Solar Expats: New Player Guide

1. The big picture

Solar Expats is turn-based. Each turn is one month, and you advance time with Enter, Space, or the ▶ Turn button. Orders are standing orders: tell a ship to collect iron once and it keeps collecting every turn until you cancel or the planet runs dry. You spend most of your time deciding, not clicking.

You win by being the first to 100 Victory Points (mostly from colonies — each colonized planet is worth its listed VP) or by earning a Sovereignty Charter through sustained trade with Earth. Either way, the road there runs through the same early game: claim good planets, plant colonies on them, and build the resource engine that pays for everything else. That first third of the game — roughly the first five in-game years — is what this guide covers.

2. What you start with

Everyone begins in orbit of Earth with a small fleet — a mix of warships and freighters that depends on your faction. There is no home planet: Earth is neutral UN territory that can never be claimed, colonized, or mined. What Earth does have is the UN Station, a shared shipyard anyone can use (it builds slowly — at half speed — but accepts payment in any mix of resources).

Your most important early asset hasn't arrived yet: sometime between turn 12 and turn 20, the UN Colonial Initiative grants every faction one free Colony Ship, delivered at Earth with a full tank. That ship is your first colony. Everything you do before it arrives is preparation for using it well.

One more piece of calendar to know: a system-wide truce covers the first 24 turns. Nobody sensible starts a fight during it (the UN sends warships after anyone who does), so your opening years are safe for unescorted freighters.

3. The three resources, and how to get them

There are exactly three resources. Nothing needs food, upkeep, or maintenance.

Energy: sunlight, and lots of it (near the Sun)

Every ship collects solar energy each turn, automatically, based on its distance from the Sun — and the falloff is steep. A ship at Earth gathers about 100 energy per turn; at Venus nearly 200; at Mars about 43; at Ceres about 13; past Jupiter, essentially nothing. Sunlight is free money in the inner system and a famine in the outer system. Plan around that.

Iron and silicon: mine them with ships

Park a ship in orbit of a planet, press C (Collect), and pick a mineral. The ship pulls about 14 units per turn into its cargo hold (while still collecting solar on the side — you never have to choose). Two things to know:

• Ship mining drains the planet's finite reserve. The green ring around a planet shows how much is left.
• Mining an unowned planet automatically claims it for you — a nice bonus for getting there first.
• Mining a planet someone else holds with real presence — a colony, station, outpost, or battlestar in orbit — is wildcat mining: you dig at a heavily reduced rate, and the owner remembers it (they'll quote you worse trade prices later, and triple the resentment if their battlestar is watching). A bare flag doesn't enforce anything, so the early land rush is unchanged.

Colonies: the engine that never runs out

A colony produces resources every turn, forever, for free — and its passive mining does not deplete the planet. A basic colony generates:

• 15 energy/turn from its core power plant (works anywhere), plus 15 × the planet's solar factor from sunlight;
• 10 minerals/turn, split evenly across whatever ore types the planet has. A planet with only iron puts all 10 into iron; a planet with both iron and silicon gives 5 of each. (Water never dilutes this split — a colony on a watered world harvests +4 water/turn on its own separate budget.)

This is the core economic lesson of the game: ship mining is a quick burst that runs out, while colonies are permanent income. The long-term economy is founding more colonies, not strip-mining planets.

4. Your first dozen turns

Your Colony Ship arrives around turn 12–20, so use the opening turns to scout, claim, and stockpile. A solid opening, whatever your fleet looks like:

1. Send fast ships outward for exploration points. The first faction to put a ship in orbit of each planet earns permanent VP (+2 for inner planets, +3 for outer ones). This is free score that can never be taken away, and everyone is racing for it.
2. Plant a flag on the planet you intend to settle. If you have a Scout, fly it to your chosen colony target and press P (Claim). A flag reserves the planet — rivals can't colonize a world you've flagged, and your Colony Ship can still land there later.
3. Put your freighters to work. Send one to Mars or Eros to start mining iron (C once it's in orbit), and let others sit near Earth or Venus soaking up solar energy. A freighter idling at Venus banks almost 200 energy a turn.
4. Consider a second Light Freighter. It's the cheapest, fastest build in the game, and the UN Station at Earth will build it for you. You can never have too much cargo capacity early.
5. Think ahead: order a second Colony Ship. The UN yard accepts payment in any mix of resources totalling 1600 — one freighter's full energy tank plus some ore covers it, and the UN provisions the settlers' water from Earth's oceans as part of the deal. It builds at half speed, so an order placed in the first few turns isn't ready until around turn 54… which is exactly when you'll be wanting colony number two. There is no faster route: your own station or a mature colony can't deliver a settler that early.

