BLUVERSE HOMEWORLD

THE ONE LAW

Nothing here runs on a clock. The game moves in cycles, and a cycle passes only when you press End Cycle. Builds take cycles, not minutes. There is no timer anywhere in this game, and there never will be.

THE LOOP

Your three collectors — the Scrapworks (Scrap), the Signal Array (Signal), and the Spark Core (Spark) — produce resources every cycle. Spend resources to upgrade structures; each level raises production and visibly grows on the planet. One construction crew: one build at a time. Until you build a Scrapworks or Signal Array, your lander drips +2 of that resource every cycle, so no opening can leave your colony stuck.

STORAGE PRESSURE

Your vaults hold only so much — production past the cap is lost, and you can't bank up for a build that costs more than the vaults can hold. Storage Vaults double your caps each level. Watch for it: the mid-game turns on when you do.

FLEET & RESEARCH

The Shipyard builds hulls — each level raises your fleet cap, batch size, and unlocks heavier ships. The Research Bay runs one project at a time in parallel with construction, and goes five levels deep: a branch's level 4 needs a Bay at level 4. The tree is a long road on purpose — maxing it costs roughly twice what the Beacon's first stage does.

• Propulsion (5) — Ring 2, then Ring 3, then missions one cycle shorter, then two cycles shorter (every ring becomes a 2-cycle round trip), and finally a deep-range survey that pulls cleared sites' respawn in by 10 cycles.
• Hulls (4) — Corvette + Hauler, then Cruiser, then expanded holds (+25% cargo on every hull), then reinforced frames (−25% combat losses).
• Weapons (5) — +15% fleet power per level up to +75%, and the same lift rides on your Aegis Grid.
• Salvage (5) — +15% loot per level up to +75%. Bring holds to match, or it spills.
• Aegis Doctrine (3) — hardened pylons (+30% grid), full mobilisation (docked hulls defend at full power, not half), and deep watch (raids telegraph two cycles out, and counter-battery crews recover half of anything a breach steals).

THE STARMAP

Three rings circle your homeworld: derelict caches (loot, no defense), pirate outposts (defended, better loot), and one BASTION deep in Ring 3. Send a fleet; it returns in a few cycles and resolves on the cycle tick. Combat is honest math — your power (with a small seeded variance you can't re-roll by reloading) against their defense, shown on the report card. Cleared sites respawn as new variants after enough cycles.

HOLDS, AND WHY HAULERS EARN THEIR KEEP

Loot rides home in cargo holds, and a fighting fleet's holds are always smaller than the pile it just won — a minimum winning strike carries under a tenth of what a site pays. That's what Haulers are for. Support hulls (Probes and Haulers — anything under 10 power) hang back while the guns settle it, so they take half the fleet's loss fraction: bringing holds is not a tax on your losses. The mission planner tells you exactly how many more Haulers a site's pile needs.

TURTLE, THEN SWEEP

Multiple fleets can launch in the same cycle (up to your Shipyard level), and every extra simultaneous strike stacks a Momentum loot bonus. Build patiently, stage everything, then take the map in one glorious turn.

Overwhelming force is cheap force. A strike that only just clears a site's defense comes home missing half its wing — the SAFE PWR line is the minimum that wins, not the amount you should bring. Double that power and you lose half as many hulls; bring four times and the report card reads Losses: none — overwhelming force. Patience is not just flavour here; it is the cheapest way to take the map.

BOARDING — RAZE OR SEIZE

Win a fight at a defended site and the report card offers a choice. RAZE is what the game has always done — the haul on the card is already banked, and closing the report keeps it. BOARD sends marines inside to seize the site whole: your surviving hulls crew the pods (1 marine per Corvette, 2 per Cruiser, up to 4), and you fight through a 6×6 interior.

• Everything is visible from turn one — the objective room, every trap cell, every defender. No fog of war, ever.
• Every defender's next action is telegraphed before you commit, and their intent is locked. The 🤖 Sentry steps one cell toward the nearest boarder then strikes anything beside it — stand in its path and it is stuck. The 🎯 Gunner never moves; it charges one full turn, announces its row or column, then rakes it. The 🛡️ Warden holds the door and never chases.
• Marines have 2 health and 2 actions a turn — a step, or a strike into an adjacent enemy. ⚠️ Trap cells cost 1 health on entry and are then spent.
• Win by ending a turn on the 🏴 objective room, within 8 turns.

The stakes. Seize it and you take +50% of the haul on top of the raze — cargo-capped like everything else, and the report tells you honestly what stayed in the hull — and the site becomes HELD: it pays a tithe every cycle until it respawns. Fail, run out of turns, or withdraw, and you simply keep the raze haul; every marine lost costs one hull of the type that supplied it. Boarding can never end a run.

