IXION Starter Guide: 5 Tips & Tricks for Beginners

by Mike Alexander / Articles, IXION, Misc. Guides / 26 May 2024

Our planet is dying. Misuse of resources, ignorance, and general incompetence have put us on a practically irreversible path to oblivion, and the timeline for that demise gets shortened every year. Now, we look to the stars for a new home for humanity, hopefully one that will be cared for and maintained for future generations. In the new game IXION, you get to experience that search for a new home, and you’re in charge of every decision.

Developed by Bulwark Studios and published by Kasedo Games, IXION is a resource management/colony sim that puts you in charge of essentially the fate and future of the human race. That’s definitely a lot of responsibility, but it doesn’t have to be overwhelming. Especially if you make use of this IXION starter guide. So, gather your crew and aim for the stars as we share these tips & tricks.

Preventing Visual Overload

At any given time in a playthrough of IXION, you might become overwhelmed by the amount of information being presented on screen, especially if you’re new to the colony sim genre. If you feel like you need a breather, it is possible to hide the resource indicators of the many rooms of your space station. This is done by pressing the leftmost button on the bar at the top of your screen. This will either turn them on or off permanently.

If you choose to leave them off but occasionally need a reminder of which building produces what, you can bring up those indicators once more using the ALT key. Pressing and holding it down will bring up the indicators while releasing that button will hide them again. This is a better way to play the game if you’re trying to optimize the visual information you are being presented with.

Your Fate Has Been Decided

When you take on a Science Ship Mission, you will be presented with a choice you will need to make in order to complete that mission. Sometimes, some of these choices will require resources or have other specific requirements in order to select and complete them. In most games, the outcomes of these choices would be randomized based on however many factors, but that is not the case in IXION.

All of the choices in this game have a predetermined outcome, so you will get the same result no matter your level of success or failure in the rest of the game. It’s also worth noting that even if a choice requires some kind of investment, it is not guaranteed that the outcome will be positive. Liberal use of the quicksave and reload function is recommended here.

Expanding Your Station

Shockingly early on in the game, you will be given an opportunity to expand your space station with a new sector. This might seem tempting, and you might feel like you’ll miss out on this opportunity if you don’t take it right away, but we would highly recommend that you consider whether or not you actually need that new sector before blindly accepting it.

A new sector requires resources and manpower, it’ll require you to double the population management, and opening a new sector decreases your hull integrity. Think about whether you have the resources and population to split into this new area, and if it is worth all of the extra hassles it brings before you commit to it. You will have plenty of opportunities to open new sectors throughout the game, so there is no rush.

Early Upgrades

In IXION, Science acts as a currency that allows you to research new technologies, a critical part of the game that aids your population and workers alike. Science is a limited resource that can be expended quite quickly, so doing your best to find a way to keep it coming in is in your best interest.

We recommend dedicating early upgrades to the Tech Lab research as much as you can. This will give you a steady income of science that will be critical to your success further down the line.

Gain Trust

The core of any successful city or colony is a healthy and happy population, but managing a growing group of people in deep space can get a little out of hand. In IXION, you will need to manage your crew’s trust in order to keep them working effectively and abstaining from things like sabotage and mutiny.

You can do this throughout the game by managing their food levels by sector, building memorials, and making sure there is enough housing to cover everyone comfortably.

Mike Alexander

Mike has been playing video games since he was able to hold a controller, having been fascinated by Sonic 2 on his mom’s Sega Genesis. That fascination and passion for the art form has grown exponentially nearly 30 years later, and he doesn’t see that fading away anytime soon.
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