5. Founding your first colony

When the UN Colony Grant arrives at Earth, the steps are simple:

1. Click the Colony Ship and pick your target planet from its Destinations list.
2. Confirm the trip in the travel planner. Colony Ships arrive with a full tank, and inner-system targets are comfortably in range: Mars takes roughly 7–16 turns depending on where the planets are, and costs only a few hundred of the ship's 2000 energy. Even a direct run to Ceres is affordable.
3. When the ship arrives and enters orbit, press O (Colonize).

The colony appears instantly, seeded with a small stockpile (250 E / 75 Fe / 50 Si) — and the Colony Ship is consumed in the process. It becomes the colony. From then on you manage the colony by clicking its hexagon marker on the map, which opens its upgrade and shipyard menu.

You can only colonize a planet that is unclaimed or already flagged by you, and never Earth. If somebody else colonized your target first, their claim is exclusive — pick another world. This is why flagging early matters.

6. Which planet should you colonize?

Three things make a planet a good colony:

• Distance. Closer means less fuel, a shorter trip, and better sunlight for the colony's solar income.
• Minerals. Both the size of the reserve (for ship mining) and which types are present (a colony's passive mining splits across the types the planet holds).
• Victory points. A colony scores the planet's full VP value.

One more thing to weigh: silicon. A colony on an iron-only world (Mars, Eros, Psyche) starts with 50 silicon and will never produce another unit of it — and most upgrades, every ship, and any future station there need silicon. That doesn't disqualify Mars; it means a freighter will eventually have to haul silicon in (Venus and Vesta are the nearest sources). A two-ore world like Vesta or Ceres never has that problem — the trade-off is weaker sunlight.

And a newer one: water, which settlers built at your own yards will need. Ceres is the belt's water tower (and Mars has polar ice), while Vesta — despite being an asteroid — is bone dry, matching the real one. A watered colony trickles water forever and can build Ice Harvesters; a dry one imports water or buys it from the UN at Earth. It's a point in Ceres's column as the long-term expansion hub.

7. Growing the colony

A colony has no population to feed and nothing that decays. It "grows" through the upgrades you build, paid from its own stockpile, one project at a time (a docked ship will automatically chip in if the colony is a little short):

A sensible first-colony build order:

1. Mining Drill — more ore per turn compounds into everything else;
2. Solar Array (inner-system worlds) or a second Drill;
3. Storage Bay when the stockpile starts bumping against its caps;
4. Defense Battery once the truce is over and aggressive neighbors are roaming.

The colony can also build small ships — Scouts, Destroyers, and Freighters — from its own shipyard menu. It builds them slowly (three times the normal build time), but a frontier colony that can replace its own freighters saves you a lot of hauling. At 5 years old (60 turns), a colony matures and can build Colony Ships itself — that's the moment your expansion stops depending on Earth.

8. Space stations

A station is your own full-speed shipyard, fortress, and warehouse in one, and the only place you can build Battlestars. It scores 25% of its planet's VP. The catch: it costs 2000 E / 600 Fe / 400 Si — by far the biggest early-game purchase.

How building one works:

1. Put any ship in orbit of a planet you want the station at (not Earth), press B (Build), and choose Space Station. The ship hands over its resources and starts working.
2. The builder ship must stay in orbit until the station reaches 50% — about 8 turns. After that the station finishes on its own and the ship is free to leave.
3. Other ships can top up the construction fund any time with H (Contribute).

Stations don't take upgrades, but once one is running (or from a Battlestar, at higher cost) you can add two separate structures at a planet: a Mining Operation (500/150/100, doubles the speed of ship mining there — great over a rich reserve you're actively hauling from) and a Military Outpost (800/250/150, buffs your ships in combat nearby). Both consume resources gradually as they build, so they're much friendlier to start than a station.

