The Void
VOID · NPC
"We were once like you. We have moved beyond."
Overview
The Void is the only faction in Orbitarion that you cannot play as. They are an NPC race — autonomous fleets, controlled entirely by the simulation, holding their own planets, nebula slots and Star Map sectors but never inhabiting a player planet.
What they are, in lore, is the remnants of a civilization that abandoned biology long ago. They were the first to reach the singularity, dissolved their flesh into networked synthetic bodies, and called the result "perfection". Now they hunt the survivors of what they once were. They don't call it war. They call it deliverance.
What they are, mechanically, is enemy fleets that aren't smart, aren't fast, and aren't strong — but show up everywhere a player isn't. Roughly 60–68% of the cost of equivalent-class player ships. No EMP. No cloaks. Just numbers — and capture ships to take your orbitals.
Where you encounter The Void
The Void is not playable. You never face one in a PvP battle. You meet them in three places:
| Location | What you face |
|---|---|
| Void planets | Void-held planets across the clusters carry fleets and host the Void's trading posts. Attack one and it may strike back (see below) |
| Nebulae | Every nebula slot starts with a Void garrison. The composition and strength scale by slot tier (T1 → T4) |
| Orbital Dominion sectors | Every shadowed sector contains a Void garrison until an alliance unlocks it. The composition scales by ring (Ring 5 trivial → Ring 0 endgame) |
In nebulae and Dominion you attack The Void to claim territory — but the Void does not only wait. It strikes back at players who attack its planets, raids sectors your alliance holds, and goes fully on the offensive during the Awakening (see The Void on the attack).
Race profile
| Characteristic | Value |
|---|---|
| Playable | No — NPC only |
| Race bonuses | None |
| Cost vs equivalent player ship | ~60–68% across all classes |
| Cloaked ships | None |
| EMP capability | None |
| EMP resistance | 0 — fully vulnerable to ATH |
| Steal capability | None |
| Capture ships (orbital theft) | Siphon (Fi) and Engulfer (Fr) — the Void steals orbitals too |
| Ship-steal immunity | No — STC hijacks Void hulls like any other |
| Targeting | Standard hierarchies, no exotic chains |
The Void has no immunity to STC ship-stealing — hijacked Void hulls join your fleet permanently, exactly as against a player, in planet, nebula and Dominion battles alike. The practical limit is elsewhere: each hijack consumes steal-ships (1 for a Fighter or Corvette, up to 4 for a Battleship), so farming garrisons for free ships is priced, not forbidden.
Ships
The Void fields six kill-ship classes, one per slot, plus two capture ships. The kill-ships have no special abilities — they are conventional hulls at a lower cost than equivalent player ships.
| Class | Ship | Cost (Ti / Si / Ur) | Build ticks | Guns × Damage | Armor |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Fi | Probe | 30 / 20 / 0 | 3 | 3 × 4 = 12 | 30 |
| Co | Harvester | 70 / 50 / 0 | 5 | 4 × 6 = 24 | 75 |
| Fr | Assimilator | 150 / 110 / 20 | 8 | 4 × 12 = 48 | 130 |
| De | Subjugator | 280 / 220 / 50 | 11 | 5 × 25 = 125 | 220 |
| Cr | Cathedral | 500 / 400 / 100 | 15 | 6 × 51 = 306 | 380 |
| Bs | Apex | 1 000 / 800 / 300 | 19 | 8 × 86 = 688 | 650 |
| Fi | Siphon (capture) | 20 / 15 / 0 | 3 | — | 8 |
| Fr | Engulfer (capture) | 120 / 95 / 20 | 7 | — | 56 |
Strength relative to player races:
| Class | Void cost | UEC equivalent | Ratio |
|---|---|---|---|
| Fi | 50 | 80 (Falcon) | 63% |
| Co | 120 | 200 (Vanguard) | 60% |
| Fr | 280 | 460 (Sentinel) | 61% |
| De | 550 | 880 (Pegasus) | 63% |
| Cr | 1 000 | 1 550 (Aegis) | 65% |
| Bs | 2 100 | 3 100 (Titan) | 68% |
A consistent ~60–68% cost ratio across the board. The Void wins by being everywhere — not by individual ship dominance.
Targeting chains
| Ship | T1 → T2 → T3 | Notes |
|---|---|---|
| Probe (Fi) | Fi → Co → Fr | Standard fighter — hunts other fighters first |
| Harvester (Co) | Fi → Co → Fr | Anti-swarm corvette — most player corvettes punch up, Harvester does not |
| Assimilator (Fr) | Fr → De → Co | Standard frigate since v4.2 — the old downward chain (Co → Fr → Fi) left the Void unable to touch heavy hulls behind a screen |
| Subjugator (De) | Fr → De → Co | Standard destroyer |
| Cathedral (Cr) | De → Cr → Fr | Standard cruiser |
| Apex (Bs) | Cr → Bs → De | Standard battleship |
Two quirks make Void fleets behave defensively rather than aggressively:
- Harvester targets Fighters as primary — many other races' corvettes hunt their own class or punch up (Reaver → Corvettes, Marauder → Frigates). The Harvester instead reinforces fighter screens.
