Wiki / How it is played
Mining and selling
Ore is the only wealth; the hold is the only storage for it; the price scissors tells you where to fly.
Ore is the only wealth in the game - because the world that made everything else is the ore. The economy is one chain: ore → credits → equipment → deeper sectors → rarer elements → tempered tiers → siege cannon → territory. No item appears from nowhere; somebody cut all of it.
Where the rock is
Home has none. Rock is in the belt zones: your Compact’s Shallows (the nursery), the Compact’s own Belt, the Cinder Belt and the Tailings in the middle, which are nobody’s, and the Overburden at the bottom of the map. Only one belt ever allows PvP - a Compact’s own Belt, and only while a foreign front has reached it (combat). A deeper belt scales the size of its rocks, never the price of the ore: ×1.00 in the Shallows, ×1.10 in a Compact Belt, ×1.20 in the Cinder, ×1.45 in the Overburden.
The rock
Four ores:
| Ore | cr / unit | m³ / unit | Hardness | Share of rocks |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Iron | 4 | 1.0 | 1.00 | 46% |
| Silicon | 7 | 0.8 | 0.80 | 28% |
| Ice | 3 | 1.4 | 0.55 | 21% |
| Platinum | 46 | 0.5 | 2.40 | 5% |
Platinum is a find, not a resource: slow to break, small, and worth the trip.
The shares are a plain week. Most weeks some of the belts outside the Shallows run a seam: one ore - iron, silicon or ice, never platinum - is far more common there, and what the belt is worth per m³ does not change. No belt runs one two weeks running, and a Compact’s own Belt never seams ice. The week turns on Thursday, and a belt whose seam changed is re-dealt on the spot.
A broken rock grows back within 90 seconds, within 300 m of where it was, as the same ore and the same size until the week turns.
Cutting
Close and hold Left click / F. Mining Laser I cuts at 150 a second from 400 m and keeps everything; the ladder runs to VI, each tier faster and a little further. The Fracture Bore is the other tool: a fraction of the reach, enormous hits, and it wastes a fifth of what it breaks. A gun shatters rock too, and keeps a third of it or less.
Breaking a rock books a small assay duty - 7% of the rock’s declared yield - against the pilot who fired. It is taken at your next sale and never waived.
The scoop
The rock does not go into your hold; it comes apart into chunks, at most six per pilot who cut it, and you fly into them. The magnet reaches 1.2 km and the piece is taken once it is inside the ship. For fifteen seconds the chunks are yours - nobody else’s magnet takes them - then the first ship there has them. Litter nobody collects is gone in 75 seconds. A full hold leaves the rest floating rather than destroying it, and the meter goes red.
The hold
I opens it. The hold is the only storage for ore and materials: no warehouse, no vault; the depot shelf takes equipment only. A starting hull carries 54-66 m³ of its own; the issued Cargo Bay I adds 90; Cargo Bay II adds 160 for 1,800 credits, and the family runs to VI. K jettisons a stack into space - you are refused it for 25 seconds, so you cannot pull it straight back; anyone else can. If you die, the whole hold spills where you died: Death.
Selling, and the scissors
Docked, G sells the ore in your hold. The kind of station sets the price, and the rates are the same in every zone:
| Where | Pays for ore | Sells |
|---|---|---|
| Trade port | ×1.50 - the best | nothing |
| Mining post | ×1.10; ×1.80 for its called ore | lasers, bores, bays |
| Citadel | ×1.10 | grade I tools, guns, bays and cells; hulls |
| Arms post, Shipyard | ×0.85, the floor | guns and shields; hulls |
| Sentinel | nothing | nothing |
The Trade port pays the most because it sells you nothing: worth the trip with a full hold, worth nothing with an empty one. Elements are sold a stack at a time at the same rate; components are never bought at any counter.
From level 10 two more charges start: leaving a berth costs a flat 20 credits whatever the station, and an hour in flight costs an overhaul of 0.35% of what your hull and its fit list at. Neither clock runs before level 10, so nothing is waiting for you when it starts.
A Mining post’s rolls post sale writs for the ores its belt yields (a Shallows post asks no platinum) and, at a Compact’s post, a haulage writ to its home Trade port. On a seam week a Mining post calls the seam’s ore and pays ×1.80 for it: the chart’s THIS WEEK line and the Circular name the post and the ore. A sorted hold of the called ore beats the Trade port; a mixed one does not. Stations.
Elements
Nine elements come out of rock - each only out of some ores, the rare ones rarely - and five components never do. cryo_salt, for instance, is ice-rock only; starmetal and null_shard never come out of ice. A bigger rock drops something more often, and the deeper belts have the bigger rocks. A belt heart is a piece of the old world’s core: no shelf sells one, no bench pours one, only rock gives one up. Elements.