The server decides
Positions, hits, damage and loot are all worked out on the server — your client only gets to say what it wants to do. That makes cheating pointless and it means the standings are worth something.
Cosmic Survivor is a shared 3D world where you fly a single ship into a map full of cities. Survive every wave of an area and it is yours — until someone comes to take it. The server works everything out, so what you see is what actually happened.
No download, no install. An account is free and takes a minute.
What it is
No separate matches and no levels to tick off. There is one world that keeps running, and what you do in it is still there after you log out.
Positions, hits, damage and loot are all worked out on the server — your client only gets to say what it wants to do. That makes cheating pointless and it means the standings are worth something.
There is no catalogue of ships to pick from. Everyone starts the same and builds their own ship up with modules in the hangar. What you build can never be made obsolete by a newer model.
Form a crew and you stop hitting each other, in every area. What you take together stays with those people — even if the crew falls apart later.
The map
This is the real map, fetched from the server just now. Every dot is a city you can fly into; the colour is that area’s tint and the size follows its ring. Hover for details.
Conquest
You do not take an area by showing up often, but by getting all the way through it once.
From the hub you open the map and pick an area. On the way you are invisible to everyone: you are in no city at all, so there is nothing to attack you.
Six to eight waves, building from light swarms to heavy tanks. Die and you are thrown out of the area and the owner keeps it. No retrying from halfway: you start over.
There is a boss halfway and a heavier one at the end. Which ones is fixed per city: the boss of Ember Docks is still the same tomorrow. So an area is something you can get to know.
Whoever holds an area keeps it until someone gets through. Beat back an assault on your own ground and that pays too — less than taking one, but not nothing.
The hub
In NEXUS you fly to two buildings. The hangar is the shop: score becomes starcoins and starcoins become modules. The data core is your account — password, two-factor, the rest. This is the real catalogue, fetched from the server.
In pictures
Straight out of the game, not mocked up. Every city is built on the server from its own profile, so no two areas look alike.
Standings
No high scores: what counts is what you hold. Points are the combined value of the areas you own, and the outer ring is worth far more than the inner one.