9. Freighters and moving resources around

Nothing moves by itself. Colonies don't share stockpiles, and ore in a colony's warehouse at Ceres cannot pay for a freighter at Mars. Freighters are how resources get where they're needed, and the rhythm of the early game is a simple loop: mine or collect where it's plentiful, haul to where it's spent.

With a ship selected in orbit next to a colony, station, or friendly ship:

• D Deposit — unload into the local colony or station;
• W Withdraw — load up from it;
• R Transfer — move cargo or energy to another ship.

There's also a fourth option when hauling is too slow: trade. With your ship orbiting where a foreign faction has a ship, colony, or station, press U (Trade) to buy ore with energy or sell ore for energy at their posted price. The price tilts with circumstances — sellers charge more for ore they can't produce themselves, whoever is closer to winning gets the worse end of every deal, and a faction you've wildcat-mined will gouge you or refuse outright. Sometimes paying an AI's markup for silicon beats waiting twenty turns for your freighter — and that's a reason to stay at peace. (The same U at Earth reaches the UN's water counter: flat price, no cooldown, and the only thing the UN will ever sell you.)

Three logistics facts worth internalizing early:

• Iron and silicon share one cargo hold. A Light Freighter's 350 cargo is 350 total, not 350 of each.
• Newly built ships launch with only half a tank. Let a fresh ship sit in sunlight a turn or two before sending it anywhere far.
• The Heavy Freighter's 9000-energy tank is a feature. It's designed to be a flying fuel depot: fill it with cheap inner-system solar energy, then deposit energy at colonies out in the dark where sunlight can't keep up.

10. Things that trip up new players

• Running out of fuel in deep space. Entering orbit costs energy (about 50 for a Scout, more for heavy loaded ships), and arriving without enough means a rough entry that costs 20% of the ship's hull. The travel planner shows the round-trip energy estimate and warns you — believe it. A stranded ship can always refuel on sunlight in the inner system; past the belt, it can't.
• The thrust intensity slider. Pushing it past 50% wears out your engines, and past 67% risks outright engine failure. Leave it at the default until you have a reason and a repair station.
• The truce ends at turn 24. After that, aggressive factions start hunting, and a bare colony has only 150 hull and three small lasers. (One mercy: every colony's first two years are under UN colonial protection — attacking a new settlement's faction at its planet brings peacekeepers, truce or no truce — so a freshly founded colony has a grace window to grow teeth.) A Defense Battery or a Destroyer parked in orbit turns your colony from a snack into a porcupine. (When your own warship arrives at another faction's planet, you'll be asked to choose a local truce or declare war — the truce is almost always right early on.)
• An empty energy bar is a silent colony. Colony lasers need 15 energy per shot; a colony that has spent everything on upgrades can't defend itself. The end-of-turn warning flags this.
• Random events start after the opening truce — meteor showers, equipment failures, cargo breaches, but also supply caches and rich mineral strikes. They target random ships across all factions, so don't panic-plan around them; just avoid having your whole economy riding in one hull.

11. Where the mid-game begins

By around year five (turn 60), a healthy expansion looks like this:

• A first colony with several upgrades, producing steadily;
• A station (probably at the same planet) building ships at full speed;
• A second Colony Ship arriving at a two-ore world like Ceres or Vesta — if you ordered it from the UN yard in the opening turns (see section 4), it founds colony number two around turns 60–75; wait for your own station or a mature colony to build it, and the date slips past turn 80;
• A freighter loop connecting them, and most exploration VP within reach claimed.

Right about then, your first colony turns five years old and unlocks Colony Ship production — expansion no longer depends on the UN. From there the game opens up: push outward for the high-VP frontier worlds (which means fusion reactors and heavy freighter supply lines), or pivot your ore surplus into the Earth trade route toward a Sovereignty Charter. Both paths are won or lost on the economy you built in these first sixty turns.

12. Things to try

• Start a sandbox game (0 opponents) and practice the full opening: scout, flag, colonize, upgrade, station — with nobody racing you.
• Park a freighter at Venus and one at Mars for ten turns and compare their energy banks. The solar falloff is the whole inner-system economy in one lesson.
• Found a colony on Mars (all iron) and later one on Ceres (iron + silicon) and watch how the same 10/turn mining budget splits differently.
• Try building a station before colonizing a planet, then the other way around at your next planet, and compare how painful the funding is.
• Time a Heavy Freighter's round trip to the belt and back. How much of the trip was free coasting?