The clock
The bar in the top-right corner is your survivor's remaining life, and it goes down on its own — whether the game is open or not. It takes 48 points a day at the standard rate. Everything you can do to earn life back, added together, does not currently cover that. This page says exactly what each source pays so you can see the shape of it for yourself.
The rate
- It runs offline. Life is computed from the time elapsed since it was last updated, so closing the game does not pause it. At the standard rate a full bar lasts 50 hours — and you start with 48%, which is 24 hours.
- The tutorial halves the drain, it does not stop it. The Overseer is giving you a courtesy, not a reprieve.
- It floors at 0% and caps at 100%. An award that would take you over 100 is clamped, and the part that does not fit is simply lost — claiming a +1.5 objective at 99.5% gets you half a point, not one and a half. A full bar is the only ceiling there is; nothing else limits what you can earn in a day.
In the current build the drain is larger than everything you can earn. Four daily objectives and eight completed expeditions — a full, deliberate day of play — comes to roughly 13 points against the 48 the standard rate takes. From the 48% you start with, that reaches zero in about a day and a half however well you play.
This is a known balance state, not a bug in your account: the life awards were cut to a quarter of their previous values and the drain has not yet been moved to match. Nothing happens at 0% — see below — so today it costs you the bar and the Overseer's opinion of you, and nothing else. Expect both the awards and the drain to be re-tuned.
It is meant to get easier
The survival branch is the only permanent way to change the rate. Each project cuts it, and they stack additively:
| Survival research | Drain | Per day |
|---|---|---|
| None | −2.00%/hr | −48 |
| Metabolic Dampeners −10% | −1.80%/hr | −43.2 |
| + Cryogenic Cycling −25% | −1.50%/hr | −36 |
| + Overseer's Favour −50% | −1.00%/hr | −24 |
Finishing the branch doubles how long a survivor lasts. It is the largest single effect anywhere in the game, and it is deliberately the most expensive and slowest chain to reach — the capstone needs Logistics Network from the economy branch and player level 6. It is also the only lever you have on this page that moves the big number rather than the small ones.
Metabolic Dampeners costs 350 gold, 150 materials and 100 energy, and takes seven and a half minutes. It is affordable within your first hour, and the 10% it saves compounds over every hour you play afterwards. There is no reason to leave it late.
The bar stops at 0% and stays there. In the current build there is still no penalty when it runs out — no base is lost, nothing is deleted, nothing locks. The countdown is pressure and atmosphere for now, not a fail state. It is meant to become one; it is not one yet, and this page will say so until that changes.
Earning life back
Five things pay life, and they are the only five. Nothing else in the game touches the bar upwards — not levelling, and not War Bonds.
| Source | Pays | Realistic per day |
|---|---|---|
| Finish an expedition | +0.5 to +1.0 | +4 to +8 |
| Clear a daily objective | +1.5 | +6 (all four) |
| Earn a promotion | +1.25 | Rare — 18.75 in a career |
| Pay a tribute | +0.5 | Costs resources, and escalates |
| Claim an achievement | +2 to +10 | One-off — 44 across the eleven you can chase now |
The achievement row is the odd one out and it is worth noticing why: a trophy pays more than an entire day of expeditions. Those are one-off awards across a whole account, so they cannot be an income — but if you are close to one, finishing it is the most life available to you anywhere on this page.
Expeditions — the fuller the party comes home, the more it pays
Every completed expedition pays +0.5 flat, plus up to another +0.5 scaled by how full your party was when it got back. A party that comes home at capacity earns the full +1.0; one that comes home half-loaded earns +0.75. Sending one Scout at a rich deposit gets you the base and little else.
This is the only life award that cares whether you played well, and it is worth reading expeditions with that in mind: matching the party to the deposit is worth life as well as resources. A recalled party still counts as a completed expedition, and is paid on what it actually brought home — so a fast recall, which drops the cargo, pays the base and nothing more.
