Hyper Relays are one of the megastructures that came with the Overlord DLC, and once a few of them are linked up, your fleets will cross your empire a lot faster. A chain of relays in neighbouring systems lets your ships hop from relay to relay instead of crossing each system at sublight speed to reach the next hyperlane. Apart from the DLC, you are going to need the rare Hyper Relays tech. Each relay costs 500 alloys, 100 rare crystals and 25 influence, takes a year to build and will cost you 2 energy a month after that.

The numbers in this guide match the 4.5.2 “Cygnus” version of the game.

What Hyper Relays Do

The in-game description calls a single Hyper Relay useless on its own, and that is accurate. A relay only does something once there is a second one in a neighbouring system, meaning one that is directly connected to it by a hyperlane.

Relays do not create new hyperlanes either. They speed up the lanes that are already there, so two relays that sit three systems apart will never link up, and you will need a relay in every system along the route. In return, one relay covers every lane of its system, so a single relay in a hub will link to all neighbouring systems that also have one.

Once two relays are linked, your fleet will hop from the relay in one system straight to the relay in the next one. That hop is not instant. The game files give it its own charge-up of 10 days. A normal hyperlane jump charges for 15 days with the first hyperdrive and about 11 days with the Hyperlane Breach Points drive you need for the relay tech anyway, so the hop itself is only a little faster. What saves the most time is that your fleet no longer has to fly across each system at sublight speed to reach the next hyperlane entry. Whether better hyperdrives also shorten the relay charge-up is not clear from the files.

How much time you save will depend on how big the systems are and how slow your ships are at sublight speed. Since the saving is the sublight trip you skip, it should matter most in large systems and for slow fleets.

On the galaxy map, the hyperlane between two linked relay systems is drawn bolder than a normal lane.

Fleets pick relays on their own when they plot a route, so you simply give the move order as usual. Players have complained for years that this sends fleets across a whole system to reach the relay, even when the hyperlane exit is right next to them. One workaround players use is to order the fleet to the hyperlane entry point first and queue the jump after it.

For example, picture four systems in a row, A, B, C and D, each linked to the next by a hyperlane. With a relay in all four, a fleet starting at the relay in A will hop to B, then to C, then to D, and it never has to cross B or C at sublight speed. Now leave out the relay in C. Your fleet will still hop from A to B, but from there it has to fly to the hyperlane entry in B, cross C at sublight speed and jump into D the old way. The relay in D is useless in that case, because it has no linked neighbour left.

How to Unlock Hyper Relays

Hyper Relays need the Overlord DLC. Without it, the tech will never appear, and neither will the option to build a relay.

The Hyper Relays tech is a tier 2 physics tech in the Particles category with a base cost of 3,000 research, and its only prerequisite is Hyperlane Breach Points. It is also a rare tech, and you cannot get it through reverse engineering.

Beware that the normal tech draw will never offer it to you without some access to rare crystals. You need at least one of these:

• the Rare Crystal Mining tech
• the Rare Crystal Manufacturing tech
• market access

The one exception is the Jabbardeeni Data Cache in the Yuht precursor chain, which adds Hyper Relays to your research options directly.

Once that is covered, the following factors change your odds of seeing it among your physics options. They all multiply with each other.

Together with the exploration civics, the biggest lever in that list is the x0.2 penalty. If none of your council has a matching trait and you have never seen a relay, the tech is five times rarer. Seeing any empire’s relay removes that penalty and adds 50% on top, which raises the tech’s weight 7.5-fold.

The AI weights its relay sites towards its capital system and towards systems next to an existing relay or with a colony, so its chains usually grow out from the capital. An AI neighbour is a likely way to see your first relay. If nobody around you builds them, you are going to want a council member with one of the traits above.

If you own Astral Planes, the astral action Gain Hyper Relay Insight is a handy shortcut. For 300 Astral Threads, it adds 50% research progress to Hyper Relays, provided you have Hyperlane Breach Points and the tech is neither researched nor among your current options.

Cost, Upkeep and Build Time

Bio-ship empires from the Biogenesis DLC pay half the alloys for a relay and make up for it with food.

Each relay also costs 2 energy a month in upkeep. The build time is 360 days, so one Stellaris year, before any build-speed bonuses. Relays count as megastructures for those bonuses, which means anything that raises your megastructure build speed will finish them sooner as well.

You can only have one relay per system. There is no limit on how many relays you can own in total, though.

Since a chain needs a relay in every system, the whole route is what you pay for. For reference, this is what 10 and 20 relays will cost you:

With First Contact, the insight tech Temple of Transportation adds 1 unity a month per relay. It can only turn up as an insight once you have researched Hyper Relays.

Flash Forge Hyper Relay

Once you have the tech or it is among your options, the Astral Planes action Gain Hyper Relay Insight is replaced by Flash Forge Hyper Relay. You pay 50 Influence and 500 Astral Threads, and your next relay will be built instantly and for free. The tech has to be researched before you can activate it.

The thread cost goes up by 50 with every use, up to 1,000, and the action has a cooldown of 900 days, so 2.5 years. That is twice the influence of a normal relay, but you skip the alloys, the crystals and the year of building. It is a good fit for a relay you need in a hurry, like one in a border chokepoint.

How to Build and Connect Relays

Once you have researched the tech, your construction ships will be able to build Hyper Relays. They have to be built outside a system’s gravity well, anywhere between the gravity well and the system’s outer edge.

You will need one in every system along the route. Make sure to finish one route before you start the next, since a half-finished chain only helps where two relays already sit next to each other.

Relays only link to relays in neighbouring systems along hyperlanes, and they never connect through a gateway or wormhole. If a system has a gateway or a wormhole, place the relay right next to it, so your fleets will not have to cross the system to get from one to the other.

