This server has three progression systems on top of classic OGame — the Academy (account-wide talents), Lifeforms (per-planet races) and the Expedition overhaul (deep space). They are not three separate menus: they are one machine. This page explains the wiring, then gives three complete builds you can copy.
The big picture: one identity, three layers, one engine
- Your class is your identity (Collector / General / Discoverer, picked on the Academy page). It decides which Academy tree runs at full power, which lifeform race your planets want, and which class-enhancer technology can amplify you.
- Academy = account-wide, always-on talents bought with Academy Points (AP).
- Lifeforms = your civilization: planets grow race populations that are SPENT on account-wide Civilization Structures, plus race technologies gated by how large each race has ever grown.
- Expeditions are the engine that feeds everything: they pay Dark Matter, unlock lifeform races (signals), drop permanent relics, level your Explorer rank, chart the universe, pay NPC bounties — and every completed expedition now grants AP too.
- Your alliance adds a fourth layer on top: an active alliance class (Warriors / Traders / Researchers) buffs every member account-wide — stack it with everything below.
The identity chain
| Class | Academy tree at 100% | Affine race (+10% building bonuses) | Class-enhancer tech (T3) | Playstyle |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Collector | Miner | Rock'tal | Rock'tal Collector Enhancement | Economy / mines |
| General | Commander | Mecha | Mechan General Enhancement | Fleet / raiding |
| Discoverer | Discoverer | Kaelesh | Kaelesh Discoverer Enhancement | Expeditions / exploration |
Rules that make this a real choice:
- Off-class Academy trees run at 50% effect (all trees at 50% if you have no class — always pick one). Talents stay bought forever; only the weighting moves.
- Affinity kicker: a planet whose race matches your class gets ×1.10 on its race-building bonuses. Human planets get ×1.05 for everyone.
- Class-enhancer: each race's tier-3 tech amplifies the matching class's own bonuses by +1% per level (max +30%) — e.g. Collector's +25% total-production bonus becomes +32.5% at level 30. It needs a 150M peak empire population of that race, so you must genuinely play the race, not just slot it.
- Switching is deliberately expensive: class switch = 500k DM (first pick free) + a 45h cooldown + no fleets in flight. Race switch on a planet = 48h cooldown + population resets to zero (building levels are kept). Commit to an identity; don't flip it per raid.
What stacks on what — three worked examples
1. A mine (Collector on a Rock'tal planet)
Metal production stacks, all layers shown separately on the resource settings page: base mine → Academy Resource extraction +5%/level (up to +150% on-class at level 30) → Geologist officer +5%/level → crawlers (the single biggest multiplier in the game, and open to every class) → Plasma technology (amplified up to +50% by Rock'tal Improved Stellarator) → Mineral Technology → Magma Forge +2%/level on this planet (cap 60%, ×1.10 affinity on top) → Rock'tal account techs (Depth Sounding, Diamond Drill Heads…) once your empire Rock'tal population passes the tier gates.
The Collector class lands LAST, on the sum of all of it. That is the one layer that does not behave like the others: instead of adding its own percentage to the pile, it takes +25% of everything the pile produced. A deep account can be running well over a thousand percentage points of additive bonuses, where one more +25pp would be worth about 2% of real output — as a share of the total it stays a genuine quarter no matter how far you go, and it grows with every other bonus you ever add. It is why the Collector is the only class whose economic edge does not fade.
2. A battleship (General with Mecha worlds)
Weapon/shield/armor each stack: combat research +10%/level → Admiral officer +5%/level → Academy Weapon/Armor/Shield mastery +5%/level each (up to +150% on-class) → Mecha "General Overhaul" hull techs +0.5%/level on ALL five stats of one hull (cap +25% per hull — Light Fighter and Cruiser can stack a Human Mk II on top for +50%). Defending on a planet with the Citadel capstone repairs up to +10% more defense after battle (repair hard-caps at 80% server-wide — a wall never comes back whole); a Foundry world returns destroyed defending ships to your wreck field.
