The Cycle

The Cycle — The Long Game

What follows was written by pilots who have survived at least three cycles. Not all of it will make sense on your first. Read it anyway, so that when the galaxy snaps into focus mid-cycle, you have context for what you're feeling.

What a Cycle Is

A cycle is the arc from one galaxy's founding to the moment the Fugari homeworld — Kethara Prime — falls. There is no fixed duration. Some cycles end in a week of relentless coordinated assault. Others stretch for weeks as the Fugari dig in, the GPI stays stubbornly high, and the coalition fractures before it can push.

When Kethara Prime falls, the galaxy is reborn — and so is everyone in it. A new Big Bang regenerates the topology entirely: new node layout, new warp connections, new procedurally named Space Lanes. Every pilot's credits, rank tier, planets, bank balance, and reputation reset to their starting values, badges and outstanding loans clear, and non-active ships are cleared. This isn't a rare admin event — it's the core loop, and it fires automatically the instant a coalition lands the killing blow.

What survives the reset: meta points and career stats, syndicate membership, phone verification, and 10% of your syndicate's shared vault. Everything else starts from zero.

The cycle is the meta game, and the reset is what gives it stakes — individual sessions are turns in a chess match that takes weeks to conclude, and the board is wiped clean when it's over. The leaderboard at the end is the permanent record of who contributed, who landed the killing blow, and who — against all the galaxy's opposition — made it across the Coreward approach and fired.

The Big Bang and New Cycles

The Big Bang generates a galaxy from scratch: the node layout, the warp connections, the procedurally named Space Lanes. It fires at the start of every cycle — automatically the moment the previous cycle's Fugari homeworld falls, or manually via --init for the very first galaxy ever created. Once a cycle's Big Bang completes, that topology is fixed for the duration of the cycle. It does not carry forward to the next one.

Each new cycle brings a fresh Kethara Prime — full HP, fresh GPI, new AI strategy seeded at spawn — inside a freshly generated galaxy. The Coreward path exists again from scratch, same as everything else.

The Fugari AI strategy for each cycle is seeded when the cycle starts. You won't know it until their behavior reveals it over the first several resets. The Realm Report's early signals — how aggressively they're latching, whether they're expanding or fortifying — give you the read. Experienced players identify the strategy by the third or fourth reset.

Early cycle priorities:

• Map the galaxy from the Nexus outward, particularly Coreward — every pilot starts from the same blank map
• Establish trade routes before lanes get contested
• Watch the Realm Report for GPI signals and Fugari behavior patterns
• There's no head start into a new cycle beyond experience — everyone begins at starting credits, rank 1, with no planets

Fledgling pilots entering the game for the first time and veterans of a dozen cycles start the new one from exactly the same baseline. What carries over is knowledge of the systems, not wealth.

Reading GPI Throughout the Cycle

The Galaxy Prosperity Index is the cycle's primary strategic variable. It determines how hard the home planet is to assault at any given moment, and it fluctuates based on how many players are active, how much the Fugari are earning from drains, and how over-extended they've become.

A healthy mid-cycle GPI pattern looks like this: the Fugari start Thriving (50–79), their income grows as they latch more players, GPI pushes toward Apex (80–100). Then, if the coalition is coordinating purges and the Fugari have expanded too aggressively, the tension penalty climbs, and GPI begins to slip.

When GPI drops to Developing (25–49), the outer drone screen replenishes at only 60% and guardians regenerate at 50%. This is the signal to begin serious assault — not the killing push, but the attrition work on the orbital defenses that sets up the final strike.

When GPI hits Sparse (10–24), no guardian regen and only 30% drone replenishment. Any coalition worth the name should be assaulting the core approach at this point.

The Frontier window (GPI 0–9) is the rarest and most important event in any cycle. The main Fugari fleet has actually departed. The bastion runs on a skeleton crew. 20% drone replenishment, no guardians whatsoever. Cycles end at Frontier more often than not. The window is finite — the fleet returns. Missing it after spending an entire cycle building toward the assault is the kind of loss veterans don't discuss lightly.

What Carries Over (and What Doesn't)

Understanding persistence is critical for long-term planning.

What resets every 12 hours (epoch reset):

• Turn count (2,000 for verified players, 300 for unverified)
• Credit stipend (+100 credits per player per reset)
• Port stock (partial — 15% regen)
• Fugari drone screen (partial — based on GPI band)

What persists across epoch resets (unchanged between ticks):

• Credits
• Node ownership (drone networks)
• Syndicate membership and vault
• Reputation score
• Active scan results (until marked stale at next reset)
• Ship hull and upgrades
• Planets, citadels, and all deposited cargo

What resets when Kethara Prime dies:

Killing the Fugari homeworld triggers a full galaxy reinit — new topology, a new cycle id, and a hard player wipe. It is the same reset described at the top of this page, and it is the big one.