Always skippable. AUTO-RESOLVE plays the board out with the same math in one click, and a checkbox makes that the default forever. Play by tap or by keyboard — arrow keys move the selected marine (arrow into an enemy to strike), 1–4 or Enter switch marines. The board is seeded from the site and the cycle, so reloading never re-rolls it.

THE BATTLE DECK (optional)

When fleets return, you can watch the fight you already won or lost. Nothing resolves during the show — the result was settled and saved before the first frame drew, so closing the tab mid-Deck costs you the spectacle and nothing else. Each frame speaks in four voices at once: the stage plate, the battle tape (one ledger line carrying the actual numbers — every integer on it comes straight off the report), the roster of countable hulls that grey out on the exact volley the arithmetic says they died, and the Blu witness calling it beside you.

You are the projectionist. CONTINUE steps one frame; PLAY auto-advances at the pace you pick (STEP, SLOW, FAST) and PAUSE stops it; SKIP ALL or Esc jumps to the reports from any frame. Manual step is the default and no frame can hold you. And the Deck never ends on a victory lap: the closing frame names what is still open — a site that will respawn, a boarding you haven't answered, loot your holds or vaults couldn't take. The same tape is folded into every report card, so it survives a skipped show.

SOUND (off until you ask for it)

The Deck can speak. It doesn't, until you press SOUND — the toggle sits in the command strip's MORE menu and again inside the Deck's settings, and they're the same switch. Until you press it, this game builds no audio at all: not muted, off. Nothing is downloaded either — every note is synthesized by the game while it plays, so there are no music files, no streaming, and nothing to load.

Each beat gets its own short cue: the yard opening, the long crossing, the reveal, each exchange (brighter when your fleet is stronger, with a low knock when hulls go down), the loss, the haul coming home. The closing cue obeys the same law the red text does — when something is still open, it ends on a chord that doesn't come home. You can hear an unfinished story without reading a word of it. And sound follows you, never the other way around: it never slows a frame, and SKIP ALL or Esc cuts it off clean.

THE DEFENSE MODULE

The frontier remembers. Break your first pirate outpost and raids begin — reprisals, arriving on cycles, never on a clock, and always telegraphed one cycle ahead so you can prepare. The Aegis Grid () meets every raider wave with its full power, and your docked fleet mans the flak lines at half power — the turtle doctrine made literal: keeping ships home defends the homeworld. A raid resolves as three waves against your per-wave defense; if the grid can stop the biggest wave, the shieldwall holds. If it can't, raiders steal from your vaults and the flak line pays in hulls. Watch it as theater or skip to the honest per-wave math — your choice, always. Research Aegis Doctrine to harden the pylons, put the docked fleet on the line at full power, stretch the warning to two cycles, and get half of any stolen haul back.

THE BEACON

The capstone. Restore the colony, break the Ring-3 BASTION, and the summit posts its terms: a 3-stage build — Foundations, The Array, First Light — each one huge, each one visible on the planet. When the lamp burns, the arc is complete and endless mode opens: same colony, same counters, no finish line. No timer did any of it. You did.

THE DECISIVE SWEEP

After First Light, a newly scouted Bastion signature can become a real ending instead of another loop. Bring every fleet home, assemble one wing whose seeded forecast is an exact win, and make room for the whole raze in both its surviving holds and your projected vaults. The DECISIVE SWEEP button stays held until all five truths agree. Launch it and the ordinary battle resolver still decides the fight; only a clean win closes the frontier. Lose or spill loot and the Bastion stays in its normal respawn loop. Close it cleanly and it is retired permanently: no BOARD offer, no respawn, and the Battle Deck can finally end on a resolved cadence.

UPDATES — WHAT EACH ITERATION ADDED

You are playing Homeworld ITER 40. Newest first. Earlier entries include campaign and companion milestones.

