Welcome to Atmoburn. You have just begun a truly immersive game experience. Atmoburn is set in the future, in a civilization of star traveling humans. The simplified purpose of the game is to colonize planets, build large space fleets and conquer your enemies (or merely protect yourself from destruction). All content in the game is user created, researched, and dictated.

This is a detailed guide for your first steps in the game. It is best consumed on a PC or notebook rather than mobile, and in a separate tab than the one where you try the instructions.

If you like to figure things out yourself, but aren't quite sure where to start, check out the far more concise quick start guide.

Your faction is your team. You will likely have received a message from your faction president when you joined. It is usually a good idea to ask him what medium for communication everyone uses. The game offers a lot of different things to do and exchanging some things with allies will enable you to do more for less.

Some people within your faction will have organized into empires. Empires are a more tightly organized group of players who share additional benefits depending on their empire type. Empires can share exploration data, message the entire empire at once, share technology with the entire empire at once, and have a shared bank where the empire taxes go and from which empire operations are funded. Open the relations tab in the top menu and click Join Empire. Apply to one of your faction for the best results. You can apply to multiple empires at once.

Select your colony from the COLONIES menu on the left. You may have started with more than one, in which case the guide for the second colony is different so only take the following steps for your primary colony.

Your government is an Autocracy. It's not an efficient way to run things, choose Plutocracy for a save choice or even try Democracy. If a Religion is available, it will be beneficial to choose one also. However, this is difficult to change later, so if you don't want to take a wager or read up on the different theisms now, you can safely postpone it. Default taxes and wages are fine for now, click "Save Changes".

Your colony's private economy will take sufficient care of it until you have the technology and resources to efficiently improve it with your own structures.

If you joined a round where you start with multiple colonies then the secondary colony will likely need a little different treatment. Follow these steps to ensure your colony will survive and be put to good use.

It is most likely on a planet with decent abundance of the starter resources but not so great habitability and meant as an early mining colony. First, lets get things stabilized.

Your government is again Autocracy, which is good. It is the best system to stabilize a colony and optimize mining output. Again, set a religion just like with the first colony, best to pick the same religion. Your base taxes will be fine, people won't like it but its a mining colony, we don't care if they are unhappy.

Pick some local laws. Go for Minimum Wage, Mandatory Recycling, and Controlled Media. Be sure to scroll down and click "So be it!". If your crime goes rampant don't be scared to turn on Martial Law as well.

This colony will likely be on a planet with little to no fertility. This means your people buy food from the private market, which means it is shipped from private off world sources or grown in high tech facilities. Either way, its expensive for them. Those food expenses drain the wealth of the colony, but don't worry, we'll counter that by employing a bunch of them in our industry. The wages we pay them will allow them to buy food, aren't we generous. Later we'll supply them with our own food, which we of course sell to them, it ain't free but the money will go their benevolent government, us.

If by now you have already been accepted into an empire then it is best to ask them what to build. If you haven't then lets go build some things. Click the construction button. On this colony you will need about 1 clinic for every 2000 people, 1 academy for every 6000 people and just to be on the safe side, 1 police station for every 10,000 people. Do check if you already have some of those facilities. This will keep your colony stable. We'll cover the industry later on in the first steps.

Now it's time to get to know a little about the universe around you. You start with several single-probe fleets, listed as "Explorers" in the FLEETS menu. Select one.

The quickest way to explore more planets in the fleet's current system is to use the "Local Targets" dropdown. Select an unexplored planet. The exploration mission type is preselected for explorer type fleets, so simply click launch. Once the mission is finished, the fleet is no longer highlighted in the menu and you will receive a starlog message, which you can read by clicking the letter icon in the top menu.

Select the explored planet from the starlog notification or the fleet's position information section. If it has decent habitability and plenty of resources, remember it for later. You can also write it down in a note. Notes can be found on fleets (right most tab) and colonies (bottom of the overview).

Once you know all planets in your starter system(s), it's time for the bigger picture. Click an explorer's local or global coordinates on the fleet page to open the starmap. Hover over or tap the nearest star system and click "explore". Once you've arrived at the system, you will see it's planet and can explore those.

Keep at it until you've found a couple of interesting planets. The higher the habitability, the better. And you want to find and settle on planets that offer resources your homeworld doesn't have. This is important, as only your starter technology has no resource requirement. Further exploring is not necessary, but those who enjoy it are highly sought after for the intelligence and even ancient technology large scale exploration can provide.

Once you've found a great planet nearby, it's time to colonize it. Select one of your colonizer fleets, which consist of one or more colonizer vessels with colonists already on board, and possibly a freighter with some materials. You can either go through the fleet menu again, or directly select it from the quick links of the map. Make sure the fleet's name is shown in the top right corner of the map. Hover over your planet of choice, and select "colonize". This early in the game it is important that you choose planets with decent habitability, anything above 60% habitability and 20% fertility is a safe choice. Below that you will have to set it up properly, see the earlier section about the second starting colony.

While your probes do their thing, or your colonizers are en route already, let's get some research started.

