What happens when you end a turn

Orders are queued, not executed. Placing a building, assigning somebody to a job, sending a fleet — all of it is written down and nothing moves until you press the button. A turn is a plan rather than a race, and you can change your mind about any of it until you commit.

When you do commit, this is the sequence, and it is the same every turn:

1. Battles form. Anything already sharing a sector with an enemy is locked into an engagement before it has a chance to wander off. A fleet that wants out breaks off from the board rather than slipping away beforehand.
2. Movement. In-system moves first, then warp travel and arrivals. A fleet that arrives in a system takes a holding slot in the outer reaches rather than falling on whoever is already there.
3. Combat. Whoever has just arrived joins the board, and the orders given on it are what happens.
4. Power is allocated, world by world and hull by hull, and everything that stayed powered produces. See power and brownouts.
5. Construction, surveys and training advance.
6. Food is eaten and a birth may happen. The whole sector eats out of one shared store. See food.
7. Life support is resolved, and anybody born or turned out of a lost post walks into the nearest empty one.
8. The ground follows the machinery — terraforming, remediation and core heating each move one step.
9. Research is banked and spent, and blight is rolled for.
10. Civil order is settled, once the turn's hunger, damage and crowding are all known. See unrest.

Why the order matters

Three consequences come up constantly, and all three are just the list above read carefully.

Power is allocated before anything is produced. A reactor you finish this turn does not retroactively light the factory that went dark last turn; it lights it next turn. Build reactors a turn before you need them, not the turn you notice.

Food is eaten after it is grown. Everything a world or a fleet produces is banked into the sector's store first, and then everybody eats out of that store. A hull with enough hydroponics aboard genuinely never runs its larder down, however long the crossing.

Unrest is settled last. The famine, the bombardment and the overcrowding that happened this turn are all already known when order is reckoned, which is why a bad turn shows up in the mood on the same turn rather than the next one.

Keep reading

All of the guide →