Adjutant LYRA

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Adjutant LYRA is your ship's AI and the voice of the beginner guide. Beyond the guide and the story Transmissions, she comments on what happens in your empire. She sits at the left edge of the screen, below the top bar (on phones, at the start of the planet switcher row), and speaks in speech bubbles beside her, each with her small ASCII face, which changes with her mood. Close a bubble with its ×, or on a touch screen swipe it away to the left or right. Ordinary notifications stay on the right. With the guide finished or hidden, her panel shrinks to a short note with links to Ask LYRA and the full guide. She is dry, a little dramatic and secretly very fond of her crew.

Her moods

Face	Mood	For example
O_O	Panic	A hostile fleet or a rocket is heading for one of your planets.
O_o	Puzzled	Strange sensor readings, relics, wormholes, Mark upgrades.
>_<	Stressed	An energy deficit, or a joke she regrets.
>_>	Side-eye	Sarcastic or completely useless remarks, your return after a long absence.
X_X	Done	Full storage, a battle in which both sides were wrecked.
^_^	Happy	New colonies, incoming deliveries, new blueprints and commanders, a crushing victory.
T_T	Sad	Lost ships, failed excursions, cancelled orders, scrapped ships, a crushing defeat.
-_-	Pouting	You told her to talk less, or left her alone too long.
ò_ó	Angry	You named her after one of Earth's old voice assistants.

What she reacts to

Important events

• Attacks: once for every hostile fleet and every rocket heading for one of your planets. These warnings always come through, even when she is told to keep quiet.
• Deliveries: a transport from another player heading for one of your planets.
• Colonies: your first colony and every new one.
• Losses: ships lost in battle and failed excursions since she last looked, so she also notices what happened while you were offline.
• Shortages: an energy deficit or full storage on the planet you are looking at.

Chatter

• Your actions: new ship and drone blueprints ("That is a good-looking drone. I am taking one as my personal planetary cab!"), Mark upgrades, cancelled orders, scrapped ships, G.E.L.D. speed-ups, new commanders, forged and fused relics, renamed and abandoned planets, government changes, a new alliance, rocket launches, named wormholes and achievements. Many of these only get a comment now and then.
• Combat reports: when you open an unread combat report of a big battle for the first time, she comments in about half of the cases. A side's losses count as big from 5% of your empire's value (your total points in resources). If the enemy lost a big amount and at least three times what you lost, she celebrates; if it went the other way round, she mourns; if both sides lost big and neither three times the other, she calls it a bloodbath.
• Her name and her voice: a new name pleases her, though she may need a moment to get used to it, and she is glad to get her original name back. Some names get a reaction of their own: famous AIs and robots from films, series and games (try JARVIS, HAL 9000, GLaDOS or Marvin), great scientists such as Einstein, Tesla, Curie or Turing, and Earth's old voice assistants, which she cannot stand. She sulks when you set a longer remark interval and cheers up when you let her talk more often.
• Government milestones: a one-time comment when a government category (civilian, economy, military) reaches 3 and 6 policy points.
• Welcome back: a remark when you return after a day or more away.
• Section tips: a practical hint for the page you are on, at most once every three hours per tip: an idle resource or infrastructure construction yard, an idle research queue or shipyard, a free colony slot on the Galaxy, or open offers on the Trade Hub. Once you could research LYRA Autonomy (requirements met, not researched and not queued), she playfully suggests it on the Overview and the research page, at most once a day.
• Colony reminder: at most once a day, on any page, she reminds you to work toward a colony. With a free colony slot she points you at it. With every slot taken she names the next Government Network level, which gives another slot, or, if it cannot be researched yet, the research still missing on the way to it, with the level you have and the level it needs. That second part starts once your Photonic Computing reaches level 3 or your account is three days old, waits while research is running, and stops from five colonies on.
• Invite friends: every two to three days she encourages you to invite friends, with a link to the Support page and your invite link. The first time comes two days after you join a world, and only while she may chat freely (not with Important only).
• Random remarks: now and then a joke or an observation, at most once per remark interval (30 minutes by default, see below). She has opinions on Earth's science fiction and sci-fi games, quotes old Earth memes from the archives, reports on station life, hears more snacks, coffee and sighing at your desk than she should, has a theory about your keyboard, makes jokes from your own culture in your language, notices when you play late at night or for hours, greets holidays and comments on the page you are on.
• Idle remarks: if you leave mouse and keyboard alone for a few minutes while the game is open, she starts reading old Earth records aloud. Cats feature prominently. Left alone longer, she pouts.

