Getting Started

Getting Started — Orientation Briefing

The following is an unofficial orientation prepared by veteran pilots for new arrivals at the Nexus. The Accord won't tell you any of this. They barely acknowledge you exist until you're worth something.

What Is Fugari Wars?

Fugari Wars is an asynchronous galaxy-wide game of trading, territory control, and collective warfare against an alien faction called the Fugari. The galaxy — a spatial grid of nodes connected by warps — resets every 12 hours. Each reset grants you a fresh allotment of turns. You spend those turns flying between nodes, buying and selling resources, planting drones to claim territory, and building toward the cycle's endgame: the destruction of the Fugari home planet's core.

The cycle ends when that core reaches zero HP. A leaderboard is posted. Titles are awarded. Then the galaxy resets — a new galaxy generates, your credits halve and carry over, and you keep your best ship.

You are not racing against a clock. You are racing against other players, the Fugari's expanding grip, and your own decision-making under turn pressure. Mid-game, you can claim planets — long-term investments that produce drones, support garrisons, and shape territory control. See Planets & Citadels for the full system.

First Login: You Are at the Nexus

When you log in for the first time, you are standing at the Nexus — the galaxy's single permanent neutral hub, fixed Coreward-center, indestructible and faction-neutral. Every pilot passes through here. It is the only place in the galaxy guaranteed to be safe.

The Nexus contains:

• The Shipyard - where you trade in ships, buy additional ships, or browse the fleet catalog
• Syndicate — where you join, found, or manage your syndicate; the shared vault and membership controls live here
• Accord HQ — rep standing and specialty services for high-reputation pilots
• The Black Market -- visible only to pilots with rep <= -100, tucked in a corridor most Accord patrols don't check

Your starting ship is a Drifter: 50-unit hold, 400 hull HP, a drone bay for 10,000 drones, and no special advantages beyond the fact that it gets you moving. It is not impressive. It is a beginning.

As a new arrival, you are in the Fledgling tier. PvP against you is hard-blocked — any attack attempt is rejected outright. The galaxy is rough, but it isn't trying to kill you yet.

The Guided Trade Run

If you're new to trading, a Guided Trade Run button appears on your map screen while you're in the Fledgling tier. Tap it once and the game walks you through your first trade — step by step, using real actions with short pauses between each one so you can see what's happening:

1. Route planning — the system finds the nearest port from your current position
2. Warping — your ship flies hop by hop to the port, spending turns as normal
3. Buying cargo — the system purchases cargo scaled to your credits on hand, filling your hold proportionally
4. Route to seller — a second port is found and the ship warps there
5. Selling cargo — everything is sold and the profit is shown on screen

At the end you'll see your new credit balance and how much profit you made. The tutorial completes automatically after the sell — the button disappears and you're on your own.

The Guided Trade Run costs real turns and uses real credits, so the profit you make is yours. The handful of turns it costs is a worthwhile investment in understanding how trading works.

How Turns Work

Turns are your action budget. Every 12 hours (00:00 UTC and 12:00 UTC), you receive a fresh batch:

Unused turns carry over up to the bank cap. Moving between nodes costs 1 turn per warp. Active scanning costs 1 turn. Deploying beacons costs 1 turn. Everything costs turns — spend them deliberately.

Credit stipend: Every reset, all active players also receive 100 credits automatically — enough to cover basic expenses, not enough to fund ambition. The real money comes from trading.

The 12:01 Rush: Players who submit actions immediately after reset get queue priority. If you're after a contested port or a valuable node, early action matters.

Your First Session — Step by Step

This is what a productive first session looks like. Follow it once, understand it, then start improvising.

Step 1: Read the Activity Feed

Before you spend a single turn, open the Activity screen (the log icon in the bottom nav). It is a unified stream filtered by tag:

• Realm — the AI-narrated Realm Report published every reset, your primary intelligence briefing
• Fugari — Fugari contact notices, seizures, and purge confirmations
• PvP — raid results, combat outcomes
• Drones — node captures, drone ping alerts, and your own deployed drone positions
• Syndicate — syndicate-level events and notifications
• Planets — planet production, attacks, garrison and battery events (your citadels only)
• Online — pilots currently active (updates live)
• Standings — the current cycle leaderboard by score

The Realm Report filter is where you start every session. It tells you where major activity happened, where the Fugari are pressing, which syndicates are fighting, and which lanes are hot. This is your intelligence briefing. Treat it like one.

Step 2: Open the Course Plotter

The Course Plotter is your navigation tool. It uses Dijkstra pathfinding — enter a destination, get 2–3 ranked routes with turn costs, hazard warnings, and lane annotations. Even if you don't know where you're going yet, open it and look at what's reachable from the Nexus in 3–5 turns.

Step 3: Find a Port

Your first objective is to make credits. If you haven't already used the Guided Trade Run (the pulsing button on the map — see above), now's the time. It will handle your first trade automatically. If you prefer to learn hands-on, fly to a nearby port node. When you arrive, your ship fires a passive scan automatically: it reveals all adjacent nodes, their types, ownership, and approximate drone density. Use this to orient yourself.

Step 4: Trade Once

Buy what the port sells. Sell what it buys. Prices are flat — every port pays the same for the same resource. What varies is stock: a depleted port may have nothing to sell you. Check levels before committing your whole hold.

Step 5: Scout the Lane

After your first trade, fly one or two nodes further along the lane. Note what's adjacent. Look for ports that create a trading loop -- two ports within a few hops of each other let you buy cargo at one and sell at the other, creating a natural shuttle route.

Step 6: Return to Nexus If You Need It

If your hold is full and you're out of good trades nearby, warp back. The Nexus is always there. Save a few turns for next session's opening move.

What a Reset Feels Like

At reset, your turn count refreshes. The Realm Report publishes. Ports regenerate 15% of their max capacity. Drone replenishment on Fugari nodes ticks. Everything in the galaxy shifts slightly.

If you've been hoarding turns near your bank cap, you're wasting potential — unspent turns above your cap simply don't accumulate. The game rewards engagement. Every reset is a new window.

Reading the Realm Report

The Realm Report is narrated by an omniscient voice — dry, precise, occasionally sardonic. It never addresses you directly. It refers to pilots by callsign in ALL CAPS. It covers:

• Significant PvP events (attacks, kills, wreck events)
• Territory changes (node captures, drone battles)
• Fugari activity and GPI signals (without revealing the raw score — look for metaphor)
• Syndicate events, including betrayals if any occurred (betrayals are always the headline)

Learning to read the GPI signals takes practice. "The Fugari bastion is silent in the way that fortresses are silent — watchful, complete, unmovable" means they're dominant. "Two Fugari convoys clashed near Node 34. Something is wrong inside the bastion" means they're fracturing. Pay attention to tone.

The Realm Report is not flavor text. It is intelligence.

A Note on Protection

You are new. The galaxy knows you are new. For your first several sessions and your first 50 lifetime turns, you are in the Fledgling tier — PvP attacks against you are blocked entirely. You have time to learn.

Use that time. The moment you graduate to Emerging, you become visible. Not immediately a target — but visible. And when you graduate to Established, the Realm Report names you. So does the Fugari contact that's been watching you.

The galaxy notices growth. Prepare for it.