How to play Astera Online: a complete guide for new commanders

What kind of game this is

Astera Online is a persistent multiplayer strategy game. A galaxy keeps running when you close the browser: your mines keep producing, queued buildings finish and fleets keep flying toward their targets. You make a handful of decisions, leave, and come back to find out what happened. That gap between the order and the outcome is the heart of the game.

Every commander has a capital that can never be captured, so you cannot be wiped out in one night. What you can lose are ships, resources and colonies. What you can win are the same things, taken from neutral worlds, pirates, events and other commanders. The game is built around one sentence: the fleet is the bet, the information is the game and the planet is the stake.

In practice that means two players with identical fleets do not have identical chances. The one who knows what is waiting at the target, when its owner was last active and which ship classes defend it will choose better battles. Most of this guide is about getting that information and turning it into a decision.

Your first world and what you start with

When your first season begins, your world arrives already working. The Store holds 1,500 alloy, 1,000 crystal and 50 deuterium, and the Works hold a little more production waiting to be collected. Your Command Core is at level 3, the Alloy Refinery and Crystal Extractor are at level 2, and the Store, Shipyard and Hangar are at level 1. The Telescope (level 3), Radar (level 2) and Aegis (level 1) are installed, together with an Uplink in orbit so the sensors work from the first minute.

You also receive a small fleet: three Darts, one Warden, one Courier and one Prospector. The Darts and the Warden are your first warships, the Courier is a fast transport with a large hold, and the Prospector is a mining craft that cannot join raids. The package is granted once per account, in your first season only.

Your first world is protected for 72 hours in your first game, and an ordinary join into a later galaxy gives 24 hours. Use that window to build an economy and learn the map rather than to hide. Protection ends on its own, and a commander who spent it well arrives in the open galaxy with stock, sensors and a plan.

The economy in one picture

Three resources pay for everything. Alloy pays for most buildings and ships. Crystal pays for advanced ships, instruments and research. Deuterium is fuel: every flight burns it, and a few purchases need it too. Each planet keeps its own stock, so a colony’s resources do not pay for an order on your capital unless you transfer them.

Production does not land straight in your Store. It accumulates in the Works first, which hold about 14.7 hours of each resource’s production. Only collected resources can be spent, and collection needs free Store room. This one rule explains most early frustration: a full Works stops producing, and a full Store stops collection. If you return after a long day and see a full Works, you have lost production, not saved it.

Every planet has a Construction queue for buildings, instruments and satellites and a Yard queue for ships and ground defences. Each queue holds three orders including the one being built. Research has a single queue shared by all your planets. You pay when you place an order, and cancelling a Construction or Yard order refunds only 50%, so queue what you will still want when it finishes.

• Short session: collect, queue the next producer upgrade, queue one ship order, leave.
• Before a long absence: spend down the Store so the Works can be collected later, and queue the longest useful orders.
• When an upgrade is blocked: check the Command Core level first; most buildings cannot pass it.

Seeing the galaxy before you act

A point on the map is not a planet you know. Your Telescope identifies what it can see and lets you place silent watches on other worlds; a watch tells you whether a fleet is home or away, and the target is not notified. Your Radar warns you about attacks aimed at your own planet, and higher levels add direction, strength and finally origin and ship details. Neither instrument tells you how many resources a target holds.

For that you send a probe. A probe costs 65 alloy and 40 crystal, flies on its own and returns a report on defence, ship classes and a range of possible loot. Two details matter more than the numbers. First, every report is dated: it describes the moment of observation, and the target can change before your fleet arrives. Second, a blank field is not a zero. If a probe did not measure something, assume it might be there.

A good habit is watch first, probe second. Watches are free and quiet, so use them to notice a commander whose fleet keeps leaving. When the pattern looks promising, pay for a probe to read the defence and the loot range. Only then decide what to send.

Your first raid, with real numbers

Combat uses three classes in a cycle. Skirmishers deal ×1.6 damage to Bulwarks, Bulwarks deal ×1.6 to Lances and Lances deal ×1.6 to Skirmishers; in the reverse direction damage drops to ×0.63. Your Dart is a Skirmisher and your Warden is a Bulwark. A Dart has 21 attack, so against a Bulwark each of its hits is worth about 33.6 before shields and pace, while against a Lance it falls to about 13.2. The same ship is strong or weak depending on what it meets, which is why the probe report’s class line matters more than its total.

