¶ Beginners Guide - A New Players Guide
¶ Introduction
You can utilize an email to create your player account, then use a credit card to purchase initial items, or use the funds you have in an existing starknet account to purchase the intial items. There are starter packs contained within the store beginning at $29, or you can purchase the indivdual game items separately. Below are the first steps to getting started, and the recommended first actions to get you going.
Links:
¶ Before Play
¶ Create an Account
- Navigate to the game and, if new, click “Login with email” and follow the account creation flow, through our account provider partner Argent. If you already have an existing account, you can use that.
¶ Purchase a Starter Pack
- Once logged in, you will see the “STORE” option. If not already clicked, navigate to the button and click it.
- Within the store, it is recommended that new players use the “Starter Pack” option and select between the “Basic” and “Advanced” starter packs. Both will give you everything you need to get started, with the Advanced pack giving you extra SWAY to further allow you to help start your initial colony. You can purchase more crewmates and SWAY at any time.
¶ User Interface Introduction
The Influence user interface includes the game launcher and in-game menus. The launcher has sections for play, store, help, rewards, and settings. The main in-game menus are the crew & action log (1), wallet & main menu (2), sidebar (3), time controls & orient view (4), and action & inspect (5). There are two primary views: Belt View, which shows the asteroid belt and includes filters, favorite asteroids, and flight plans, and Asteroid View, which provides detailed information on specific asteroids, orbiting ships, resources, and market details. When taking most actions, other than travel, you will mostly be in asteroid view.
For more details, visit Influence User Interface.
¶ First Step
¶ Getting Started with a Crew
- The first step for every intrepid explorer is to recruit your crewmates who will allow you to specialize and progress within the newly established Adalian colony. Your crew can consist of one to five crewmates.
- When you begin the recruitment process for each of your crewmates, you will be able to select any of the available classes: Miner, Merchant, Engineer, Scientist, and Pilot.
- You can compose your crew of any combination of these classes, and from there your adventure begins. One thing to keep in mind: the more of one class you have, the more efficient you will be at undertaking their target actions, but at the cost of being slower and less efficient at others.
¶ Tips on Choosing Your First Crewmate(s) and Setting Up Your Crew(s)
- Most new players will want to start as an Engineer and/or Miner-led crew.
- If you want to control more than one crew, you can split crews apart.
- When you begin recruiting the first crewmate, you will be asked to select a Habitat where they will be housed. Simply choose the auto-select option if you’re new.
- Traits picked cannot be changed once locked in, except through random events. If you love to min-max, join the discord and ask our community what might be best for you or see the wiki.
¶ Leasing Your First Lot
- Once you have bought your starter pack and recruited your initial crewmate(s), you will want to find a lot to settle on Adalia Prime (the largest asteroid in the Adalia system). You can choose any lot which is not occupied by another player. Lots are indicated on screen by the small white hexagons with a dot at the center. Each lot enables you to build one building.
- Finding the right location for your first lot is a strategic choice. Each lot has an associated "cost” in SWAY, the in-game currency, at a monthly rate. On Adalia Prime, most lots are extremely affordable. If you click on a lot that looks expensive, it’s likely within the zone closest to the initial city and, due to high demand, the price is set higher. See the short video below if you need help choosing a lot.
- To lease a lot, simply click the lot, then click the lot agreement button on the bottom left, then enter the amount of time you want to lease it for and click confirm.
¶ Plan a Building Site
- Once you have leased your lot, click the build site plan button on the bottom left of the screen, indicated by the three squares. For your first building, you will want to choose a “Warehouse” so that you can store future materials that you buy, mine, refine, and manufacture.
- Click the Warehouse in the menu, then confirm. This will take a moment to process, then you can start delivering materials to the lot to construct the building. See the video below for a walkthrough.
¶ Construct Your First Building
- Once the building site plan is down, you can transfer materials to the site to construct the building. This will require you to search for materials on the market and find the best prices and/or closest available products. The further a product is, the longer it will take to arrive at the lot, so weigh cost and distance to your preference.
