The map is a grid, and the edges meet.

Each planet is a rectangle of plots. Opposite edges connect. Attacks and trade pods travel the shortest wrapped path, horizontal distance plus vertical distance. A Sensor Array scan is a square around your base, and that square continues across an edge.

What a plot contains

Every extractor works one mine slot, and each extractor is upgraded on its own. The plot type decides how those slots are split:

• A balanced plot has three extractors of every resource.
• A specialized plot has nine extractors of one resource and two of each other resource.
• An upkeep plot favors Food, Water, Energy, and Helium.

The seven resources those slots produce are Food, Water, Metals, Biogel, Energy, Composites, and Helium. Production, storage, and hauling are covered in the resources manual.

Sensor Array

Each Sensor Array level adds one map cell of scan range, up to eight. Every cell covers 10 square kilometres. Distances in the contact list are shown in square kilometres or square miles, whichever you saved.

The array also sells intelligence. A shallow report costs 25 Gold and includes resource totals and combat HP. A detailed report costs 75 Gold and adds buildings and deployments. Both are snapshots. The target can change after you buy one.

Founding another base

An empty plot inside scan range can be colonized with a Colony Ark. First raise the Research Lab on every active base to level 20, then train the Ark. You may own or dispatch only one Ark at a time. Open the Sensor Array, select the empty plot, name the new base, and send the Ark. The Ark is consumed when the base is founded.

The Ark’s resource cost rises with the number of bases you already own, up to a cap of 500 bases per player. The first Ark is the base price. By the last base, its Metals cost equals what a fully upgraded Storage Vault can hold, and every other resource scales by the same proportion. No unit, including the Ark, costs Gold to train.