Daily objectives — the reliable six
Four objectives a day, +1.5 each, so +6 for clearing the lot. The targets are set at the low end of what an ordinary session produces on its own, so you will usually finish most of them without aiming at them.
| Objective | Target | Life |
|---|---|---|
| Drill the ranks | Train 3 units | +1.5 |
| Bring it home | Complete 2 expeditions | +1.5 |
| Break ground | Start 1 construction or upgrade | +1.5 |
| Make the quota | Collect 500 resources | +1.5 |
Three things are worth knowing about how they count. Drill the ranks counts units as they finish training, not as you queue them — a batch started at bedtime pays the following day, and a vehicle counts as the one vehicle it produces, not as the four troops it ate. Break ground counts an upgrade as well as a fresh build, and it counts when you start it. Make the quota counts what your expeditions haul home, so it fills alongside Bring it home rather than from the resources your buildings produce while you are away.
The set resets on a rolling timer rather than at midnight: your day turns over twenty-four hours after the first one you were given, and at that same clock time from then on, wherever you live. The panel shows you when.
Promotions — a bonus, not an income
Each rung of the rank ladder pays +1.25 the first time you reach it. There are sixteen rungs and you start on the first, so that is 18.75 points spread across an entire career. Welcome when it lands; never something to plan around.
Tribute — the escape hatch, priced to hurt
You can buy +0.5 life for resources. The first payment of a day costs 400 gold and 150 materials, and each further payment in the same rolling twenty-four hours costs half again as much:
| Payment | Gold | Materials | Life |
|---|---|---|---|
| First | 400 | 150 | +0.5 |
| Second | 600 | 225 | +0.5 |
| Third | 900 | 338 | +0.5 |
| Fourth | 1,350 | 506 | +0.5 |
| Fifth | 2,025 | 759 | +0.5 |
The price is always quoted before you commit, and the panel also shows what the next one will cost. Read it: five hundred and fifty resources for half a point of life is fifteen minutes of the clock, and by the third payment you are paying more than a Training Yard for it.
Tribute is the pressure valve, and it is deliberately a bad deal. If you are heading for zero and cannot get an expedition home in time, this is what it is for.
Achievements — one-off, and you have to collect them
Achievements pay +2, +4, +6 or +10 life by rarity, once each, plus rank points. They unlock on their own the moment you earn them, but the reward waits until you press Claim.
That extra step exists because of the 100% cap. A trophy that paid itself out automatically while you were offline and already near full would apply the part that fitted and lose the rest — so the game makes you pick the moment instead. If your bar is full, the claim is refused outright and the trophy stays claimable; nothing is lost by trying.
Eleven are currently in reach, worth 44 points of life in total across an entire account. The full list, and what each takes, is on levels & ranks.
The tutorial's opening credit
Before any of the above, the five tutorial objectives pay a total of +16 percentage points:
| Objective | Life |
|---|---|
| Restore Power | +3% |
| Secure Income | +3% |
| Raise a Garrison | +4% |
| Train Your First Unit | +4% |
| Survey the Battlefield | +2% |
That is why the tutorial matters beyond the XP: sixteen points is eight hours of standard drain, handed over for five minutes' work — and it is more life than four full days of daily objectives. It is a one-off; those five objectives are not the daily objectives above and they do not come round again.
The Overseer's assessment
The badge beside the Overseer changes with your life bar. It is the machine's opinion of you, not a readout of your health — you do not get praised at 100%.
| Life | Badge | Bar |
|---|---|---|
| 90–100% | UNCONVINCED | Green |
| 70–89% | STILL WATCHING | Lime |
| 50–69% | OBSERVING | Yellow |
| 25–49% | UNIMPRESSED | Orange |
| Below 25% | EXPENDABLE | Red |
You start at 48% — UNIMPRESSED — and the tutorial's sixteen points is what lifts you into OBSERVING. He comments when you cross a band downwards, so a line from him about your standing is a warning with a number behind it.
Why it shapes how you play
- Long timers are cheap; idle time is not. The clock runs at the same rate whether you have an hour-long HQ upgrade running or nothing at all. Always have something building, something training and something researching before you close the game.
- Clear the daily objectives anyway. Six points is not much against forty-eight, but it needs no resources, it expires, and it is the only life that is genuinely free.
- The survival branch is the only real answer. It does not add life — it cuts what you lose, taking the daily bill from 48 to 36 and eventually to 24. That is a bigger swing than every source in the table above put together.
- Send parties that fit the deposit. The life an expedition pays scales with how full it comes home, so a well-judged run is worth twice a careless one. See expeditions.
- Spend tribute like a fire extinguisher. It is there so a bad week cannot become a dead account. The escalating price will tell you it is not meant to be a routine.