The world:

• The galaxy itself — a fresh Big Bang: new node layout, new warp connections, newly named Space Lanes
• Kethara Prime HP — fully restored when the new Fugari cycle spawns
• GPI — reset to starting state for the new cycle
• Fugari AI strategy — re-seeded when the new cycle begins
• Leaderboard standings — archived, then cleared for the new cycle
• Wrecklog entries — archived in the cycle record, then cleared
• Fugari guardian perimeter — rebuilds from scratch over the new cycle's epochs

Your pilot:

• Credits — back to the starting balance
• Bank balance and accrued interest — zeroed
• Outstanding loans — cleared
• Cargo — emptied
• Every ship except the one you are currently flying (an Escape Drifter is upgraded to a Drifter)
• Drones — back to the configured starting guardians and strikers
• Reputation — to 0
• Rank tier — to Tier 1, Fledgling
• Heat and infamy — to 0
• Badges — deleted
• Fog of war — cleared; the map goes dark again

What survives:

• Meta points and consumables
• Lifetime career stats (active income is zeroed, so Fat Sack cannot be immediately re-awarded)
• Syndicate membership
• 10% of your syndicate's shared vault — note this is the syndicate pot, not your personal bank, which is zeroed
• Phone or Steam verification, which is why your turn tier survives

This is the stake. When Kethara Prime falls the galaxy is reborn and so is your pilot: you carry your name, your record and your meta points into the next hunt, and almost nothing else. The killing-blow pilot is permanently recorded in the Fugari cycle archive, and a new hunt begins.

The implication for long-term play is the opposite of compounding. Credits do not accumulate across cycles, and neither does rank — a Tier 8 veteran starts the next cycle as a Tier 1 Drifter alongside everyone else. What follows you is the record: meta points, career totals, and your syndicate.

Source of truth. The reset contract is defined in fugari-engine/src/db/reinit.rs, whose header comment lists exactly what resets and what persists. reset_player_state there is the single function both the Fugari-death path and the admin cold-start call, so the two cannot silently diverge. If this section and that comment ever disagree, the comment is right and this page is stale.

Fugari Cycle Scoring

Scores for a Fugari cycle are finalized the instant the Fugari core reaches zero. The Records system snapshots every pilot's contributions from the cycle's combat log at that moment across multiple leaderboard categories.

Damage dealt is the primary scoring axis. Every assault against every layer — drone garrison, orbital defenses, guardians, core — accumulates points for the attacking pilot. Pilots who showed up for the attrition work across a dozen sessions will outrank pilots who only arrived for the final push.

The killing blow bonus is 1,000 points on top of whatever damage the killing-blow pilot contributed. It is meaningful, but it does not override a cycle of sustained assault. The pilot who dealt the final shot but did little else will not top the leaderboard over someone who spent twenty sessions battering the orbital defenses.

Purge completions reward the good-path players who applied GPI pressure all cycle. 200 points per successful purge adds up — and purging is what made the final window possible.

The Records system captures more than raw Fugari damage — wreck counts, trade volume, node tenure, and other contributions are tracked across categories. The full leaderboard is available via the Records tab. It is permanent: the cycle archive preserves it.

The End Sequence

When the core reaches zero, the Fugari cycle ends immediately. There is no delay, no scheduled tick, no 12-hour wait.

1. Leaderboard finalized. All players' scores are snapshotted from the combat log at the kill moment. The killing-blow pilot receives their +1,000 bonus. The leaderboard is archived permanently under this Fugari cycle's record.
2. Galaxy-wide broadcast. Every connected player receives a real-time notification naming the killing-blow pilot's callsign and ship.
3. New Fugari cycle spawns automatically. No admin intervention required. Kethara Prime is reborn with full HP. A new AI strategy seeds. The GPI resets. The leaderboard clears for the new cycle.
4. The galaxy is reborn. A fresh Big Bang lays down new topology under a new cycle id, and every pilot is reset to starting credits at Tier 1 — see What resets when Kethara Prime dies above for the full contract. The game does not pause; pilots who were mid-session keep playing, in a new galaxy.

The killing-blow pilot is permanently recorded in the Fugari cycle archive. The new Fugari cycle begins with the same pilots — carrying their meta points, career records and syndicates, and little else — and the hunt resumes.

Advice from Those Who've Been Through It

On the early Fugari cycle: don't rush toward Coreward in your first five sessions. The pilots who die Coreward trying to reach the Fugari planet before they have a Warship-class hull are consistent across every cycle. The galaxy is not a sprint to the planet. It is an economy and an arms race. Win the economy first.

Veterans entering a new Fugari cycle do not already have ships and credits — the reset takes those. What they have is knowledge and meta points. The temptation is to skip ahead and go straight for the approach on the strength of experience. The pilots who resist that and rebuild the economy first tend to be better positioned when the Frontier window opens.

On the mid-cycle Fugari latch: you will be latched. Plan for the drain. Have a purge strategy ready before Stage 4, not after. Stage 5 seizure is survivable; it costs more time and turns than an earlier purge would have.

On the Frontier window: the players who win Fugari cycles are the ones who have their fleet assembled, their approach route scouted, and their turns banked when the Realm Report says the fleet has left. Not the ones who start building then. The preparation precedes the signal.

On the final push: the killing blow is one action, but the cycle is won or lost in the twenty sessions before it. The scoreboard reflects this. A pilot who contributed 10,000 damage points to the orbital defenses and purged three Fugari latches will outrank most of the pilots who happened to be present for the final assault.

The Fugari cycle ends every time. The only question is how your name appears in the Final Realm Report — and what position you carry into the next hunt.