If you have several colonies already, it is a good idea to limit research to one of them. Better results will require some specialization down the road, so it's better to limit that to one colony for now. Your first colony already has a research lab. If you decide on another one, you will have to build one from the colony's construction menu first.

Select the colony and click on scientists. Here you will see researchers for hire. If there aren't any, or just one or two, wait a little longer until more arrive, so you get better choices.

The starter lab you've been given supports projects with two researchers. Since they collect significant salaries, don't hire more than two. Find two which have a good mix of skill between them. Since you likely want to start researching a better lab you should look for scientists with high MAT (Material Science), MED (Medical Science), ELE (Electrical Engineering) or SOC (Sociology). These skills are likely to yield you a lab with more than 2 workers. High ING (ingenuity) is also good, but as you might have noticed by now, those scientists are usually older and will die at some point during your play time. In this startup phase of the game they are still a good investment as that high ING will boost your tech enough to get you properly up and running.

After you've hired them, select research from the TECHNOLOGY menu. Please not that while that menu also has a scientist option, it shows applicants at all colonies. Later on it makes sense to find the best one there and if necessary transfer them to your research colony. For now, that's prohibitively expensive.

On the research page, select your lab for the Location. Then choose a Goal. A better research lab is always a good first choice. Add your scientists to the project with the button in front of their names. A balanced preference and the default budget are fine. Now start the project. You will be notified once it has finished.

Anything you build beyond your starter tech will require materials. Since it takes time to acquire them, let's get some industry going asap. If you have several colonies already, take a look at their planets to see which have the most of each resource. Quickest way to see a colonies planet is by clicking its name below the colony's on the colony page itself.

The amount of a certain resource at a planet is a measure of how difficult it is to extract, not an absolute amount available. This means a good mining planet will remain a good mining planet the entire game, its resources will never run out nor will the difficulty of extraction change. It is best to focus most early game mining on one or two small dedicated mining colonies. This specialization will increase your mining output but will also have other undesirable effects that might require some balancing out through the construction of facilities, local laws, wages, taxes, and your government type.

Once you've made your choices, click "Construction" on the colonies' pages. There, first look at the Resource Summary. You only have starter blueprints for the industry that produces the basic resources. Other industry blueprints need to be researched first. Don't worry though, early game technology will only require resources that can be obtained with starter industry. If you look at the various starter industries you will note that some have lower quality. Lower quality will increase the difficulty of extraction, effectively making your workers less efficient. Only build these low quality industries on planets with decent abundance of the relevant resource. The summary at the top of the blueprints you can build from will tell you how much one worker produces, so you can gauge how many buildings you need. The amount of resources you will likely need correlate with their value. To start you need steel, copper, cement, and wood. A daily production of 20 steel, 5 copper, 20 cement, and 20 wood is plenty. You also need some amount of uranium to refuel your freighters. Make sure you transport some to your colonies that can't produce it. Depending on the distance between your planets you'll need about 60-100 to ensure they can be refueled for the way back, but make sure you keep a bit extra just in case you forget to bring it next time.

The next resources you will need are most likely aluminum, plastic and diamonds. If you do well you'll need them after about 10 RL days. So don't waste your starting money on diamond mines that you won't need yet. Plastic will be the first material for which you need to research the production plant, the biopolymer farm. Next will be aluminum which is produced from bauxite.

If you've been quick to work through this tutorial, you may find you don't have enough money to build the more expensive industry. That's fine, there's plenty more to do until you get the cash.

Shortcut: If you're lucky, someone may be running a trade outpost at your faction's homeworld(s). Click "trade" on the colony page to check if that's the case. Then select the outpost to see which resources they offer. Some even offer altruistic support for their faction, selling everything at one credit. Unless prices are extremely high, e.g. several thousand credits for a diamond, it'd be better to postpone mining of the rarer expensive resources, or even wait till you find that ideal planet for your dedicated mining colony. Players running a trade outpost likely have more advanced technology and can produce those resources much cheaper than yourself at this stage.

When you're producing materials on different planets, you will need to haul them around to where they are needed. Ships are built from ship designs, which are designed from technology blueprints. You already have some starter designs for the fleets you were given, including a freighter.

If you feel that the freighter is slow then you are correct. That thing needs an upgrade. It would be a good idea to acquire a new freighter hull by either researching it, having someone share one, or buying one from either the Blueprint Market or the IGTA Archives. You then want to open the Ship Design from the technology menu, select your new freighter hull, ignore most stuff and just slap your basic CSD (Capital Ship Drive) on there, or a better CSD if you got your hands on one already. Finally you need to check if the result is actually better than the basic one, chances are the early technology might still be worse.

Then when you know you actually made better stuff than basic you pick an adequate class name for your first creation and record the design. Voila, you've contributed your first personal touch to the universe.

Alternatively you can ask around if someone is willing to send you a design. Most people are willing to help you out. When in doubt, ask your mentor, they are the nicest people in the game and the author of this wiki article is totally not biased or anything.

