Hey everyone! The first community event is nearly done. The Contract Rally started on August 6 and closes at the end of August 12, so there is still a day left to push your number up - but the top of the board is settled.
Where the Rally Landed
This was the first time the whole community pooled progress into one shared total, and it went better than I expected for a first run:
- 45,896 community contract points earned during the event window.
- 14,262 contracts completed by event participants.
- 108 commanders scored at least one verified point.
For context on how busy the wider colony has been while the rally ran: Mars is now up to 1,441 registered commanders and 5,892 total level ups, with 127 of those level ups happening in the last 24 hours alone.
We Have a Clear Winner
There is no suspense left at the top. Volch has run away with this one, finishing with roughly 3× the points of second place and more than a quarter of the entire community total on their own. 3,501 completed contracts from a single commander in one week is genuinely absurd, and it was done at Level 21 with a Terraform Index of 80, so it was a well-tuned prestige colony rather than a brute-force endgame save.
The current top five:
- Volch - 12,528 points, 3,501 contracts, Level 21, TFI 80
- Turtleman - 3,910 points, 1,242 contracts, Level 10, TFI 10
- TheMartian - 3,471 points, 969 contracts, Level 31, TFI 50
- Orbit Rhino - 3,376 points, 1,125 contracts, Level 16
- BigM - 1,840 points, 554 contracts, Level 20
The fight for second is still live, and positions 2 through 5 are close enough that a strong final day could reshuffle them. If you are anywhere near that range, it is worth one more contract push. Final standings and the community total stay up permanently in the event archive once the window closes.
One thing the standings made obvious: raw colony level did not decide this. A Level 10 colony took second place. Contract throughput is about how tight your supply chain is and how often you can turn goods around, not how far up the tech tree you have climbed.
Next Event: the Level 31 Sprint
The second community event runs August 13 to August 19, and it is a completely different challenge: speed leveling.
You start a fresh colony at Level 1 and race to Level 31. The clock is your run time, so the leaderboard is sorted by fastest, not biggest. The rules are simple:
- The whole run must fit inside the window. A run only qualifies if it both starts and finishes between August 13 and August 19. A colony you started before the event does not count.
- You can try as many times as you want. Only your single fastest complete run appears in the final standings, so a failed attempt costs you nothing but time.
- The board shows the community best time alongside the number of qualifying runs, so you can see exactly what you are chasing.
This one rewards route knowledge rather than grinding. Which buildings you place first, when you spend on Outposts instead of production, how early you commit to a chain, and whether you take the map seed you are given or reroll for something friendlier - all of that gets compressed into a few hours instead of a few days. I expect the first day of runs to look nothing like the last day of runs, and I am curious how much time the community can shave off once people start sharing routes.
If you have a prestige colony with a high Terraform Index, remember that your perks and map choices carry into a fresh run, so it is worth thinking about which map you want to sprint on before the window opens.
Thanks to everyone who took part in the first rally - 108 commanders showing up for an experimental event was a great result. Go grab your last contract points, then come back Thursday and race. See you on the community board!