Ticks, protection and inactivity
Galactica runs on ticks: the world advances once every 60 minutes. This is the key difference from real-time games — the winner is not whoever is awake at 3am.
What happens on a tick
Every 60 minutes the tick runs: your mines produce, research and production advance, fleets arrive, and battles are resolved.
This happens whether or not you are online. You do not need to be present to progress — only to DECIDE. The game is strategic because your decisions matter, not because of how long you sit in front of it.
In practice you can stay competitive with one or two check-ins a day. Playing more helps — but because you make more decisions, not because you stay up at night.
Newcomer protection: two stages
A newly registered planet starts in the Collector galaxy, protected for 72 ticks. That is 3 days — enough time to understand the system without being torn apart.
When you move out of the Collector into a regular galaxy, you get another 24 ticks of protection: a settling-in period, so you are not a target from the first minute.
While protected, you cannot attack either. There is no firing from behind the shield and ducking back in.
One rule stays in force after protection ends: you can only attack or scout a planet whose score is at least HALF of your own. Smaller planets are shielded from you — while nothing shields you from bigger ones, so punching up is always allowed. Alliance defense missions are exempt from this limit.
If you stop logging in
If you do not visit your planet for 7 days, you get a warning email. If you still do not log in for another 2 days, the planet is deleted.
This is not a punishment but housekeeping: abandoned planets would leave galaxies full, and new players would have nowhere to be born.
Logging in clears the flag by itself — there is nothing else you need to do.
The ticks are already running
Signing up takes a minute, and you immediately get a planet in the Collector galaxy, where you are protected for the first ticks.