Getting Started

This chapter takes you from a blank screen to your first dispatched fleet. The steps are the same in spirit on web and mobile; where they differ, both are described.

Step 1 — Open Nova

• On the web: open the Nova address in your browser. You arrive at the enrollment screen, branded NOVA / Galactic Command.
• On mobile: open the Nova app. If you have played before, it remembers your last commander and drops you straight back into that game. Otherwise you land on the same enrollment screen.

Screenshot: the enrollment screen. On the web, a left-hand menu lists "My games", "Join a game", "New game", and "Map editor". On mobile, a bottom tab bar offers the same choices — My Games, Join, New Game, and Map Editor — and new players land here.

Signing in

The public, hosted Nova asks you to sign in first, so each commander belongs to a real account. You meet a screen headed NOVA / Galactic Command with the prompt "Authenticate to deploy." Sign in once and Nova remembers you:

• On the web: choose Continue with Apple or the Google button. Each opens that provider's secure pop-up; approve it and you are in.
• On mobile: tap the Apple sign-in button and approve the native iOS sheet. (Phones are Apple-only for now.)

You use one account, linked by email — sign in with Apple and with Google under the same email and you land in the same account. There is no password to manage. You can sign out any time from the Account view (web: left menu → Account; mobile: the Account tab), which shows the email you are signed in as. If your session lapses, Nova returns you to the sign-in screen automatically and you sign in again.

The Account view is also where you can permanently delete your account. You confirm by typing DELETE (the deletion can't be undone), and Nova removes your login and the sign-in details tied to it. Any commander you had in a game still running is left on the map — your stars and fleets stay put so the other players aren't disrupted — but the slot is marked as a commander who left. After deleting you are signed out; signing in again starts a fresh account.

Development builds replace the provider buttons with a simple dev sign-in: type any email and press Enter dev mode to become that email's commander. It exists only for local testing and never appears on the live service. A Nova configured with authentication switched off skips this screen entirely and drops you straight at enrollment.

Step 2 — Join a game, or start a new one

A theatre is a single game. You can join one that is forming, or create your own.

New to Nova? Try it solo first. On My Games and Join a game, newcomers see a Try NOVA offer (and there is always a small Try NOVA → link on My Games). It opens a short explainer and then drops you into a private practice game against a single, passive opponent — no real players, no waiting, a generous starting treasury, and a fast clock. It is the whole game of Nova in miniature: send fleets, capture stars, build factories, and defeat the opponent to win. Come back here to start a real theatre whenever you are ready.

Joining a game in the lobby

Under Join a game you see the games that are forming — open theatres still waiting for their commanders. Each one is a compact card with its name, a row of settings chips (game length, time compression, galaxy size), and how many slots are taken ("2 / 4 joined"). Tap a card to open that game's join screen, which shows its full roster and the open slots.

On the join screen, type the name you want in the "Your commander name" field and pick which home world to claim. That takes the next open slot and names you as its commander — there are no pre-named commanders to choose from. The game then moves under My games, where you watch it fill: its card reads "Waiting for players…" and updates live as others join, then "All players joined — starting…" the moment the last slot is taken. Once it's live, that card carries an Enter game button to jump straight in.

You join one slot per game with your account: once you've claimed a commander, trying to claim a second slot in that same game is refused ("You have already claimed a commander in this game"), so you cannot hot-seat several commanders from one login. For testing, development builds let each browser tab sign in as a different dev email — and so join as a different commander — which is how the screenshots in this manual are made. On a no-login Nova nothing locks.

Screenshot: a Join-a-game card showing the game name, its settings chips and roster, and the "Your commander name" field with a Join button.

Tip — one slot per account. With sign-in on, your account claims a single slot per game in the lobby, and once a game is active under My games you are locked to the commander you claimed — you play that theatre as that commander, and yours alone.

Some theatres are private and never appear in this list. To join one you need its join code: enter the code a friend gave you in the join-code box on the Join a game screen, and Nova shows you that game's lobby so you can name yourself in an open slot. See Private games and join codes below.

Creating a new game

Choose New game to open the Create a new game wizard — three quick steps, with a progress indicator ("1 of 3") and Back / Next buttons to move between them.

Step 1 — Identity.

1. Name your game (required) — the field starts pre-filled with a suggested name (like Cygnus Gambit or Operation Ironveil); keep it, type your own, or press the reroll button (a die icon) to roll another. Friends see this name when they join, so every game is named.
2. Who can join — Private (the default) or Public. A private game is hidden from the public list and reachable only by a code or link you share; a public game appears in the Join a game list for anyone. (See Private games and join codes below.)

Step 2 — Map. Where the galaxy comes from — you pick one of two routes (see Choosing a galaxy below):

3. Generate a fresh map (the default) or Load a saved map you designed in the map editor.
4. When generating: set the number of commanders with the – / + stepper (at least two), and pick a Galaxy size — Small, Medium, or Large — which sets how many stars each commander gets. Players name themselves when they claim a slot, so you do not name any commanders here. A saved map fixes the commander count for you (it's built for exactly that many).
5. Advanced (layout, ships, costs) (optional) — a collapsed section for fine-tuning most games leave alone: the exact stars per commander and the galaxy layout (Symmetric / Sym+scatter / Random); Starting ships and Starting cash (each 250 by default, the same for every commander so the opening stays fair); and the purchase costs of everything commanders can buy — factories, the speed/range/battle-power upgrades, spy probes, nova bombs, and the two shields (leave them at Nova's standard prices, listed in Economy and Building, or tune them to shape the game). These settings apply to that theatre for its whole life.

