Combat

Every hit is resolved on the server. The client predicts and is corrected; it has no say over damage, loot or position. A shot is traced against the target’s own hull where you saw it - the server winds the target back by your connection’s delay plus one frame, never more than 0.3 seconds - so you aim at the ship on your screen, not ahead of it. Whether the target is docked, gone or under a ceasefire is still judged by where it is now. A round of yours that lands lights the hit mark on your reticle.

The lock

T picks the nearest thing ahead of you and asks for a lock; the server grants it or says why not, in words on the screen:

A lock never turns your ship. It is a mark, not a turret: you aim by hand, locked or not. Right click / X releases. The moment your target’s shield falls its name on your bracket and marker reads SHIELD DOWN. When someone holds you, the HUD names them: !! <name> HAS YOU, or !! <n> SHIPS HAVE YOU.

Shield and hull

The shield takes the hit first and comes back on its own: 260 a second, starting five seconds after the last hit. Breaking off for a few seconds is a real move. You hear the shield break, an alarm runs and a red edge holds on the screen while the hull is open, and a tone says when the shield is back online.

• The shield gate. A round that meets a standing shield stops there - the shield can go to zero, nothing carries through to the hull on that round. A ship with its shield up never dies to one round, whatever gun it met.
• The hull phase. Once the shield is down, a gun’s round meets 675 points of armour: it reaches the hull at hull ÷ (hull + 675) of its damage - 40% on the weakest issued hull (450), more on a bigger one, up to about 93% on a Whale-23 Line. Every hull takes guns as if it had 675 more points, so an upgrade never thins it. That is the time you have to turn and leave. Drones, pilots and convoys are met this way; a Citadel battery’s or a Sentinel’s rounds land in full, because there is no breaking off from them.
• The hull comes back only at a station, 600 a second while docked, never in open space. Ramming a rock costs hull too, as the square of your speed, and a collision lands in full.

Weapons

The trigger is Left click / F; 1–6 choose the mount. Mining Laser I is a tool: it cuts rock and drones and never hurts a pilot’s ship. The guns, tier I:

Damage comes in rounds, on the server’s clock. Each round is the gun’s DPS divided by its rate; holding the trigger gives the full DPS, and tapping faster than the rate buys nothing. The ship has one clock, not one per mount, so swapping guns every tick fires no faster than the best of them.

No level gates a weapon. What gates it is the price, the hull and the item’s own + ladder at the forge. The four gun mounts are Rapid, Close, Precision and Siege, and each takes a different kind of gun. Most hulls open the first two; a war-line hull opens Precision too; Siege opens only on the HAUL-35 and the Whale-23 Line. An issued starter hull opens what its frame carries.

Where the fighting is

• Sectors, always. The threat band is on the chart; entering threat t needs level (t−1)×5.
• A Compact’s belt only while the front has reached it; the Cinder Belt and every Shallows, never. A home only while its siege window is open and it has not fallen.
• A ceasefire ring stands around each Freeport at the common ladder’s doors, as wide as that station’s own no-fire envelope (727–974 m): no blow lands inside it, and no shot can be fired from inside it either. Every belt station and ladder door holds your trigger inside its envelope; the HUD says weapons held - <station> envelope.
• Nothing docked can shoot or be shot.

Drones

A patrol is something you can watch. A drone attacks only when shot or crowded - about 300 m, from half that to twice that depending on its family - and one shot wakes the neighbours that can hear it. It fires from 1.2 km against your cannon’s 1.8.

Its rounds are real: each one is a ray at your hull, scattered around the aim point and aimed a little behind you. Against a ship that holds still about two rounds in three land, 70 damage a second. Flying straight away from it is standing still to it; breaking sideways fast is how you get out.

A threat-1 drone dies in about six seconds under a starter cannon. Its wreck spills eight units of silicon (double in a sector in bloom); the sector usually replaces it 45 seconds later. A kill pays 10 XP at every depth (levels): depth is where the work is, not the work.

Pilots, and the ledger

Killing another pilot pays 30 XP, spills their hold, counts for the war, and pays a bounty from the injured Compact’s purse if they were Wanted there. Wanted is earned by robbing another Compact’s convoys: past 1,000 points of debt that Compact’s Arms posts, Shipyards and Sentinels turn you away, and its pilots see the mark on your name. Three ways down: restitution at one of its Trade ports or its Citadel, the weeks (15% of the debt lapses each ledger week), or being killed by one of its pilots, which halves it.

When it ends

A fight that ran 15 seconds, or took a tenth of your hull, ends in one line: Engagement closed · dealt · took (shield, hull) · seconds, and a finding - Most of your fire never reached. Close the range., Three or more were on you., You took far more than you gave., That was close. or Clean - the shield held the whole way. If it ended with your hull, see Death.

Logging off under fire does not save you. Leave within eight seconds of being shot and your ship stays in space for 30 seconds, undefended, where anyone may go on shooting it. More hits do not extend it. If it survives, it leaves; if not, it is an ordinary death.