Navigation and exploration
Surface systems span 192,000 × 108,000 Rz and wrap. Geography is regenerated from fixed seeds; live NPC traffic and encounters restart with the realm. Your Pilot Chart remembers explored coordinates in each system.
Factory sensors reach 12,000 Rz from your ship. Fitted sensors can change that range. Charted terrain remains known, but live ships, projectiles and loot require sensor coverage. Coordinate Phase Jumps reveal only the arrival area. Select a destination at least 5,000 Rz away; jumping requires 75% of maximum capacitor and consumes that charge after at least ten seconds of calibration and completion of fitted thruster alignment. Navigation changes cancel calibration without charge. Hover the Phase Jump button for its current unavailable reason. The public roster is a deliberate exception for pilot presence, not remote positions.
N or the strip below Sensors opens the Navigation System beside Sensors. Click or drag the heading dial and vertical throttle, or open the map and Astronav. Emergency Overdrive remains an equipment action. 000° points to the map’s top; bearings increase clockwise.
Frequency Layers, Sector Class and Squadrons
The Nexus sits at the center of every system map. An exact Frequency identifies a physical Layer: Anchor 1.1840 THz, Vigil 2.9625 THz, Ember 3.8470 THz, Drift 4.1135 THz, Chorus 5.2840 THz and Null Reach 8.9065 THz. Null Reach travel is closed pending future discovery.
Anchor, Vigil and Qirk’s Graveyard are SECURE: no main-Layer PvP, with the arena’s separate rules retained. Ember is CONTESTED; Drift and Chorus are FRINGE; Null Reach is HOSTILE. These other classes permit PvP subject to Squad and ordinary safety protection. Faction NPC combat is available in every Layer. A first-attack warning offers Attack or Cancel; an actual shot, even a miss, raises the current-Layer hostility alert. No repeat warning while already alerted. Docking fully clears it.
Squadron membership is a separate four-digit pilot setting. Change it only while fully docked at the Nexus. Matching nonzero Squads retain friendly-fire protection; 0000 means solo. Membership persists across ships. Squad chat reaches members anywhere; local chat stays in the current Layer or exact instance.
Astronav starts fully docked, undocks you and holds All Stop through calibration. Adjacent major bands take 20 s per hop; dock again for each next hop. Known Layers within the same band use a short transition. Arrival is undocked, stationary and at the same coordinates and heading. Cancel restores navigation in the original Layer. Frequency identifies the Layer; Squad identifies your pilot’s group. Combat rules · Travel and Squadrons.
Cargo and item actions
Ordinary carried equipment can now be sold to NPC shops for Burst at a faction Forge or Trading Post. The quote depends on size and quality: small ordinary gear usually yields 20–30 Burst. Confirm the displayed offer to remove one item and deposit the payment. At a Trading Post use My Cargo; at a Forge select the carried item in Cargo. Material recycling remains a separately labeled action.
NPC shops refuse all blueprints and Frequency tunings, ammunition, bound gear and deterministic factory-spec fittings. Data items remain useful for learning or player listings; jettison unwanted copies instead of selling them for nothing.
Cargo and Vault show 20 items per page. Select an item for its full information and available actions. At the Nexus, move equipment and resources between Cargo and Vault. At a faction Forge, fit carried compatible gear or use local stock. In flight, select a quantity and Jettison unwanted cargo into a public loot container beside your ship. Rapid drops within eight seconds and 300 Rz reuse the same intact box until someone plunders it. Jettison is unavailable during Training and Escort.
Hover a primary Ship System for its item information beside a separate calculation of the ship totals. Click through for contributors and controls. The Cargo hover breaks down fitted systems, stored cargo, reservations and free CU.
Mining, trade and contracts
Target an asteroid and press A for all fitted mining lasers, or use its mining controls for one available laser. The ship turns toward the rock; a newer navigation order takes priority. Green extraction beams flow from rock to ship, and confirmed cargo gains appear as small green popups.
