Civilized Space - Guide to Setting Up a New Civilization or Company

The subject of this article is from the Interceptor update.
The information from this article is up-to-date as of 6 June, 2023.

This section is Fan Fiction. The information found here is not an actual part of the released game, but a user-invented addition to the wiki.

We Believe in Civilized Space

Civilized Space Guide to Setting Up a New Civilization or Company is a user guide.

Summary

Civilized Space Guide to Setting Up a New Civilization or Company is a guide to advise newcomers who wish to establish a civilization or company. This guide will help you avoid some of the common issues in setting up a civilization.

Civilized Space regions of the No Man's Sky universe are local groupings formed by individual or groups of players.

Step 1: Are You Committed?

The wiki is full of civilizations and companies that were a glimmer in their founder's eye, and after 1-2 days the civilization/company is never updated again. The key thing is, make sure you are committed before you engage and start a wiki page to claim a new civilization or company. You must be ready to do the following:

1. Learn how to do basic creation and editing of a wiki page: Simple wiki pages can be done with virtually no effort. The founder needs to be committed to fill it out. (Start here: No Mans Sky Wiki:Explained - Creating Pages and No Mans Sky Wiki:Community portal.
2. Pick a Civ Theme: Come up with a theme for your civ or company; be creative. Or Don't. But make the decision up front and stick with it. Be clear and focused one way or another. Otherwise you will end up with a long rambling random collection of ideas on a wiki page describing you how you civ will do everything from bake bread to cure cancer to rule the 256 galaxies. Or your page will be empty and have lots and lots of blank space.
3. Document Star Systems: You must document star systems. This means that when playing the game you keep should keep notes or build a library of screenshots that record basic information about at least five star systems. (Some editors will print off empty star system pages and use them to store their notes.) This information is essential to moving forward. We call these star system claims.
4. Always Record Galactic coordinates: Make sure you understand how to discover and record Galactic Coordinates and Portal Glyphs. The star systems you claim will have to provide the coordinates and/or glyphs. The Wiki administrators have been known to stop in a claimed capital or company HQ to see if it really exists and that it is named as claimed. Here is a great coordinate to a Portal Glyph converter: NO MAN'S SKY PORTALS DECODER. Your documentation for stars, planets, ships and tools is nearly useless if no one can find them.
5. Social Media: You should allow time to invest in projecting your voice outside the wiki. Many of the most successful civs or companies do not just play the game and update the wiki, they have a full public relations on discord, twitter, youtube, reddit, instagram and/or facebook. There are real world politics between civs and companies outside the actual game play. The more you do this, the more serious you will be taken.

Step 2: Pre Set-up Decisions

Platform and Mode

What platform/mode will you have it based in? Your choices follow, but the majority are mainly active in Normal mode on any of the platforms regardless of what many wiki pages say. Pick one and focus on it to be successful.

1. PC/PS/XB/NS
2. Creative, Normal, Survival, Permadeath

Pick A Type: Civilization or Company

A civilization is normally going to settle in one or multiple adjacent regions and may try to attract other players to join. A civilization normally acts mainly as role play, claiming systems to grow territory and help each other build up or play together in the region. The two largest civilizations, Galactic Hub Project and the Alliance of Galactic Travellers, have thousands of players each.

Companies typically (but not always) seem to be made up of a sole player or a small number of players (a CEO and employees). The company typically has a real in- game activity focus (Industrial mining, farming, production) or exploration/documentation. The most active company examples include Intergalactic Exploration Corporation and GenBra Space Corp.

WARNING: Please do not use punctuation marks in your civilization name (things like ][{ ? % / \ :). It causes problems with the wiki and the admins may need to unilaterally change your civ or company name.

Select A Location

Select a Location - pick a galaxy and region to focus on and travel to it. Too many civs or companies say they will roam or be nomads, and eventually they wither and disappear. A lot of the reason for this comes down to lack of a focus on what the owner wants to build. Civilized space can be quite busy, especially in the starting Euclid galaxy nowadays compared to the early Pathfinder and Atlas Rises eras. There are civs in other galaxies besides Euclid. The first dozen galaxies all have thriving civilizations (check out Civilized Space Maps). You can choose to locate near a neighbouring civ (make sure not to set up inside their regions), set up near the Galaxy Centre, or for some hermit kingdoms, go to the extreme edges of a galaxy or travel to a distant galaxy to hide from other civs.

