Open multiplayer lobby · Full solo rules and ship tables · PDF manual
All surviving, non-resigned human houses must submit Ready. There is no five-minute timer or other deadline. The final submission resolves the turn on the server exactly once: computer planning, economy, construction, research, population growth, repairs, movement, survey, orbital combat, landings and colonization, fleet merging, survey, intelligence, and scoring. All players then receive their own next-turn view.
Human planning changes apply to their own house as each command is accepted, in server arrival order. A room revision rejects stale concurrent writes; refresh and review before retrying. Retrying the same request identifier never repeats a purchase or order. During resolution, houses use ascending house ID, worlds use ascending world ID, and fleets retain their stored order. The original seeded rules generator resolves combat; its seed and stream position remain private on the server. Exact final score ties go to the lowest surviving house ID.
Fleet speed is the slowest mobile hull's speed. Courses use the shortest wrapping hex route. Mobile hulls can retreat in combat according to the original rules. Legions attempt a landing only when Land legions is enabled; Bombard enables attacks against hostile population and industry. A captured world retains 55% of its population and 45% of its industry. Details, technology costs, ship strengths, and full economy rules are in the solo tutorial.
Win by being the last surviving house, by maintaining supremacy for four consecutive resolutions, or by having the highest score at the chosen turn limit. Supremacy requires at least 1.6 times the runner-up score and a share of total surviving score of 0.38 × 3 ÷ max(2, surviving houses). Score equals population × 0.5 + industry × 0.8 + climate × 0.15 across owned worlds, plus 8 per research level, fleet build value × 0.04, and reserve × 0.02. A house with neither worlds nor ships is eliminated. The final result shows each house's final score. Start another match through Switch room.
Computers use the original Farhold AI and do not consume human seats. The default is one computer; the maximum is five with two reserved human seats. Zero computers is supported with at least two humans. Computers plan only from their own surveys and obey the same construction, movement, and combat rules. Documented difficulty modifiers apply: Cadet produces 84% of human output, Veteran 112%, and Ace 136%; aggression and planning also vary. Computers run once per submitted turn, including solo practice. They cannot replace an unfilled seat after start.
Disconnecting does not convert a player to AI. Resign house, followed by confirmation, permanently surrenders all owned worlds and destroys the house's fleets. It does not add a computer participant. Resigned players retain chat and their last surveys. Victory is checked immediately; if no active humans remain to submit turns, further simulation stops.
Everyone can see star positions and names, room display names, human/computer type, readiness, presence, and public elimination status. A player receives full details for their own house, its worlds, and fleets. Other worlds show only last surveyed climate, yield, population, industry, and owner. Visible enemy fleets disclose their current position and observable hull/weapon composition, but no destination, route, or combat orders. Unseen fleets, enemy treasury, research, production queues, home-world markers, map knowledge, and random seeds are never transmitted. The host receives no extra intelligence. Online play omits the solo rival-history panel because its route-derived hints require further privacy work.
The portal supplies a short-lived, signed access ticket after checking the current account and subscription rules. Tickets are held only in browser memory. A stable portal account identifier restores the same room seat, including on another device. The browser stores only the last room code; clearing browser storage does not delete the server world. Reopen last room or use the invitation code to return.
The service persists accepted commands before acknowledging them. A disconnected human keeps their seat and unsubmitted turn indefinitely. If they submitted Ready before disconnecting, the others can complete that one turn; later turns wait again. No clock, scheduled travel, or computer processing runs while the room is waiting. The host has no force-turn privilege. Switch room leaves a waiting lobby and transfers host to the next member; in an active match it closes your view without surrendering. Use explicit resignation to surrender permanently. Reconnect requires access to the same portal account; a lost account must be recovered through the portal.
Presence is Online when an authorized request has been seen within 20 seconds; clients poll roughly every 3.5 seconds. Service failures, expired access, and HTML error pages produce readable messages. The client retries an interrupted mutation with the same identifier and refreshes after revision conflicts. Commands already acknowledged remain safe; unsubmitted form edits may need to be re-entered.
Chat is visible only to authorized members of that room. Messages display the sender's public display name and local-time timestamp, and are rendered as plain text. Limit: 500 characters and five messages per sender per ten seconds. The newest 100 messages are stored with the room and survive reconnection and service restart; older messages are removed. Do not share passwords or personal information. No harassment, threats, or abusive content. Report misuse through the Tronsoft contact page with the room code and message time. The service operator can investigate and archive a room through its private stored record. The game does not send reports automatically.
The left Information sidebar contains house totals, roster, chat and the command report. The map fills the center. The right Controls sidebar contains map controls, readiness and world, fleet and research orders. Desktop sidebars scroll independently. Phones stack the map, orders, and room information vertically. Drag the map to pan; use +, −, Fit, and Home. With the canvas focused, arrow keys pan and plus/minus zoom. World and Fleet dropdowns provide keyboard alternatives to map clicking. Tab visits controls; each uses a visible focus indicator. Chat has labels and a new-message announcement. The canvas itself is not a fully screen-reader-accessible map.
This is a conversion build for specification distribution 1.6.4 (manifest schema 1.6), pending production acceptance. The client ZIP contains no executable backend. Install the separately supplied farhold-room-server-v5.5.0.zip on a Node-capable host, connect its same-origin HTTPS route and the site's verified portal access adapter, and set config/multiplayer.json. A PHP-only shared hosting account cannot run the Node service without a separate runtime.
The metadata requests a Multiplayer tile linking to multiplayer.html. Only the portal installer can update the actual tile and preserve its access/subscription checks. Required production URL, portal tile, upgrade/rollback, and independent-device acceptance tests remain unverified. tests/acceptance-evidence.json records this explicitly and blocks publication until those checks pass. Solo play and format-3 local saves remain available; saves from versions 1.x and 2.x remain incompatible.