She stays quiet while a story transmission is waiting for you, and never talks to bots or players on vacation.

Making her quieter

• Not now, LYRA: the button under her messages gives her the day off. For 24 hours she only warns you about attacks and rockets.
• Game settings → LYRA remark interval: minutes between her random and idle remarks, from 5 to 60 (default 30). Warnings are not delayed.
• Game settings → LYRA chatter: Everything (default) or Important only. With Important only she keeps attacks, deliveries, colonies, losses, shortages, section tips and the colony reminder, but drops reactions to your actions and settings, combat report comments, welcome-backs, random and idle remarks.

Ask LYRA

Ask LYRA (in her panel, or the page /game/lyra) is a chat with her. Type a question about the game and press Enter (Shift+Enter starts a new line). She answers in your language from the guide, the FAQ and her own playbooks for the economy, colonies and defense, and she looks at your empire while she answers: energy deficits and how hard they slow your mines, production, full storage, idle construction yards or research, free colony slots, your current guide objective and incoming attacks. On the planet you have open she can also look up buildings and research (what they need and cost, why one cannot be built), your queues and your stock. So "What should I do next?", "Why is my production so low?", "Why can I not build the Fusion Reactor?" or "Someone is attacking me, what can I do?" get an answer for your situation.

She remembers your last few questions, so a follow-up like "and then?" continues the conversation. For topics beyond the basics, such as governments, relics, the Void Realm or ship assembly, she reads up on the topic first and puts a Read more on the wiki link to the matching wiki page under her answer.

You can ask 10 questions an hour; the counter beside the chat shows how many are left. A question she could not answer does not count. Now and then she may be busy with other duties and ask you to come back later. The chat keeps your latest exchanges.

Giving her a name

Game settings → Adjutant name lets you call her something else (2 to 16 letters, digits, spaces, dots, apostrophes and hyphens; leave it empty for LYRA). Only you see the new name: it replaces LYRA everywhere she appears for you, and she answers to it in the chat. Her research LYRA Autonomy keeps its name. Other players still meet LYRA. She takes a new name personally, and is delighted when you go back to LYRA.

LYRA Autonomy: she runs colonies

With the research LYRA Autonomy (requires Government Network level 3) you can hand colonies to her. Every research level lets her govern one colony, up to three. Your home planet always stays in your hands.

Choose her path on the colony's Overview (the LYRA autonomy row below the rating) or in its planet settings:

• Economy: mines, Thermal Borehole, Planet Resource Lab, energy and storage.
• Economy and infrastructure: also the shipyard, labs and the other infrastructure buildings, always the lowest one she can afford first. She never builds the Terraform Control Center.
• Economy and combat: also ships from your newest combat design, built from surplus. She builds a shipyard first if the colony has none, and never designs ships herself.

She builds with the colony's own resources until it reaches the median economy (and, on the infrastructure path, the median infrastructure) of your planets she does not run, plus 5%, and looks at it again every few minutes. She fixes power shortages and nearly full storage first: for power she picks the Solar Farm or the Energy Grid by what a unit of energy costs, and keeps upgrading a Fusion Reactor only if the colony already runs one; for storage she builds Resource Storage. For production she works out which building pays off best among the four mines, the Thermal Borehole and the Planet Resource Lab: the production it adds, valued by how scarce the resource is in your world and by how much it holds back your next upgrades, with extra weight on the planet's bonus resource. She saves for a clearly better building rather than building a much worse one.

When every slot is taken, choosing a path on another colony opens a dialog that asks which colony she should leave for the new one. Choose Off to run a colony yourself again.