Each laser completes a 20-second cycle at 2 MJ/s. Its Extraction Power becomes work against ore resistance: Alloy 4, Iridium 7, Plutonium 24 and Depleted Uranium 12 work per unit. Unfinished work carries between cycles while the laser stays assigned. The starter laser has 16 power, so valuable ores yield fewer units instead of granting the same quantity at a much higher price. Range, obstruction, empty energy, cargo capacity or depletion stop extraction. Multiple lasers share the rock’s finite reserve. Trade resources or listed equipment at a Trading Outpost; Resource Depots offer one claimed hauling job at a time with a 30- or 60-minute real-time deadline.
Mining Depots also offer Squad or solo Escort contracts. Matching nonzero Squads share admission; solo pilots get separate lobbies. No joins after launch. Temporary ships, mission rewards and the return to your entry depot are separate from your main ship’s fittings. Easy supplies the starter Viper without its Mining Laser. Asteroids are collidable scenery, not mining targets. The convoy follows a varied route without waiting for you; focus attackers waiting ahead and watch for a rear attack. The freighter panel above System Feed shows shields, hull and acquired enemy locks. Its Upgrade button offers one choice whenever you want, without pausing the mission. Surviving teams recover downed teammates as the convoy passes the midpoint. Clearing attackers lets the convoy make slightly better time. Enemies use fitted weapons, ammunition, capacitor, locks and the shared movement rules. Medium and Hard increase pressure and pay more.
Combat and Frequency Rifts
Pulse Cannons spend capacitor and fire visible shots that can bounce. Railguns spend capacitor plus one cargo round for a fast, non-bouncing slug, with a brief fading trail. Missiles use their own guidance and cadence. Each hardpoint explicitly shows the families it accepts.
Frequency Rifts are contained 96,000 × 54,000 Rz hostile facilities with multiple Depths. Their status button shows HOSTILE in red with no Frequency address, regardless of the parent Layer. Hover for the current Depth; click to open the Rift map. Each floor starts uncharted; your fitted sensors reveal terrain and live contacts just as they do in a system. Exploration of that floor lasts while its exact instance survives. Squads share a run; solo pilots get separate runs. Upgrade and prepare before entering: patrols and guard groups use fitted combat ships. Connected rooms and loops offer several routes, with a few tougher optional branches and relatively quiet arrival clearings. Double-click a portal to approach and enter; simply passing over it never transfers you. Defeating the deepest boss creates a clear exit near the kill. Unfinished runs remain in memory while the server runs; completed runs retire after everyone leaves. To abandon a run, open NAV and choose Escape Rift where Astronav normally appears. The 15-second countdown can be cancelled; you remain vulnerable until departure. A surviving ship and its cargo return to the parent system’s Nexus. Escaping grants no completion reward.
Shields recover continuously when enabled and powered. Their bubble is also your collision boundary. Dropping or depleting shields exposes the hull; rearming waits for room. Safe docking fields prevent combat. A target’s red focus marker is selection, not permission to bypass protection. A fitted Targeting Jammer is a manual countermeasure: spend 15% of maximum capacitor to break a rolled number of incoming locks and briefly prevent new targeting. It does not erase missiles already in flight.
Anchor raiders and risky prey
While pilots occupy Anchor, a pirate alert names a public waypoint at least every five minutes. Two Scrap Raiders patrol its outskirts for up to twelve minutes; several groups can overlap. They harass local traffic and installations, and local defenders can fight back.
Raiders are already hostile; no faction-attack confirmation is needed to fight them. Each defeated raider can leave 35–55 Burst plus a 35% chance of useful starter equipment. You must participate to earn drops from a fight finished by NPC defenders; expiry pays nothing. Recover the salvage before it disappears.
In Qirk’s Graveyard, dead hulls offer modest salvage with occasional equipment, Frequency tunings or matching ship blueprints. Destroyed hulls return periodically. Watch the scrap collectors: some attack approaching pilots, while others retaliate if attacked or if you disrupt the wreck they are actively shooting or take its salvage. There are no claim markers or Concord patrol responses here.
