider also researching:

Basic Propulsion (12 ticks, 2 000 Ti / 2 000 Si) — −1 tick ETA on all your fleets, forever
Basic Defense Systems (14 ticks, 2 000 Ti / 2 000 Si) — unlocks Planetary Defense Systems (PDS)

PDS — your immovable wall

PDS towers are buildings, not ships. They stay home and defend your planet — they never leave, never escort, never die in transit. There are four tiers: Pulse Laser Array (T1, anti-Fi/Co), Plasma Turret (T2, anti-Fr/De), Ion Cannon (T3, anti-De/Cr), and Orbital Strike Platform (T4, anti-Cr/Bs). Each tier caps at 999 units, so a fully-stacked PDS column is a serious wall. They were significantly buffed in v2.2 and now cost less per unit. A planet with no PDS is a planet that loses orbitals every time its fleet leaves.

You can empty a fleet in one click

The fleet screen has an empty fleet button that returns all assigned ships to your defense in one action. Use this before logging off if you're unsure whether an attack is incoming, or when reorganizing your fleets between attacks.

Auto-retreat saves your fleet

Since v2.2, fleets automatically scatter and retreat if they take more than 50% losses in a battle. Surviving ships make it home; they're not annihilated chasing a losing fight. This changes the math on attacks: you can probe a target without risking your entire fleet on a single miscalculation. But it does NOT save your orbitals — if you're the defender and you lose, the attacker still steals up to 15%. And once your fleet retreats, those ships are out of that battle — no second wave to save the planet.

Don't leave your planet empty

Even with auto-retreat saving your fleet from total loss, sending most of your ships on attack still leaves your planet exposed. A determined enemy can hit you while your offensive fleet is in transit. Keep PDS and a defense reserve home — the rule of thumb is never send more than 60% of your fleet at once during the early post-protection period.

Pick a Commander

When you join the season you also pick a Commander — an archetype that grants stacking traits across four tiers. Commanders are huge. They shape your playstyle, multiply your race's strengths, and let you specialize within your alliance.

There are four archetypes:

Spymaster

You see everything. You hide everything.

T1: +5% scan success, 10% scan cost reduction, 15% chance to see who scanned you
T2: Unlocks fleet scanning (intel on enemy ships in transit)
T3: 30% scan block on incoming scans, 1 decoy fleet every 48 hours
T4: One cloaked fleet per season, permanent spy duration extended

Pick if: you love intelligence work, you're an alliance scanner, you want to know everything before anyone else does. Synergizes with ODO (cloaks) and STC (recon).

Engineer

Your economy is unbreakable.

T1: +3% income, +5% build speed
T2: +10% build speed, +5% research speed
T3: +10% income, +15% build speed
T4: +1 build slot (parallel ship production), +20% build speed, −2 ticks on every build

Pick if: you want to outproduce everyone. Synergizes with UEC (already fast construction) and players who like long-game compounding.

Tactician

You hit first and you hit hardest.

T1: +5% damage
T2: −1 initiative (fire earlier), +10% damage
T3: +5% crit chance, +15% damage
T4: −1 initiative again, +10% crit chance, +20% damage

Pick if: you're the attacker in your alliance. Synergizes with ATH (already fires first) and any race running heavy frigate/destroyer kill fleets.

Defender

They cannot kill you.

T1: +5% armor
T2: +10% armor, +5 agility
T3: +15% armor, +20% damage bonus when fleet drops below 30% value
T4: +20% armor, 50% chance to survive first hit each battle

Pick if: you want to be a fortress. The natural fit for UEC. The save-the-first-hit Tier 4 trait is devastating in fleet-vs-fleet battles.

Read the full Commander guide →

Commander Points

You start with 1 point. You earn more by playing — research completions, building, combat. Tier 1 traits cost 1 point, T2 cost 2, T3 cost 3, T4 cost 5 — so the final ultimate trait takes some real progress to reach.

Race-specific tips for your first season

Your race shapes everything. Here's how each plays the first 48 hours.

United Earth Command (UEC) — The Fortress

Bonus: +20% construction speed, +10% armor on all ships

Your ships are the toughest in the game. The trade-off is that you fire last in most matchups. You win by surviving.

