Free and premium

Everything is free during the alpha. No payment is taken, no price is shown, and there is nothing to buy. The paths that will one day lead to a subscription already exist in the game, with the payment step replaced by a free one: that is how we learn what they are for before charging for them.

So this page describes a model, not an offer. It will be updated when there is something to sell.

Free is the game, not a demo

A free player plays for real. Their name is in the world, they trade, they contribute to the gauges, they vote.

• One world, assigned, and one colonist.
• A domain bounded at four Hexes. That is a bound rather than a conversion
• moment: it limits what a free player holds, it is under no obligation to be
• reached in any particular time, and nothing pushes toward it.
• The whole market, buying and selling, on the same fees as everybody, with one
• standing order per resource. Every market is open every week, food included.
• Research, on one tree at a time.
• Feats, trophies and collections, the same as everyone.
• The vote. A free player is a citizen, not a lesser player.

What is closed to them fits in a sentence: they cannot expand past their bound, they cannot leave their world, and they trade through the anonymous market rather than through named contracts.

What premium will add

Expansion and social life, never power.

• A larger domain.
• Market orders with no limit on how many.
• Two research trees in parallel, and never a third.
• Direct contracts between players, which is the real change.
• Emigration to another world and founding colonies.
• Full participation in the events instead of watching them.
• A second colonist, and therefore a second world.

Three things no purchase will ever do

These are written into the contract, not only here.

1. No purchase ever unlocks production capacity. A premium player has more Hexes; a premium Hex produces exactly what a free Hex produces. 2. The extra research is parallelism, never an exclusive branch. A free player can research everything, more slowly. 3. The order limit is interface friction, not an economic disadvantage. The free player trades; they trade less quickly.

And three things there will not be

No advertising. No loot boxes. No energy timers.

What we will not tell you

How long it takes to reach that bound. The question is open, the answer depends on which world you are given and when you arrive, and we will not publish it until it is stable. A bound is a bound: it is not a purchase schedule in disguise.