A plan is a build or upgrade of a building that you get for free. There are six ways to get plans in the game: contests, spies, the Archaeology Ministry, Excavator, trading, missions, and the tutorial.

Acquiring Plans:

1. You can participate in the contests that we run on the web site to get free plans. The plans we give away there are sometimes unique, and so the only way you can ever build them is if they are built from one of these plans after winning a contest.
2. Assigning your spies to appropriate technology will tell your spies to steal the plans for buildings. When they successfully steal something, you will get a plan. Some planets such as those entitled Jackpot have been setup as a method of giving away of plans to other players.
3. When using the Archaeology Ministry you'll have a chance to get glyphs. Glyphs can be organized into a plan for an ancient building left behind by the Great Race, and other cool stuff.
4. Sending out excavators can also produce plans.  The plans vary from level 1 to a maximum of 1+4. 
5. You can purchase plans that other players put up for sale by looking at the available trades in your Trade Ministry and in your Subspace Transporter.
6. Some of the missions in your Mission Command building provide plans as rewards for completing the mission objectives.
7. During the tutorial the Lacunans will often give you free buildings as rewards for completing assignments.

Using Plans:

There was a hard limit of 20 plans per planet. As of Server 2.4500, this limit has been removed.

You don't have to even know you have a plan to use it. If you have one it will automatically appear in your build list. When you build it you'll do so for free, meaning that it won't cost you any resources (except time) to build that building. Plans are expended when used.

There are three types of plans.

1. A level 1 plan builds a level 1 building.
2. A 1+x plan builds a level 1+x building.
   1. A 1+x plan instantly (as soon as it starts building) becomes a Lx building and then starts upgrading to Lx+1 taking the normal Lx to Lx+1 upgrade time.
   2. This means that the building will make and use resources at Lx during construction.
3. A x level plan upgrades a building from x-1 to x.

Tips:

• Level 1 plans can be used to build buildings which you migh not otherwise be capable of building.  One example of this is the SubSpace Transporter plan that is given away during the tutorial.  A beginning empire is not normally capable of building this building until much later in the game.  Because of this fact level 1 plans for other popular buildings sell for high prices in the markets.
• There are planets setup by some players called Jackpot planets where extra plans may be dumped to be stolen by other empires.