So you want to try the "impossible" difficulty? Go ahead! I suppose you try to figure it out yourself, find your systems and solutions. I developed my personal playstyle and wil be applying it in this guide, but it's certainly not the only way!

This guide is not meant for new players. In advance you should have at least played on the "ultra hard" setting to get used to the core mechanics like alternative research. The guide will assume that you know the basics and have designed some ships and blueprints before. Alternative, you can download my fleet from the workshop.

Remember: it's a game. The purpose is to have fun!

Your first priority is to get power generation going. Focus on Iron (duh!) and power from oil. Don't unlock tech pack 2 before you get it!

Once unlocked you'll want to build a simple station with one oil generator and 10-20 batteries. for the input, you'll manually warp your Flagship to the planet (drag and drop the iron blocks from your storage onto the demand window in the bottom right).
Claim sectors to progress. Pay attention to one star sectors - they may suck your ship dry and you can't jump back.

To progress, build a few Astroid Miners and set up an extractor with four T1 storages at the oil station. Mining Iron from the nearby astroid is the first step of automation. In the meantime, unlock Energy from Fuel, Coolant and either liquid storage or space teleporters.

The game sets you up for getting the oil planet, the water planet and the iron planet in the starter system running first.
You need fuel, coolant and transportation. I like to get myself a very early energy carrier, too, in case I make a mistake with my flagship. You'll have to keep mining with that one manually to supply construction projects.

If you run out of Memory and sectors to claim, build a ship with 104 batteries (104.000 Energy) and fast forward to charge it while your astroid miners do their job. Use it to claim two star sectors.

Pay attention to your agression levels! You MUST stop at 29 sectors!

Claim 2 star sectors when possible and skip 0-1 star void and gas giant sectors, they provide the least Memory!

As soon as you get your "triangle" running, stop choosing research progress, connect the planets via production lines, transporter ships or space teleporters. I prefer Teleporters for constant demands and transporters&storages for orders and centralised production lines later on. This way constant demands will mechanically always be prioritised and can't run dry.


The oil planet should now get supplies from the iron planet, and the Miners should be redirected to provide building materials. Leftover supplements the Oil planet's constant order. Build a dedicated Construction ship, place 5-10 reseach facilities near the oil station, which should be producing energy from fuel, and recycle your flagship. Delete it or use it for some other purpose. delete the robots if you're not mining with it!
In Impossible, you can't afford unnecessary machines. Staying below 200 to not trigger green is the main goal now! Don't build production you don't need! Produciton for orders gets deconstructed after the order is complete!

!!!Only continue reseach once all three of your planets show their first order!!! You must hold tech and choose what you need to complete them, or you'll end your options for progress. If the orders have not popped up yet, just hold. once all batteries on your oil planet are full, the population on all planets will go up.

Keep checking your machine count every time to build! Deconstruct everything you don't need! There is no space for idle production lines or ships. no QOL. One transporter for solids, one for liquids, one builder, one energy carrier.

To complete your first orders, you must rely on astroid mining. Fast forward the game as needed. You'll have an astroid for each resource in your neutral sectors, so you can't get stuck here. The only thing that can screw you right now is an unlucky biomass product request.

Grab some planets, get some production going. The Coal planet is most likely your first expansion.

I came up with a system to set up every planet the same way. I produce the constant demand on site, and add modules (via blueprints), always on the left. only raw resources get transported, no half finished products.


Especially in long run, this phase is tricky, because you only get one iron and one oil per second initially, which is used up in the "triangle". Once you have every resource going (you can skip silicone, titanium and uranium for now), you'll start reaching your limits.
Memory will always be maxed out. You'll need to grab planets which you don't need for their resources, fill their constand demand, trigger their orders and complete them just for the memory. One by one. Once you hit tech you don't have, deconstruct the entire station and production to make space for another planet and it's orders. Repeat this until you have nothing to do.

Get rid of your Astroid miners when you can, they take up 9 machines each.

I personally focus unlocking rockets over Shells and skip the railgun, the deconstructor and energy from biomass and carbon.

Check after each completed planet, if all currently shut down planets running simultaniously would fit another population goal. You'll be able to hit the 100 million goal with some preparation and juggling. maybe 200. I was stuck at 185.

At some point you'll run out of orders. If it went well, you'll have at least electric steel shells or heavy rockets. even nukes are possible, but unlikely. Now it's time to destroy everything you don't need and get some ammo production going.deconstruct every station that doesn't produce used output. get down to <150 machines. don't forget your research, you don't need those for now. It's time for Ammo production.

Choose one, your strongest, kind of ammo, and an appropriate composite for your ships. you'll be fighting red and green at the same time.
That means you want Nitinol > TitanCopper > TitanGold > NickelGold. Hope you grabbed one of them!

One compositor producing armor into one T2 Storage is plenty for now. Add a second line after you engage to keep your demands for repairs fulfilled. Don't forget a construction ship for repairs!












For ammo, one production line is good. Each produced unit is eight shots.
To squeeze some extra Combat ships out before you engage, stockpile ammo, 5-10 T2 storages, and deconstruct the ammo production. You can rebuild it once you engaged with green and established a defensive line.



