Settings

Settings is where you set up how the game looks and behaves for you. It is the page SFC1 called Options. You get to it from the More dropdown at the right end of the top menu, and if you use it a lot you can move it onto the menu itself from the Navigation section below.

The page has seven sections listed down the left side. Click one and it loads on the right. Nothing here costs resources except renaming your commander.

What is saved where

Most of these settings belong to the commander you are playing, so every universe you play in keeps its own copy. A few belong to your account and follow you everywhere.

Per commander, per universe	Commander name and quote, Navigation, Gameplay, Protection, Direct Messages, and everything in Interface except the two mobile switches
Per account	Push notifications and the notification types, Mobile Auto-Scroll, Desktop Layout on Mobile, Auto-follow Topics, and your forum identity

Notifications

Push notifications tell your phone or desktop when something finishes, even when the game is not the window you are looking at. Press Enable Push Notifications and your browser asks for permission. Allow it once and the button turns green and reads Disable Push Notifications, so the same button switches it back off later.

Under the button is the list of things that can raise an alert. Everything is ticked when you start, so untick what you do not want. Ticks save the moment you click them, there is no save button.

• Production covers structure upgrades, tech research, ship construction, defense construction and missions.
• Messages covers a message arriving and a reply landing on one of your support tickets.
• Email covers two warnings that go to your account email address instead of your screen. The diplomacy one goes out about a day before seven days away from the game suspends your diplomacy protection.
• Fleets covers colonization, transport, deploy, attack, espionage and harvest fleets, each ticked on its own.

Profile

Rename Commander changes the name other players see. It costs 20,000 credits. The name has to be 2 to 20 characters, made only of letters, numbers, spaces, underscores and hyphens, and nobody else in the same universe can already be using it. There is no waiting period between renames, and your old name is not held for you once you drop it.

Personal Quote is a line of up to 200 characters that shows on your bio when another commander looks you up. Empty the box and save to clear it.

Interface

Display and input switches. All of them save the instant you flip them.

Setting	What it does
Classic Art Pack	Swaps the artwork for buildings, research, ships, defense and missions back to the original SFC1 images.
Abbreviated Numbers	Writes big numbers as 1.2M or 3.5B in the resource bar, on the fleet pages and in the battle calculator. Hover a shortened number to read the exact figure. You can type shorthand like 5m or 2.5b into quantity boxes whether this is on or off.
Skip Confirmation Prompts	Drops the "are you sure" step on ordinary actions you could undo. Destructive ones still ask every time, so deletes, removals and teardowns are not affected.
Keyboard Navigation	Left and right arrow keys move you one solar system at a time on the Galaxy page. Shift plus an arrow jumps a whole galaxy. The arrows are ignored while you are typing in a box or while a popup is open.
Overview Defaults to All Planets	Opens Overview on the All Planets view instead of the single planet one. You can still switch views at the top of the page.
Chat Bubble on the Left	Moves the alliance chat bubble to the bottom-left corner of the screen instead of the bottom-right. The bubble only appears while you are in an alliance.
Mobile Auto-Scroll	On a phone or tablet, loading a page scrolls you past the top menu straight to the content. Desktop browsers are never affected.
Desktop Layout on Mobile	Renders the full desktop layout on a phone, zoomed out to fit, the way the original game did. Double-tap or pinch to zoom in. It is there for players who find the mobile text hard to read.

All eight start off. The light and dark color scheme is not one of them, that is the small sun or moon button in the top bar.

Navigation

This section is a checkbox for every page in the game. Ticked pages sit in the top menu. Unticked pages move into the More dropdown at the right end of it. Nothing is ever taken away from you, it only moves. Press Save Navigation when you are done.

The four groups match the dividers in the menu itself: Universe, Planet, Social and Other. 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. See Interface for what each of those pages does.

Gameplay

Quick Espionage sets how many Hermes probes the one-click spy button sends. Put a number from 1 to 50 in the box and press Save. After that, the spy button on a Galaxy row or in an Oracle result fires that many probes straight from the planet you have selected instead of taking you to the fleet page. Set it back to 0 and the button goes back to opening the fleet page. See Espionage for what the probes bring back.

Auto-Select Deploy is on when you start. Tapping one of your own planets on the Fleets page picks the Deploy mission for you, so the dispatch form opens in one tap. Switch it off and the form waits until you choose a mission yourself.

Planet Order sets the order your planets are listed in the planet bar and on the fleet pages. Move rows with the up and down arrows and press Save Order. There is no alphabetical or by-coordinate sort, the order is whatever you put them in.

Protection

Three separate ways to keep other players off you. Each has its own page with the full rules.

• PVE Mode is a Store item paid for with credits: 15,000 for one day, 60,000 for seven days, 160,000 for thirty. It switches player combat off in both directions and leaves NPC farming alone. Buying again adds to the time you have left rather than replacing it.
• Diplomacy Mode costs nothing but taxes your production. The penalty is 25% under 50k resources spent points, 50% from 50k up to 100k, and 75% at 100k and above, and the panel tells you which one you would pay. Turning it on or off takes 24 hours either way and you can cancel the change while it is running. It does not cover you once you have been away seven days.
• Vacation Mode freezes the whole account while you are gone.

Vacation mode only turns on when nothing of yours is running. Buildings, research, ships, defenses, missions, fleets and missiles all have to be finished first, and the button stays greyed out until they are. Once it is on:

• Your planets cannot be attacked, spied on or hit by missiles.
• Production stops. Nothing piles up while you are away.
• You are locked out of that universe until you come back.
• You have to stay on vacation at least 48 hours.
• Anything already in flight when you leave still lands.
• There is no time limit. You stay on vacation until you turn it off yourself.

Other players still see the inactive marker next to your name after seven days. That is only a label, it does not open you up to attack while vacation mode is on.

Forum

Forum Identity is the avatar and display name you post under. Click the avatar to edit either one. If you have not made a forum account yet, this panel offers to create one for you.

Auto-follow Topics is off when you start. Turn it on and starting a topic or replying to one follows it, so new replies show up in your unread count. You can always follow a topic by hand with the Follow button instead.

Direct Messages is on when you start. Turn it off and other players cannot send you messages, replies or attack group invites, and anyone who tries is told you have messages switched off. System mail is not affected: battle reports, mission results and alliance circulars keep arriving.

Blocked Forum Users hides someone's topics and posts from your view of the forum. Search their name, add them, and they are never told. It works one way, so they can still read your posts.

Things people look for here and do not find

• Your password. There is no password box in the game. Sign out and use the Forgot password link on the sign-in page.
• Your email address. Open a Support ticket and ask, it cannot be changed from Settings.
• Dark or light theme. That is the sun or moon button in the top bar.
• Skipping the Get Lucky animation. That is a Skip animations checkbox on the Get Lucky page itself.
• Sending several missions at once. The Missions page has a quantity box on each row, already filled in with the most you can send.

Old SFC1 options that are gone

If you came from the original game, some of the old Options entries have no equivalent in SFC2. Planet sort type is replaced by the manual Planet Order list. Mute Alliance, Mute Buddy and Block Alliance Invite were not carried over. Disable Auto Escape, Enable New Layout and the Facebook password panel belonged to universes and a platform that do not exist here.