How to play Universe Battle

They set the speed of your mines

Under 1 000 steps	25%
6 000	70%
10 000	100%
20 000 or more	150%

It never drops to zero. A week off costs you ground against your neighbours, not your empire.

They are your only uranium

No mine on any planet produces uranium and it cannot be bought. It comes out of your legs and nowhere else, and the Enrichment Plant multiplies what each step is worth — the same way a mine multiplies what a field is worth, so it grows with you instead of falling behind.

Walk nothing today and the plant gives you nothing. It makes your steps count; it does not replace them.

Careful with the tank: whatever does not fit is lost. Upgrade the Uranium Vault before a long weekend.

1 · They set the speed of everything

Today's steps decide how fast your mines run, from 25% on a day you do not move to 150% at twenty thousand. That happens on its own, every day, whether you open the game or not.

2 · They fill your Momentum bag

The same steps also bank time: 300 steps = 1 minute. That minute sits in a bag until you decide what to do with it — cut a minute off something you are building, or a minute off a fleet that is already in the air.

Ten thousand steps is over half an hour to spend wherever it hurts most that day. Nothing is wasted and nothing is automatic: you choose. And a Time Lapse takes 6% off that rate per level, all the way down to a hundred steps a minute.

The bag has a lid

Without a Momentum Store you can only hold five minutes, and everything past that is thrown away. The first level of that building takes you to half an hour, and it keeps growing to eight hours at level thirty.

Its neighbour, the Time Lapse, works on the other end: instead of how much you can hold, it changes how much a step is worth. Build the Store first — a better rate is no use if the bag overflows anyway.

It is the cheapest big decision in the game. Build it before you go on a long walk, not after.

Spending it on a fleet

One minute out of the bag is one minute off the journey — the same on a one-hour hop as on a one-day haul, because you walked the same either way.

You can never cut more than half of a trip on the same day, so nothing arrives out of nowhere. And it works both ways: bringing a fleet home early is how you save it.

Where the buttons are

There is no Momentum screen. The buttons appear next to whatever they would speed up, and only while there is something to speed up:

• Under a building that is going up, on Overview or on Buildings — right where it says ready in…
• Under a fleet already in the air, on the Fleet page.

They offer round amounts that fit both your bag and the job. There is no point being offered ten minutes off a job with two left on it, or off a bag holding one.

Nothing is spent by accident

Momentum is never taken automatically. If you never press a button it simply sits there — filling up, and then spilling over once the bag is full.

The chip in the top bar is the one to watch. It turns amber and says Full the moment you start throwing steps away, and it links straight to the Momentum Store.

A whole day of walking can go in the bin without a single warning anywhere else. That chip is the warning.

Two halves of the same substance

Uranium pays for buildings, research, ships and turrets. Fuel does one single thing: it lifts a hull off a planet. Nothing flies without it — not an attack, not a transport, not a rescue.

You make Fuel out of your own uranium in a Fuel Refinery. Without one you can still do it, badly: six uranium for one Fuel. Every level tightens that, down to one for one.

Fuel does not fit in the Uranium Vault: it needs a Fuel Tank, and that tank is what decides how big a campaign you can hold ready. Refine past what fits and the excess is gone.

That is the decision

Every unit you refine is a unit you are not spending in the yard. A bigger fleet, or a fleet that can actually go somewhere. You cannot have both out of the same walk.

Which means somebody who barely walks can still build a magnificent empire — enormous mines, every technology, a hangar full of ships. They just cannot take any of it anywhere.

Defences never need Fuel. Standing your ground is always free; leaving is what costs.

It is not spent and it is not saved

Iron, Crystal and Uranium pile up. Energy does neither: your buildings need a certain amount and your Solar Arrays and Fusion Reactors produce a certain amount. All that matters is whether the second covers the first.

If it does, your mines run at full speed. If it does not, every mine drops by the same share — cover 78% of what you need and your Iron and Crystal come out at 78%. It is a ceiling on everything, applied at once, and it never stops until you fix it.

Uranium is untouched: it comes from walking, not from a mine, so no power shortage can slow it down.

What the colour means

Green — full power. You produce everything your buildings need, with room to spare. Nothing is being held back.

Amber — full power, barely. You are still at 100%, but the margin is thin. The next level of any mine will take you under and slow down everything you already have. Build the power before the mine, not after.

Red — already slowed. The number is the percentage your mines are actually running at. Every hour it stays red is production you are simply not getting.

A Solar Array is the safe answer: it costs nothing to run. A Fusion Reactor makes considerably more, but burns uranium every hour — and uranium only comes from your legs. Let the tank run dry and the reactor stops, which drops your energy just when you were counting on it.

Interceptor Drones

Cheap, unarmed, single-use. Launch them at a fleet that is already on its way to you and each one pushes the arrival two minutes further out. They shoot nothing down — all they buy is time.

That time is the whole point: it is enough to walk your own fleet home, or to get one more turret finished.

A fleet can only be held up by half of its journey in total, so drones delay a raid — they never cancel one.

Signature Damping — the answer to drones

You cannot aim drones at a fleet if you do not know when it arrives. Research Signature Damping and your target still sees that something is coming, but not when — and a fleet nobody can time is a fleet nobody can intercept.

The warning never disappears completely: whatever you research, the defender always gets their last fifteen minutes back. Nobody is ever hit out of a clear sky.

A mission, not a place

There are no coordinates for the Sentinel. You pick it as the mission, your fleet leaves the charted systems, and it comes back when it comes back.

What it brings home is never the same twice: drifting cargo, a hull somebody walked away from, or nothing at all. It is the way forward for anyone who would rather not pick fights.

What to send

At least one Probe — something has to go ahead and look — and enough cargo hold to carry back whatever turns up. Send a probe on its own and it will find things it cannot bring you.

The trip out is the same length for everybody, so you can plan around it. Astrogation still shortens it, like it shortens everything.

Before you attack

• Spy first. The report tells you what is on the ground and what you would loot.
• You can only attack players between 1/5 and 5× your points.
• Bring cargo ships: the loot comes home in holds, and a fighter carries nothing.
• Check the fuel bill before confirming. The game shows it to you.

When they attack you

• You are told the moment the fleet takes off, not when it lands: by email, and on your watch.
• A fleet sitting at home gets caught on the ground. Send it away — the watch does it in one press with Save Fleet.
• Defences never move and 75% of what is destroyed is rebuilt for free.
• Nobody can hit the same planet more than six times in 24 hours.