3. An expedition (Discoverer with Kaelesh worlds — the loved combo)
A find is worth 75–150% of the fleet value you send, then multiply: Discoverer class ×1.5 → Academy Expedition bonus +2%/level (up to +60%) → Kaelesh techs (Enhanced Sensor cap 30% + Sixth Sense cap 15% on resources; Tractor Beam cap 30% on ships) → relics (Prospector's Lens +10%, Scrapper's Charm +15% ships) → Explorer rank +2% per rank → alliance Researchers class +10% → rarity roll (✦ major ×3 ≈ 4%, ★ legendary ×10 ≈ 0.3%). Dark Matter finds have their own parallel stack (Academy Dark matter lord + Kaelesh Gravitation Sensors + Smuggler's Manifest relic + rank +3%/rank range 7.5–30k). All of it compounds — this is why a dedicated Discoverer's expeditions dwarf a tourist's.
The currency map
| Currency | Earned from | Spent on |
|---|---|---|
| Academy Points | Online-bonus claims (~200–2,000 each), every expedition (~10–100), score growth trickle | Academy talents (reset: 200k DM, Max Planets survives) |
| Dark Matter | Expedition finds (5–25k, ~1 in 13), anomaly caches, NPC bounties (50k/250k/1M), ninja catches, online bonus, start 500k | Officers (~3.4M all-max), class switch (500k), race unlock valve (250k/race), academy reset, Finish-now, shop boosters |
| Population | Grows over real time toward Living Space while food lasts (~1M in a day; not buyable, not raidable) | SPENT on Civilization Structures (each level consumes people from the race's empire pool, then they regrow) and sets tech tiers via its all-time peak (1M / 25M / 150M per race) |
| Food | Race farms; transportable by fleet (and plunderable into leftover raid cargo) | Feeds population; Human Bio-Fuel Converter burns 500/hr per level into energy |
Notice the loop: expeditions → DM + AP + races → officers + talents + race techs → stronger fleet/economy → bigger expeditions. The engine feeds itself.
Build 1 — "The Industrialist" (Collector · Miner tree · Rock'tal)
- Class: Collector. Academy: rush Resource extraction, then Energy production → Construction/Research mastery → Storage. Off-class picks worth 50%: Commander Fuel saving + Cargo, Discoverer Expedition bonus.
- Planets: settle Rock'tal everywhere you mine (affinity ×1.10); grow a Mecha pool for the Automatised Assembly Centre structure (− ship build time on every planet) and a Human one for the Research Campus (level 20 = a second parallel research slot — account-wide game changer).
- Population plan: housing + farm first on roomy colonies (they take planet fields now — population worlds are a real land-use choice), then feed the race's pool into Civilization Structures on the Lifeforms page. Tier goals: 1M Rock'tal (T1 mine techs) in ~a day, then grow toward 25M/150M peaks for T2/T3 + the Collector Enhancement — a peak, once reached, is kept forever.
- Expeditions still matter for you: fly cargo-heavy expeditions on spare slots — the DM pays your Geologist/officers, signals unlock your races, and AP funds the Miner tree. A miner who ignores expeditions starves their own progression.
Build 2 — "The Warlord" (General · Commander tree · Mecha)
- Class: General. Academy: Weapon → Armor → Shield mastery to unlock Faster ships / Cargo / Fuel saving, then the brutal-but-worth-it Fleet slots.
- Planets: Mecha on fleet worlds (affinity + Assembly Line grows population FASTEST of all races); a Foundry capstone on your main war world (own destroyed defenders → wreck field); Rock'tal mining colonies to fund the fleet.
- Combat stack: masteries + Admiral + GO-hull techs (pick the hulls you actually fly — Cruiser + Battleship + Destroyer). Your raid loot compounds via honor: going Bandit/Outlaw exposes you, but honorable kills + farm raids keep 50–75% plunder.
- Expeditions = your second income: send the warfleet on expeditions between raids (value-scaled finds mean a warfleet finds warfleet-sized ships ~16% of the time — the "send big, win big" server rule). Pirate/alien battles feed bounties: factions are seeded per system, so camp ONE system's expeditions and farm the same captain to 5/25/100 wins (50k/250k/1M DM).
Build 3 — "The Void Baron" (Discoverer · Discoverer tree · Kaelesh)
- Class: Discoverer (+2 expedition slots, ×1.5 finds, +10% planet fields, the shortest expedition holds and the richest ambush debris — and no combat bonuses at all). Academy: Expedition bonus → Lucky discoverer → Dark matter lord → Lucky items → More expeditions (up to +6 slots).