Loot is the second calculation. Against a commander in tiers 1–3, a decisive victory can take 25% of the stock above Store protection and 15% of the uncollected Works; a partial success takes half of that. Imagine a probe shows about 8,000 alloy above protection and 1,200 waiting in the Works. A decisive win could take roughly 2,000 plus 180 alloy. Now look at your holds: a Dart carries 30 resources, so three Darts carry 90. The rest stays on the target. One Courier adds 1,000 cargo, which is why a first raid fleet is almost always warships plus a transport.

Third, cost. Fuel is paid at launch, ships lost in battle are gone for good, and ships away do not defend home. A raid that wins but loses two Darts may bring back less value than it cost. Read the battle report afterwards: it separates loot, wreckage and permanent losses so you can tell whether the raid was worth repeating. See the counter cycle and loot rules for every multiplier.

Choosing a target you are allowed to hit

Your development tier is your highest Command Core level divided by three, rounded up. A Core 7 capital is tier 3; a Core 10 world makes you tier 4 even if your other worlds are small. Player attacks are limited to a nearby tier range, so the strongest commanders cannot spend the season farming beginners. The launch preview always tells you whether a target is allowed before you pay anything.

Raid limits apply to the whole commander, not to one planet. If either side is in tiers 1–3, each direction allows one ordinary raid and then a 12-hour wait from the battle. Commanders in tier 4 and above can make three raids per 12 hours against the same opponent. Newcomer, recovery and occupation protection can block an attack outright, and recovery protection exists precisely so that one heavy loss does not snowball into a lost season. The full table is in attack eligibility.

There is also a reason to pick fair fights. Honor is the season’s second ladder, next to Dominion. Attacks against a navy close to your own size earn full Honor; the further the defender’s navy falls below yours, the less you earn, and pressuring a much weaker commander in a lower tier, or raiding a commander with less than a third of your navy twice in a day, can cost Honor. Your Honor tier then changes real prices: repair costs, convoy rewards and the merchant’s commission.

Neutral worlds and pirates follow their own rules and are the safest way to learn combat. Pirates are moving targets that leave after a while; the preview calculates where your fleet can meet them. A decisive win against pirates can even capture a ship. Neutral planets have garrisons of different strength, and winning there opens the road to your first colony.

Growing beyond your capital

Colony slots open when your capital’s Command Core reaches levels 9, 13 and 16, for a maximum of three colonies. To found one, win decisively against a neutral world’s garrison. That victory opens a 90-minute settlement period, and the raid winner gets the first 60 minutes as priority if they have a free slot. Send two Couriers carrying 1,000 alloy and 500 crystal of founding resources, plus fuel for a one-way flight, and arrive before the deadline.

Plan the travel time before you raid, not after. A victory far from home can be worthless if your Couriers cannot arrive inside the window. A new colony is protected for six hours, starts with the stock of its neutral tier and runs its own buildings and queues. Colonies can suffer faults that cut production or leak resources and they lose loyalty when faults stay unrepaired or raids succeed; at zero loyalty a colony turns neutral again. Your capital never does. Founding a colony lists every requirement.

Seasons, standings and staying in the game

Each galaxy runs a season with a start, an end and timed phases. Some research and strategic weapons only open in later phases. Standings are measured in Dominion: in a scored player battle, the attacker’s result is the loot carried home plus the value of the defender’s permanent losses, minus the attacker’s own losses, and the defender receives the opposite change. A defender who destroys an expensive attacking fleet can therefore climb the table without ever leaving home.

Activity matters in a specific way. If you place no attack, building upgrade, research, ship or defence order for 30 hours, your worlds move to Silent Space, where production runs at 50% and raids, mining and events are unavailable until you apply to return. Logging in alone does not reset the timer; one useful order does. If you need a real break, Vacation mode pauses and protects every world for one to seven days in exchange for deuterium.

A daily rhythm that works

You do not need to play for hours. Strong commanders play in short, deliberate visits. A practical rhythm looks like this:

• Collect the Works and spend the Store on the next producer or the Command Core.
• Keep all three queues busy with orders you will still want in six hours.
• Check watches and the Radar line: who left home, and is anything aimed at you?
• Probe one promising target and compare its loot range with your cargo and its classes with yours.
• Send one well-planned mission instead of three hopeful ones, and keep fuel and a defence at home.
• When the mission returns, read the report and decide whether that target is worth a second visit.

Follow that loop and the rest of the game opens naturally: research to unlock better hulls, a second and third colony, clan support when rivals start probing you, and monuments when you want to fight over a public prize. Each of those has its own guide in this section.