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Galactic War
August 27, 2026 at 06:11 AM
Corrected the leaderboard table from seven boards to the eleven that are published, added the Season Zero scoring rules, the three co-op commanders, galaxy fuel, mutator matchmaking, the separation of Galactic War balance from versus, and the measured detail of the item system
The Galactic War is the cooperative pillar of ZeroSpace, a persistent, seasonal campaign fought on a shared galaxy map. Instead of a single self-contained match, players contribute to one ongoing war effort that the whole community pushes forward over the course of a season.
At the start of a season you choose one of three alliances, the Keeper Council, the Eden Accord or the Obsidian Order, and begin at the edge of the map. From there you fight inward, capturing territory and earning upgrades for your chosen faction as you advance. The season's war is decided when a faction seizes the central planet at the heart of the galaxy.
The Galactic War strings together many mission types rather than one fixed format. You can take missions solo or in small co-op teams, and the broader campaign map ties everyone's results together. Capturing nodes unlocks rewards and strengthens your faction's position for the missions ahead. In the Early Access build, the cooperative side offers ten co-op missions, with the enemy factions, compositions, and objectives generated procedurally so runs stay varied.
Mode | Description |
|---|---|
Co-op | Team up with another commander against the computer |
Single-player / PvE | Tackle galaxy map missions on your own |
2vAI | Two players cooperate against AI opponents |
2v2 | Paired multiplayer skirmishes that feed the war |
Scenarios | Special objective-based missions |
1v1 | Head-to-head matches within the campaign structure |
Three commanders are playable on the co-op side, one drawn from each of three main Factions. Each fields its own units, buildings and top-bar abilities rather than a straight copy of the versus faction, so a run as one plays very differently from a run as another. For hero mechanics that carry across every mode, see Heroes and Commanders.
Commander | Faction | What Sets Them Apart |
|---|---|---|
Prefect Aster | Also leads Act 1 of the single-player campaign | |
Galavax | Switches between a fire mode whose attacks set enemies alight and a lightning mode whose attacks stun | |
Vynthra | Built around Infusion, a top-bar ability that heals a target while raising its health, damage and regeneration |
Per-unit and per-ability figures for the three come from the community knowledge base rather than an official database, so treat exact numbers as a snapshot rather than a published spec.
Travelling across the galaxy map costs galaxy fuel, which makes where you fight a decision rather than a free choice. On August 14, 2026 the studio temporarily halved that cost to make it easier to reach the pirates holding the centre of the map. The same update made difficulty scale every mission reward rather than only some of them, and corrected the experience curve between levels 12 and 30 without costing anyone the levels they had already earned.
Missions run across four difficulties, from Casual up to Brutal, and many carry mutators that change the rules of a run. Matchmaking gained its own settings on August 19, 2026: you can tell the queue to favour a faster match or to hold out for the mutators you actually want. The score screen was reworked at the same time to track your fastest times and your fewest units lost, which gives a co-op run something to chase beyond the win itself.
An earlier change on August 11, 2026 stopped mercenaries spawning near expansions on the Casual and Normal difficulties. A dated record of these changes lives on Update History.
Because progress is shared and resets each season, the Galactic War is designed to keep evolving. It sits alongside the single-player Campaign and competitive Skirmish as one of the game's three pillars.
Since August 19, 2026 the Galactic War has carried its own balance. Units in the mode are no longer affected by changes made for versus and Skirmish play, and several versus changes were rolled back inside the Galactic War: Devourers, for one, can hit air again there. That is a design decision rather than a bug fix, and the practical effect is that a unit you know from the ladder may not behave the same way on a co-op mission.
The Early Access launch on July 20, 2026 debuted Galactic War: Season Zero, the mode's first community season. It ran two weeks, from July 20 to August 2, 2026, with players aligning behind one of three alliances fronted by the strategy creators Winter, Neo and uThermal and competing for control of the Orion Sector. Every co-op match played during the season advances the chosen alliance, which captures planets and extends its influence across the galactic map based on mission difficulty and completion. The alliance holding the most territory when the clock ran out took the season, and players earned exclusive portraits and titles by reaching milestones along the way.
The scoring rules were published before the season opened. Each planet an alliance still controlled at the close awarded points. Unspent influence sitting in the alliance pool added 1 point for every 100,000 banked. Every pirate still holding ground inside an alliance's systems at the end cost that alliance 5 points. The alliance with the highest total won, and its creator was crowned the first Galactic Emperor.
To help newcomers get their bearings, ZeroSpace includes a dedicated co-op tutorial that prepares you and a teammate for the galaxy-map missions before you take them on together.
The season closed on August 2, 2026, and the Keeper Council took it. The studio announced the result on August 6, naming the alliance and its leader Winter the first champions of the Galactic War. Every player received the I'olin Season Zero portrait as the shared reward, and anyone who personally captured a planet during the war also unlocked a planet portrait. The studio said further portraits and titles would follow, and that the winning alliance's victory helps set the theme of a later season.
The end of the season did not reset the map back to a blank slate. With the alliances pulled back into their expanded territories, unrest began rising across conquered systems, and a pirate warlord seized the galactic zenith and the space around it. Pirates now take over a share of every alliance's planets, and you have to beat back the raiders coming through the ZeroSpace wormholes before that planet can earn influence for you again. Pirate missions are themed and can carry mutators, and clearing one hands you a burst of influence for the planet you defended.
Underneath the map sits an influence economy. Influence is what your side banks by winning missions and what it spends to build up the systems it holds, and the public leaderboards track it several different ways: influence earned, influence spent on construction, and influence donated into structures. Alongside it runs a pledge system, where commanders pledge to a cause and are ranked on pledge victories, pledge donations, and the influence their pledges generate.
A separate item layer arrived as an early preview during the first week of Early Access. Finishing a Galactic War mission now carries a chance of an item drop from a limited pool, and items you collect are equipped from your Arsenal before heading back out. The studio has flagged it as a first pass rather than a finished system.
The detail below was measured by the community knowledge base rather than published by the studio, and its own authors hedge the drop rate as an estimate.
Rule | Detail |
|---|---|
Drops per match | One at most, and never a duplicate of an item you already hold |
Failed missions | Can still drop an item, at a lower chance |
Reported drop rate | Roughly 12 to 23 percent, depending on the system type and whether its rates are boosted |
Upgrade levels | Five, with the cost doubling at each step: 0, 200, 400, 800 and 1,600 credits |
Equipped slots | Three General slots, with mercenary items counting as General |
Categories | Top-Bar, General including Mercenary, and Planet Mastery. Top-Bar and Planet Mastery hold no items yet |
Items always drop at level 1, are equipped per commander from the Arsenal tab, and can be swapped freely between missions.
Eleven separate Galactic War boards are published. Seven track what you do on the map, and four track the pledge system that runs alongside it.
Leaderboard | What It Tracks |
|---|---|
Co-op Victories | Missions won on the galaxy map |
Planets Conquered | Territory personally captured |
Galactic Influence Earned | Total influence generated for your side |
Daily Battle Streak | Consecutive days spent fighting the war |
Most Donated to Structures | Contributions to shared structures |
Most Influence Spent Building | Influence poured back into construction |
Most Pledged To | Commanders drawing the most pledges from others |
Pledge Influence Earned | Influence generated under a pledge |
Pledge Victories | Wins recorded under a pledge |
Pledge Donations | Donations recorded under a pledge |
Pledge Building Influence | Construction influence recorded under a pledge |
These boards are readable outside the client as well: the studio opened a public rankings page during the first season so commanders can check standings, including a per-day history, without launching the game. The same page also carries the Skirmish ladders.
