Wiki / How it is played
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.
A piece of equipment can be tempered from +0 to +9, and is written that way: Mining Laser II +7. The ladder belongs to one copy for its whole life; a grade is a separate item, bought or found at +0, never made from the grade below (equipment). The attempt is made at a station’s bench: Up/Down choose the copy, S chooses whether to spend a seal, Enter makes it. Guns are worked at an Arms post; tools, cargo bays and shield cells at a Mining post; both run the whole ladder. Your Citadel’s bench works all four kinds but stops at +3. A Sentinel has no bench. A fitted copy can be worked without unfitting it.
Three bands
| Band | Marks | Opens at | On failure |
|---|---|---|---|
| Stamp | +1 … +3 | rank 1 | the bill burns; the mark stays |
| Draw | +4 … +6 | rank 10 | the bill burns; the mark drops one, never below +3 |
| Quench | +7 … +9 | rank 24 | run open: the copy is destroyed. Sealed: the mark drops two, never below +6 |
A band is a ratchet: once a copy has entered one, no failure takes it back out. Your rank’s notices call the three bands Safe, Slip and Break (rank).
The ladder
The chance is printed on the ticket before you press anything, and it is a number the server sent; after the attempt the ticket shows the roll against it. The Stamp band costs credits only; from +4 every attempt takes one element a miner produced and one component that came off a wreck or down a road.
| Mark | Band | Chance | Credits | Element (type A / type B) | Component | Bonus at this mark |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| +1 | Stamp | 92% | 400 | - | - | +0.8% |
| +2 | Stamp | 82% | 600 | - | - | +1.8% |
| +3 | Stamp | 72% | 800 | - | - | +3.0% |
| +4 | Draw | 62% | 1,200 | tantalum 2 / cryo_salt 1 |
focusing_lens 1 |
+4.7% |
| +5 | Draw | 54% | 2,000 | tantalum 3 / cryo_salt 2 |
focusing_lens 1 |
+6.7% |
| +6 | Draw | 46% | 3,200 | tantalum 4 / cryo_salt 3 |
field_coil 1 |
+9.0% |
| +7 | Quench | 40% | 1,500 | tantalum 2 / cryo_salt 1 |
field_coil 1 |
+11.6% |
| +8 | Quench | 34% | 4,000 | tantalum 3 / cryo_salt 2 |
field_coil 1 |
+14.6% |
| +9 | Quench | 28% | 8,000 | iridium 1 / void_glass 1 |
field_coil 2 |
+18.0% |
Which element a copy asks for is its type’s, so the bill says what the gun is:
| Type | Element +4 … +8 | Element at +9 |
|---|---|---|
| A - Rapid, Breaker and Siege guns | tantalum (iron and platinum rock) |
iridium |
| B - Close and Precision guns, Mining tools, Cargo Bay | cryo_salt (ice rock only) |
void_glass |
| Shield Cell | cryo_salt, type B counts |
iridium |
A Siege gun asks twice the element and the same credits. The bonus moves the one number the item is bought for - damage on a gun or tool, space on a bay, shield on a cell - and is capped so that a +9 never outruns three quarters of the step to the next grade. Nothing in the game requires a mark above +3. A counter buys a marked copy back as if it were +0.
The seal
A sealed attempt that fails does not destroy the copy; the mark drops by two. A seal does not change the odds, and it is spent whether the attempt takes or not. It is offered at +7 and above only - below that a failure costs materials, and a seal would be a worse deal than running open. An Arms post sells assay_seal at 4,000 credits; its line is fed by the convoy roads, so a raided lane shows it short and an Arms post no lane ends at has none to sell. Convoy holds on the deep lanes carry them too (convoys); no wreck ever drops one, and no rock gives one up.
Issued gear - the laser, cannon and bay every pilot starts with - may be stamped and drawn to +6 and is refused at +7: it is not yours to lose.
The die
Every roll is made on the server, keyed on a secret the player has never seen; nothing from the client is in the input. The same attempt always yields the same number - pulling the cable, crashing the server, re-sending the request changes nothing, and an attempt whose answer was lost is answered again without a second roll. An attempt that cannot be written down did not happen: nothing is spent. Every copy carries its own record - attempts and takes - and the pilot carries lifetime attempts, takes and breaks.
The Naming
At +9, and only there, the specialist’s bench offers one more operation - not the Citadel’s. It takes one belt_heart, the rarest thing a rock gives up (elements), and a name of up to 24 characters: plain letters, digits and punctuation, no +, and not a name the game already uses for an item or a trait. It cannot fail, cannot be undone, and is refused on issued gear.
The named copy then stands for a second hand. Another pilot - a different account, docked at the same counter, with ore banked behind them - offers a hand, and you accept it. That seals the copy with both names, and the hand draws one of twelve traits: the four of the witness’s Compact, all twelve for a witness who has none. The draw is keyed the same way as the bench’s die, so the same two hands on the same copy always draw the same trait. A trait is a word on the item today; it moves no number.
Paid for in credits
Everything on the bench - the credits, the materials and the seal - is bought with credits or earned in play. Nothing on it has a real-money price in this build.