¶ Tips/Important Notes
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New players will either start on the asteroid Adalia Prime, if you do not select another asteroid with a public habitat. If you are unfamiliar with the game, are not part of an alliance, and want to get started quickly, starting on Adalia Prime is ideal.
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If you purchase an asteroid, you do not start on that asteroid. You must first learn the game, get a ship, and then figure out how to travel to it and sustain yourself on it. It’s an enjoyable and hard logistics problem to solve, which every colonist who has done it before you knows. The Discord is a great place to ask questions if you are curious. This shouldn’t deter you from purchasing an asteroid, if inclined, but there is a lot to understand before the purchase and more after. Check out Asteroids for more details on them.
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Actions in this game take time, and once started cannot be cancelled, so take your time and think through your actions first. In the beginning it might take a bit to get adjusted to the slower paced within the game. In Influence as you grow your settlements, industry, and skill you will have more to do and progress begins to compound.
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This is first and foremost a strategy game. Opportunity and progress will always favor those who put in the time and master the skills. While money can get you more crewmates and SWAY, it can’t teach you the skills.
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The community is incredibly helpful, if you have questions it’s likely you can get your answer quickly in the Discord.
¶ Basic gameplay concepts
¶ The Adalian System
The Adalian System features 250,000 dynamic asteroids and five uninhabitable planets. Players can own asteroids to extract and refine materials, produce goods, manage marketplaces, and lease space. Each asteroid has unique orbital elements, rotation, spectral-type, size, and surface lots (lots equate to how many buildings can be built). Asteroids orbit 24 times faster than real-time, advancing the game one day per real hour. Adalia Prime, the largest asteroid and initial player hub, offers free buildable lots and public structures to assist new players.
¶ Crew
A crew is required to play Influence and is made up of at least one, and a maximum of five, active individual Crewmates, one of which must be selected as the captain. Additionally, players may control any number of crews.
¶ Crewmates
Crewmates dictate what actions your crew can take at different efficiencies. The more of any one class you have the more efficient that classes actions will be. However, since there are five classes and only five slots in a crew, you will need to figure out what the best composition is for you depending on what you are trying to accomplish. Many players run multiple crews that are specialized. Additionally, crewmates are able to acquire a set of traits, some of which are impactful, which will further enhance specific actions.
¶ Food
The Food resource is “banked” with the crew and stored in their hab module. Once banked it can not be withdrawn and will be consumed until empty. Each Crewmate consumes one ton of Food per Adalian year (~15 real days).
¶ Extraction
Raw Material Extraction in Influence involves scanning and core sampling to identify resource deposits. Scanning, performed with long-range scanners, reveals the distribution of raw materials on asteroids, influenced by their spectral-type. Core sampling targets specific materials, with results indicating deposit sizes. Chained sampling can increase yield up to 10,000 tonnes. Extraction rates decline as deposits diminish, requiring repeated core sampling. Efficiency bonuses apply to Crewmates with Prospector and Surveyor traits. The extraction process balances time, cost, and yield. Asteroids do not run out of materials, but players are required to utilize a core sample each time they start an extraction.
¶ Building
Building construction in Influence involves placing buildings on 1 km² lots. Initially, buildings are in planning mode until required materials are moved to the site. Construction starts after materials are delivered and takes several Adalian days, with efficiency boosted by Crewmates with the Builder trait. Buildings must be emptied before deconstruction, with materials subject to reprocessing loss. Unfinished sites can be claimed by other players after 48 hours.
¶ Refining & Manufacturing
Raw materials must be refined. Refined materials and raw materials may then be manufactured into finished goods. The yield of refined goods can be increased with the presence of a Crewmate with the Refiner trait. Production buildings must specify an available warehouse as an output for all processes. They may be set to run as long as there are sufficient inputs and sufficient output storage capacity.
