A fleet on its course is dark and lights up no world; the moment it stands on one, it joins that world's defense and its build cost counts into that world's brightness. That state is garrisoning. On your own world the fleet is the garrison; on someone else's it is a guest. Who may station, what a garrisoned fleet can do, and what it costs — that is what this page is about.
Parking a fleet on someone else's world needs no approval. The server has no list of allies to consult — there are no enforced alliances here; the order alone decides the side. Arrive under a station order and you join that world's defense as a defender, whatever you are to its owner. An enemy who stations on your world is defending it. Arrival starts no battle; the only way to start one is an attack order. And the void cannot be garrisoned: an attack, station or transport order that arrives at an empty coordinate turns for home, committed — settling an empty coordinate is what a colony order is for.
Ownership follows the order too. Land on your own world and the fleet merges into its single garrison pool. Land on someone else's and every guest fleet stays a separate thing — they never merge, and several fleets from the same owner stand in their own columns, each remembering its own launch world and its own retreat line.
While the garrison stands, neither side can touch the other: the owner cannot fire on a guest, and the guest cannot hurt the owner. Betrayal costs two full voyages — first a withdrawal, the whole fleet flying home to the world it launched from, one commitment; then, from your own world, the attack, a second. The knife is never drawn on the host's doorstep.
A host world is never a base, either: no attack, no re-station, no colony run ever launches from someone else's world. A guest fleet has exactly one order available — withdraw, the whole fleet, home.
The name does not wait for the landing. Once a guest fleet is inside the circle the owner can read clearly, he knows who sent it and how many hulls are coming: the warning never says what a fleet is for, but close enough it says whose it is. The other way round, whose world you are about to stand on may have no settled answer when you launch. The coordinate might be one you read yourself, one somebody handed you along with a claim about who lives there, or one you simply guessed. That middle one cannot be checked — you may be parking on a player who was named to you falsely. Landing is what ties the coordinate to the name: both sides hold each other's id from then on, messages can start, and negotiation or extortion starts with them.
The composition does wait for the landing. In flight he knows only how many; the moment the fleet sets down on his world, how many warships, how many walls and how many freighters go straight onto his guest roster, fleet by fleet and never merged: three hulls now and five more a few turns later read as two arrivals, and the order of them is legible. What you brought does not survive the landing as a secret.
What stays hidden is the retreat line. He knows what you brought; he does not know whether you will stay. "I sent you fifty defenders" can be checked. "I will hold to the end" cannot, and where those fifty have their line set is yours alone to know. The fake reinforcement is still a playable con — the card has moved from the hulls to the nerve — and it still turns over only when a third party attacks.
The window is one-way: the owner sees his guests' composition, and a guest never sees the owner's garrison. A fleet carries no sensor, and the side that came closer is the side that gets read. The only way to see it is to fight: a battle report gives you, round by round, what every fleet on the field was made of, your own side included.
First, your fleet lights up someone else's world. Guest build cost counts into the host world's brightness and makes it a bigger target — while the score stays yours: defending transfers no points, and holding someone else's wall does not sign your fortune over to him.
Second, you stand blind. A fleet is not a sensor: on that world you see no incoming at all. Who is inbound, only the owner knows; if he does not tell you, you are standing blindfolded on the host's wall.
Third, you may die for him. When a third party attacks, you fight as a defender. Guests default to standing fast — retreat line at one hundred; if you want room to run, you set the line the moment you dispatch, because it can never be changed again, not in flight and not on the ground. To change policy, the whole fleet flies home and is sent out anew.
How the retreat line works →The owner can expel at any time: one action clears every guest fleet one player keeps on that world, each flying home to its own launch world, committed. If a battle falls on the same turn, the expelled fight it to the end and the survivors leave after. Expulsion reaches only fleets already present when the world froze — so every guest fleet is guaranteed at least one turn on the ground.
To move goods, give a transport order. It is the one launch order of the four that must carry cargo: an empty hold is refused at the desk, the load is capped by the fleet's capacity, and the destination is any coordinate with a world on it. Run it to your own world and it is logistics: concentrating resources on a fortress star. Run it to someone else's and it is aid, or a bribe. The moment it arrives the cargo settles into the stockpile and the fleet turns for home automatically: it joins no garrison, fights no battle, stands on no side — and so there is no such thing as a retreat line on a transport order. To leave ships that defend, station them; to deliver goods, transport them. Troops and cargo are two separate orders.
Deliveries leave a paper trail. When the world belongs to someone else, its owner gets a delivery record — who sent it, how much, and when. There is no such thing as an anonymous drop. The one-beat landing risk stands: if the world falls the same turn, the Matter you just set down is carried off with the rest. As for the other orders' holds: station now carries no cargo, refused outright like attack, while a colony order's seed capital stands — that is colony semantics, not transport.
Garrisoned on someone else's world you read none of it: not the brightness, not the incoming, not the garrison's details — a fleet is not a sensor. But fighting brings reports: every time that world is attacked, you, being present, receive the round-by-round telemetry — who struck, how it ended, and what every fleet on the field was made of. One ship parked on another man's world is a field observer in place. It holds one of your fleet slots for every turn it is away, though: how many fleets you can have out at once is a shipyard question, and an observer counts as one.
Expulsion turns permanent observation into a social game. An unexplained ship appears on the owner's guest list the moment it lands, and can be expelled the very next turn. Watching for the long term takes the owner's tolerance — or a disguise that holds: "I'm here to help you hold it."
Reinforcements launched when the alarm sounds arrive late to every neighboring world — the flight is longer than the warning, and the speed rules fix it that way. Only one form of joint defense holds up: the ally's fleet is already standing there before the fight begins. A pre-positioned guest is always present and needs no alarm; and a guest adds only positional brightness to that world, no coordinate leak — compatible with staying dark. What it costs you is a slot: every turn a guest stands abroad, it holds one of your allowances for fleets away at once.
A station order under way is not silent, though. Any fleet of somebody else's flying toward a world enters that owner's warning, reinforcements and gifts included, and the warning says nothing about the mission: he sees something bearing down on him, not that it is coming to help. So joint defense takes one thing beyond pre-positioning: say it first. The order is committed at launch and a station run cannot arrive as an attack, but that only settles on landing, and until then all he holds is a claim of yours he cannot check.
Speeds, fuel and fleet slots — the turns page →The server keeps no record of who is allied to whom, and stops no fleet from standing on any world. Stationing is a bare primitive: a fleet delivered to someone else's doorstep. Whether he dares receive it, whether you dare leave it, whether the fifty hulls hold to the end once they land — no mechanism vouches for any of it, and the cards turn over the moment a third party attacks.