Wiki / How it is played
Hulls
No pilot classes; five platforms, thirteen hulls; four starting hulls chosen at the door, credit hulls at the Citadel, warranted hulls at a Compact Shipyard or The Last Yard.
No classes
There are no pilot classes. Vanguard, Stalker, Corsair and Warden are retired, and so is every multiplier they carried. What your ship does comes from four things: the hull’s own numbers, what is fitted to it (equipment), the marks on that gear (the forge) and the skills you have trained. The Compact you were raised in adds no stat (colonies).
A rank buys no stat. It opens depth, skill grades and forge bands, and moves no figure on the ship. The skills are the one thing about the pilot that does - Extraction, Stowage, Shield tuning, Gunnery and Handling, each a flat step per grade, bought with credits and materials (rank and skills). Stowage scales the whole hold, bays included; Shield tuning scales the base shield and every fitted cell.
Saves from before the change. A pilot who chose a class keeps it as a title - Old Vanguard, Old Stalker, Old Corsair, Old Warden - told to them once on the system channel. The title moves no figure and nobody can earn it now. Hulls, grades, marks, shelf and cargo stay where they were. A hold that was bigger because of the class may now be over capacity: nothing in it is lost, and it takes no new cargo until you sell below the line.
Platforms
Every hull flies on one of five platforms, and the platform is read off the drawing’s own width - nobody types it. The platform is where the numbers live:
| Platform | Hold m³ | Hull points | Gun mounts, at most | Top speed vs fighter | To 95% of top speed | Warp tank (lanes) |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Fighter | 60 | 450 | 2 | 100% | 5.0 s | 5 |
| Corvette | 120 | 700 | 3 | ≈95% | 5.4 s | 4 |
| Frigate | 300 | 1,000 | 4 | 80% | 6.0 s | 4 |
| Hauler | 900 | 2,600 | 3 | 60% | 7.5 s | 3 |
| Capital | 2,200 | 6,500 | 4 | ≈53% | 9.1 s | 2 |
No step up is better at everything: hold and hull points climb, speed and tank fall. A jump spends one lane from the warp tank per lane it crosses; a warp inside a star system spends none, and the tank is refilled free at every quay (the chart). Two hulls carry two more lanes than their platform, because their job is being somewhere else: the ESC-3 holds 7 and the PRX Probe 6.
How many guns a hull opens is its line’s. A war hull opens three gun mounts, and Siege as a fourth only where its platform has four. A starting hull opens what its platform carries. Every other hull - scout, industry, trade - opens two. Guns open from the top of the list: two means Rapid and Close, three adds Precision, and only the HAUL-35 and the Whale-23 Line have a Siege mount. The mining, breaker, hold and systems mounts are open on every hull.
The shelf
Every pilot may buy every hull; there is no level gate. The gate is the price, and on the four heaviest a warrant - a counter the game already keeps. Banked is cubic metres of ore sold across any counter, cumulative; deep kills are hostiles destroyed in sectors of threat 3 or higher. You own at most one of each hull.
| Hull | Job | Line | Platform | Price (cr) | Hold × | Thrust × | Hull × | Hold m³ | Hull pts | Guns | Warrant |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| ESC-3 | courier | scout | Fighter | 8,000 | 1.00 | 1.00 | 1.00 | 60 | 450 | 2 | - |
| Ageia G57-X | skirmisher | starter | Fighter | 12,000 | 1.00 | 1.00 | 1.00 | 60 | 450 | 2 | - |
| Strider Ox-24 | interceptor | starter | Fighter | 12,000 | 0.90 | 1.10 | 1.00 | 54 | 450 | 2 | - |
| Hyper Falcon-25 | escort | starter | Fighter | 12,000 | 0.90 | 1.00 | 1.10 | 54 | 495 | 2 | - |
| Excalibur X | runner | starter | Fighter | 12,000 | 1.10 | 0.90 | 1.00 | 66 | 450 | 2 | - |
| Excalibur XIII | gunship | war | Corvette | 24,000 | 1.00 | 1.10 | 1.00 | 120 | 700 | 3 | - |
| Whale Tender | tender | industry | Frigate | 38,000 | 1.25 | 0.90 | 1.10 | 375 | 1,100 | 2 | - |
| PRX Probe | prospector | industry | Frigate | 45,000 | 1.00 | 1.00 | 1.00 | 300 | 1,000 | 2 | - |
| HAUL-35 | sapper | war | Frigate | 140,000 | 1.00 | 1.00 | 1.00 | 300 | 1,000 | 4 | - |
| C8X | freighter | trade | Hauler | 320,000 | 1.15 | 1.00 | 0.95 | 1,035 | 2,470 | 2 | 25,000 m³ banked |
| HA-4 | transport | war | Hauler | 320,000 | 0.85 | 1.10 | 1.10 | 765 | 2,860 | 3 | 150 deep kills |
| Whale-24 Carrier | carrier | trade | Capital | 480,000 | 1.00 | 1.00 | 1.00 | 2,200 | 6,500 | 2 | 15,000 m³ banked |
| Whale-23 Line | battleship | war | Capital | 900,000 | 0.85 | 0.95 | 1.30 | 1,870 | 8,450 | 4 | 500 deep kills |
Hold and hull points here are the hull’s own - before any Cargo Bay and before your skills.
