Install and sign in
Where the game comes from, what your player id carries between devices, and what still works with no connection at all.
Getting the game
On iPhone, Orbital Frontier reaches you through TestFlight, Apple's own way of trying a build before it ships to the App Store. Once you have been invited as a tester, a build shows up there and TestFlight tells you when a newer one is ready.
On Android, the game comes as a file you install straight onto the phone, or, once it has a listing there, as an update from Google Play. Either way it is the same game and the same account underneath.
Your player id
The first time the game talks to the shared world, it asks for a player id: a short name you choose. Everything below is kept under that id, so typing it again on another phone, or after reinstalling, brings all of it back.
You change it from Settings, reached from the small figure at the foot of the parts column in the hangar: type a new id in the Player field and tap Apply.
What your account holds
Your player id carries your whole game forward: the credits and discovery you have earned, the tech nodes you have bought, and the buildings standing at your Space Center on every world. It also carries your crew, the game calls them the Meek, and your ship library, every rocket you saved from the hangar.
| You start with | |
|---|---|
| Credits | 5,000 |
| Discovery | 0 |
The ship library follows you the same way: a rocket saved on one phone is there the next time you open Ships on another, under the same player id.
Playing offline
The game keeps a copy of the parts and the way they look on the phone itself, so the hangar opens and works with no connection at all. What you cannot do offline is spend anything that belongs to your account: a launch cannot be charged and a tech node cannot be bought. An achievement you earn offline is kept on the phone and claimed the next time the game reaches the world, and so is a reading you take. The About list in Settings says World server: offline when this is the case.
Nothing is lost by flying offline. The moment the game finds the shared world again, it picks up exactly where your account left off, and anything you flew in the meantime while offline simply never touched it.
Sandbox: a place to fly with nothing at stake
Settings also has a Sandbox switch, under World. Turned on, everything you launch, park or lose stays on this one device and never reaches the shared world: nothing is spent, unlocked, built or earned there, however the flight ends. You still fly with the credits, the tech and the Space Center your account already has. Sandbox reads them, it just never writes anything back. It is the one place with a clock of its own, so it is also where time warp and saved worlds live; the shared world runs on one real clock that nobody can speed up. Turning sandbox back off drops the local world and brings the shared one back.