Qirk’s Casino
Qirk’s Casino is in the separate SECURE Anchor-faction Layer at 1.1869 THz. Buy its tuning for 1 Burst at Concord Forge Shop or Anchor’s main Trading Outpost Station Shop, learn it in Cargo, then select it in the Nexus’s top-level Astronav panel. The same-band trip skips the 20-second calibration but retains the complete signal-loss and signal-acquired animation. The Astronav dial selects major bands; Qirk remains an individual Layer in the middle list. Approach the Casino and press D to enter. Choose Tango Hold’em, Kilo Keno, Romeo Roulette or Sierra Derby; Comms remains available in each game.
Tango is ten-seat no-limit Hold’em with 10/20 Burst blinds and no rake. Buy in for 400–4,000 Burst (2,000 by default); NPCs yield seats between hands. You have 30 seconds to act, then check automatically if free or fold. Choose Fold, Call/Check or Raise before your turn to queue it; click again to cancel. A changed table bet, street or hand clears the choice instead of silently accepting a higher call. Cash-out and disconnection finish the current hand, including all-ins, before returning your remaining table stack.
Kilo draws 20 of 80 numbers for your own 3–10-pick ticket. Choose numbers yourself or use the 3–10 Quick Pick dropdown, choose a wager, then draw. The three arrow speeds draw normal balls every 0.5, 0.25 or 0.125 seconds. Hits pulse and pause longer, especially when they increase the return. Balls fall into a vertical chute with hits highlighted; the highlighted payout row stays tied to your last ticket until the next draw begins. Once accepted, your ticket is settled and its reveal plays locally; changing speed does not contact the server. Reconnecting restores the saved result. The selected Game King-style schedule returns about 91.6–92.7% over the long run, depending on picks.
Romeo uses the American 00 wheel. Choose chips and click a number, an outside bet or a border between adjacent numbers for a split. Zero splits have separate buttons. Maximum stakes are 1,000 Burst per inside position and 10,000 per outside position per round. Repeat restores your last settled layout; Undo and Clear work while betting is open. Recent results show resolved rounds, newest first.
Sierra Derby races eight named Frigates around an oval that expands during the race. Fresh fields feature clear favorites, longshots and more than10,000 possible names, with visible thrusters and a live running order. Choose a chip, then a ship to Win or a pair in the Top Two — Any Order matrix. Returns include the stake; shown multipliers are rounded for display. Betting is open for 80 seconds, closes for 10, and the race lasts about 90. The probability model targets 95% long-run return, with fractional Burst retained for future payouts. Limits are 1,000 Burst per selection and 10,000 per race. Undo, Repeat and Clear work while betting is open. Leaving refunds open bets; locked races finish and pay even if you disconnect.
Each wager and payout is saved with your Burst balance. The game menu preserves an active poker seat; Leave departs the Casino and requests cash-out after the hand. Forge services remain at Concord Forge in Anchor.
Pilot Knowledge and Burst Wallets
Press K to open Pilot Knowledge, or select its top-level Nexus tab immediately before Local Starter. Frequencies and Blueprints have separate pages. Frequency rows show exact THz, faction, major band, Sector Class and locked, learned and visited status; cycle the filters to narrow the list. The Burst Wallet tab provides jettison controls in flight. Pilots start headquartered at Anchor with its tuning learned. Vigil, Ember, Drift and Chorus remain listed in Astronav but each requires a rare tuning found on NPCs, raiders or Rift enemies, or bought from another pilot. Null Reach remains closed. Schematics and skill training are future additions.
Burst Wallet loot deposits directly into your pilot balance without using cargo space. In flight, Pilot Knowledge also lets you type an amount from 1–65,535 Burst and jettison a wallet into an ordinary loot container. Anyone able to loot that container may collect it.