1. Limit Your Platform scope: Recognize that there are multiple universes, each with 255 galaxies. (note that a universe in this case is a specific game platform and game mode). Decide in which one your civ or company will exist and focus on that one. This is important because stars that you claim will only have names in your selected universe, and not other universes unless you can convince players in other universes to visit the exact same galactic coordinates and name the stars exactly the same! (It sounds easy, but even the largest most organized civs struggle with this). In other words, don't try to overreach (eg. claim you will be on all game modes, and across platforms - PC, PS4 and Xbox).
2. Pick A Single Region to start: A good starting civilization claim could be as simple as a single region within a single galaxy. Don't bite off more then you can chew. Just as in the real world, a civilization can only effectively manage a reasonable set amount of space. To put it in perspective, a single galactic region has around 500 individual star systems, plenty to begin your new civilization (you can always expand in the future).
3. Be Diplomatic, Make Space: As a civilization, by design you need to be diplomatic. Check your surroundings and realize that others also play this game. We all need to make room for our fellow travellers. Make sure you understand the key rule of civ space, Do not name a star in another civilization region without checking with the owners. This means if you go into a new region of a galaxy, check the wiki and make sure no other company or civ has claimed that region. Its a rule of the civ space that civs should NOT name stars in another civs region without having explicit permission from the civ owner/founders.

Build Your Theme Story

Come up with your theme. Some are complex, with large detailed histories, written constitutions, and dozens of documented government departments. Others create simple entities and focus clearly on only a few goals. The key thing is to have a theme, and the rest flows naturally. You are writing the book of your entity! Your wiki page will be much better and credible if you can complete it with well-thought out ideas. A wide variety of examples include The Qitanian Empire, The Volition Project, Empire of Jatriwil, Forgotten Colonies, and the Euclidean Scholar's Society. For companies, take a look at Tinker and Transports, CELAB Galactic Industries, and the Galactic Expedition Agency.

Solo or Team

Solo or Grow? Do you want to have full control or do you want to grow and work with others? The answer will affect your theme as well as your success in getting a successful lift-off for your project. Groups are not always more successful; it is still hard to coordinate in one region in NMS multiplayer, although travel throughout the galaxy is much easier now in Origins with the removal of portal interference. For most people, it is best to start solo, and if you find you have the passion and drive, the success will show and others will ask to join your organization project.

Civilization Name

Due to wiki code issues, most punctuation marks or special characters should NOT be used in a civilization name. In general the only special characters besides alphanumeric that will work without an issue are the following: ()-.

Never use an apostrophe or quotes in your civilization name. It will cause many features of the wiki pages to operate inconsistently.

Renaming a Civilization

The further ‘developed’ your civilization is, the harder it is to simply rename. The more systems, planets and other things you have claimed via the "civilized" parameter, the larger and more difficult a move to the new name becomes. Make sure you are happy with your civilization or company’s name before starting the work of creating the civilization. If you do decide to go ahead and rename anyways, there are a few steps that need to be taken:

1. You cannot JUST rename your civilization. Even if nothing else but the name has changed, you must create a new embassy page for that civilization. This is done for two reasons:
   1. The wiki staff does everything in their power to keep the history of things alive on the wiki. The process of just renaming a page, essentially erases the existence of the previous civilization (even if it was essentially the same civilization).
   2. This also preserves the name of that civilization, so in months/years down the road another person can’t come and claim your old civilization as their own.
2. The new civilization’s logo must be different from the old civilization’s logo.
3. The old civilization needs to have the {{CivAbandoned}} banner applied to the top of the summary. The size parameter should also be updated to read: ‘Abandoned (Formerly [previous size of civ])’, for example: ‘size=Abandoned (Formerly Standard-E)’.
4. If you decide to have your new civilization reside in the same capital planet/system/region as your old civilization, those places will need to be claimed for the new civilization. Go to that page and change the ‘civilized’ param to the new civilization’s name. Additionally, you will need to leave a note in the ‘Additional Notes’ section marking the date and who claimed the location from whom.
5. Similar to step 2, you will need to go to every place (moon/planet/system/region) and thing (multitool/starship/flora/fauna) that you would like to claim as the new civilization and change the ‘civilized’ parameter in the infobox to the new civilization’s name. You will need to leave a note in the ‘Additional Notes’ section marking the date and who claimed the location from whom.
6. If you have a census, you will need to create a new census for your civilization following the name format ‘Census - [civilization name]’. If you have a base census, you will also need to go to every base and update its ‘civilized’ parameter.
7. Finally and optionally, you can write into the background/lore/history of your civilization that it conquered the old civilization with a link to the old civilization’s page.

