Strategy and Tactics

The rules of Nova are simple; playing it well is not. This chapter collects practical advice. None of it is mandatory — treat it as a starting point and develop your own style.

The opening: expand fast

Your home star's 250 ships are the largest fleet you will command for a while, and the neutral stars around you are at their weakest they will ever be. Spend the opening claiming nearby neutrals.

Target the closest, weakest neutrals first. Use the range ring to see what your home can reach directly, and grab those.
Do not over-send. A neutral with a dozen defenders does not need 200 ships — send enough to win comfortably and keep the rest for the next target.
Every star you take widens your routing network, letting later fleets reach farther.

The engine: factories and compounding

Nova rewards compounding. Stars give wealth; wealth buys factories; factories build ships; ships take more stars; more stars give more wealth. The earlier you start that loop, the steeper it climbs.

On every safe star you capture, start adding factories. A back-line star bristling with factories is a war-winning asset.
Prefer factories on high-wealth, low-risk stars — they pay for themselves fastest and are least likely to be captured before they do.
Resist the urge to hoard credits. Idle credits earn nothing; factories earn every cycle.

Intelligence: scout before you strike

A spy probe costs 10 credits and travels fast. A failed assault costs an entire fleet.

Probe a target before any serious attack so you know the garrison and can send the right force.
Probe a rival's frontier to understand where they are strong and weak.
Put probe shields on your own front-line stars so rivals must attack you blind.

Remember scouted intel can go stale (the amber ~ numbers) — a probe tells you the past, not the present, so re-probe before a decisive move.

Combat: respect the defender's edge

The defender always has an advantage. Two lessons follow:

When attacking, bring more than you think you need. To even the odds against a comparable garrison, bring about 25% more ships than it has; to be confident, more still — and remember the defender's edge compounds in a bigger battle.
When defending, a modest garrison punches above its weight. You do not need to match an attacker ship-for-ship to make them pay.
Battle power multiplies every fight. If you intend to do a lot of fighting, a few upgrades early can be worth more than the equivalent in ships.

Logistics: automate the rear

As your empire grows, hand-flying every reinforcement becomes impossible — and idle garrisons are wasted ships.

Set standing orders so rear stars feed the front automatically. A common pattern: home -> forward staging star, keeping a safe home garrison.
Chain orders so production from deep in your territory flows steadily toward the fight.
Keep enough garrison behind each order that a sudden enemy push cannot walk into an empty star.

Jump gates: build your highways

A jump gate does not fight — it changes what your fleets can do. It links two of your stars and lets fleets cross between them far faster than open space, so it is infrastructure, not a weapon.

Gate the routes your reinforcements actually take. A gate along your main supply line turns a slow front into a fast one, and pairs perfectly with a standing order down the same route — ships flow to the fight at gate speed, hands-off.
A gate is a defensive multiplier. It lets you rush a garrison to a threatened star faster than a rival can mass against it — often the difference between holding and losing a frontier.
A gate helps whoever holds both ends. Don't build one toward a star you cannot defend, or you may be laying your enemy's highway into your own territory.
Gates are an investment: they pay off over the whole game, so build them early on the routes you know you will use, not in a panic once the fighting starts.

Upgrades: buy what your situation needs

Range when good targets sit just out of reach, or to knit a sprawling empire into one routing network.
Speed when your fleets keep arriving too late — to reinforce, to counterattack, or to beat a rival to a neutral.
Battle power when the game is turning into a slugfest.

There is no single right order; read the board.

Special weapons: tools, not crutches

Spy probes are cheap and almost always worth it before a big move.
Nova bombs are expensive and destroy a star rather than capture it. Use them to deny — to erase a fortress you cannot take, or to sever a rival's routing chain by killing a key waypoint — not as a way to grow. A bombed star helps nobody's final score.
Nova shields are costly insurance. Reserve them for the handful of stars you truly cannot afford to lose.

Diplomacy: make allies, apply leverage

With three or more commanders on the map you are never just fighting the terrain — you are managing rivals. Diplomacy decides who fights whom, and a well-timed word or payment can be worth a fleet.

Talk before you have to fight. A message that points a neighbour's attention at a common rival keeps their ships off you — the cheapest defence there is.
Contracts make a promise real. Pay a neighbour to attack your rival — a conditional contract sends their ships, not just their goodwill — or buy quiet on one front while you settle another.
Information is a weapon. Private threads are invisible to everyone else: coordinate a pincer, or shade the truth in one thread while acting in another, and the target never sees it coming.
Gang up on the leader. When one commander pulls ahead it is in everyone else's interest to combine against them — be the one who organises that, or the one who quietly grows while others do the fighting.
Trust, but keep a garrison. A contract only ever moves credits (and, if conditioned, one fleet); it never enforces the goodwill. Deals hold exactly as long as they suit the other side.

The endgame: count stars, watch the clock

The winner is whoever holds the most living stars when Mission ends hits zero — or, if two or more finish level on the most, they share the win (a tie).

In the final cycles, spend everything on taking and holding stars, not on long-term investments that will never pay off.
Time your last attacks to land just before the deadline — Nova will not let you launch a fleet that cannot arrive in time, so watch the clock.
Hold back enough to defend your own stars from rivals doing exactly the same thing.
Do the arithmetic: if you are ahead, play safe and deny; if you are behind, take risks for the stars that close the gap.

A few habits of strong commanders

Always be producing. Every star that can hold factories should.
Always know your front. Keep recent intel on the stars where you and a rival meet.
Never strip a star bare unless you are sure nothing can punish it.
Spend, don't hoard. Credits and ships sitting idle are losing you the game slowly.
Plan around the two clocks. Production and the mission deadline drive every good decision.