Eras

What an era is

An era is a player's level of development, one for the whole account. Knowledge belongs to each copy separately, while the era belongs to you as a whole, because it answers a question about you: how many copies can exist at the same time.

There are four eras. The first three are named after their key technologies: nuclear, thermonuclear and the era of antimatter. Of the fourth, not a word here: finding the door to it is part of the game.

Era I — nuclear

The fleet ceiling is three copies. Ships travel at fractions of the speed of light, the next system is an expedition of several real days, and a neighbour on the radio answers on a daily rhythm.

It is the era of exploration and first colonies, and you will live in it for a long time. It is about getting there and having a look — and about a great deal of arithmetic in real days.

How an era opens

The second era is opened by a construction — the game's first megastructure, which a colony builds as a project. The knowledge tree belongs to a copy and the era to the player, so the door to it is the colony's business.

The construction is big, and it runs into whatever the system physically has. For the first time the bet on a star's class gets a price measured in tonnes.

Era II — thermonuclear

The fleet ceiling is four copies: each era adds one to the fleet. Fusion brings scale: ships grow bigger and faster, and the road to the next star gets noticeably shorter. After the first step the era's technology splits into two branches by purpose. The heavy one carries armour, weapons and spare fuel; the fast one goes further and sooner, and choosing between them is a real choice.

The colony changes too: stations get new levels. The era changes both where you can fly to and where you fly from.

Era III — antimatter

The third era is opened by the second megaproject, and it stands where the first one did: in the colony that built the ring. The ring has to be rebuilt whole, and the factory and the science station raised to new levels. Research provides the blueprints; the era itself is still bought by what is built. The project is called just that — "The first gram".

The fleet ceiling is five copies. Antimatter only ever comes from a plant: a dedicated plant makes it, and there is nowhere else to get it. A ship on antimatter can refuel only where such a plant is working, so a long flight in this era begins with the question of what to refuel with at the other end.

The era's ship is a new platform. At a factory a copy changes its hull and fits a plasma drive, a reactor and antimatter traps as one set: an old hull cannot carry that kind of gear. This era's hulls stand outside the branches: a heavy or a fast frame takes any gear, and the best of them comes closer to light than anything else in the game.

Stations get new levels again, each resting on a second-era level. A copy that received the third era over comms will first have to learn the second.

How a distant colony learns of the new era

The fleet ceiling rises at once — the era belongs to the player. The knowledge behind the new technology goes to the copies standing in the colony when the era opens. The rest get it over comms: the colony starts broadcasting the new era at the speed of light, and each of your colonies with an interstellar comms station receives the news when the wave reaches it. With the news of the third era a distant colony also gets the right to build an antimatter plant of its own.

So put up a comms station in advance. A colony without one stays in the old era until someone who knows flies there. Another player hears nothing.

The rules stand

The first three eras make ships faster, but light remains the ceiling, communication stays at light speed and matter stays in its system. The thousands of tonnes of the later eras are the mass of the ship itself with all its equipment: there is no cargo in them, and no interstellar logistics appears.

What changes is how the limit feels. In the first era the next star is several days away, in the second about a day and a half. Light usually covers that distance in about a day, so the third era has almost nowhere left to speed up to: it adds reach instead, and in the same week on the road a ship gets noticeably further. This is where you see that the ceiling is real.