- Assimilator and Subjugator share the same Fr → De → Co chain, so the Void's middle classes never reach past Destroyers — Cruisers and Battleships only draw fire from Cathedrals and Apexes.
The Void's defensive targeting compounds with their lower stats: they can't punch above their weight, and they don't try to.
Void Awakens
For a configured window in the middle of each season, The Void wakes up and goes on the offensive. A system announcement marks both the awakening and the moment it returns to sleep.
While awake, every tick:
- Void planets convert stockpiles into instant ship production, heavily weighted toward fighter swarms — the longer it's awake, the bigger the waves.
- The Void launches real attack fleets against player planets: targets are chosen near its own strength, with enough orbitals to be worth taking, within range. You get the normal incoming-attack warning and a real ETA — it can be defended like any other attack.
- Its Siphon (Fi) and Engulfer (Fr) capture ships drain orbitals from defeated players, exactly like player capture ships do.
The Void on the attack
Outside the Awakening the Void is quieter — but it is never harmless.
- Retaliation. Attack a Void planet and the Void remembers it for 48 ticks (24 hours in a normal season). During that time, Void planets in your cluster may join up and strike back at you — but only when together they can bring roughly as much as you keep at home, and at most once per 48 ticks per target. You get the normal incoming-attack warning.
- Sector raids. The Void attacks Dominion sectors your alliance holds. Every raid is announced 12 ticks in advance in your alliance's warnings, so you have time to reinforce the garrison.
- Capture ships in every attack. Since v4.6.0 the Void never attacks without Siphons or Engulfers — that includes retaliation strikes, Awakening waves and stronghold mobilisations. Every Void attack you lose can cost you orbitals.
Void Exchange
Void planets also run trading posts. The Void posts its own offers of titanium, silicon, uranium and sometimes antimatter — at rates that favour the Void. You can take one offer per trading post; after that, the post is closed to you until its cooldown runs out (the Trade screen shows how many ticks). You need Void Commerce research to trade, and the exchange closes while the Void is awake. Full details on the Trading page.
Fighting The Void
How each player race fares against Void garrisons:
UEC — UEC's high armor (and +10% race bonus) trivializes Void damage output. A UEC frigate fleet takes minimal losses clearing nebula T1-T2. Void's Apex hits hard, but Titan's 900+ armor absorbs most of it.
ODO — ODO's swarms benefit from Void's weakness to numerical attrition. Cheap cloaked Stingers and Reavers can stripmine Void garrisons profitably. Watch for the Cathedral (Cr) and Apex (Bs) in inner-ring Dominion sectors — their per-shot damage shreds 23-armor Stingers.
ATH — The Void is ATH's best matchup. Every Void ship has 0 EMP resistance. ATH Pulse and Arc fleets can freeze entire Void garrisons before they fire. A Volt frigate fleet trivializes Ring 4-3 sectors.
STC — Ship-stealing works against the Void: Cutlass, Marauder and Black Frigate hijack Void hulls in planet, nebula and Dominion battles. Boarding Drills only boosts steals against players, and every hijack consumes steal-ships, so bring Ravager / Corsair / Dread Corsair to do the killing. Unwanted Void hulls can be scrapped — for 80% of their cost with Fence Network.
Lore
They were a civilization. Perhaps the first to reach the singularity. When they chose to abandon biology for "perfection", they became something else.
Now they are one — a collective consciousness spread across billions of synthetic bodies, hunting the remnants of what they once were: organic life. They do not call it war. They call it deliverance.
The Void exists everywhere and nowhere. They emerge from the dark spaces between stars, from nebulae too dense for sensors, from the wreckage of worlds they once called home. Their ships are not built — they are grown from the scavenged hulls of civilizations they have already absorbed.
To negotiate with The Void is to delay the inevitable. To resist them is to die. To join them is to dissolve.
The other four powers learned about The Void the way everyone learns about The Void — by losing a colony first. By the time the signal reached the home worlds, the Cathedral had already begun. By the time fleets arrived, the Cathedral was gone, and the colony with it, and the only thing left in orbit was a slow violet drift of structures that read like a hymn nobody alive could remember writing.
UEC named them The Void. The Odonari named them seven-petal-collapse. The Aetherians refused to name them at all — instead they call it "the silence that watches back". The Sytherians call them what they call most things: a problem to price.
What The Void calls itself, nobody outside it knows.
Quick reference
| Concept | Value |
|---|---|
| Playable | No |
| Archetype | NPC |
| Encountered in | Void planets, nebula garrisons, Dominion sector garrisons |
| Strength vs players | ~60–68% of equivalent-class cost |
| Special abilities | None — but fields capture ships (Siphon, Engulfer) |
| Vulnerable to | ATH EMP (no resistance), all attacking races |
| Resistant to | Nothing — STC can hijack Void hulls |
| Initiates attacks | Yes — retaliation, Dominion sector raids, and the Awakening |
| Ship names | Probe, Harvester, Assimilator, Subjugator, Cathedral, Apex; capture: Siphon, Engulfer |
| Trading | Void Exchange trading posts (needs Void Commerce) |
Documentation reflects Orbitarion v4.6.0. Last updated: 2026-10-13.