Interface

Every page in SFC2 sits in the same frame. There is a bar across the top holding your planets, your resources and the menu, and everything below it is whichever page you picked. Learn the bar and the rest of the game is just pages.

The top bar

The first row has the universe you are playing in on the left. Click the name to open the universe list, where you can switch universes or join one you have not played yet. Next to it is the game clock. That clock reads the same for every player no matter where they live, and any notice about downtime or maintenance uses it. Your commander name sits in the middle, and the small sun or moon button on the right switches between the dark and light color scheme.

The second row is the planet bar. Your homeworld and your colonies are listed with their name and coordinates, and the one you are looking at has a box around it. If a planet has a moon, the moon shows up as a small second icon on the same tile and its coordinates are repeated with an m on the end, like 1:2:8m. Click either one to switch to it. Slots you have not settled yet just say Colony and take you to the Galaxy page. You can hold up to 10 planets, and moons do not count against that. If you want them in a different order, move them up and down under Settings, in the Gameplay section.

On the right is the resource panel. It shows ore, crystal and hydrogen for the planet you have selected, a link to the trade merchant, and your credit balance. The numbers count up on their own while you sit on a page, so you do not have to refresh to watch a mine fill.

The last row is the menu.

The menu

The menu is yours to arrange. Open Settings, pick Navigation, and you get a checkbox for every page in the game. Anything you tick sits in the top row. Anything you untick moves into the More dropdown at the right end of that row. Nothing is ever taken away from you, it only moves.

A new commander starts with Overview, Fleets, Galaxy and Missions, then Buildings, Shipyard, Defense and Research, then Messages and Alliances, then Get Lucky, and everything else under More. The thin dividers in the row mark the groups: pages about the universe, pages about the planet you have selected, social pages, and everything else.

Some pages care which planet you have selected and some do not. Buildings, Shipyard and Defense are about the selected planet only. Research is empire wide but runs out of the lab on the planet you have selected. Overview has a switch for one planet or all of them. Fleets, Galaxy, Messages, Leaders and the rest read the same wherever you are standing.

Switching planets does not knock you off the page you are on. If you are looking at Buildings on your homeworld and you click a colony, you get that colony's Buildings page. That makes it quick to walk the same page down every planet you own.

Universe pages

Overview

Overview is where you land. The panel on the left is the planet itself: its picture, its coordinates, the temperature range, how many building fields are used, how many fleet slots you have in the air, and whether newbie protection or diplomacy mode is on. The pencil button on the picture changes the artwork. Under it are buttons to rename the planet or abandon it.

The rest of the page is everything currently running for that planet: fleets in the air, the building being upgraded, ships being built, and the research you have going. Every row has a progress bar and a countdown. Building and research rows also carry a Complete button that finishes the job right now for credits, and a Cancel button. The small icon at the end of a row copies the status as text so you can paste it into chat or the forum.

The All Planets switch in the page header opens a second view with four tabs.

Tasks lists everything running anywhere. Ships totals your ships and shows every build queue. Buildings lines your building levels up planet by planet. Resources shows what is in the bank on each planet and what every mine is producing per hour. It is the fastest way to spot the colony you have been neglecting.

Fleets

Fleets is fleet control for the whole empire. The header counts your fleet slots. You get one slot plus one more for every level of A.I. Tech, and missions use them too, so a slot spent on a raid is a slot you cannot use for a transport.

Anything in the air is listed above the dispatch form, two lines per fleet: the outbound leg and the return leg. Each line shows where it came from, where it is going, what is in it and how long is left. Hover a ship icon or the Cargo tag for exact numbers. The outbound leg of most missions has a Cancel button. Cancelling turns the fleet around immediately, and the trip home takes exactly as long as it has been flying, so a fleet 20 minutes into a five hour trip is back in 20 minutes. You do not get the hydrogen back, so think before you send.

Below that is Fleet Dispatch. Pick a mission, pick a destination by typing coordinates or clicking one of your own planets, pick your ships, and send. Once a mission and a destination are set the page adds a cargo box and a summary with the distance, the flight time, the hydrogen it will burn and how much cargo space you have. The speed dropdown slows the fleet down, which burns less hydrogen and takes longer.

The missions are Colonization, Transport, Deploy, Attack, Espionage, Harvest, Fleet Save and Group Defend. Attacks you have launched also get a Formation link for pulling others into a group attack, and a Withdraw button once you have joined one.

Galaxy

Galaxy shows one solar system at a time. Step through systems and galaxies with the arrows, or type coordinates and press Go. Home jumps back to the system your selected planet sits in. Turn on keyboard navigation in Settings and you can move with the arrow keys instead.

Every slot in the system gets a row: what is in it, any debris field floating there, who owns it, their status and alliance tag, and the actions you can take. The icons on the right are spy, quick spy, attack, message and buddy request. Empty slots show a flag icon that starts a colonization. Your own planets are highlighted and get transfer and deploy shortcuts instead.

The status column is short but it matters. Press Legend at the bottom right for the full list. The short version:

• (*) active in the last 15 minutes, (20m) active 20 minutes ago
• n newbie protection or too weak to attack, N too strong to attack
• i inactive for 7 days or more, I inactive for 21 days or more
• v on vacation, V on vacation with protection lapsed, so they can be attacked
• d protected by diplomacy mode, P in PVE mode, ! diplomacy mode being switched

The rank number next to a name is colored too: blue for a weaker opponent, red for a stronger one, gray for one you cannot touch.

Missions

Missions are short jobs you send ships out on for resources without attacking another player. Each one lists the ships it needs, how long it takes and roughly what it pays. Type a number in the box to run several copies at once. Every copy takes a fleet slot, so eight of one mission is eight slots.

