Reading the HUD

The flight HUD is a fixed composition: who you are top left, the errand top centre, contacts top right, the ship’s own two readings on the ship, the meters, the tray and the readings along the bottom centre, money and the talk bottom left, the local sphere bottom right. In a warp tunnel it stands down except for your writ cards and the talk - in the tunnel there is nothing to fly by. At a berth the station screen takes over and only the talk stays. F1 shows the controls; M the chart.

Top left: the pilot card

Three lines: who, what rank, where. Your rank sits in a ring that fills toward the next one, with a second ring of ten segments around it for the bands you have finished, and the band’s numeral under the rank once there is one. Beside it your name and RANK 3 · 120 XP TO RANK 4. Under that the zone line: CINDER BELT · IRON SHOAL T6 - the zone, and the patrol inside it with its threat.

What the next rank opens is not on the card in flight. When a rank arrives the chip says what it opened, and a little later a strip under the card says what the next one is for, then goes. Ranks.

Top centre: the errand

One place. A station the Docket filed for you, else a place you set a course to on the chart, else the nearest station. The strip’s head says whose it is - FIRST RUN, WORK FOR YOUR GUNS, or your Compact’s own word (FILED, SWORN, BOOKED) - then the name, the kind and the distance, in km inside this orbit, AU across this star’s system and LY to another star. A place at another star reads VIA the jump point the way leaves by. Inside the orbit a green bar fills as you close from where the errand was filed.

Out in the world the course is a green square in the sky, standing on its true bearing - where that star or site really lies - with its name and range under it. Off screen it moves to a ring round the crosshair on the side to turn toward, clear of your own ship. Between two sites of one body the mark stays on the place itself. Your writs in hand are cards of their own: what each asks, a count and a bar, gold while it runs and green at COUNT MET · RETURN TO COLLECT.

Top right: contacts

CONTACTS · 7 counts everything in range, with 2 HOSTILE beside it - or 1 FIRING ON YOU, which outranks it. The rows are only what you act on, five at most: stations by kind (TRADE, MINING, ARMS, YARD, CITADEL, SENTINEL), and a ship only if it is hostile, firing on you, warping away (WARPING), locked, marked or your errand. Whatever is shooting you comes first. A row carries its range; a ship’s also its hull as a figure and a bar; tags say LOCKED, MARKED or THE ERRAND.

On the ship

Two arcs ring your own hull: the hull on the left - HULL, THE BODY or ASSET, in the words of the Compact you swore to - and SHIELD on the right, each with a percentage. The hull arc is green and turns red under a third; a blow that lands flashes it red.

The boresight sits where the guns actually point, not at the centre of the screen. A locked target gets a ring that fills as the lock closes, its name and range under it: red if it is hostile, gold otherwise. When its shield is gone the name reads NAME · SHIELD DOWN. If somebody has locked you, a line says so: !! DEV 01 HAS YOU, or !! 3 SHIPS HAVE YOU.

Bottom centre: flight, the tray, the readings

SPEED in m/s, gold while boosting. THRUST is a bar from a centre line with a word: AHEAD, ASTERN or IDLE. BOOST fills with how much of the boost band the press has bought, gold while the key is down.

The tray is six keys, 1–6: an icon and the key, gold when selected. An open mount with nothing in it says EMPTY; a key this hull has no mount for says NO MOUNT and stays where it is. The line under the tray reads the selected cell - MINING LASER I · 150 DPS · 400 M - or, for a moment, why a key you pressed was refused.

The readings:

• FIELD - within three kilometres of the zone’s wall, the distance left to it; past the wall it goes negative.
• The plane - your height against the field, the zone or the nearest station: ABOVE FIELD 0.8 km, BELOW STATION 0.3 km, or ON FIELD PLANE in green inside a hundred metres.
• WARP TANK - lanes left out of what the hull holds, 5 / 5 LANES, and under it DRIVE LV 1 · 1 LANE PER JUMP (HULL CAPS IT when the tank is what limits the jump). A segment a lane: gold while any are left, red when empty. An in-system warp spends none.
• HOLD - used over capacity, 42 /150 m³: green under half, gold from half, red from 85%.

Bottom left, bottom right

Bottom left is the purse - ON ACCOUNT, OWED YOU or BALANCE, by the Compact you swore to - with the contact count and the hostile count, and above it the talk: the log and the line Enter opens.

Bottom right is the local sphere, LOCAL · 12 KM: a disc of dots, hostile red, the errand gold, everything else dim, lifted off the disc by height. A green notch on the rim points toward a course too far away to be a dot. M CHART stands beside it; F1 CONTROLS stays until you have opened the controls once.

In the world

Every contact gets a diamond. A name and range label goes on the errand, hostiles, ships firing on you, your marks and the nearest two others; the rest are unlabelled, and when two labels meet the less urgent one gives way. Off screen, the diamond becomes an arrow at the edge. A mark is drawn larger, in white.

With nothing under the crosshair, T takes what you are aiming at in the sky: a star or a site, bracketed and tagged STAR or SITE, with ENTER set course · M chart under it. Where several stand on one line it reads STAR · 1/3 IN LINE · T NEXT ..., and T again takes the next.

A ship that has hit you gets red brackets round its hull and a label NAME · FIRING · 1.2 KM; off screen its arrow grows. A ship whose shield is down is labelled NAME · SHIELD DOWN · 1.2 KM. The brackets hold for about five seconds after the last blow and then fade. A ship carries a hull bar over its hull: green, gold under 60%, red under 30%.

Under the boresight, on a plate, one notice: a counter’s answer in gold, the zone’s arrival sentence as you enter (it fades), a siege’s line, or WEAPONS HELD - <STATION> ENVELOPE in red when a station’s no-fire envelope is holding your guns. The prompt reads <STATION> [R] DOCK when a berth is offered. The chip at the top is the route’s next instruction or the Docket’s NEXT · .... At a zone’s wall the chip’s place is taken by the threshold frame: where the wall leads, what crossing costs, and [J] JUMP or [J] WARP. If your course lies somewhere else, the errand strip then reads COURSE instead of offering a second warp - the one on screen is the frame’s. A warning from the Voidborn team is pinned in the talk until you type /ok - reports, warnings and appeals.

The colours

• Gold is money, the hold as it fills, the errand, what you have selected and a lock on anything not hostile.
• Red is hostile, a blow, a hull under a third, a hold nearly full, an empty tank and a refusal.
• Green is a healthy quantity - your hull, a ship’s hull, a hold with room - and your filed course.
• Your Compact’s colour is identity. It is never a warning.

Everything else is white or dim ink, so the colours can be read without reading.