Patch notes — every iteration, newest first

• ITER 40 — the command deck comes alive. A living violet homeworld whose structures grow with every level, one sticky command strip, designed icons, a calmer Battle Deck and readable reports. Every cycle now answers back: resources count up, builds burst, milestones announce themselves, and each build card says exactly what it still needs. Two fixes: the lander now drips +2 Scrap and +2 Signal each cycle until you build that collector, so no opening can stall your colony, and the battle reports from the cycle that lights the Beacon now play after the First Light finale instead of vanishing. Your saved colony carries over unchanged.
• ITER 39 — colony commands first. Build without scrolling through the roadmap. Cycle controls stay close, other modes fold away, and FTL choices show their consequences with a keyboard-safe handoff.
• OCT V44 — the packet gets a dock. A settled FTL run can now cross a session-only boundary into the public Cycle Dock, where the player reviews the return packet and chooses STAGE FOR NEXT CYCLE or KEEP IN PACKET. The choice is player-owned and visible; campaign, economy, save, resolver, wall clock, and return-leg application remain HELD.
• ITER 38 — what comes home. Escape, urgent-message, and expedition runs now emit a named FTL_RETURN_PACKET_READY record after settlement. The card carries arrival state, survivors, captures, held loot, message state, Planetfall, and Ark succession; its return-leg application remains HELD until a Cycle-owned consumer is chosen. No save, economy, clock, or resolver rule changed.
• ITER 37 — the campaign spine. The command surface now names the cause-and-effect loop in one rail: empire, journey, orbit, ground, pressure, and memory. Existing FTL, theater, and defense witnesses are linked from their stage; BluDex, NORMAL VS, and companion roguelites remain visibly gated until they return a named campaign packet. No economy, resolver, clock, or save rule changed.
• ITER 36 — reset without the browser. Starting a new colony now uses an in-world confirmation dialog with keyboard-safe focus, Escape dismissal, and a clear warning before the saved colony is wiped. The save format, economy, combat, and one-terminal Battle Deck remain unchanged.
• ITER 35 — one terminal for the Battle Deck. A cycle can settle more than one report, so the replay now marks each report handoff and one true Deck terminal. An early clean report cannot sound resolved before a later same-cycle raid or ruins report; only the final frame may earn the resolving cadence. The settled reports, ordinary resolver, Ember Relay lock, and all mission math remain unchanged.
• ITER 34 — decisive Bastion sweep. First Light now earns a prepared closure mission against a fresh Bastion signature. Its pure readiness line reuses the real launch, seeded forecast, hold, production, tithe, and vault contracts. A clean resolver win retires the Bastion forever and lets the Battle Deck resolve; any loss or spill fails closed into the established respawn loop.
• ITER 33 — cleanup pass. No game rule changed. The economy preview now accounts for resources already above a proposed cap, world and route contracts avoid repeated work, repeated held-state labels are consolidated, and screen readers receive one short World Network status instead of the whole rebuilt roster.
• ITER 32 — the Deck finds its voice. The Battle Deck can make sound now, and it is off until you say otherwise — nothing plays, and nothing is even switched on inside your browser, until you press SOUND. Every note is built by the game as it plays; there are no music files to download and nothing is ever fetched. Each beat has its own short cue, and the last one obeys the same law the red text does: when something is still open, the closing chord does not resolve. Skip and the sound stops with you, instantly.
• ITER 31 — the Battle Deck. Your settled battle, replayed as a show you scrub yourself: a cinematic plate, an honest tape of every number behind it, countable hulls that grey out on the volley they actually died, and Blu calling the match. Step it, play it at your pace, or skip it — and however it ends, the last frame names what is still open instead of taking a victory lap.
• ITER 30 — balance review. Overwhelming force now genuinely saves hulls (double the power, half the casualties), the heavy Cruiser hits hard enough to be worth its price, and a held site's tithe was trimmed so the colony stays the main engine. Plus a review pass: SAFE PWR is now exact, the launch advisory no longer claims your holds cover a haul nobody has scouted, and the forecast says out loud when a second fleet at the same site can change your result.
• ITER 22–29 — the pre-launch brief. Battle Readiness panel, seeded outcome forecast that matches the real resolver, the launch composer, cargo advice that tells you how many Haulers a pile actually needs, and SAFE PWR — the force that cannot lose to a bad roll.
• ITER 10–21 — readable systems. The World Network map, research readout, and the phase ledger that shows a future second base as a plan, not a promise. Nothing on that lane is live yet, and it says so.
• ITER 8–9 — mission planning and witness theater. Power band, holds, and haul target visible before you commit; short watchable beats when fleets move.
• ITER 7 — boarding. Win at a defended site and choose: RAZE, or BOARD a 6×6 interior with telegraphed defenders and seize the site whole.
• ITER 6 — the defense module. The Aegis Grid, raids as reprisals on cycles, telegraphed a cycle ahead, resolved as skippable theater over honest per-wave math.
• ITER 4–5 — stage plates and the campaign board. Structures grow through visible stages; the starmap became a board instead of a table.
• ITER 1–3 — the loop. Collectors, storage pressure, shipyard, research, the starmap, and the Beacon arc. No timers, ever.