---
title: "How Citadel Works | Hardcore Sessions and a Player-Built World"
description: "Discover a hardcore micro-MMO built for focused sessions, where factions and player crews need every kind of captain to shape a persistent world."
canonical: "https://www.thecitadel.com/world"
content_type: "machine-readable marketing page"
language: "en"
---

# How Citadel works

> A hardcore world you have time for.

Citadel is a persistent world built for focused sessions. Fight, build, trade, or explore on your schedule, then return to a world that remembers what happened.

Citadel is a browser-based gunship sandbox MMO inside a vast ancient megastructure. Players enter focused sessions, take work created by factions and other players, and return their gains or losses to a persistent war economy.

## Core facts

- The setting is a vast ancient megastructure divided by civil war.
- Sessions are focused and can be played on a real-life schedule.
- Players choose their own level of risk, from hubs and markets to permadeath Breach runs.
- Captains can fight, haul, mine, salvage, craft, trade, scout, or support other players.
- Players create the ships, weapons, equipment, and logistics the world depends on.
- Victories, losses, cargo, destroyed ships, and faction outcomes change what the world needs next.

## 01 / Opportunity: The world needs you.

Civil war has spread across the megastructure. Factions and player crews need captains to haul cargo, escort convoys, mine, salvage, hunt bounties, and raid their rivals.

Civil war has spread across the ancient megastructure. Warring factions hold its hubs and need guns, ships, cargo, gear, and captains willing to move them.

Take work as a convoy escort, cargo hauler, miner, salvager, bounty hunter, or mercenary raider. Every job answers a real need in the war economy.

**Every job is an opportunity to leave a mark.**

## 02 / Your time: Play on your time. Leave a lasting mark.

Citadel unfolds in focused sessions you can finish on your schedule. Step away when you need to. The war, markets, and megastructure will be waiting when you return.

Citadel delivers the stakes of a hardcore persistent world through focused sessions you can pick up or put down on your schedule.

Fight for factions, fly with crews, build for the markets, or spend time in the hubs. The world continues between sessions, but it does not demand that you live inside it.

## 03 / Playstyle: The world needs your playstyle.

Craft, trade, and socialize in the hubs, or risk valuable gear on a permadeath Breach. Citadel needs builders, traders, scouts, fighters, and everything between.

Choose your risk appetite. Craft, socialize, and trade in the hubs, or carry valuable gear into an ultra-hardcore permadeath run through a Breach.

There is no single correct way to matter. Builders, traders, scouts, haulers, salvagers, and fighters all keep the world alive.

## 04 / Other players: Other players need you.

Players build the ships, weapons, and equipment the world depends on. Crews need specialists in battle, industry, logistics, and trade. Your contribution gives someone else a way forward.

Citadel is built by its players. Ships, weapons, equipment, and the logistics that connect them all begin with another player’s work.

Squads, crews, and guilds need specialists to achieve their goals on and off the battlefield. A captain who never fires a shot can still decide who wins the war.

## 05 / Consequence: Leave the world different.

Every victory and loss shifts the balance. Ships are destroyed, markets react, and new jobs appear. You return to the same world, but never the one you left.

Recovered resources feed manufacturing, research, salvage, and player trade. Destroyed ships create demand. What one crew brings home can become another player’s module, ship, target, or opportunity.

Factions turn those needs into new contracts. If a hub runs short on resources, someone has to haul them. If a route is contested, someone has to defend it. The world creates the reason for the next Breach.

## One session. One shared outcome.

The contract ends. The cargo, losses, routes, and faction result remain in the world.

### The loop

1. **Prepare:** Fit a ship from what you own.
2. **Commit:** Take a faction contract.
3. **Breach:** Fight, mine, and recover.
4. **Return:** Secure the result or lose it.
5. **Invest:** Build, research, and trade.
6. **Repeat:** See what the world needs next.

## Enter the Breach.

Early access is live.

- [Play Citadel now](https://alpha.thecitadel.com/?utm_source=ai_agent&utm_medium=markdown&utm_campaign=agent_discovery&utm_content=world_play)
- [Back to home](https://www.thecitadel.com/?utm_source=ai_agent&utm_medium=markdown&utm_campaign=agent_discovery&utm_content=world_home)
- [Machine-readable Citadel overview](https://www.thecitadel.com/index.md)
- [Citadel on X](https://x.com/0xCitadel)
- [Citadel Discord](https://discord.gg/XKmfAkdWGG)

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