Orbital Systems
Orbital systems are the primary locations where players build, extract resources, and project force. They are the fine-grained geography of the game world — each one a distinct, named place on the region map.
Purpose
Each orbital system is a distinct, named location on a region's local map. It is the finest-grained addressable point in the game world — below the region but above individual stellar objects.
Everything economically and militarily significant happens at the system level: resources are extracted from stellar objects within a system, infrastructure is constructed inside a system, and fleets occupy and move between systems.
Player Value
Orbital systems are where the game is actually played. A player operating in a system can build infrastructure, stage fleets, and extract resources from stellar objects within it.
Not all systems are equal. Systems with rare or high-yield stellar objects are more economically valuable. Systems at grid chokepoints — where few paths exist around them — are more militarily valuable. The most strategically significant systems tend to be both.
What Systems Contain
An orbital system contains zero or more stellar objects. Stellar objects are the astronomical bodies inside a system — stars, planets, moons, asteroid belts, gas giants, and other formations.
Each stellar object has a composition that determines what, if anything, can be extracted from it. A system with no stellar objects offers no extractable resources, but may still hold strategic value due to its grid position.
For more on stellar objects, see Stellar Objects.
Gateway Systems
Some orbital systems are designated as gateways. A gateway system has a connection to a specific system in a neighboring region, allowing fleets to cross the region boundary.
Gateway systems appear on the local region grid like any other system, but they carry additional strategic weight — they are chokepoints between regions.
For how inter-region movement through gateways works, see Inter-Region Movement.
Rules
- Each orbital system belongs to exactly one region.
- Each orbital system has a unique name within its region.
- An orbital system occupies exactly one cell on its region's local 2D grid.
- Fleets move between systems by traversing adjacent occupied cells on the grid. Adjacency is orthogonal — north, south, east, and west only.
- An orbital system contains zero or more stellar objects.
- The stellar objects in a system determine what resources can be extracted there.
- A system's position on the grid is fixed at world definition time.
Player Actions
- View all orbital systems in a region on the local region map.
- View the details of a specific orbital system: its name, stellar objects, grid position, and current status.
- Move a fleet into an adjacent orbital system.
- Build infrastructure within an orbital system (subject to ownership and construction rules).
- Extract resources from a stellar object within a system (subject to extraction rules).
Constraints
- Players cannot create, move, or delete orbital systems.
- The number of systems in a region is bounded by the region's grid size and is fixed at world definition time.
- Fleet movement rules — travel time, fuel cost, and combat — are defined in a separate feature.
- Construction and extraction rules are defined in their respective features.