¶ SWAY - The Adalian Currency
SWAY is the primary currency in Influence, used for fees and market transactions. It facilitates trade by reducing friction and providing market clarity. Players can acquire SWAY by selling materials, participating in incentivized actions, managing marketplaces, leasing asteroid lots, trading, and purchasing from decentralized exchanges.
¶ Trade
In Influence, trading is player-driven with no NPCs involved. Trade is the central system in this game that allows the player base to continue to settle the belt and grow, this is due to the complexity of the production chains. Completeing production chains from start to finish is extremely time consuming, which pushes players to specialize in production and activity and using markets to fill in the gaps.
¶ Travel
Travel in Influence involves navigating the Adalian belt with realistic physics, requiring careful planning for elliptical, parabolic, or hyperbolic trajectories. Ships launch into orbit from spaceports, with journeys limited to one Adalian year and dependent on food reserves. Propellant use is adjustable for efficiency, and cargo capacity affects travel time. Crewmates can enhance efficiency and capacity. Emergency transport allows stranded players to return to a nearby asteroid by generating limited propellant.
¶ Surface Transport
In Influence, surface transportation of items between lots incurs time costs based on cargo mass and distance. Standard transport occurs at 2.5 km per Adalian hour, taking several hours for larger asteroids. Items moved within a 5 km radius transfer instantly, benefiting smaller asteroids and encouraging contiguous lot settlement on larger ones.
¶ Ships
In Influence, three types of ships are available:
- Shuttle: Transports up to 20 Crewmates with minimal cargo capacity. Requires a Spaceport to land.
- Light Transport: Small cargo ship with a capacity of 2,000 tons, capable of landing on any empty lot or Spaceport.
- Heavy Transport: Large cargo ship carrying up to 12,000 tons, requiring a Spaceport to land.
Additionally, Escape Modules support emergency flights
¶ Ownership & Access
Asteroid Ownership & Access: Players can enter orbit and land on asteroids using Light Transports. Spaceports, which can be public, private, or whitelist-based, are required for surface access. Lot use is managed by owners, tenants, or squatters. Lease agreements involve SWAY payments, notice, and eviction periods. Player organizations can manage assets and roles through a flexible approval system, encouraging custom roles and automation.
¶ Buildings
- Spaceport: Allows all ship landings, queue system, optional SWAY landing fee.
- Habitat: Recruits/stores Crewmates, optional fees for stationing/recruiting.
- Marketplace: Central for trading, fees for transactions.
- Warehouse: Storage for all items.
- Extractor: Extracts raw materials, tied to core sampling.
- Refinery: Refines raw materials, uses process modules.
- Factory: Produces finished goods, uses assembly modules.
- Bioreactor: Produces food/organics, batch-based.
- Shipyard: Assembles ships, requires spaceport for outputs.
¶ Raw Materials
In Influence, raw materials are categorized by their spectral types.
- Volatile materials: Ammonia, Carbon Dioxide, Carbon Monoxide, Hydrogen, Methane, Nitrogen, Sulfur Dioxide, and Water.
- Metal materials: Feldspar, Graphite, Olivine, Pyroxene, Rhabdite, Taenite, and Troilite.
- Organic materials: Apatite, Bitumen, and Calcite.
- Rare Earth materials: Merrillite and Xenotime.
- Fissile materials: Coffinite and Uraninite.
¶ Refined Materials
Refined materials (including some raw materials which can be refined from other raw materials) are produced via Refineries. Uniquely among the production buildings, refining formulas generate multiple outputs. Players are able to specify the “target” output, which will be output at 100%, while the trace outputs will be output at a reduced percentage.
¶ Finished Goods
Finished goods are produced by Factories, Bioreactors and include consumables, the inputs into shipyards for the production of ships, and building construction materials.
¶ Game Action Guides
- Extractor Overview
- Warehouse Overview
- Factory Overview
- Refinery Overview
- Bioreactor Overview
- Shipyard Overview
- Spaceport Overview
- Habitat Overview
- Marketplace Overview
- Ships Overview
- Travel Overview