BASICS

Your Crawler

Your base is a vehicle. It is not a city fixed to a map tile, and almost every decision in the game comes back to where you have parked it.

Moving

You order a move and the Crawler drives there in real time. It is not a teleport and it is not instant. While it is moving it is genuinely somewhere on the line between where it left and where it is going, and the game treats that live position as the real one.

That matters more than it sounds. The moment your Crawler crosses out of the Frontier it becomes attackable, part way through the march rather than on arrival. The same clock runs the other way: cross back in and your unbanked haul banks at the border.

Fuel and boosting

Moving costs fuel. You can spend Temporal Catalysts to shorten the trip, the same way you can shorten any other timer in the game.

Being destroyed

A Crawler that loses a defence is destroyed and respawns in the Frontier. The attacker's plunder is left in the wreck for them to collect: the unbanked haul riding on it (all of it, unless Haul Protection research shields part), plus up to a quarter of your banked resources. Any unbanked haul the attacker did not take banks when you respawn.

Unbanked haul is what a kill mostly takes. That is the whole risk model of the game, and it is why the bank step at the end of a run matters as much as the run.