Seasons
Orbitarion is played in seasons — finite campaigns with a clear start, middle, and end. Each season is its own self-contained world: new universe, new planets, new alliances, new race choices. When a season ends, that universe closes and the next one begins.
This page covers how seasons work — from signup to the final tick.
What is a season?
A season is one complete game of Orbitarion. Each season has:
- A start date and an end date
- A fixed tick interval (typically 30 minutes for regular seasons, 5 minutes for Speed Rounds)
- A fixed total tick count (about 1 300–2 500 ticks for full seasons)
- A name (e.g. "Season 1 — A New Dawn", "Speed Round — Beta Test")
- A sequential season number
When you join a season, you create a new planet, choose your race, and play through to the end. Your final ranking is recorded in the Hall of Fame. Your Commander Career profile preserves your stats across all seasons.
Season types
Orbitarion has two main types of seasons:
| Type | Tick interval | Total ticks | Real-world length | Pacing |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Regular Season | 30 minutes | ~1 300–2 500 | 4–6 weeks | Standard — measured strategic play |
| Speed Round | 5 minutes | ~3 000–3 500 | 10–14 days | Compressed — every decision matters more |
Speed Rounds are typically run between regular seasons as beta tests for new engine versions. They have the same mechanics as regular seasons but compressed — research takes minutes instead of hours, fleets travel between ticks in real time, and the whole game cycle plays out in 1–2 weeks instead of a month.
Speed Rounds often include perks (e.g. free premium features) to encourage players to participate and stress-test new mechanics before they ship to the next regular season.
Season phases
Every season progresses through four phases, in order:
signup → protection → active → havoc → ended
Signup
Before a season starts, it sits in signup state. Players can:
- Reserve a slot
- Choose their race
- Choose their planet name
- See estimated start time
You can join up to (and sometimes during) the early phases of a season. The earlier you sign up, the better your starting position — most galaxies fill up in signup order.
Protection
When a season starts, every player has personal protection for the first 96 ticks (48 hours in a regular Season, 8 hours in a Speed Round).
| Behavior | Detail |
|---|---|
| You cannot be attacked | Other players cannot send hostile fleets to your planet |
| You cannot attack | You cannot send hostile fleets to other planets |
| Build and research freely | Use the protection window to research Fighter Operations + Basic Sweep Sensors and start economy growth |
| Late joiners get full 96 ticks | A player who joins on tick 50 still gets 96 ticks of personal protection, expiring on tick 146 |
| Round-level protection | The round exits the protection phase after the protection_ticks budget passes, but individual planets keep their personal protection separately |
After your personal protection expires, you receive a protection_ended news event. You are now fair game.
Active
The main competitive phase. Combat is allowed, alliances form and break, nebula and Dominion warfare ramps up, and the season's drama plays out. Most of the season's duration is spent here.
The "Active" status doesn't change the rules from Protection — it just signals that the round-level protection budget is exhausted. Personal protection on individual planets still applies on a per-planet basis.
Havoc
The final 96 ticks of every season is Havoc — a high-stakes endgame phase. The game logic doesn't change, but the meaning of every fleet decision does:
- You can't recover from major losses anymore — there isn't time
- Alliances make their final pushes for tier advancement
- The biggest battles happen here
- Rankings stabilize over these last few days
Havoc is marked in the UI and in news feeds. It's a flag, not a mechanic — but it's a powerful one psychologically.
Ended
When the tick counter exceeds total_ticks, the season ends. The round's status changes to ended. From that moment:
- No more ticks process
- No more attacks possible
- Race data unmasks on the stats site
- Final rankings are recorded permanently
- Hall of Fame entries are committed
- Commander Career profiles update with final season results
You cannot return to an ended season. It exists permanently in the archive, but no actions can change it.
Signing up
You sign up during a season's signup phase. The process:
- Open the app and pick the current round from the lobby
- Choose your race (UEC, ODO, ATH, or STC)
- Pick a planet name
- Choose a galaxy and coordinate (or auto-assign)
- Confirm
Once signed up, you wait for the season to start. The scheduled_start timestamp tells you when ticks begin processing.
Race lock
Your race choice is permanent for the season. You cannot switch from UEC to ATH mid-season — that ship is on the shipyard floor, fully committed. Race choices for a future season are independent of what you played in the previous one.
Bot fleets
Each new season seeds NPC garrisons (Void Raiders) in nebulae across the universe. You'll encounter them as part of Nebula War content. See The Void and Nebula War.
Bots can also be enabled to attack — controlled by the bots_can_attack flag per round. When enabled, bot planets behave like player planets but follow AI-driven rules. Most seasons keep this enabled to ensure even the lowest-activity galaxies see action.
Season transitions
When one season ends, the next begins after a short break. The break is used to:
- Process and finalize the previous season's archive
- Update game mechanics for the next season (new engine versions launch here)
- Run a Speed Round if a beta test is planned
- Allow players to take a breath
During the break, the previous season is archived to stats.orbitarion.com and the next signup phase opens.
You sign up for the next season independently of the previous one. Your Commander Career profile carries over your lifetime stats across seasons; everything else (resources, ships, research, alliance) resets.
Engine version
Each season has an internal engine_version. This determines which mechanics ruleset applies:
| Engine | Used by | Major changes |
|---|---|---|
| v1 | Season 1 (and earlier Beta rounds) | Original combat + STC resource raid + original PDS pre-round pulse |
| v2 | Speed Round Beta Test and forward | Battle engine v7 + STC ship-stealing + The Void + Commanders + PDS-as-units + Shield Generator linear reduction + Dominion |
Past seasons remain locked to the engine they were played on. You can browse a v1 season's archive and see the v1 mechanics that applied at the time. The current and future seasons use v2.
Pausing seasons
The is_paused flag exists for emergencies. When set, tick processing halts immediately — useful during incidents (DB outages, critical bugs, etc.). The round timer pauses too; no ticks elapse during a pause. Pauses are rare and announced in Discord as they happen.
Quick reference
| Concept | Detail |
|---|---|
| Season types | Regular (30-min ticks), Speed Round (5-min ticks) |
| Phases | signup → protection → active → havoc → ended |
| Protection length | 96 ticks (48 hrs regular, 8 hrs Speed Round) |
| Havoc length | Final 96 ticks of the season |
| Engine versions | v1 (Season 1 and earlier), v2 (Speed Round + forward) |
| Race choice | Permanent for the season |
| Sign-up state | Open during signup phase, sometimes during early active |
| Mid-season join | Get full 96-tick personal protection from arrival |
| Bot opponents | Controlled per-round via bots_can_attack flag |
| Pause state | Possible via is_paused for emergencies |
| Archive | Permanent on stats.orbitarion.com after ended |
Documentation reflects Orbitarion v2.0. Last updated: 2026-05-28.