Glossary and Quick Reference

A one-stop reference: the numbers that govern the game, the on-screen abbreviations, and the vocabulary.

Starting values (every commander)

Price list

Combat odds at a glance

Each round of a battle, one ship is lost. The base chance is set by the force ratio, then scaled by each side's battle power. The defender wins ties.

Takeaway: to reach even odds you must outnumber the defender by more than 3-to-2; below that, the defender is favoured.

Travel and production

• Travel time grows with distance and shrinks with your speed. Spy probes and nova bombs travel at double fleet speed.
• Production cycle: every star you own builds one ship per factory and pays its wealth into your treasury. The Next production countdown shows when the next cycle lands.
• Range limits a single jump; longer trips route through stars you own, each leg within range. Probes and bombs always fly direct.

On-screen abbreviations

Glossary

Account — the view (web: left menu → Account; mobile: the Account tab) showing the email you are signed in as, with a Sign out control. If your session lapses, Nova returns you to the sign-in screen automatically.

Auto-deploy — see Standing order.

Battle power — a commander-wide combat multiplier (starts at 100) that scales your odds in every battle, attacking and defending.

Claiming — taking a commander as your own when you sign in: either picking an existing commander's pill, or claiming an empty slot in a forming game and naming yourself. A commander can be claimed by only one account, and you play that theatre as your claimed commander.

Commander — a player. Each has a colour, a treasury, and a set of stars.

Credits (c) — your spendable money, earned from your stars' wealth each production cycle.

Diplomacy (Chat) — Nova's built-in messaging: a Global broadcast channel everyone can read plus a private 1:1 DM thread with each other commander (no group chats). New messages notify you in-app and by push, with per-channel unread badges plus a status-bar / app-icon unread count. Pause/resume governance is logged here, and chat works while the theatre is paused.

Dead star — a star destroyed by a nova bomb. Owned by no one, produces nothing, cannot be captured, and destroys any fleet that arrives there.

Factory — a structure on a star that builds one ship each production cycle.

Fleet — a group of ships travelling between stars.

Fog of war — the limit on your knowledge: you see every star's position and owner, but the details of stars you neither own nor have scouted are hidden.

Game length — the real-world duration of a theatre, in hours, set at creation. Independent of time compression: a 24-hour game ends 24 real hours after it starts.

Garrison — the ships currently stationed at a star.

Home star — your starting star, with a large garrison (250 ships by default, set per theatre on the New game form).

Jump gate — a permanent link between two stars that carries fleets between them at a multiple of normal speed, ignoring range. Built into some maps or built/upgraded by commanders (cost scales with distance × speed). Using one needs only the mouth you leave from, so capturing a gate mouth hands you the gate. See Jump Gates.

Lobby / waiting game — a game created with a number of empty commander slots that players join by claiming and naming a slot. It auto-starts once every slot is filled. The in-game status-bar ‹ Lobby control returns you to the home screen while your theatre keeps running.

Mouth — one of the two stars a jump gate connects. You may use a gate from any mouth you own; building or upgrading a gate requires owning both.

Nova bomb — a fast, expensive unit that permanently destroys a star unless it has a nova shield.

Nova shield — a per-star defence that blocks nova bombs.

Notify on arrival — a per-fleet flag, off by default, that pushes you the result when that fleet, probe, or bomb lands. Set it in the composer or, after launch, on the fleet's panel.

Parsec (pc) — the unit of distance on the map; your range is measured in parsecs.

Pausing — a shared halt to a theatre — proposed by one commander, seconded by another — that freezes the clock and every deadline until it resumes. You propose from the status-bar pause status chip (RUNNING / PAUSED), and the pending proposal and Second button appear in the Diplomacy Global channel (where pause/resume steps are also logged). All commanders are notified of pause and resume changes.

Probe shield — a per-star defence that blocks enemy spy probes. A probe blocked there reveals to the prober that the star carries a probe shield (a green ring on their map).

Production cycle — the regular tick when factories build ships and stars pay wealth.

Range — the maximum length of a single fleet jump, commander-wide.

Recall — calling a just-launched fleet back within 30 seconds, refunding its ships (or a probe/bomb's cost), allowed only while nothing has happened at its origin star since launch.

Routing — automatically chaining jumps through your own stars to reach a distant target.

Sign in — authenticating with Apple or Google (one account, linked by email) to play on the hosted Nova. Required there; absent on no-login servers.

Speed — how fast your fleets travel, commander-wide.

Spy probe — a fast, cheap unit that scouts one star's defences. If the star has a probe shield the probe is blocked, but it still reveals that the star carries a probe shield rather than learning nothing.

Standing order (auto-deploy) — an automatic rule that keeps a set garrison at a star and forwards any surplus to a destination whenever the star produces or receives ships.

Star — a world that can be owned, developed, and fought over.

Theatre — a single game, with its own galaxy and commanders.

Time compression — how much faster a theatre's game clock runs than real time, set at creation. At 1× the game runs in real time; higher values make production cycles, travel, and battles happen more quickly without changing the game's real-hours length.

Treasury — your pool of credits.

Wealth — the recurring income a star pays its owner each production cycle.

Win condition — the commander holding the most living stars wins. The game ends either when the mission timer reaches zero or early, the moment one commander is the last to control any living star (a sole survivor).