Typical first steps in Mankind consist of building a small base on one of the nearby planets and mining available resources which could either be sold or used to construct further units.

Early game reviews talked about a total sum of 900 million available planets, each with their own climate, seasons and population,[1] a figure that was repeated in advertising text on the game box and even topped by the official website, which claimed several million systems and billions of planets.

[2] In fact, a majority of these planets and star systems were unavailable ("closed") at the initial release of the game[3] and have never been opened afterwards.

[5] During the game rework of Quantex in early 2009, the graphic engine of Mankind was fully ported to DirectX 9 and full support for Windows Vista implemented.

[7] A newer version of the game, named Unity Space Conquest, is based on the original Mankind.