Step 3 — Pace. How much game plays out over real time. Pick a preset — Quick (~1 hour), Standard (~3 days), or Long (~2 weeks) — and Nova tells you how many production cycles the game will run and how often they land (e.g. "about 25 production cycles — one about every 2.4 min"). Every preset runs the same standard amount of game; the length just spreads those cycles over more or less real time. Custom pace reveals two fields you can edit:

• Game length (real hours) — how long the theatre runs in real-world hours; decimals are allowed (e.g. 1.5 for a ninety-minute game). When this much real time has passed, the game ends.
• Speed (× standard) — a pace factor where 1.0 is the standard amount of game for that length. Lower it (e.g. 0.5) for a more relaxed game with fewer production cycles, or raise it (2.0) to pack in twice as much. The length — the real hours you'll spend — doesn't change; the factor changes how much game happens inside it.

The last step shows a one-line summary of your choices. Press Create game and Nova builds the galaxy. A public game takes you straight to its join screen to claim your own seat; a private game first shows a Share screen (below) so you can invite your commanders. As players join and claim its slots the game fills up, and it starts automatically the moment every slot is taken — there is no manual start step.

Private games and join codes

A private theatre is invite-only. It does not show up in the public Join a game list, so nobody stumbles into it; instead, the moment you create it Nova gives you a short join code — six characters drawn from clear, unambiguous letters and numbers (no easily-confused 0/O or 1/I/L), so it reads cleanly aloud or off a screen, like K7PQ9R. The code is shown to you, the creator, on the game's card, and to anyone who has already joined.

The moment a private game is created, Nova shows a Share screen: a scannable QR code, the join code in large type, and a shareable link (novagame.app/j/<code>), with a Share button — which opens your device's share sheet, so you can send the link by text — and a Copy link button. The same QR, code, and link appear again on the game's join screen for anyone already in it, so any commander can pass the invite along, not just the host.

Share it however you like — a text with the link, the scannable code in person, a voice call. The easiest way in is the link: tapping novagame.app/j/<code> on a phone with the NOVA app installed opens the app straight to that game's join screen, with the code already filled in — nothing to type. If the app isn't installed (or the link is opened on a computer), it opens a web page instead that shows the code with a tap-to-copy button and buttons to open the NOVA app or play in your browser. Either way they land on the join screen to claim a slot. A commander can also join by scanning the QR or typing the code into the join-code box on the Join a game screen (web and mobile). Without the code, a private theatre simply isn't reachable.

Heads up — codes last 72 hours. A join code is good for 72 hours from when the game was created. After that it stops working and the "No game found for that code" message appears, so gather your commanders within a few days of setting up a private theatre. (A private game also has to be still forming to join by code — once it has started, the code no longer admits anyone.)

Screenshot: the Create-a-new-game wizard — the Identity step with the pre-filled game name and its reroll button, and the Private / Public choice; followed by the Map step (Generate / Load-a-saved- map, the commander stepper and Galaxy-size presets) and the Pace step (Quick / Standard / Long presets with the production-cycle count, and the Custom-pace length + speed fields).

Note: Game length is always real-world time. A 24-hour theatre ends 24 real hours after it starts no matter what compression you pick — turning compression up just fits more production cycles and battles into those hours. See Time compression and game length in the Core Concepts chapter.

Choosing a galaxy

When you create a theatre the Map section offers two routes, and you use exactly one of them: Generate a map or Load a saved map.

Generate a map builds a fresh galaxy and lets you set the number of commanders. Pick one of three styles:

• Symmetric — Identical rotated regions with a contested hub. Every commander gets a starting region that is an exact rotated copy of every other, with a single hard-to-hold star at the dead centre of the map. This is the fairest possible layout: no one has a better opening than anyone else.
• Sym + scatter — the symmetric layout above, plus a sprinkling of extra neutral stars spread roughly evenly across the map to break up the pattern and add surprises. Still very fair, a little less predictable.
• Random — Procedurally scattered and balanced. Stars are scattered freely and then balanced so each commander has a comparable share nearby. More varied and less tidy than the symmetric maps, and only roughly fair.

You choose the layout under Advanced when you generate a galaxy; a line beneath the choice explains what each one does.

Load a saved map is the other route, available once you've designed and saved your own galaxy in the map editor. Switch the Map section to Load a saved map and pick one from the list (on both web and mobile); the game starts on that custom layout. Because a saved map already places every home world, it fixes the number of commanders — the count follows the map and the generate-only options (layout, stars per commander) step aside. See the Map Editor chapter.

Step 3 — Get your bearings

Once you are in, you are looking at the galaxy. Find your home star — it is in your colour and is your strongest world, with a large garrison of ships. Take a moment to read the next chapter, Reading the Star Map, so the colours, numbers, and rings make sense.

Step 4 — Issue your first order

The shortest path to playing:

1. Select your home star by clicking (web) or tapping (mobile) it. Its details appear in the Contact panel.
2. Because it is your star, command buttons appear — choose Send fleet.
3. Pick a destination: click or tap a nearby neutral (grey) star that lies inside your range ring.
4. Choose how many ships to send using the slider or the ¼ / Half / Max buttons.
5. Confirm with Launch.

Your fleet leaves home and crawls across the map toward its target. When it arrives, it will either occupy the neutral star (if it is undefended or you bring enough ships) or fight a battle for it. Watch the Comms feed and the Fleets in transit panel to follow what happens.

That is the core loop of Nova: select a star, give it an order, watch it play out, repeat. Everything else in this manual builds on those four moves.

Switching commanders or leaving

To leave a game and return to the enrollment screen — for example to join a different theatre or play a different commander — use the ‹ Lobby control in the status bar at the top; your game keeps running while you are away. On the web, opening a second tab is usually easier than switching back and forth. You can also sign out or switch accounts from the Account view (web left menu → Account; mobile Account tab).