Ships, Hangars and persistence
Your Pilot, Squad, Burst, Vault, unlocked Hangar capacity and ship records persist across Frequencies. The Nexus holds Hangar and Vault; faction Forges provide refits and paid construction for all ship classes. Compatible gear must be carried in Cargo. Any Forge can build a learned design; its own stock reflects its faction. Your Vault starts at 200 CU, with paid 200 CU expansions up to 1,000 CU. Blueprints and Frequency tunings are tradeable cargo until you choose LEARN ONE COPY in Cargo, anywhere. Up to 100 identical copies share a 1 CU stack. Learning consumes one copy, confirms the learned item and preserves your Cargo browsing view. The permanent discovery appears in Pilot Knowledge and unlocks eligible Astronav travel; duplicates can be stored, traded or jettisoned. One free ownership slot includes the active ship. Additional slots open sequentially, from 100 Burst for slot 2 to 50,000 for slot 16; only the next unlock is shown.
Current ship, cargo and condition save while you play. Logout takes 10 seconds, or completes immediately when safely docked. New combat interrupts a normal countdown; restarting while in combat lets you leave, with your ship remaining vulnerable while living opponents are attacking or pursuing. Docking, a harmonic field or defeating the last opponent ends combat. Docking also fully clears current-Layer faction hostility; reaching a harmonic field alone does not erase that memory. Brief loss of contact after an attack has a two-second bridge. The ten-second ordinary disconnect minimum and final save still apply. A disconnected ship keeps its existing orders. Rejoin returns control of that same ship. Transfer to Hangar requires full Nexus docking. Normal ship destruction loses the active hull; eligible cargo and fittings can become plunder. Burst, Vault and stored ships survive. At the Nexus, store your active ship before requesting a free local starter; owned spares may remain if there is an open berth. The starter physically launches from the local faction Forge. From Qirk’s Nexus, commissioning puts you at Concord Forge in Anchor, 1.1840 THz; activating an owned Hangar ship keeps you at Qirk’s local Nexus. Death returns you to ship selection without automatically activating a spare.
Surface ships return at their saved location. A surviving exact Frequency Rift instance resumes at the same spot; otherwise the ship returns to its parent system’s Nexus. Training and Escort protect the main ship. Layer loot, ongoing encounters and mission progress are server memory, not a permanent Layer save. This is a development alpha, so broader resets remain possible.
A readable cockpit
Right-click a sensor-visible target and choose Inspect for rough current/maximum HP and SP, estimated fitted DP/s, normal maximum cruise speed and largest shot. Inspect is passive: no lock, shots or faction hostility. Potential output does not guarantee applied damage; range, defense, capacitor and ammunition still matter.
Nearby contacts come from your sensors. Sensor families trade range, acquisition time and target-lock capacity. Existing legacy sensors retain two target slots and independent two-second acquisition. A rolled Targeting Oracle adds one to three slots (five maximum) and reduces lock time by 15–60%. Yellow cards count down until a cyan lock is ready; focus has its own highlight. The focused ship has a blue circular shield gauge and a separate hull bar in space. Other selected targets keep their defenses in the top cards. Selected cards show shield, hull and capacitor bars; a dashed bar means the value is unavailable. A can queue weapons or mining while a lock acquires; S cancels pending or active assignments. Waiting for lock spends no ammunition or operating capacitor. Click a numbered bullseye in Nearby to focus another queued target without losing its lock. Click the already-focused target’s bullseye to remove it; an empty badge adds a target, and removing an entry closes the numbering gap. Warm card backgrounds distinguish incoming tracking from armed weapons. The selected contact also has a cyan focus box on Sensors. Armed weapons wait for range; a confirmed kill moves them to a surviving queued target, preferring one ready and in range. An empty queue turns weapons off. Manual removal, sensor loss and jamming never trigger this handoff. Cards report assignments, while the nearby filter limits browsing by ship, object or ore category. Filter choices last until your next login.
The bottom instruments sit between your Pilot/Burst and Uplink/online readouts. Hover Uplink for ping and loss; brief fluctuations do not immediately change its color. Actual disconnections show a reconnect dialog. The top-left System Feed keeps 100 entries with a scrollbar, newest at the bottom. Anchor Security pirate reports include a clickable waypoint that starts a normal approach in the current system when flight is available. Collapsed Communications shows only its header; Enter reopens it. NAV retains the complete executing order and an All Stop button. Ship shows the server’s green safe, yellow in-flight or red combat state. Empty action-rack space accepts normal Layer navigation.