The Expedition Bonus in the header is the extra payout your Expedition Tech level adds on top of every mission reward.

The red banner at the top is the secret mission. It builds an enemy base scaled to your strength at a hidden location and sends your fleet through a wormhole to reach it. Missions tagged Daily reset every day. Anything you cannot crew yet says Not Enough Ships instead of Start.

Quests

Quests are longer goals with rewards attached, split into Daily, Development, Military, Operations, Social and Technology. The page tracks your progress on each one and holds the reward until you press Claim. The badge on the menu link counts how many are waiting.

Calculator

The Calculator is a battle simulator. Load an attacking fleet and a defending fleet, up to three waves each, and it runs the fight for you. It is still in beta, so treat the numbers as a guide rather than a promise.

Planet pages

Buildings

Buildings covers everything you construct on the ground, and that includes the mines and the power plants. The panels down the left side are the planet's vital signs: fields used out of fields available with a Terraform button, production per hour for each resource, energy used out of energy produced, and how full your storage is.

Terraform buys five more building fields for 10,000 credits. A planet caps out at 320 fields.

Each row shows the current level, what the next level costs, how long it takes and what it gains you. Mines and power plants also carry a capacity dropdown so you can throttle one back when energy is short. You can only upgrade one thing at a time on a planet, and whatever is running sits in a Tasks panel at the top with a Complete for credits button and a Cancel. More Info opens the full page for that building, and the pin next to it adds it to your favorites so it sorts to the top of the list.

Shipyard and Defense

Shipyard builds ships and Defense builds defenses and missiles. They work the same way: set a quantity, press Build, and it joins the planet's build queue. The two pages share one queue, so a long run of cruisers on the Shipyard page will hold up a batch of turrets on the Defense page. The queue sits in the left panel with arrows to reorder it and a clear link to empty it, and the panel under it counts what you already have parked on that planet.

Research

Research is where you level up your technology, and what you learn applies to every planet you own. It runs out of the Research Lab on the planet you have selected, and you can only research one thing at a time across the whole empire. You also cannot start anything while a Research Lab is being upgraded anywhere. The left panel lists your current levels.

Social pages

Messages

Messages holds your inbox, sent mail and trash, and it is where battle reports, spy reports and mission results land. Filters across the top separate system reports from player mail. Your buddy list lives on the same page.

Alliances

If you are not in an alliance, the Alliances link opens the browser where you can search for one, apply, or start your own. Once you are in one, the same link takes you straight to your alliance forum. Everything else about the alliance, the member list, the ranks, diplomacy with other alliances, hangs off there.

Invites

Invites gives you a personal link to hand to a friend. If they join and stay active, you earn lucky draw tokens.

Polls

Polls lets anyone in the universe put a question up for everyone else to vote on.

Everything else

Leaders

Leaders is the scoreboard. The left column splits it into the weekly boards, which are Velocity: Fleet, Velocity: Buildings and Raider of the Week, and the all time boards, which are Overall, Resources Spent, Buildings, Ships, Techs, Defenses, Destroyed Ships and PvP Destroyed Ships. You can look at players or at alliances, and filter down to just your buddies or just your own alliance. Your own row is highlighted wherever it lands. The all time boards refresh every hour and the weekly boards update twice a day.

Content

Content is the requirement browser. Pick a category and it shows everything in the game, with a green check on what you have unlocked and a padlock plus a list of what is missing on what you have not. There is a Locked Only switch if you only want to see what is still ahead of you. This is the page to open when you want to know why something is not showing up in your shipyard yet.

Get Lucky

Get Lucky is the lucky draw. Spend a token, pick a card, and win resources, ships or credits. Tokens come from quests, from invites and from the Store.

Store and Credits

The Store sells things for credits: lucky draw tokens, the trade merchant, moving a planet to a different slot, terraforming, and PVE mode, which switches player combat off in both directions for a set number of days. Credits themselves are bought on the Credits page, which is what the credit balance in the top bar links to.

Trade

The Trade link in the resource panel opens the merchant, where you swap one resource for another at the going rate for a credit fee. See Trading for the details.

Forum

Forum is the game's message board. Ask questions, argue about tactics, brag about battles and read the announcements. Bugs and account problems belong in Support, not on the forum.

Wiki

Wiki brings you here.

Notes

Notes is a private scratchpad. Keep target lists, fleet plans or anything else you want, and share a note with a secret link if you want someone else to read it.

Settings

Settings has seven sections. Notifications picks which events push an alert to you. Profile renames your commander and sets the quote on your bio. Interface holds display options, including the classic SFC1 art pack, abbreviated numbers, skipping confirmation prompts and keyboard navigation. Navigation arranges the menu. Gameplay covers quick espionage, fleet shortcuts and planet order. Protection is PVE mode, diplomacy mode and vacation mode. Forum holds your forum identity and whether other players can message you.

Support

Support is how you reach the team behind the game. Open a ticket for a bug, a payment problem or anything to do with your account, and the reply comes back on the same page.

Moons and the Oracle

A moon is a separate planetoid sharing a slot with its planet, and it appears in the planet bar under its planet. Most of the game works the same on it, but a moon has no mines and no power plants, so it produces nothing on its own. It also cannot be abandoned. The only things you can build there are a Lunar Base, a Capitol, an Oracle, a Warp Gate and a Lunar Dock.

Build an Oracle and a new Oracle page appears for that moon. It sweeps the systems on either side of it and reports one kind of contact per scan: encounters, inactive players, or active players. Its level sets how far it reaches, and each scan burns hydrogen out of the moon it is standing on.

The footer

The bottom of every page has links to the Terms of Use, the Rules, the Privacy Policy, and the Discord server. Support moved into the menu, so that is where to go when you need help.