Rush Frigate Engineering — Sentinel (185 armor, 4×17 damage) is one of the best frigates in the game
Build Pegasus destroyers as soon as you can — 14 flak guns, the only destroyer with Fighters as primary target. They obliterate ODO swarms
Titan (battleship) is your endgame. Plan for it from tick 40 onward
Commander pairing: Engineer (compounds your build speed) or Defender (max-stat fortress)

Odonari Hive (ODO) — The Swarm

Bonus: −1 tick ETA on all fleets, +15% research speed

Your Fighter, Corvette and Frigate ships are cloaked — invisible to enemy scanners until they engage. You're fast, cheap, fragile.

Your +15% research speed compresses the whole research timeline — Frigate Engineering finishes ~3 ticks earlier
Build masses of Stingers (35 Ti each — cheapest fighter in the galaxy)
Mantis frigate (cloaked) is an assassin. Use it to ambush enemy heavy ships
−1 ETA matters: your fleets arrive a tick earlier than your enemies expect. Tick-time your attacks aggressively
Commander pairing: Spymaster (cloak + intel = unstoppable scouting) or Tactician (hit first AND hit hardest)

The Aetherians (ATH) — The Controller

Bonus: +20% research speed, +10% EMP efficiency

You fire first in almost every matchup. Your EMP ships freeze enemies with EMP instead of destroying them, while your kill ships (Tempest, Celestial) clean up.

Your +20% research speed is the best in the game. Abuse it — every research finishes earlier than for any other race
Build a mix of EMP and kill ships. EMP alone wins nothing — you need destroyers/cruisers to finish frozen enemies
Your Celestial battleship has initiative 3 — fires before every other battleship in the game
Volt frigates freezing entire destroyer groups changes alliance battles
Commander pairing: Tactician (extra damage on top of first strike) or Engineer (more EMP fleets faster)

Sytherian Cartel (STC) — The Raider

Bonus: +15% ship production speed, +20% steal cost discount

You don't just destroy enemies — you steal their ships. STC has three distinct ship roles, and a good fleet uses all three.

Steal ships (Cutlass, Raider, Black Frigate) hijack enemy vessels mid-battle. Stolen ships immediately join your fleet and fight in the next combat round. They have low raw damage on paper — that's by design. Their job is to grab, not kill.
Kill ships (Ravager destroyer, Corsair cruiser, Dread Corsair battleship) do the actual damage. Without these, your steal-ships have nothing left to fight after they grab. Build kill ships alongside steal ships from frigate-tier onward.
Capture ships (Orbital Pod, Infiltrator) steal orbitals from defeated planets — same role as other races' capture ships.

Tips:

Your +15% production speed means more ships per tick — abuse it during the build-up to attacks
Your +20% steal cost discount makes steal-ships cheaper to build than for any other race
One catch: stolen The Void ships don't work — NPCs are immune to ship-stealing. Save your steal-ships for player vs player
Commander pairing: Tactician (more damage on your kill ships = more dead enemies = more grabs land) or Spymaster (find weak targets to raid)

STC redesign

The Sytherian Cartel was redesigned in v2.0. Old guides may talk about STC raiding resources, or about every STC ship punching up — that's gone. The new identity is steal ships + kill ships + capture ships, three distinct roles working together. Steal ships can't kill on their own; kill ships can't steal. You need a balanced mix.

When protection drops

Tick 96 hits. You're vulnerable. Here's what to expect:

Aggressive neighbors will probe you. Especially if you have many orbitals and few ships
Alliances close ranks. If you haven't joined one, do it now — Discord is where they live
Orbital theft begins. Wins steal up to 15% of the target's orbitals (scaled by score ratio). This becomes the primary growth engine from now on
Race reveals propagate. The first attacks of the season expose attacker races to their targets and through their targets' alliances. Within a few hours, your galaxy is no longer anonymous
Your news feed lights up — every scan, every fleet, every battle gets logged

Attack range scales with score

You can't attack just anyone. Targets must be within range of your score — too far below and the game protects them from you (no orbital theft from rookies); too far above and you can't reach them. This range widens over time as your score grows, so the early game is naturally bounded to peer-vs-peer fights. Look for targets close to your score for the best orbital returns.

Your immediate priorities:

Keep building ships every tick — the fight just started
Join an alliance (if you haven't) — race intel and fleet defense both require allies
Scan neighbors before you commit — you can't see their combat power until you scan them. Don't punch blind
Don't send all your ships away at once — auto-retreat saves the fleet, not the planet
Watch Intel for incoming attacks — a heads-up tick is enough to evacuate your fleet

What's next — beyond your planet

Two major systems exist outside your individual planet. You'll touch them as you grow.