System and Planet Naming Conventions

There will be a section later to give more detailed rules here, but a simple recommendation is to pick a naming convention. This is the only real way you can show the entire NMS player community that your organization really exists in the game itself. Other players will see your star system names, and recognize your existence. Most civs/companies adopt a simple prefix or suffix naming system, although some have more complicated rules, but these typically only work (eg. have staying power for more than few weeks of game play) for the best organized, largest staff and most dedicated player groups. A naming convention is NOT mandatory, but no one in the actual game will know how your star systems are tied together if you do not do this.

Imagery

Create a logo and emblem badge artwork. All the civs and companies have them. Its basically a requirement to get taken seriously. You can check out the wide range of logos at Civilized Space Emblems.

Capital or HQ

Choose a capital star system and planet, or for companies, a HQ star and planet. Be prepared to publicly publish galactic coordinates. Civs that cannot be actually visited or verified for existence by wiki administrators (or their proxies) risk being de-activated on the wiki.

Step 3 Naming Conventions Guidelines

This refers to how you name star systems in the game. In general, most civs/companies will use a consistent set of prefix or suffixes attached to some existing or user-created name for a star system. This allows a trail of consistency to be observed by other players who visit your systems and establishes creditability for your organization.

In general most focus is around star system naming, as it appears relatively permanent across updates to the game from the developer. Planet names sometimes lose their player-given names and need to be renamed again. (Note: Planet naming resets have become less common in 2020 updates, but there is no guarantee this trend will continue).

There are a lot of things to consider in selecting a prefix or suffix. Here are some key ones and they apply ESPECIALLY to BOTH stars and planets/moons:

• Special Char Rule 1: NEVER use special characters. This SPECIFICALLY includes ][ @ & * : % $ # ? }{ _ ' " \ and /. The main reasons are due to the wiki programming language. All of these characters are used to do different programming things in the wiki pages. IF you use them in star system names, then the wiki page names for those star systems will have problems. We know there are plenty of civ/company pages that say they will use these characters in their naming convention, however it will limit a lot of things in the wiki site for your civ if you do this, most notably it will be hard to count and credit your systems automatically by using the prefixes or suffixes. At some point, the wiki administration team will give your civilization a heads up notice if you do not follow this guideline.

• Special Character Rule 2: The special character of / and ' (Apostrophe). The NMS game uses these a lot in planets, star names, multi-tool names, ship names etc. DO NOT USE THEM IN YOUR NAMES. Again they will cause you lots of problems down the road. WE recommend using - in place of / when writing anything on the wiki (even if the in-game name uses /. Similarly, use a - in place of apostrophes or quotes.

• Be consistent in how you separate a prefix or suffix from the rest of a name. Make sure you always use the same character, for example a space, a dash, or a round bracket. (Again never ever, ever use square or curly brackets... you have been warned by the wiki watchers). If you are not consistent, the wiki program code that counts your claims will probably undercount your system claims, and various types of automated tables and page linking will likely fail in the future for your pages.

• Do not use overly long prefixes or suffixes - you will be typing them in game every time you discover and claim a star. So make it easy on yourself and your future citizens and employees.

• Check FIRST to make sure another civ is not using a prefix/suffix that is the same or too similar to your prefix/suffix. e.g. Do not use HUBE for your prefix, cause some other civ is already using HUB and the counts will probably get messed up. The best way to check is to look thru the prefixes and suffixes used on Civilized Space Claims and Civilized Space Claims - Companies. (ed note: These pages are still being created so consider them only 80% accurate, if you are unsure, send a message to ask for advice from a wiki admin before you start naming systems in the game).

