Field manual
Wiki
What things are and how they are played, written from the running build. When the game changes, this changes with it.
Getting started
The first 15 minutes ↗
From the door to the first sale - the route the chip walks you, and the Docket that takes over after it.
Reading the HUD ↗
What each part of the flight screen says, and what its colours mean.
Controls ↗
Keyboard, mouse and pad; hold F1 in the game for the same list.
Reports, warnings and appeals ↗
Report a pilot with /report; what a warning, a mute, a sign-out, a suspension and a ban do; where you read why and how you appeal.
How it is played
Hulls ↗
No pilot classes; five platforms, thirteen hulls; four starting hulls chosen at the door, credit hulls at the Citadel, warranted hulls at a Compact Shipyard or The Last Yard.
Rank, experience and skills ↗
A hundred ranks in ten bands; the work pays the experience; a rank moves no figure on your ship - it opens depth, skill grades and bench bands, and skills are bought with credits and materials.
Equipment ↗
Nine main lines and six leaning lines on eight mounts; grade I at the Citadel, grades I and II at the specialists, III to VI found; every price is k × grade², and every counter buys back at 34%.
Mining and selling ↗
Ore is the only wealth; the hold is the only storage for it; the price scissors tells you where to fly.
Elements and components ↗
Nine elements fall out of rock and five components never do; which rock gives what, where the parts come from, and why selling an element is the mistake you are allowed to make.
Stations ↗
Six kinds, each for one job; every station has a name, a plate and an owner or none, and the Citadel at home does every errand at the bottom of its ladder.
The chart, warp and jump ↗
The map is honest - a threat band says what a place costs, a shut door says what the key is, a warp stays at your star, a jump crosses lanes, and both start with a wind-up somebody can shoot at.
Convoys, raiding and the Wanted mark ↗
Freight flies the lanes on a timetable; in a sector it can be robbed, and robbing it puts your name in a Compact's ledger.
Combat ↗
The lock is a mark the server grants and never steers; a gun fires rounds on the server's clock; the shield comes back and the hull does not.
Death, the wreck and the wake ↗
Death costs the hold and nothing else; the spill is nobody's for ten minutes; you wake at the nearest counter open to you, on the same ship, repaired.
Companies - the Charter, the Line, the Syndicate ↗
A house is a name, a fund and a roll; it opens no door and pays no credit, and everything an officer or head does is written with their name.
The forge (+0 … +9) ↗
A copy's own ladder in three bands - the odds, the bill and the price of every mark, the rank each band opens at - and a die the client never touches.
The world
The three colonies ↗
Concord, Sepulchre, Ashaari - one event, three accounts; where you were raised and whom you swore to.
Dominion, siege and the Tithe ↗
Ground changes hands on a weekly score behind a Sentinel in every owned sector, a home's Citadel falls over three evenings in a two-week window, and the loser pays a share of its earnings for a season.
The zones ↗
Fifty-three places on fourteen stars - a middle nobody owns, three Compact spines running inward from it, and a common ladder running out past the last page.
The stars ↗
Fourteen stars in one arm - the Kindling - every zone a site around one body of one of them, and the lanes between them are what a jump crosses.
The Fallow ↗
What patrols the sectors - pre-Cinder machinery in four habits, a sector that remembers being left alone, the Gleaners that come to a wreck, and the Leviathan pods that walk a spine each season.