The chart and warp

M opens the chart: the zones, who holds them (filled in the owner’s tint) and the steps between them. Pick a zone and warp with J. Fifty-three zones, four kinds, three spines and a ladder: the zones.

The map is honest

• Threat bands say what a place costs before you pay it. Ten bands. A Compact’s own spine runs 1 to 6; the common ladder out of the middle runs 5 to 10. The higher the band, the bigger the patrol and the more a wreck pays.
• A locked jump says what the key is. A greyed zone carries its reason; there are no invisible walls.
• Depth, not rules, protects beginners. Your colony’s Shallows is one hop from home and never a battlefield; PvP lives in the sectors.

The locks

The chart says	Why	The key
another Compact’s writ	somebody else’s territory	a war week and a front: a foreign frontier (depths 1–2) is open in every week but the Slack; each deeper rung only to a Compact holding the rung before it
no writ past the front	a foreign rung the campaign has not reached	win the rung in front - dominion
ungraded past rank N	the sector’s patrols outrank you	level (threat − 1) × 10
transit	a foreign Shallows in a siege window	you may cross; nobody fires either way

Compact before level, on purpose: a pilot refused for both is told the one they can fix by playing.

Warp

A warp is two halves, and only one of them is nowhere.

1. Wind-up, 8 seconds, in the zone you are leaving: at a position, visible, and it can be shot. Sustained fire rewinds it at twice real time; stop shooting and it resumes. The drive will not start within 8 seconds of a combat hit - a rock does not count - so a fight cannot end with the loser vanishing.
2. The tunnel: 4 seconds a hop plus 2, floored at 6 and capped at 22. Fourteen seconds to a neighbour, thirty across the whole map. In the tunnel you are nowhere: nothing can see you, hit you or lock you. The chart and the hold are readable, the wing channel is open, zone chat is not, nothing can be refitted, and it cannot be cancelled.

A hop is one step on the chart: a link between adjacent rungs, or the seam between two siblings.

Tank and reach

The drive spends one hop of fuel per hop crossed, at the start. The tank is a hull stat; the reach is the drive’s level.

Hull class	Tank (hops)
Fighter	10
Corvette, Frigate	8
Hauler	6
Capital	4
any courier or prospector hull	+5

Drive level	1	2	3	4	5
Most hops in one warp	1	2	4	7	15

What a hull can actually do is the smaller of the two, and the yard card says which one caps it. A crossing longer than the reach is refused as drive Lv N reaches M hops a warp; longer than the tank, as this hull carries M hops a crossing, full - no rung and no quay makes it more. The same crossing one hop at a time is always legal.

Any quay fills the tank - full, free, at once, at any station of any Compact. Nothing fills it on a clock. And the navigation computer always keeps a return solution: an empty tank still warps home.

The edge

A zone has a wall. At 3 km from it the nav rail grows an EDGE row - the distance to the line and the name of what lies across it, or open space where the map ends; at 1 km the outward speed starts being taken away, and the ship is held at the line with its heading kept. Flying at a wall takes you nowhere; the way past it is a warp.

The one exception is a declared seam: two zones sharing a spine and a depth (Long Watch and Iron Shoal, Belt and Overcut, the Tailings and the Scrape beside the Cinder) are siblings, and you fly across into the other, arriving on its near side with your speed kept. No fuel, no tunnel, no calm window. Warp while the tank is full; fly the seam when it is low.

Territory

Space is somebody’s. A Compact’s colours read at a glance; taking a home is not a button, it is a front six rungs long. What your side holds is exactly what your side can defend. Dominion, siege and the Tithe.