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Stellar Object Holdings

This page gives an overview of the current idea space for how players establish and grow holdings on stellar objects.

It does not describe final game behavior. It summarizes the main direction and links to more focused idea pages.

Goal

The goal is to define how players expand from their homeworld onto other stellar objects without turning every useful object into a full colony.

The broader holding model should:

  • support long-term empire growth
  • make many stellar objects worth contesting
  • preserve a strong difference between light expansion and permanent settlement
  • prevent infinite effortless expansion

Current Direction

One promising direction is to use a layered holding model:

Surveyed
  -> Claimed
  -> Frontier
  -> Colony

This is mainly a way to think about increasing commitment and increasing value.

Each step would likely mean:

  • more investment
  • more infrastructure options
  • more strategic value
  • more permanence

Main Topics

This idea space currently breaks into three more focused questions.

Holding types and upgrades

This topic covers the layered model itself:

  • what claims, frontiers, and colonies mean
  • what each layer can do
  • how players upgrade from one layer to the next

See Holding Types And Upgrades.

Holding limits

This topic covers how many claims, frontiers, and colonies an empire should be able to sustain:

  • whether each layer gets its own cap
  • whether one weighted capacity model is better
  • how those limits should grow over time

See Holding Limits.

Holding loss and contestation

This topic covers how claims and frontiers can be fought over and destroyed:

  • what active pressures can destroy a site
  • what total loss at a site means
  • how colonies differ from claims and frontiers in warfare

See Holding Loss And Contestation.

System ownership by presence

A coarser ownership layer than the per-stellar-object holding tiers. Who owns an orbital system as a whole — computed from presence inside the system rather than from explicit claims — and what rights system-level ownership grants (notably, the right to fill the system's gate slot).

See System Ownership by Presence.

Shared Direction

Across all three topics, the current shared direction is:

  • claims are real footholds, not only legal markers
  • frontiers are meaningful upgrades from claims
  • colonies are permanent settlements and should feel exceptional
  • claims and frontiers can be lost through active hostile pressure
  • colonies are currently treated differently and may remain permanent once founded

Open Questions

  • Which exact structures belong to the claim-only infrastructure set?
  • Which frontier-only infrastructure categories matter most?
  • Which limit model produces the best long-term expansion gameplay?
  • Which active pressures should be able to destroy claims and frontiers?
  • Which stellar object types can become colonies, and which should stop at claim or frontier level?