Starting hulls. At the door you choose one of four fighters - Ageia G57-X, Strider Ox-24, Hyper Falcon-25, Excalibur X. All four cost the same and none is better: each trades 0.10 between two columns. Whichever you take comes with Pulse Cannon I, Mining Laser I and Cargo Bay I, all issued: lent, not owned, and no counter buys issued gear back. The choice is not final: at your Citadel the yard exchanges the hull you were given for another of the four for 4,800 credits, and any drive levels on it come off into your hold first.
Where hulls are sold.
- Your Citadel sells every hull without a warrant, and keeps your hangar.
- The Compact Shipyards - one in each Compact’s Tin Hollow, a threat-3 sector: Brandt Slipways (Concord), Maren’s Ring (Sepulchre), Aster Holdings (Ashaari) - sell the four warranted hulls and build drive levels to the top. They keep no hangar: you cannot swap or sell a hull there, and the ship you buy is the ship you fly home.
- The Last Yard, a Freeport shipyard in Salt Wake at threat 10, sells the warranted hulls to anybody and keeps a hangar.
The hangar. You may own at most five bought hulls besides the one you were given. Buying adds a hull and puts you in it; the hull for the trip is chosen where the hangar is - your Citadel or The Last Yard. A bought hull sells back at 60% of its price. The hull you were given sells for 20% (2,400), and buying it back costs 20,000. You cannot sell the hull you are sitting in, or your last hull.
Warp drive and engine
Each hull carries two levels, 1 to 5; level 1 comes with the hull. No roll, no failure. The credits are the same on every hull; the parts differ by drive. Your Citadel builds to level 2, the credits-only rung; levels 3 to 5 are built at a Shipyard - a Compact Shipyard or The Last Yard.
| Level | Credits | Warp drive parts | Engine parts | Warp: lanes one jump may cross | Engine: thrust and drag | Engine: turn |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | given | - | - | 1 | ×1.00 | ×1.00 |
| 2 | 6,000 | - | - | 2 | ×1.10 | ×1.04 |
| 3 | 7,500 | cryo_salt 1, focusing_lens 1 |
ferrite_dust 8, servo_array 3 |
3 | ×1.20 | ×1.08 |
| 4 | 11,000 | cryo_salt 1, field_coil 2 |
ferrite_dust 16, servo_array 4, field_coil 1 |
4 | ×1.30 | ×1.12 |
| 5 | 15,000 | void_glass 1, field_coil 3, singularity_core 1 |
iridium 1, field_coil 3, singularity_core 1 |
7 | ×1.40 | ×1.15 |
An engine level lifts thrust and drag together, so the ship answers the stick faster and its top speed does not move. A jump must fit the drive’s reach and the hull’s tank, so what a hull can really cross is the smaller of the two: a Capital tops out at drive level 2, a Hauler at 3, a Corvette or Frigate at 4, and only the ESC-3 uses all seven lanes of level 5. A level that would buy no reach on this hull is refused at the yard. A level can be unshipped into a 12 m³ part and carried to another hull; the Citadel ships and unships every level, whatever it builds.
Fitting
O opens the outfitting window; 1–6 select the firing mounts in flight. What goes in each mount, what it costs and where it is sold is on equipment; the second way to improve a piece is the forge.