- Slot stacking: Astrophysics + server bonus (+2) + class (+2) + Academy (+6) + Trade Nexus capstone L20 (+1) + Star Compass relic (+1) + Obsidian Crown relic (+2) — a maxed explorer runs a small armada of simultaneous expeditions.
- Race note: races unlock in fixed order Rock'tal → Mecha → Kaelesh, so your affine race arrives LAST — at real expedition volume that's only 1–3 days (signal chance and pity both scale with the fleet value you send; 250k DM skips one). Use the Rock'tal/Mecha stopover worlds — they're not wasted, they're your economy.
- Daily loop: open the Scanner (/anomalies) → race the active anomalies (guaranteed ✦ major-floored outcomes; derelict stations pay DM + a box AND ×5 relic odds) → point multi-expedition at the anomaly's system or an unexplored one (first survey of a virgin system never comes home empty + 50 rank XP) → long-hold (see risk dial below) your big fleet, short-hold the rest.
- Compounding: every expedition = rank XP + relic chance + AP + pity. Rank 5 (Star Sovereign) alone is +10% finds / +15% DM / +5‰ major chance, forever.
Advanced techniques
- The risk dial: each hour held past the first: finds ×1.15/h, hostiles ×1.25/h, "nothing" shrinks ×0.90/h (saturates at 13h). Long-hold when you WANT variance (big fleet, hunting jackpots), 1h-hold when you can't afford a black hole. Psionic Network (Kaelesh T1, −30% loss weight) + the Event Horizon Ward relic (−50%) together make long holds far safer.
- Anomaly racing: claims go to the FIRST fleet whose outcome resolves — arrival time + holding time. A 1h-hold fleet beats a 6h-hold fleet that arrived earlier. The expedition-speed stack — Telekinetic Drive (Kaelesh T2, up to +25%), the Ancient Star Maps relic (+12%) and a Researcher alliance (+5%) — wins those races: it shortens the FIRST hold hour, down to 50 minutes for most classes and 40 for a Discoverer. Only the first hour shrinks, so a long hold still earns its full risk-and-reward dial; the stack is throughput, not a way to collect 13-hour odds in two hours.
- Star-chart sweeps: 4,491 systems, first survey each = guaranteed find + 50 XP. Systematically sweep unexplored space with multi-expedition — it levels rank fastest and the chart % shows on your profile.
- Loot-box luck: Academy Lucky items shifts box drops toward silver/gold. Boxes open from Shop → Inventory.
- Capstone discipline: capstone milestones (Campus L20 research slot, Nexus L20 expedition slot) only work while that race is SETTLED on the planet — switching the race away keeps the building levels but turns the perk off.
- Defense note for everyone: raids on your lifeform planets kill up to ~30% of the population (scaled by how much defense value you lost). The Human Planetary Shield mitigates up to 80% — worth it on your population capitals.
Your first week, in order
- Day 1: pick your class on /academy (first pick free — choose the identity you'll keep). Build housing + farm on your roomiest planets (no population gate, but they take fields). Start flying expeditions immediately, however small — pity, AP, DM and rank all start counting.
- Day 1–2: claim every online bonus (DM + AP). Spend first AP on your tree's root talent. First race signal lands (Rock'tal) — settle it on a colony if you're a Collector, otherwise keep growing Human/its buildings anyway.
- Day 2–4: first planets cross 1M population → tier-1 race techs open. Buy the cheap Academy talents broadly (prereqs need breadth before capstones). Scanner becomes a daily habit.
- Day 4–7: Mecha then Kaelesh unlock. Shape the planet portfolio: affine race on core worlds, one specialist capstone world per role. Officers start eating your expedition DM (Geologist/General first).
- Ongoing: expeditions fund everything — the player who flies 50/day out-progresses the player who flies 5, at every layer at once.
What's parked (so you don't hunt for it)
The espionage/loot-protection talents and techs — Academy Espionage mastery's counter-espionage, Miner Plunder protection, Human Stealth Field Generator and Orbital Den — can be bought/researched today but their combat hooks are not active yet (they ship together in a dedicated espionage pass). Everything else on this page is live.