Artifacts are things that an empire can build to help them out in the massivly in the short term, and hopefully, preserve their legacy in the future. You see, unlike stations, artifacts stick around after the empire that built them fades from memory, unless they are destroyed. Each empire may only build one, including one that you are controlling.

Some things look like artifacts but really arn't. They could be ships or stations that just happen to be orbiting the star and die from bullets like everybody else. Here are a few examples of things that are not, in fact, artifacts.

Those were a gun station (or just a station), and an imperial explosives museum, respectively.
A good rule of thumb is if you can select it, it's not an artifact, although this could change.

These guys arn't artifacts but they function like them. I'm not really sure how they spawn but I think it has something to do with star development. Once a diamond gets found it will stay on that star forever. Diamonds attract traders to the star their on, which brings an influx of wealth. Every planet that a trader visits gets a small wealth boost and the start/end planets get a larger one.

This is a lunar momument. What do they do? Well, they certantly look cool. I'm pretty sure they bring traders (those little ships you see flying between stars), but so does every other artifact. They may have something to do with the warden, but I hear that it spawns whenever ANY artifact dies. Don't build it unless you want to stoke your ego, I suppose.

Wormhole Distruptors look like rings around a star. They change color, but just keep an eye out for a massive ring. Just like rings, Wormhole Distruptors are fickle things. When and why they choose to distrupt wormholes (the connections between stars) is still up to debate, but when it chooses to go to work no ship or land invasion, when one star just kinda goes \swhoomp\ and changes empires, can hurt it.

Distrupt Launchers are like Wormhole Distrupters but long range. These guys will fire distrupt balls, seen here, and if they hit a star it will be covered in green smoke and lose it's development and whatever nation owned it before gets kicked out, AND the star loses wormhole connections with it's neighbors for a few seconds.

Here is the Financial Center and a trade ship. Centers will spawn trade ships and compell trade ships to visit the star, making you enough money to build a wall if you put them in a good spot. They will also generate cash over time on the star they are at. Having richer stars means faster tech, more ships, and better land wars. Overall, good investment, especially if you have a small loan of a million Galbucks to pay off.

*Battle Stations! All hands to Battle Stations!* Fleet Bases are stations that are mounted with four fighters, or as I like to call them, death doritos. When a ship gets in range the base will release these doritos onto the enemy and, most likely, the cute little triangles will get completely decimated. It won't matter though, since the base can just make more. These guys are okay for harrasment at long ranges so it's your call. The doritos are the same as the ones in the carriers, btw.

These guys are simple. If a ship touches 'em, the ship goes poof. The only way to take these planets is through a land invasion, which makes throwing one of these shields over your capital a very cheese way to survive a cult, since they can't land attack.

Mind Control Hubs shoot out Mind Control Pods. These little buggers fly over to other stars and circle around them, similar to a dropship. Just like a dropship, you can see the progress of the "assault", although it's probably spreading pixie dust, with the little circles around the planet. Unlike dropships, however, Pods have much less health (i'm fairly sure they will always be 1 hit killed). Also, they act much faster and most importantly, they don't need to do it on a star that's connected to your borders, so they can theoretically start a siege across an allied territory. Don't build these with cults, as cults produce pods automaticlly.

Missile Stations are another simple one. They shoot missiles out of a station. These missiles do **A LOTTA DAMAGE**, or at least, they would, if they connect. The missile stations aren't exactly the brightest bulbs in the closet, and they don't like to fire on targets too close to them. Their obsession with sniping, combined with their inability to predict targets locations when the (rather slow) rocket gets to them, just leads me to believe that they should switch class to pyro or engineer.

Weapons Platforms are Missile Stations that did follow my advice and switch to pyro. They drop the missiles in favor of a rapid fire laser, when combined with their artifact invincibility, makes them a very good choice for an artifact, especially when on the defensive or to fire across a gap in a spiral galaxy.
(Weapons Platform fighting with a battleship.)

The Research Laboratory... researches. Wow. I know that it's a hard idea to fully comprehend but, researching is, in fact, what the research lab does. All around, good choice because it can help power you through before you start to degenerate.

These guys are the only fully positive thing that you can build, that no empire can ever take advantage of. The Sentinel Station's singular purpose is to combat space anomalies. Once it detects one, it will begin to hurl yellow missiles into it's general direction. These missiles cannot hurt anything but the monsters, and unlike the missile station, the sentinel lobs so much that at such a sheer volume, one of them is bound to connect.

Finally, the most... interesting... of all the artifacts. Building an imperial tomb won't have any immediate results, but once an emperor dies, you'll start to see some fun stuff. The ghost of the president, or capo, or CEO, or whatever, will appear in orbit of the star that the tomb was built on. Every emperor will get re-incarnated this way. The size of the ghosts affects their health and damage, (I think), and seems to be based on the score that the emperor achieved and/or the length of the emperor's reign, although it might just be randomized. They will float around the star they were buried above and protect it from invaders, both zapping ships with lasers and repelling land attacks. However, if the star gets taken, I think the ghosts die with it. Either that or go on a pilgrimage.





This is a really belated edit since I spaced out ("spaced" get it?) and didn't bother to update the guide, but about two years ago the dev left a comment explaining what the pilgrimage behavior of the ghosts are - they will seek out and destroy the highest ship on the map. I still don't know exactly what triggers it but according to the word of god that's the intended behavior.