0xUniverse - Blockchain based space strategy game

I am a big fan of browser games, and most likely retired RTS player (WC III: regorged is not really my thing anymore), but basically I grew up on C&C Red Alert 2 & 3 and Warcraft saga... I did eventually tried the world of warcraft mostly for PvP but that didn't stuck with me as much as commanding multiple armies, units and micro-management of them, as well as reading the game and spying your enemy to get the proper frontline, and counter backline "shooters".

Anyways, it's been a long time since I played any game, and recently I started searching for some browser games - mostly due to a lot of time spending in the office and doing PhD research - I wanted to play something like Ogame, Ikariam, Travian - the classics but that knows to be addictive and can fuck up your sleep routines completely (not that I have one, but I'm trying to maintain whatever is left of it).

Finding the game

After some time investigating and checking up gods unchained and other blockchain games - I ended up finding this gem 0xUniverse. and I immediately I was hooked on the design and the looks of it.
The game is not free to play, and you need to spend some $$$$ or ETH to be able to start, that made me a bit hesitant but I decided to give it a try.

Setting up an account is very straightforward. You need an email address and metamask wallet is preferred by the game (you can make it during the account making process), and within 10 minutes you
are set up to go.

---

This is a welcoming screen and navigating the game is pretty straight forward,tho it could be a bit more optimised, but it works satisfying so far.

Getting started

Okay - what is the goal of the game?
To colonize the space, rule the galaxy and eventually if you are lucky enough sell some fancy planets. Planets are categorized in 5 groups (Common,Rare,Epic,Legendary, Black Hole).
Currently on the market Cheapest Legendary is about 15-20ETH, and cheapest Epic is about 0.15. Only one black hole has been discovered and it was sold for about 90ETH few months ago.

As I mentioned earlier, after you make an account you need to get yourself a planet - you can do it by clicking on a shopping cart and get one of the 3 bundles for fiat. Or go to planet market and find already populated and a bit developed one if you already have some ETH in your wallet (this is much cheaper option).

For example, you can buy 2 common planets and 1 rare for 0.008 ETH which is about $2 instead of getting a bundle for $10 - and on top of that, you get fully populated planets. Like this one below:

After you get your first planet it's time to invent some spaceships and start exploring the space. Your population produces knowledge - and knowledge needed for the next ship rises exponentially. My practice has shown that sending rank 1 ship is not really useful and it just wastes resources which are VERY SLOWLY accumulating. Every planet produces a combination of 3 different resources. For higher ranked ships you need rarer elements which are produced on rare/epic/legendary planets - and there is a reason why people buy these planets.

Exploring the Universe

These are my spaceships, they have characteristics of Engine & Radar system (you want these numbers to be as high as possible), by reading some guides better engine will improve your chances of finding a planet and radar will cover the larger radius of the sector you send it, meaning that you have more chances to find rare type of planets. Every time you build a ship, it will cost 1.5x more to build it again, and with space exploration, all your resources needed for that ship will be dried out so chose carefully. :)

When you send out a ship to a mission, you can lose a ship or discover a planet - In order to do any of this you need to pay a gas fee for ETH transaction - now there is a funny thing tx costs are different depending on your outcome of the mission (but you can only see that) after the mission has been done, there is no way of cheating it (not yet :) ).

This is the map of the Galaxy divided into 1,000 sectors (25 x 40). Every sector contains 1000 habitable planets, making it 1,000,000 discoverable planets in the 0xUniverse.
You can search the planet only in the sector where you have a planet with enough population to operate one of your spaceships, or you can recruit people from other people for a certain price and try your luck in different sector, this is also a way to earn more in the game, by renting your population to other people.

The map is colour-coded and normalized - brightest showing where there is the most colonized planets and darkest the lowest number, but the difference is just 12 planets, where 350 is presented as dark purple and 362 the brightest yellow.

---

So far we have covered the basics of planets and spaceships.

For 3 days of playing - I've bought about 2 rare planets and 3 common ones and discovered 3 rare and 3 common planets growing my Galactic Empire to 11 planets.

So far we have covered the basics of planets and spaceships, but the things don't end up here.

With the recent update of the game new valuable product is introduced into the game - Energy. In order to harness the energy you need to build the factories and you can do that only on one of the rarer types of planets.

The factory requires a lot of resources and 1 Energy to build it (you must buy the first energy from the market - but it is cheap, at the moment), and then it will produce 1E every 4 days, or if you upgrade it to level 2 or 3 - production is doubled and quadrupled 1/2days and 1/day respectively.

It is not clear what the energy is going to be used for - but the game is still in the development phase and the team is mentioning bringing of wars, trades, and there are some greyed out options like transport and decorations.

---

The image below shows the current prices of legendary planets on the market and all the elements involved in the game.

The thing that bothers me is actually on the left side of the image... - They don't give a fuck about PTE and already established symbols for elements. For example Si = Silver; In = Iron; Go = Gold (One of the explanation is Crypto silver is not PTE silver)... Hopefully, they will change that in one of the future updates but, even tho some details stings a bit, I can get over it cause the game is really good awesome. Designers did a terrific job, it runs smoothly and it is pretty intuitive once you get on top of it which takes you about an hour or so and there is a great community which will answer any of your questions really quickly.

The community around the game is pretty active and the dev team is constantly working and bringing updates and what is the most crucial thing community and dev team are actually collaboration and there is massive bouncing feedback between them, at least that's my feel after exploring everything around the game and the game itself for the last few days. With some rumours saying space battles will be included soon - and we can have a full-scale war between fractions across the Universe! I say BRING IT ON! :guns_blazing:

For the end I am going to put my observations and thinking for the best way to start the journey with a nice beginners tip or what would I do now - like the optimal way.
If you are purchasing your planet with crypto - get the rare one first with lots of people (doesn't have to be the most expensive one), then check up the energy factory and the resources it needs. Invent several space ships - then buy 1 common planet that has at least one of the resources that are needed for building a factory, and keep inventing the ships until you hit the numbers of Engines 6+ and radar 15+. Then check what resources it needs and get a second common planet (again with lots of people) and 1 resource that is needed for factory, and the spaceship. At this moment you want to buy 1 energy packet - and start building your Factory, and start exploring.

The game is really slow-paced and you don't need to check it every 2 hours or things like that - I see myself as a long-term and dedicated player. Most of the guides and conversations I've seen encourages making multiple accounts to speed up the things. But that will also build up the amount of money you are investing in the game.

So far I invested just under $10, have 11 planets, and I am producing energy on two planets. And I am hoping my legendary planet is just behind that gravitationally distorted sector. I'll keep searching for it.

---

If you made it so far - like to the end of this post... here is a small reward for you!
As some of you know, I am astrophysicist and my job is to keep discovering and understanding things in space - this image is one of the recent discoveries.

It is Active Galactic Nuclei - Super Massive Black Hole in the centre of an elliptical galaxy that spits out enormous energy jets, that we can see in radio and sometimes in x-ray and gamma-ray detectors. The green lines are showing some irregularities in the jets that we are investigating and modelling and completely understanding the whole process is my PhD project.

If you happen to have some free witness votes and searching for a dedicated witness, please consider casting a vote for crowdwitness or Curie.

Cheers,
©Svemirac