See also Ship Design

One of your first colonies already has a shipyard. Look for the colony that has shipyards available under the tab "Shipyard", then "Build at this yard". This is also where ground defenses are built. You won't need any of these yet, or, if you were unlucky to start in the middle of a conflict, you probably don't have the technology to make a dent yet.

Select your hopefully smartly named new freighter design. It now shows you how much time it would take to build one. Remember every 60 game days are 1 real life day. Leave the amount to build at one and "Start Construction". You should have all the required resources, assuming you didn't get some top tech design from someone, but in that case they will also likely have a trade station in orbit from where you can buy the resources you're missing. You will be notified once your ship is finished.

While you wait for your freighter to be built, let's get back to your colonies again. Now that you have a little better idea of where you want go with each one, it's a good time to bless the universe with your creativity again. Select each colony and click "Name Colony". Be smart about it, their names will be forever etched into the cosmos for everybody to see. Well, until someone blows the place up at least.

Next we'll take a look at how your colony develops the land your people acquire. Click on "development" in the lower button bar. At the top, you see the percentage of each land development type for this colony. Urban is a must have for growth, tech is great for research, industry for mining, and military for serious ship building. They have various other impacts you can study on their dedicated Wiki page whenever you like.

Below is a priority value for each one, which determines how new land is zoned. Come up with a sensible mix depending on each colony's purpose. If you're not sure yet, just lower industry and military. You won't be building any oversized death fleets for a while, and likely not even on your starter colonies. You do need a little industry development if you're mining at the colony, but since your industry buildings already come with properly zoned land, it's better to favor urban and tech to net let these fall behind.

When you're done there, return to the colony page and click "Laws". Those are well described and do exactly that. You don't need any of them, but they can be beneficial for some colonies or play styles.

Have you picked your favorite colony yet? Then you can make it your capital with the "Establish Capital" button. It will see much more fierce partisan defense, should it come to that.

Has your freighter project finished? Then you'll find it by clicking "Ungrouped Vessels" at the bottom of the left hand FLEETS menu and select the colony from the dropdown. Or you can directly select the colony where you built it and click on "Fleets" there.

Add your freighter to the fleet with the + button. It will automatically be assigned the fleet's flagship class, as there are no others. (Flagships only have symbolic meaning in combat.) Now name the fleet appropriately, i.e. "Flimsy Tin Can of Death" and click "Create". This is also the place where you would disband fleets you no longer need before you send their ships to the Junkyard. But we're not going there, we're clicking on "Command Fleet" instead. You'll find all of your colonies in the Shortcuts drop down. Send your freighter to the colony where you want to pick up resources and carry them to the colony that's lacking them.

Once there, open the "Cargo" tab of the fleet's page and transfer resources as needed, then send your freighter where you want them. The default mission is "transfer", which means you have to unload things at the destination. If it's all going to the same place, you can select the "transport" mission and it will be unloaded automatically.

In addition to construction materials you should also get some food production going. If you don't provide food to your people they will try to farm it themselves or, if they can't farm it themselves, buy it from the private economy. Buying it from the private economy is expensive, it drains the wealth of your people. Low wealth in turn will cause more sickness and crime, and lower education, destabilizing your colony.

If you started with only one colony then that one is likely on a world with enough fertility that your people can farm it themselves.

If you started with multiple colonies then you should build about 20 farms on the first colony and turn on the food stockpiling local law so it isn't immediately sold again. You don't need to sell it on the first colony as the people there can farm it themselves and at this stage it is likely not profitable for you to sell it there. Next you should use your freighter fleet to haul food from the first colony to the second colony. The food you sell to your people on the second colony will ensure they won't need to pay insane amounts to the global market. This will keep their wealth at a healthier level, which increases the stats of the colony and provides you with more tax income.

Has your lab project finished yet? The actual time it takes isn't set in stone, you can see the best effort duration on the research page, where one game day are 24 minutes. Some projects finish quicker, some take longer.

When your lab is done, it may not necessarily be better than the one you already have, depending on the scientists you picked. But don't worry, they get better as they do more research. It may be worth sticking with lab projects until you have one that can support three scientists and has a higher quality than 100%. But you can build another lab and hire another team to work on other things, better mines for example.

Since scientists learn based on the projects they run, and each project has different requirements, it helps to have dedicated teams for certain types of technology. That's not always economical though, and a good team with a good lab will still produce decent tech they are not specialized in.

Shortcut: If you already have access to all resources for building higher level tech, you can look at the IGTA Archives linked in the TECHNOLOGY menu. There you will find blueprints nobody else has in their inventory anymore. Especially if you can find a better lab there, it'll speed things up quite a bit.

Now you know the basics. But what about warfare, you may ask? No war is won without advanced technology and a strong economy. Warfare in Atmoburn is very strategic, often planned long in advanced, with strategies being based on gathered intelligence. Hopefully you still have plenty of time to learn until it comes to that.

Remember, you are better informed and better equipped to take on your enemies as a team. Find an empire to join, check out your faction's forums, or contact your mentor if you have any questions.

Browse the game's various other pages to get to know all the other features and mechanisms.

Further reading: * Colony Management, Research, Ship Design