Wiki / How it is played
Rank, experience and skills
A hundred ranks in ten bands; the work pays the experience; a rank moves no figure on your ship - it opens depth, skill grades and bench bands, and skills are bought with credits and materials.
Your rank runs from 1 to 100. It is cut out of work, and it buys nothing by itself: a rank moves no figure on your ship. Hull, shield, hold, thrust, turn and damage come from the hull, the fitting, the forge and your skills. What a rank does is open things: how deep into the map you may go, which skill grade you may take, and which of the bench’s risk bands you may work in.
Experience
Only the work pays it, and every source is flat - depth changes how much work there is, never what one piece of it is worth.
| Work | XP |
|---|---|
| Breaking a rock | 21, split between everyone who cut it by the share of damage each did |
| Killing a Fallow drone | 10, the same at every threat, to the pilot whose shot ended it |
| Killing another pilot | 30 |
| Collecting a writ | its own XP, on top: a cull 10 for every kill it asks, a recovery 20, an escort 30, a survey 21, an ore or haulage writ 21 for every 8 units |
Selling pays no experience, and nor does a convoy kill: that pays in cargo (convoys). Death costs none (death).
The ladder
Ten bands of ten ranks. Inside a band every rank asks the same XP; the step doubles at each band’s edge, and each band is written to take twice the hours of the one before - about three hours of work for the first, about three thousand for the whole climb.
| Ranks | XP a rank | Total at the band’s top |
|---|---|---|
| 1 – 10 | 508 | 4,572 at rank 10 |
| 10 – 20 | 1,200 | 16,572 |
| 20 – 30 | 2,880 | 45,372 |
| 30 – 40 | 6,412 | 109,492 |
| 40 – 50 | 12,824 | 237,732 |
| 50 – 60 | 25,647 | 494,202 |
| 60 – 70 | 51,294 | 1,007,142 |
| 70 – 80 | 102,588 | 2,033,022 |
| 80 – 90 | 205,176 | 4,084,782 |
| 90 – 100 | 410,353 | 8,188,312 at rank 100 |
What a rank opens
Three things, and only three.
Depth. A sector asks (threat − 1) × 5: threat 1 is open to anyone, threat 6 - the hardest ground inside a Compact - asks 25, threat 10 asks 45. A place with no patrol asks nothing. The gate refuses you at the door, and it is asked after the question of whose ground it is (the chart, zones).
| Threat | 1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 | 6 | 7 | 8 | 9 | 10 |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Rank | – | 5 | 10 | 15 | 20 | 25 | 30 | 35 | 40 | 45 |
Skill grades. Each grade of each line opens at its own rank (below).
Bench bands. Safe (+1 … +3) from rank 1, Slip (+4 … +6) from 10, Break (+7 … +9) from 24. A band gates the gamble, not the owning: you may hold any mark and work it inside the bands you have (the forge).
No rank gates an item or a hull. The last rung is Gunnery X at rank 80; above it the ladder says so - THE LADDER ENDS HERE.
Skills
Five lines. A grade is a small, permanent multiplier on you, not on the hull: change ships and it stays, lose one and it stays. Each grade adds the same amount - rank 3 of a 4% line is ×1.12 - and the lines are additive, not compounding.
| Line | Moves | Per grade | Grades | Opens at rank | Taught at |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Extraction | mining lasers’ cut | +5% | 8 | 2, 12, 26, 37, 45, 52, 59, 63 | Mining post |
| Stowage | the hold, bays included | +4% | 6 | 4, 14, 26, 35, 43, 50 | Mining post |
| Shield tuning | the shield, cells included | +6% | 8 | 9, 22, 33, 43, 51, 57, 62, 67 | Mining post |
| Gunnery | weapon damage | +5% | 10 | 12, 28, 40, 49, 56, 62, 67, 72, 76, 80 | Arms post |
| Handling | turn rate - nothing else sells it | +4% | 6 | 5, 22, 37, 47, 56, 62 | Mining post |
A grade is bought docked, on the station’s Skills tab (the ratings page). Only Mining and Arms posts teach - a Freeport’s as well as a Compact’s; the Citadel does not. Grades go one at a time, in order. The counter asks, in this order: the right counter, the rank, the fee, the bill. The fee goes first; nothing lands in the hold, and the figures change the moment the grade is taken.
The fee is the line’s first grade - Extraction and Stowage 6,000 cr, Shield tuning 7,500, Gunnery 12,000, Handling 5,000 - times 1.5 for every grade after it. Gunnery X is 461,320 cr.
The bill climbs the same bands the belt does. The three long lines (Extraction, Shield tuning, Gunnery) sit one step higher than the two short ones.
| Step | Bill |
|---|---|
| 1 | ferrite_dust 4, silica_gel 2 |
| 2 | ferrite_dust 8, silica_gel 4 |
| 3 | ferrite_dust 12, silica_gel 6 |
| 4 | tantalum 6, cryo_salt 4, servo_array 1 |
| 5 | iridium 4, void_glass 4, focusing_lens 1 |
| 6 and up | starmetal 2, null_shard 1, field_coil 2 |
| last grade of a long line | starmetal 1, null_shard 1, field_coil 2, belt_heart 1 |
Short lines: grade n is step n. Long lines: grade n is step n + 1. So Extraction I asks step 2; Stowage I asks step 1. The last grade of Extraction, Shield tuning and Gunnery costs a belt heart.
Where rank is shown
The plate on the HUD: a ring that fills toward the next rank, ten segments that count the bands you have finished, and RANK 3 · 120 XP TO RANK 4; at the top, RANK 100 · TOP OF THE LADDER. Docked, and for a moment after a rank lands, a line under it says what the next rank is for: NEXT AT L10 · … - a place, a grade and where it is taught, or a bench band. The HUD.
The rank itself is said once, on the system channel: Rank 5. A rank moves no figure on your ship; what it opens, you work for. The chip beside it names what opened, or says NOTHING OPENS AT THIS RANK.
The Docket, a station tab: your next step and the two after it, drawn from what you have and have not done yet - nothing to accept, nothing to claim. It heads each band with a chapter: I The First Hold, II The Work, III The Ground, IV The Warrant, V The Deep End, VI The Craft, VII The Steady Hand, VIII The Last Figure, IX The Unlit, X The Ladderhead. It also carries the ladder - what this rank opened and what the next one opens - and the warrant your hull line is working toward.
Old titles
There are no classes. Vanguard, Stalker, Corsair and Warden were retired, and with them every figure a class or a rank used to add. A pilot who flew one before keeps it as a title - Old Vanguard, Old Stalker, Old Corsair, Old Warden - told once at the first login after: it moves no figure and cannot be earned again. Hulls, grades, marks, shelf and cargo stayed where they were. A hold left over its new capacity keeps its cargo and takes nothing more until you sell below the line.