If a relay shows “No known destination”, it has no linked relay you know of in a neighbouring system yet. A relay that is closed to you shows a closed-borders or hostile message instead.

There is no automation for relays. Construction-ship automation only builds research stations, mining stations and observation posts, so you are going to have to place every relay yourself.

Why You Can’t Build a Hyper Relay

When the relay is greyed out, the tooltip will tell you which of these rules failed:

Normally you can only build relays inside your own borders and in your subjects’ systems, and the one way to build in a friend’s system is the Political Leaders perk from the Defender of the Galaxy ambition (level 2), which opens up the systems of your defensive-pact partners and federation members.

Patch 4.5.2 fixed some cases where nomadic empires could not build relays, so update first if the button stays grey for a nomad empire.

Closed borders are not among these build rules. For relays, they only decide who can travel through them.

Network Edicts and Subject Bonuses

Relays also give you access to three network edicts (plus a gestalt version of Networked Amenities), and each one needs an extra tech besides Hyper Relays.

You can only turn the edicts on if your capital’s system has a relay, and their bonus goes to your colonies in systems that have a relay and are linked to the capital through an unbroken chain of relays. Additionally, you cannot be in deficit of the strategic resource that the edict uses.

Networked Movement makes unemployed pops more likely to move on their own and cheaper to resettle. All four are perpetual edicts with a small unity cost that grows when your empire is over its size cap, both to turn them on and as upkeep.

The bigger cost is the strategic resource. With 20 relays, each edict you run will add 2 exotic gases, volatile motes or rare crystals a month to your upkeep. Nomadic empires cannot use these edicts at all.

Specialist Subjects

Specialist subjects from Overlord have a tier 1 perk that projects a bonus over your relay network, as long as the network is connected to the subject’s capital. You will get a “Connected Capitals” message once your capital is linked to another empire’s capital through relays.

Since 4.3 each type only counts once. Two Scholarium subjects will not double the research bonus.

Are Hyper Relays Worth It?

I would say they are, as long as you build them with a plan instead of everywhere at once. Per piece, relays are cheap. One gateway costs as many alloys as ten relays, and its influence alone would pay for three of them. They also come much earlier: Hyper Relays is a tier 2 tech, while building your own gateways needs Gateway Activation (tier 4) and then Gateway Construction (tier 5).

Influence is what will hold you back. When the tech finally shows up, you will probably still need most of your influence for expanding, and a chain of 10 relays eats 250 of it. Energy is the other cost that creeps up on you, since every relay adds 2 energy a month, or 40 for a network of 20.

Where to Build First

I would say your first chain should run from your capital and your main shipyards to the chokepoints on your border, since that is where your fleets will need to react the fastest. A relay in the capital system is required for the network edicts anyway. After that, connect your colonies so the edicts reach them, then the capitals of your specialist subjects, and only later fill in the rest of your empire.

A chain like that gets your fleets to a threatened border sooner, but they still have to win the fight there, so make sure your fleet composition is up to the job.

Bear in mind that AI empires build relays as well. Conquering a neighbour can leave you with relays you never planned for, each costing 2 energy a month, so dismantle the ones you do not need once you are at peace.

Hyper Relays vs Gateways

This is how one relay compares to one gateway:

Relays win early and over short distances. Every piece is cheap, and a chain along your main routes will speed up every system on the way, which is what you want when a war breaks out on a long border.

Gateways win once your empire gets very wide. A gateway will take your fleets to another gateway far away without crossing the systems in between, and it has no upkeep, while a long relay chain keeps adding energy costs. That being said, you can use both, and a relay placed right next to a gateway saves your fleets the trip across that system.

The jump drive is a late tech and comes with its own charge time, so relays and gateways will do most of the work for a large part of the game.

Enemies, War and Closed Borders

Other empires can use your relays while your borders are open to them. Closed borders shut them out of your relays, and theirs shut you out. Allies in the same war are the exception, since they can use each other’s relays even with closed borders.

An enemy at war cannot use a relay in a system you still control. Once they take a system, the relay there switches to them, so they can hop between relays in the systems they hold. They still cannot jump from there into a system you hold. The same works in your favour when you capture their systems, and if a system is handed back to you, its relay comes back with it.

There is also a reported bug where fleets that are set to follow another fleet take a detour after a relay hop and slowly fall behind the fleet they follow.

Dismantling and Ruined Relays

You can dismantle a relay, including ones you conquered, for 500 energy. It takes a year, you need the Hyper Relays tech, and you must not be at war with anyone. You will only get alloys and crystals back with a dismantle-refund bonus such as the Scavengers civic, which returns 10%, or 50 alloys and 10 rare crystals per relay.

A ruined relay is what is left of an old chain. It does not work as a relay, and it blocks you from building a new one in its system. The home system of the Yuht precursor, Yuhtaan, always has one, and more can appear when certain events destroy a system or wipe out its owner, mostly crises and other endgame events.

Once you have Hyper Relays and Hyperlane Breach Points, you can restore a ruined relay for 500 alloys, 100 rare crystals and 500 energy in 180 days (bio-ship empires pay 250 alloys and 875 food instead of the 500 alloys). After that, it works as a normal relay for travel and the network edicts, and it also costs 2 energy a month.

Conclusion

Hyper Relays are worth researching as soon as the tech is offered to you, and a council member with Expertise: Particles or a neighbour with a working relay will make that a lot more likely. Start with a chain from your capital and shipyards to your border chokepoints, then link up your colonies and subjects for the edicts and subject bonuses. Gateways will take over the long distances later on, but relays come earlier and one gateway costs as many alloys as ten of them, so you are probably going to end up using both.