Now, build your ships, and the ammo carrier. Five cannons per ship is the maximum, and you want no less because each ship core takes up one machine. don't use storages on the ships, simply place some pneumotubes and a small resource zone for ammo. That way, each ship takes up six machines. You should be able to build at least 8 ships. I do not recommend defensive stations, although they can make sense in some scenarios.

Once you trigger agression on a faction, they will immideately launch an attack. But don't worry, it will only be one weak ship.


Do NOT attack first. Place your ships in each sector that has a border to green.
Border sectors should not have an important station. they might get destroyed by a random, missed shot, or an unlucky engagement. It's not game ending if this happens, but annoying. So you first goal is to establish stable borders with both factions, with astroids or empty sectors for defense. You want to have a low total number of sectors to protect. That sets your goals. Plan them before you engage!






Rebuild your ammo production, or your research facilities to trigger green's aggression. Defend the first attack, then launch your attacks twards your desired borders. Don't poke too far, repair up first. You can build more ships now, that you're on war anyway. Before you claim any sector though, place two defenders in each sector bordering red. They are stronger than green, one is not enough!

Now establish your desired borders. Voids, astroids and gas giants preferably. Remember, the less sectors an enemy faction has, the stronger their counterattacks will be! So go slow and prepare yourself. It's better to have a stable defense than to rush for victory. To finish a faction off you want at least 12, better 18 of your own ships for offensive. You can and should calmly, step by step, build up to that count now.

Always wait for an enemy attack before yours. Counter attacks can hit where you're invading, causing double waves, and you don't want that to happen.

Get your research facilities up, maybe you get a weapon upgrade mid combat. if that happens, you can go back to defending and SLOWLY upgrade and replace all ammo in your ships. Don't want to get caught out with your pants down though, keep producing and supplying the old ammo. When you hit level 99, deconstruct your labs for safety! You don't want to trigger the ancients yet, trust me.

Once your ship count is appropriate you should decide for either green or red to overwhelm one faction first, while you keep defending the weak attacks from the other faction. As soon as you encounter enemy ships with living armor, you want to go for rockets. Railguns don't really cut it anymore. You would run the enemy ships out of energy before you destroy them in many battles. If that is not an option for you, increase your number of ships.

I personally do not bother building any stations or finishing orders while i am at war. I'll rush through red and green without triggering the ancients and then take a break, delete my combat ships and build up.

Alright so you have beaten Red and Green. Almost there, right?

Well, not really. To be honest, it's just starting. To attack the ancients you need lasers. Even Nukes won't cut it. And Laser production needs a lot of resources. Not only do they require components lke Consumer Electronics, Mechanical Parts and Nanites, they also use up one unit per shot, im compariton so eight shots per unit for shells and missiles. You have to prepare, and unlock at least green lenses. If you get to Proton lenses you're comfortable.


Fortunately you just got a whole lot of new planets. So back to economy. Fit permanent orders from your (for now) cut and possibly deleted ammo and armor production. You want to unlock Energy from Uranium ASAP, energy will be a major limiter. Update the batteries of your stations, add some transporters. Logistics will get complex and demanding.

You can start centralising some productions. For example i'll have a station dedicated to produce all kinds of composites, which are common orders. I'll add basic productions to some chosen planets to keep some basic materials and ingots in stock at all times. Same goes for coolant and fuel.


If i feel lazy i'll have production lines for all kinds of shells and rockets, too.


For most end game products you can do the same thing, and also add storages to the whole production line, for example one line can be Circtuits T1, T2, T3 and Quantum computers.

Once you're locked by tech again it's time to prepare for the ancients' attacks.
Fortunately they only send one, non-living ship with green or red lasers. in fact, their defence is way stronger than their attacks ever get.

Set up production for Titan Gold or TItan Copper and nukes. build four ships per sector you need to defend. then restart your research. 50-100 facilities are appropriate if you have nuclear reactors. 10-20 if you're still on oil.






From here on it should be smooth sailing for a while. you can try to relocate a border if you want to build a station in a sector that neighbors the enemy, but if it has living armor ships to defend you'll most likely need multiple attack waves.

Get your tech as high as you can. Get living Titan Gold or Titan Copper composite if possible. if not, use the non-living version. Get the best lasers you can. Every upgrade is huge! The enemy will have Proton and Annihilation Laser Lenses, and, fortunately for you, Nitinol armor, which is "weak" to lasers compared to what you want to bring.


Eventually you'll be able to build up a large force and overwhelm them. Producing one laser lense of choice per second is not enough to sustain your defence towards the end! you either need to double it up, or stockpile a few thousands!

The war itself will be similar to the previous one, just harder. If you don't get to at least proton laser lenses and living composites with the highest defense against lasers, you'll have tough fights.

Get ready to be limited by energy! You need one Million MW to claim most of the ancients' sectors! You might have to wait out a few attack cycles to charge your batteries.


After you finish the last ancient sector off and claim it there's just one more goal:
get to a population of one Billion. If you got this far, you know the drill. Build stations, fit constant demand, fulfill oders. You'll need to take most of the planets and advance rather far in your tech tree to reach it. To be honest, I was considering to skip this part, but i grinded it out.

That's it! You beat the game. Congratulations.