Nebula War

Every galaxy has a nebula — a contested zone with 10 defensive slots held by The Void (NPC garrison) at season start. Your alliance can attack and capture these slots for Victory Points. Holding nebula slots gives your entire alliance passive bonuses (build speed, research speed, ship cost reductions) and pushes your alliance up the VP-tier ladder.

Slot 1 is clearable with Fighters and Corvettes during protection. Higher slots demand frigates, destroyers, eventually battleships. Coordinate with your alliance.

Full Nebula War guide →

Orbital Dominion

Brand new in v2.0. A galaxy-wide hex map of strategic sectors that alliances fight over. Sectors generate Victory Points per tick to whoever controls them. Adjacent sectors unlock outward from a foothold, so the strategic geography is real — you can't leapfrog past enemy territory.

Dominion is the long game. You won't touch it in your first 48 hours, but by the time you're attacking neighbors regularly, your alliance leadership will be coordinating Dominion captures.

Full Orbital Dominion guide →

Battle Calculator

Before you send a fleet at someone, simulate the battle at tools.orbitarion.com. Free, open to everyone, no login. Enter both sides' ship counts, race, Commander traits, and PDS — it runs the same engine the game uses and tells you exactly what would happen.

This is essential for any non-trivial attack. Don't punch at a target you haven't run through the calc first.

Late-game research worth knowing about

These are not first-48-hour priorities — but knowing they exist helps you plan ahead.

Quantum Scanners (10 000 Ti / 15 000 Si, 46 ticks) — unlocks planet news scanning, a new intel layer that reveals events on a target planet, not just orbital count. Late-game research; consider it once your basic economy is humming
Scan penetration / blocking research now extends to level 99, giving long-term Spymaster builds and ATH controllers a deep specialization tree to climb
Higher PDS tiers (Plasma Turret, Ion Cannon, Orbital Strike Platform) unlock through follow-up defense research and can take a planet from "easy mark" to "do not touch"

Quick reference

What	When	Cost
Start Basic Sweep Sensors	Tick 0	500 Ti + 1 500 Si
First scan	Tick 6	1 000 Si + 50/orbital
First Commander point spent	Anytime from tick 0	—
Initiate orbital	When you have one	300 Ti + 200 Si (scales with orbital count)
Fighter Operations	Tick 6–12	400 Ti + 400 Si
Titanium Processing	Tick 12–22	1 500 Ti + 1 500 Si
Silicon Refinement	Tick 22–32	1 500 Ti + 1 500 Si
Corvette Engineering	Tick 32–44	2 500 Ti + 2 500 Si
Frigate Engineering	Tick 44–66	5 000 Ti + 5 000 Si
Basic Propulsion	Anytime (post-Frigate)	2 000 Ti + 2 000 Si
Basic Defense Systems	Anytime (post-Frigate)	2 000 Ti + 2 000 Si
Quantum Scanners	Late game	10 000 Ti + 15 000 Si (46 ticks)
Protection drops	Tick 96	—

Common mistakes

❌ Skipping the first scan. The whole game runs on orbitals. If you're not scanning during protection, you're falling behind permanently.

❌ Building too many fighters and no corvettes. Fighters die to corvettes. Mixed fleets win. Aim for 2–3 fighters per corvette, not 20.

❌ Spending Commander Points on lower tiers when you could save for Tier 2. Tier 2 traits are dramatically better than Tier 1. If you have 2 points and your archetype's T1 doesn't shine, save up.

❌ Not joining an alliance. This is an MMO. Solo players don't win seasons. The single biggest skill multiplier in the game is having three good alliance friends.

❌ Hoarding resources. Resources do count toward your score at 0.25× their value (since v2.2), but ships count for far more. Stockpiles don't fight. Build ships.

❌ Sending all your ships out on an attack. Auto-retreat saves your fleet, not your planet. While your offensive fleet is in transit, anyone can hit you and steal orbitals. Split your forces and keep PDS up.

❌ Ignoring your galaxy. Check who your neighbors are. Scan the ones who matter. Combat power is hidden until you scan, so you cannot judge strength by score alone.

❌ Playing STC like it's still v1. STC's steal-ships do almost no raw damage on purpose — they grab. Without Ravagers, Corsairs, or Dread Corsairs alongside them, you have no kill power. A balanced STC fleet has all three roles.

❌ Forgetting the Battle Calculator. Five minutes at tools.orbitarion.com can save you a fleet.

Good luck, Commander. The universe is waiting.

Documentation reflects Orbitarion v2.2. Last updated: 2026-05-30.