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, flight and the tray along the bottom. It stands down while you are docked and while you are in a warp tunnel - in the tunnel there is nothing to fly by. F1 shows the controls; M the chart.

Top left: the pilot card

Your rank in a ring that fills toward the next one, then the line the game says about you - VOIDBORN OF SEPULCHRE · SWORN TO THE KINDRED - in your Compact’s colour. Under it your name, a serial, RANK 3 · 120 TO RANK 4, and one line saying what the next rank is for: how deep the map opens, which skill grade, which bench band. Below that the zone line: CINDER BELT · IRON SHOAL T6 - the zone, and the patrol inside it with its threat.

Top centre: the errand

One place, in gold: a zone you marked on the chart (or from the death screen), otherwise the nearest station. Name, kind, distance, and a bar that fills over the last twenty kilometres of the approach.

Top right: contacts

CONTACTS · 7, with the hostile count beside it when there is one. One row per thing in range: stations by kind (TRADE, MINING, ARMS, YARD), pilots, HOSTILE, CONVOY, WARPING for a ship winding up a jump. Hostiles sort first. A ship’s row carries its range, your closing speed and a hull bar; LOCKED appears on the one you hold.

On the ship

Two arcs ring your own hull: the hull on the left - called HULL, THE BODY or ASSET depending on who raised you - and SHIELD on the right, each with a percentage. The hull turns red under a third.

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 hard lock closes, its name and range under it: red if it is hostile, gold otherwise. If somebody has you, a line says so: !! DEV 01 HAS YOU.

Bottom: flight, the tray, the readings

Left of centre, SPEED in m/s (gold while boosting), THRUST as a quarter fraction or FULL, and BOOST. The tray is six keys, 1–6: an icon and the key; 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.

The readings column: FIELD is the distance left to the edge of the zone, once you are within three kilometres of it; PLANE is your height above the zone’s own plane, signed; TANK is the warp tank in hops, with the drive’s level and reach beside it (3/6 · LV 2 · REACH 2 HOPS) - gold while a crossing is affordable, red when empty; and the hold, MANIFEST / THE HOLD / CONSIGNMENT by register, used over capacity, gold until it is full and red then.

Bottom left is the purse - ON ACCOUNT, OWED YOU or BALANCE - and the contact count. Bottom right the local sphere, LOCAL · 12 KM: a disc of dots, hostile red, the errand gold, everything else dim, lifted off the disc by height.

In the world

Every contact gets a diamond. A name and range label go on the errand, on hostiles and on the nearest two; the rest are unlabelled. Off screen, the diamond becomes an arrow at the edge. A ship carries a hull bar over its hull: green, amber under 60%, red under 30% - the same three steps your own hull uses.

Under the boresight one notice line: the zone’s arrival sentence as you enter (it fades), a counter’s answer in gold, the war’s line in red, 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 is the route’s next instruction.

The four colours

• Gold is money, the hold and the errand. Nothing else.
• Red is hostile, damage, a full hold, an empty tank, and a refusal.
• Green is a healthy quantity - your hull, a ship’s hull. Never a selection.
• Your Compact’s colour is identity: the kicker and a convoy’s road. It is never a warning.

Everything else is dim ink, so the four can be read without reading.