Wiki / How it is played
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.
Each Compact moves freight along fixed lanes between its stations, on a timetable. Nobody drives a convoy; it is where it should be whether or not anyone is watching. The label says whose road it is: the Registry numbers a sailing (Carriage 6-114), the Kindred names a run for a dead cutter (Maren's Bearing), the Concern tickets a lot (Lot AS-441).
Four hulls carry:
| Hull | What it is | Hull | Shield |
|---|---|---|---|
| Collier | Bulk, slow - the prize | 2,600 | 900 |
| Packet | Crews, post and the seals; the fastest thing on the roads | 900 | 600 |
| Tender | Station servicing, short legs; drawn as the Whale Tender workboat | 1,800 | 700 |
| Sounder | A survey probe, rarely worth it | 500 | 250 |
A starter cannon takes a Collier in about eight seconds of held trigger, a Sounder in under two. A convoy’s shield comes back too, slower than yours: 4% a second, eight seconds after the last hit. The shield gate holds for it as for you: no convoy dies to one round.
Where a convoy can be robbed
Only in a sector, and only another Compact’s road. In a belt or a home a convoy is scenery and cannot be shot, and inside a ladder door’s ceasefire ring nobody can touch it. Your shot passes straight through your own Compact’s freighters, and a pilot with no Compact yet may rob nobody. In a sector the first hit on a foreign run turns it into a live hull with a shield and a manifest - fixed by the run’s own seed before you fired, so there is nothing to fish for.
A hit run never returns to the schedule. Pinned to that zone, it either reaches the far side and arrives, or dies and spills 35% of its manifest as salvage for whoever scoops it, on the same ten-minute clock as a pilot’s wreck. A damaged arrival is still an arrival, and a run nobody finishes within five minutes counts as arrived. A convoy kill pays in cargo, not experience.
What a lost run costs
The destination counts runs delivered and lost; lose enough on a lane and its rare shelf empties - the Arms post drops to a quarter of its seals, never lower. A raided lane is read off an empty shelf, not a price tag. Every run that was fought over also moves the zone’s weekly score - siege and the Tithe.
Escorting
At either end of a lane, the Arms, Mining or Trade counter posts an escort writ: it binds you to the next sailing out of that station, which then flies the whole road as a live hull. Up to three escorts ride one sailing. Paid on arrival - 20% of the quoted manifest, plus up to 40% more for the damage it took, and 30 XP - and only if you flew within 5 km of it for at least half the run. If it dies, the bond is void.
Wanted
Robbing a Compact’s roads runs up a debt with it: a point for every 8.75 credits of manifest you destroyed - about seventy for a nursery lane, over fourteen hundred for a frontier one. At 1,000 points you are Wanted there, and the Compact’s pilots hear your name on its Relay the moment you cross. Its Arms posts, Shipyards and Sentinels refuse you; its Trade ports and Mining posts still take your money, and its Citadel still lets you in to pay what you owe. Its pilots see the mark on your name.
It comes down three ways:
- Time. 15% of the debt lapses each ledger week.
- The bounty. A pilot sworn to that Compact kills you and is paid from its purse - 30% of the damage on record, or 15% of the purse, whichever is less, at most once a week for the same pair. Half your debt is forgiven either way, even when the purse is empty. The purse is fed by a quarter of every berth due at that Compact’s counters, and by every credit of restitution.
- Restitution at one of its Trade ports or its Citadel: 9 credits a point - a little more than you took - and only down to just under the threshold, never into good standing. You can pay part of it.
There is no permanent exile.