Step 4 Getting Recognized

In order to be recognised as a civilization or company, the following requirements must be met:

1. an embassy page - basically the overview page that describes your civilization. On it you will have sections similar (maybe not as much detail at first) as the good examples provided above. You also must name a capital star system and planet, and preferably have a player base on that planet). Make sure pages are created and present in the wiki for the star system, planet, and player base on the planet. Make sure all the pages provide the galactic coordinates/glyphs.
2. a minimum of five star system pages which are discovered by the civilization are present in the wiki (and in good order, specifically providing key content such as galactic coordinates or glyphs, platform and game mode as well as some minimum basic info about the system). It will be more credible if these star systems are in the same region as the capital and using your declared naming convention.
3. the civilization's founder is involved only with the new civilization (basically one civ or company to a founder)
4. an official request for inclusion from the founder is present on the Discussion page of Civilized space

Note: A civilization will be removed after a major new update if there has been no wiki activity in the last three months

Step 5 Growth and Presence

Growth comes in several forms... you can grow in size and/or credibility. This can be achieved in several ways both in and out of the game.

Of course some founders may be happy having a small, less noticeable civ, that is fine also... but you probably did create the civ/company to get noticed in the first place.

Name, Claim, and Document Star Systems on the Wiki

Civs that name, claim, and document star systems on the wiki (with galactic coordinates and glyphs for others to verify) will become more credible and prestigious as they grow. Take lots of screen captures of things like information screens on a star system and its planets, the galaxy map with the star system information pull down box displayed, and screenshots of a signal booster on a planet surface showing the planet name and the galactic coordinates. It will help you record and create pages of better quality, and you can include the images in your page to complete them.

Some civs/companies focus less on growing large numbers of stars/planet and instead focus on deep dive exploration and documentation of a smaller number of stars for their fauna, ships, and tools. Both approaches can be successful.

Attract Other Players To Join Civ/Company

If you convince other players to join your civ/company, and they claim star systems using your name convention, and document on the wiki, it will help you grow. You will also then want to start learning how to create a census so you can keep track of all the players in your civ space and show to the civilized space community your population or employee growth.

Promotion Channels

Civilized Space Emblems

Quite a few civs and companies actively promote themselves using dedicated role playing accounts (eg. not your own personal accounts you use with family and friends) on Youtube, Facebook, Twitter, Discord, Reddit and Instagram as examples. This raises visibility, allows you to promote your policies, explorations, and discoveries. It can lead to many opportunities, perhaps interactions with other civs, or attracting new recruit citizens or employees to join you. Some day, it could even attract an invitation to join the United Federation of Travelers or another pan-civilization galactic alliance grouping. The galactic core is the limit if you succeed and show dedication to your project.

In game, a common promotion method is to visit popular spots such as popular hub or tourist stars/planets, or the community event weekend missions and leave a Communications Station promoting your civ/company.

Lore

Some civs/companies invest considerable effort to develop Lore, or a backstory for their game play and civ/company. This is referred to as fan created fiction, and it can accompany the civ/company's roleplay. The best Lore ties it into real in-game locations, buildings, and points of interest. (eg. a specific Minor Settlement, Crashed Freighter, Monolith etc.

Flags, Artwork and Emblems

In-game flags and banners can be displayed at bases. Choose a pattern and color and display them consistently in your bases for recognition. Make sure you do not overlap with those already in use however, check the Federation Vexillology Department first.

Artwork and emblems will be useful on your social media promotion channels or on your wiki pages. Get creative.

Related Pages

• Civilized space
• Civilized Space Claims captures a status of claimed systems by civilizations/companies on each platform.
• Civilized Space Claims - Companies
• Galactic Coordinates are the points that can be extracted from a Signal Booster data string and used in a Coordinate Plotting App to acquire your Galactic Coordinate Position in a No Man's Sky galaxy.
• If you wish to travel to specific areas in galaxies outside Euclid, the Galactic Voyager Initiative project may be able to assist.
• Collections: Civilized Space Maps, Civilized Space Emblems, Civilized Space History, Company Categories.