¶ Cabinet & Ministries
Your cabinet is the council of advisors you appoint to your empire. Each minister you hire activates a trait — a permanent empire-wide effect that lasts for as long as the minister is in office. Some traits are utilities (free scout ship, settlers start with extra population), others change how core systems behave (production rolls over instead of being lost), and a few unlock entirely new mechanics (the Orbital Ship Repair Dock building).
Hire and manage ministers from Government → Cabinet.
¶ Decrees
Ministers don't cost credits to hire — they cost a separate currency called Decrees. Decrees are awarded on a fixed schedule across the long game:
Decrees are granted on days 100, 200, 400, 600, 800, 1000, 1200, 1400, 1600, 1800, 2000, 2200, 2400, 2600, fourteen decrees across the full lifetime of a long game, roughly one every 200 days.
You start with 1 decree, so you can hire your first minister immediately. After that, ministers are a slow but compounding investment — you have only a handful of decrees for the entire game, so spend them carefully.
¶ How the cabinet is organised
Ministers are grouped into four paths. Each path is a tree of three ministries: you have to appoint a minister at the first ministry before the next one in the chain unlocks. Each ministry has two candidates — you appoint exactly one (left or right).
| Path | Ministry chain |
|---|---|
| Expansion | Cartography → Colonization → Exploration |
| Military | Conquest → Defense → Siegecraft |
| Prosperity | Industry → Espionage → (future) |
| Intelligence | Maintenance → Rapid Response → (future) |
Each appointment is a one-way decision: once you pick a side at a ministry, you can never appoint the other candidate there. (You can fire your choice — but the other candidate is gone for good either way.)
¶ The ministers
Each candidate has a portrait, a one-line trait, a Decree cost (1–4 decrees), and a weekly credit salary they draw while in office. Salaries come out of your weekly credit balance, just like ship maintenance — see Resources.
¶ Expansion path
| Minister | Trait | |
|---|---|---|
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Cartography — Cassian | A free scout ship is granted to you when hired. |
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Cartography — Lyra | The location of the Ferion planet is revealed to you. |
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Colonization — Eamon | New colonies are settled with extra starting population. |
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Colonization — Nara | New colonies automatically inherit your default build queue. |
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Exploration — Zepharix | Settler ships can reach speed 3 (the normal cap is 2). Applies to designs you already own, not just new ones: hiring or firing Zepharix re-caps every colonizer design, every ship already built from one, and the fleets those ships sit in. |
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Exploration — Vorn | Discovering a star reveals every planet around it (no need to scan each one). |
¶ Military path
| Minister | Trait | |
|---|---|---|
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Conquest — Vesper | Conquering a planet destroys fewer of its existing buildings. |
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Conquest — Orin | Captured planets automatically inherit a build queue. |
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Defense — Bonucus | Planet defenses concentrate fire on one ship at a time instead of spreading damage. |
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Defense — Olyx | Defensive buildings have a chance to survive when the planet is captured. |
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Siegecraft — Korrath | Your planets fire twice as often while their own ships are still defending them: 40% of opportunities instead of 20%. A defensive pick. |
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Siegecraft — Zenix | Your bombers are twice as likely to shoot past the defending fleet at the planet itself: 10% of shots instead of 5%. An offensive pick. |
Siegecraft costs 4 decrees per candidate and 250 credits/week, the most expensive ministry in the game. It unlocks only after you have appointed a Defense minister. See Battles for what those two percentages do in a fight.
¶ Prosperity path
| Minister | Trait | |
|---|---|---|
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Industry — Kwakkwak | Excess production from a finished queue item rolls over to the next item instead of being lost. |
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Industry — Doak | Idle production capacity is converted into food. |
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Espionage — Vayle | Spies in training level up twice as fast: every failed Training attempt builds level-up chance at double the normal rate. |
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Espionage — Sable | Caught spies are never identified. The agent still dies, but the enemy learns nothing: no name, no level, no mission, and no right to retaliate against you. |
Espionage costs 2 decrees per candidate and 100 credits/week, and unlocks only after you have appointed an Industry minister. See Spies & Espionage for the training rolls and identification rules these traits change.
¶ Intelligence path
| Minister | Trait | |
|---|---|---|
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Maintenance — Thane | Damaged ships auto-repair when idle, without you having to issue a Repair command. |
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Maintenance — Kira | Unlocks the Orbital Ship Repair Dock building. |
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Rapid Response — left | Ships catching up to their fleet get a +1 speed bonus. |
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Rapid Response — right | Ships on Patrol & Defend gain +1 speed while chasing an enemy. |
¶ Firing a minister
You can fire a minister at any time from the Cabinet view. It's free — no credit penalty, no cooldown.
But the slot stays empty afterwards. Firing doesn't reopen the ministry for a fresh pick; the spent decrees are gone, and you can never appoint anyone (including the other candidate) at that ministry again. Treat firing as a way to stop the salary drain on a minister whose trait no longer matters — not as a do-over.
¶ Tips
- You don't have many decrees, ever. Fourteen total in a full long game. Don't burn the first one on the path you're least sure about — pick a path you'll commit to and start its chain early.
- Read traits as long-term game changers, not boosts. Picking "excess production rolls over" on day 100 means every queue item, on every planet, for the rest of the game will roll over its surplus. That's enormous over hundreds of weeks.
- Mind the salary. Defense, Rapid Response and Espionage ministers cost 100 credits/week each, and a Siegecraft minister costs 250 credits/week on top of 4 decrees — a real hit if you're running thin. Cartography ministers cost 0/week, which makes them great early picks while you stabilise the economy.
- The "either / or" hurts. Picking Cassian (free scout) closes the door on Lyra (Ferion planet reveal) permanently. Don't appoint a ministry without understanding both candidates.
- Some ministries are placeholders. A handful of the late-tier slots are reserved for future content — don't be surprised if a path's third ministry isn't yet appointable.
¶ Related
- Resources — where minister salaries hit your weekly credit balance.
- Production — the queue, and the rollover trait that affects it.
- Ships and Ship Commands — the Repair command and how the auto-repair-when-idle trait interacts with it.
- Fog of War — how the "reveal all planets at a star" trait changes your scouting.
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