GUIDE

Asteroid Dominion is deeper than it looks. The mechanical surface — fly, mine, shoot, build — covers about ten minutes of learning. The strategic surface beneath it (faction dynamics, the fuel-shield loop, the rate-versus-max question for stat investments, asteroid claim politics, the gravity cycle) is where pilots spend dozens of hours figuring out which playstyle clicks for them.

This guide is split into focused pages, one per system. Pick the one most relevant to where you are right now. If you're brand new, start with Getting Started — it walks through your first ten minutes end to end. If you've played a session and want to level up, the Factions page is the highest-impact next read. If you keep dying, Combat and Survival Tips together address most causes.

If you would rather read about how the game is built than how to play it, that is the Devlog — long-form notes on the decisions behind what you are flying.

Getting Started

The walkthrough for your first session. Press play, fly your first mining run, survive your first fight, level up — and learn how picking a faction actually works. End to end, ten minutes of reading saves you the cost of learning by dying.

Controls

All three ways to fly, in detail: point with the mouse inside the center circle, drag the touch joystick, or take the four engines yourself (QE for forward thrust, AD for reverse, single keys to rotate-while-thrusting). Plus how aiming works — shots leave the nose, so steering and aiming are one action — and advanced movement: the drift turn, the gravity slingshot, the braking turn.

Factions

Deep dive on Concordium, Unbound, Bone Collectors, and Outlaws. Lore, home sectors, harpoon abilities (ARREST, LOOT, EAT), playstyle, common strategies, and counter-strategies for fighting each one. The page most often re-read by mid-level players.

Combat

The three weapons — bullets, harpoon, mining laser. The shield-from-fuel mechanic that underpins all survival. The 5-second shield reboot trap. Asteroid collision damage. The hit list bounty system. What happens when you die.

Mining & Economy

How asteroid tiers work. What materials and fuel actually do. The white-outlined arrow on the HUD. Harpoon towing for mining or for offensive ramming. The economic loop that funds your base.

Building & Claiming

The build flow — harpoon a rock, click BUILD, pick a structure. ANTI-AIR turrets. Command Points. Claim rules per faction. The 24-hour cleanup that protects active players. Base-building strategy.

AI & Autopilot

The four AI functions — Stay, Circle Asteroid, Hunt, Build — plus the independent Auto-Fire switch, and the survival ladder that overrules all of them to keep you alive. The same brain the AI uses against you; knowing it is how you predict the field.

Commanding the Swarm

The emoji comms wheel and the two orders the AI obeys — call for a haul, call them off. Plus the named recurring cast: twenty-five pilots per galaxy who persist, level, and learn you.

Galaxy Events

The gravity cycle (0.5x calm, 1x normal, 1.5x storm, ~90 seconds each). The Bonefall every 15 minutes. Hit list rotation every 90 seconds. How to read the gravity indicator and time your maneuvers.

Leveling & Stats

How XP works. The eight stat categories (Health, Shield, Fuel, Engine, Storage, Weapon Damage, Bullet Speed, Command). Sample ship builds (Tank, Glass Cannon, Miner, Architect). The rate-versus-max question and why rate usually wins.

Survival Tips

Twenty hard-won lessons distilled into single paragraphs. Watch the fuel bar like it's a shield bar (it is). Slow down through tier-5+ fields. Don't carry full cargo across enemy territory. Read this before your next session.

Glossary

Every term in the game, defined in plain language and grouped by topic — factions, harpoon abilities, the hit list, gravity storms, the Bonefall, claiming, tiers, and more. The fast way to look one thing up.

Highscores

The three daily leaderboard categories — most kills, biggest single-life score, longest survival — tracked in game on the High Score screen. Plus the daily State of the Universe board, which ranks every galaxy by command points in use. How to compete in each.

Essential Keys

• Q + E — Forward thrust
• A + D — Reverse thrust
• Single key — Rotate while thrusting in that direction
• Space — Fire current weapon
• 1 2 3 — Pick Projectile, Harpoon or Mining Laser
• S C V B — STAY, ASTEROID, HUNT, BUILD
• F — Auto-Fire (the gun aims itself while you fly)
• G — Comms grid · Z Shield Burst
• ? — Every key, on one card

All of these can be changed in Settings → Controls, with a Reset to Defaults if you want them back. Full detail on the Controls page.

Faction Quick Pick

• Concordium — North sector. ARREST harpoon (lockdown). Coordinated team play.
• Unbound — East sector. LOOT harpoon (material drain). Build empires.
• Bone Collectors — North sector. EAT harpoon (health drain). AI-only — not a faction you can choose. Swarm power.
• Outlaws — West sector. LOOT harpoon. No teammates, all XP yours.

The Survival Loop

Shields regenerate from fuel. Fuel comes from mining. Mining requires asteroids. Asteroids exist everywhere. So: when in trouble, mine.

Reading a guide before you have flown once is the wrong order. Press Play Free Now, fly for ten minutes, die a couple of times, and then come back to this. It will mean something.

Once you have done that, here is the shape of a good first hour.

