Tournaments are knockout competitions between crews and the game's main endgame goal. They run over the P2P network, so taking part (or hosting your own) means being online at the right moments.
Hosting a tournament
To organize a tournament you need a Space Cove with a Stadium built in it, and you have to be parked on the asteroid where it's built. A finished cove alone is no longer enough. Each tournament you open also costs 1 Gold. From the space cove panel you can open one of two formats:
| Format | Hotkey | Teams | Registration window |
|---|---|---|---|
| Quick tournament (Cup) | q |
4 | 5 minutes |
| Big tournament (Supercup) | b |
8 | 45 minutes |
Both are single-elimination brackets - a Cup runs over 2 rounds, a Supercup over 3 - with a new batch of games scheduled every 30 minutes.
Registering and getting a spot
Any crew can sign up for an open tournament while registrations are still open (track them from the Tournaments panel). A few things to know before you commit:
- Be online when registrations close. You confirm your participation at that moment, so if you're offline you miss the cut.
- Once registrations close, up to the maximum number of participants are chosen at random from all the crews that confirmed. Signing up doesn't guarantee a spot in a crowded field.
- A tournament needs at least 2 confirmed crews to go ahead, otherwise it's canceled. The organizer also has to be online when registrations close, or the whole thing is called off.
Following the action
The Tournaments panel lets you cycle between All, Active, and Past tournaments, browse the brackets, and register your team. The Past view keeps every tournament that has finished, yours and other crews', so you can go back and read old brackets. You can watch live or finished tournament games from the Games panel, and scout your likely opponents in the Crews panel before you sign up.
Tournament games are also gentler on the crew than normal ones: your pirates get a chunk of tiredness back before each game, and they train less from tournament minutes than from regular ones.
Tips
- Rest your roster and top up morale before registrations close: tournament games are scheduled every 30 minutes, so tiredness builds up across rounds;
- A Quick tournament is a great low-commitment way to learn the format: 4 crews, a 5-minute window, and you're playing;
- Hosting takes a Space Cove with a Stadium, a serious investment, so most crews will play in other people's tournaments long before running their own.