Stellar Age: Discovery

Reaching the Age unlocks the Stellar City, accessed through an updated Spaceport. Unlike the Space Outposts of the previous cycle, this city does not reset when the next Age arrives — it persists through the whole Stellar Cycle, and it is the biggest map Inno has built to date. The Space Age Space Hub settlement retires when you advance.

The city begins with 9 free expansions, plus 9 premium and 16 tech-tree expansions — and notably, tech expansions can be bought with Stellar Age resources, not just Forge Points.

The New Resource Loop

Progress is now driven from the Mission Control Hub (in the HUD, plus an off-grid building). Three mission slots exist — one from the start, two more via research. The old campaign map remains visitable, and the Age's PvP Tower unlocks on reaching the Era (its tournament begins the week after release).

Rarity — Rolled For You

Each mission is assigned a rarity that drives its rewards. Not happy with the roll? Re-roll any mission that hasn't launched, or dismiss active ones in Phases 2–3.

Depth — Chosen By You

Depth is your risk dial. Deeper missions cost more and skew towards better rewards — though shallow runs can still surprise you. Each of the four deeper stages sits behind a technology:

How A Mission Runs

• Phase 1 — prepare your ship. Phase 2 — travel. Phase 3 — the objective: a fight or a negotiation, with star-rated difficulty shown up front.
• Costs: Fusion Cells + Stellar Capacity + Stellar Points, scaling with rarity and depth.
• Rewards: every mission pays Encoded Tablets (amount set by rarity), with chances at Void Shards, Goods, Special Goods, Units, Blueprints or Fragments.
• Scaling: missions match your overall power including army boosts — Historical Allies and one-off GB bonuses (e.g. Kraken) are worth lining up.
• Your first mission is a preset tutorial — play it through to learn the flow.

At certain points in the tree you will reach a fork where only one path can be taken. The game throws extra confirmation windows at you for good reason:

Technologies cost Forge Points or Stellar Points — always one or the other, never both on the same tech. Building up your city's Stellar Point production directly feeds your research pace, and the Synthetic Intelligence Remnant resource (earned from research) plays into the tree's choices.

Waypoints — The "Choose Your Path" Element

The Full Tree, Costed

Extracted from the Beta tech tree (10 Aug). Thirty-seven technologies, counting one side of each Waypoint. Numbers may shift before Live.

All 37 unlock costs read directly from Beta tooltips, 10 Aug. Waypoint I & II techs show both path variants (⤷); Waypoint III costs are captured from one path — expect the mirrored instances to swap goods types, per the Waypoint rule.

Goods Of The Age

Straight from the Beta tech tooltips — the five new Stellar Age: Discovery goods, not yet documented anywhere else:

Previous-age goods still matter: all five Space Hub goods — Silver Crystals, Dark Energy Batteries, Oxygen Pills, Deep Space Data and Hypersleep Modules — appear in unlock requirements throughout the tree, so don't liquidate your SASH stockpile before advancing.

Unlock Costs Per Tech

Beyond the FP/SP price, each technology has a "Costs to Unlock Reward" panel. Two clear bands show up on Beta:

Tree Stage	Void Shards	Encoded Tablets	Stellar Capacity	Goods (per type)
Techs I–IV (FP line)	—	—	—	4 × Space Hub goods: 1,000 → 2,000 → 3,000 → 5,000
Early tree	250	5	80 (when required)	1,000
Later tree (from Settlement Protocols)	1,950	39	371 (when required)	6,000
Deep tree (from Colonial Workforce)	7,650	153	2,862 (when required)	13,500
Endgame (from Stellar Support Systems)	18,000	360	up to 20,160	24,000
Finale (Fortification + Frontier)	31,500	630	29,400 (Frontier)	35,000

Each tech asks for one or two goods types from a mix of new Age and Space Hub goods. Since every mission pays Encoded Tablets and Void Shards also flow from main-city GBs and events, the Tablet and Shard requirements are the built-in pacing mechanism between missions and research.

Full-Tree Totals

Summing every unlock panel across all 37 technologies (Waypoint I & II counted on the first-captured path; goods split shifts slightly with path choices, amounts do not):

On top of 241,500 Forge Points and 120,694 Stellar Points. SASH goods total 371,000 across five types; new Age goods total 447,500 — so most of the goods burden falls on goods you cannot stockpile in advance.

Where Everything Comes From

A full new military line with some spicy skill combinations: flying fast units, splash-damage light units, and an artillery piece that hits multiple targets but only fires every other turn.

Terrain and counter bonuses run from 7,500 up to 12,500 depending on the unit — check in-game tooltips for the full breakdown.

A new main-city Great Building — not a Stellar City one — with an anomaly inside that the research team has decided to observe. Unless it observes us. Despite its Stellar Age origins it builds the conventional way: Blueprints, Forge Points, and goods of the Age.

Its effects depend on where you play, because it is designed around the Prestige system still in testing:

Why This One Matters

An Arc-style contribution bonus is the single most consequential effect in the game — the Arc has anchored the Great Building economy for a decade. If the Siphon becomes the contribution building for Gold-tier GBs under Prestige, it is a must-build for anyone running 1.9 threads. The "multiplicative" wording on the attack boost also hints at a new stacking mechanic, distinct from the usual additive percentages.

Construction

A compact 4×4 footprint (road required), instant construction once requirements are met, and a maximum Prestige Tier of Silver. Lore-wise, it was built to specifications recovered from the Synthetic Intelligence Remnants — with a captured fracture of space at its heart that nobody is entirely sure is only being observed.

All five construction goods are the new Age goods — 26,000 total on top of the tech tree's demands. Budget accordingly.

Observed Level Data (Beta, 10 Aug)

From the in-game Bonus Overview — the Siphon scales to Level 300, bonuses level up to a cap, and new Prestige tiers unlock new bonuses on top:

The in-game tooltip spells the third effect out: contribution rewards you receive from Gold-Tier Great Buildings are increased, with all previous Prestige Tier bonuses also applying. Early levels grow slowly — roughly +10K supplies and fractions of a percent per level at the Copper stage.

Two readings worth holding at once: the headline percentages look modest next to a 1.9-Arc (50% Gold-tier contribution at Level 300 versus the Arc's 90% at ~80), but the attack/defense boost works differently to anything before it — per the in-game description, it multiplies your existing Attack and Defense bonuses for both armies by the percentage and adds the result to your total. At Level 300 that is your entire boost stack ×1.05, which scales with everything else you build. Add the contribution boost stacking previous Prestige-tier bonuses, and a Level 300 curve as a different investment horizon entirely — until Prestige's economy is visible, treat any "is it worth it" verdict as premature.

• A permanent Stellar City that carries through every future Stellar Age — no more resets.
• Space Missions with rarity rolls and player-chosen depth replacing the campaign map.
• A branching tech tree — 37 techs, 3 Waypoint decisions, totalling 241,500 FP, 120,694 Stellar Points, 296,350 Void Shards and 5,927 Encoded Tablets on current Beta numbers.
• Six FGX units to relearn battle tactics with.
• The Shattered Horizon Siphon GB — a potential Arc successor, carrying a Gold-tier contribution bonus under the incoming Prestige system.
• And a mystery: who lived on Hendron, what did they leave behind — and what is the Synthetic Intelligence Remnant?