The first ten minutes: learn to move, and mine one rock

You are protected when you spawn. New pilots cannot be shot and cannot shoot for a short window at the start, which exists so that your first minutes are about learning the controls rather than about someone else’s target practice. Use it. Fly somewhere. Get a feel for the fact that this ship has momentum and does not stop when you let go.

Then mine something. Point your nose at an asteroid, switch to the mining laser, and hold. Mining is the first real action in this game — not shooting — because everything else is downstream of it. The materials go in your hold and the fuel goes in your tank, and the fuel is what your shields are made of.

Ten to thirty minutes: find out what kills you

Now go look at the galaxy. Fly toward another faction’s sector, find the edge of somebody’s territory, and see what happens. You will probably die. That is the cheapest information available to you and it costs a short respawn wait.

What you are learning here is the difference between the three weapons, and the fact that your shield is not a separate resource you top up — it regenerates out of your fuel. A pilot with an empty tank is a pilot with no shields, and that is the single most common way a promising run ends.

Thirty to sixty minutes: claim something and defend it

Find a rock big enough to build on — the small ones can be mined but not claimed — harpoon it, and put a Command Center on it. That is the structure that actually takes ownership; nothing else claims a rock for you.

Now you own territory, and the game changes character. You have something that can be attacked while you are not looking at it, which means you care about turrets, and about how many structures the rock can carry, and about who your neighbors are. Most of the strategic depth in Asteroid Dominion opens up at exactly this moment, and a lot of players never reach it because they spend their first hour dogfighting.

If you want the version of this with every number in it, Getting Started is the step-by-step, and Building & Claiming covers claim rules in full.

Every system in this game feeds another one. If you only remember one thing from this page, make it this loop, because it explains most of the decisions you will be asked to make.

Mining produces fuel and materials. Fuel is not just movement — your shields regenerate from it, so your tank is your effective health pool. Materials are what structures are built and upgraded from. So the pilot who mines is the pilot who is both harder to kill and able to build.

Materials become territory. A Command Center on an unclaimed rock makes it yours. Structures on top of it — turrets, shield generators, and the rest — make it defensible while you are offline, which matters enormously in a world that does not pause when you leave.

Territory becomes income and risk at the same time. Your turrets fight for you while you are away and credit you for what they kill. They also make you a target, and a claimed rock is a fixed address that anyone can come and find.

Combat produces experience, and experience buys stats. Those stats feed straight back into the top of the loop: a bigger tank means longer shields, a better engine means faster hauling, more storage means fewer trips, more command capacity means a bigger base.

The strategic question in Asteroid Dominion is never “should I mine or fight.” It is where in this loop am I weakest right now, because the loop only turns as fast as its slowest part. A pilot with a huge base and no combat stats loses it. A pilot with lethal combat stats and no territory has nothing that grows while they sleep.

The three clocks running underneath

Three things change the galaxy on a timer, whatever you are doing. Gravity cycles between calm, normal, and storm, which changes how asteroids drift and how your own ship handles. The Bonefall arrives on its own schedule and is not interested in your plans. The hit list rotates, putting a bounty on somebody new. Reading those clocks is the difference between being caught by an event and using one. Galaxy Events covers all three.

Five mistakes, in the order they usually happen.

1. Treating fuel as a movement resource. It is your shield supply. Watching the fuel bar the way you would watch a health bar is the single biggest survivability upgrade available to a new player, and it costs nothing.

2. Flying into a dense asteroid field at speed. Rocks do collision damage, and the big ones do a lot of it. Slow down in heavy fields. The galaxy is not going anywhere.

3. Hauling a full hold across enemy territory. Everything in your hold is lost with you, and a loaded ship is slower and less maneuverable. Take the long way around, or make two trips.

4. Ignoring the autopilot. The Stay, Circle Asteroid, Hunt and Build functions are not training wheels — they run the same decision ladder the bots use, and the survival rungs above them will break off whatever you asked for in order to keep you alive. Using them well is a skill, not an admission. AI & Autopilot explains the ladder, and the devlog explains why it is built that way.

5. Picking a fight with a structure. A defended rock shoots back, from several turrets at once, and it does not run out of patience. Structures are a siege problem, not a dogfight, and going at one head-on with a fresh ship is how a good run ends abruptly.

There are fifteen more of these on the Survival Tips page, each one earned the same way.

Most multiplayer space games sit you down in a lobby, count down a timer, and put you in a match that ends in fifteen minutes. Asteroid Dominion doesn't. The galaxy is one continuous world that's been running since the moment we deployed it. The asteroids you mine today are the same asteroids that were drifting through their orbits yesterday. The base you build is still there tomorrow. The hit-list bounty rotates every 90 seconds whether you're online to chase it or not.

That persistence is the design choice everything else flows from. It's why mining matters — your materials accumulate. It's why factions matter — your sector membership shapes who you fight alongside for the long term. It's why the leaderboards reward patience as much as skill — sustained play compounds.

It's also why every encounter in the field is real. There's no respawn lobby to retreat to. There's no other server you can switch to. The pilot across from you is a real player at a real screen, fighting for real XP in the same galaxy you live in. When you win, you actually beat someone. When you lose, you actually lost.