Wiki / Interface

Interface

Every ship carries a second seat of control: the interface. Press Tab in flight and a full-screen panel opens over the frozen world with four panes: Map, Ship, Inventory and Jobs. Docked at a living station, a fifth pane, Station, sells ships, escorts and the station itself. Flight resumes the moment you close it.

Opening and closing

The map

The Map pane is a schematic 3D chart of local space: distance rings, a hub, and every contact as an icon - a chevron for a ship, a lump for an asteroid, a ringed disc for a planet, a diamond for an objective - tinted by what it is to you. Click one, or step through them with [ / ], and the contact panel beside the chart gives its code, name and kind, then its range and bearing. A ship, station, rock or planet that wears a gold objective chip is one gold objective contact that keeps its own icon and name; its note shows the chip's text, then each job you hold that sends you there, such as JOB-1 Bring 4 Iron ore: hand in. A scenario objective shows its chip's text alone. Under them, the panel names your live GOTO destination over a GOTO button. An unselected contact has a faint frame; the selected one has a bright frame and always shows its label. The footer under the chart holds the legend of the icons on the chart now and Reframe with the keys the pane answers to. The key hints follow your bindings.

In a generated world, the chart view draws your chart at sector scale: a grid of sectors on the focused Y layer. Z / X step up or down one layer and clear a selection; the grid and unvisited outlines follow the focus. Clicking a find focuses its layer. Reframe returns to your ship's layer. A sector you entered is a textured tile, one layer per cluster type it holds (an asteroid speckle, a rock scatter, a ringed planet, cracked derelict slivers) or a faint grid when it is empty; a sector you never entered is an outline. The stations and wrecks your sensors found stand on their tiles. A mark's label shows a code: STN-1 for a station, WRK-1 for a wreck, numbered in the order you found them. A dead station fades, a station that refuses you docking because it is Enemy or hostile to you wears a red ring whatever its ports hold, and a station with open jobs adds their count to its code, as STN-1 (3); a station with none stays STN-1. Click a sector's coordinate or any mark to select it; the view centres on its sector, keeping your zoom and angle, the selected sector gets an accent outline and the panel opens a SECTOR block: its coordinate and the route from your cell, its contents as icon rows, when you entered it, every find there with its state (living, dead, yours, refuses docking for the same hostility as the ring), the services, trade stock and stored items you saw at your last dock at each station there, and the jobs you hold that point there. A station you never docked at shows Not docked: no stock seen. A station you bought shows in the ally colour as OWNED STATION. Every job you hold is marked JOB-1, JOB-2 and so on, in accept order, in the sector of the body it sends you to (the wreck, the hauler, the caller or the hull), or of the posting station for a procurement; the mark stays there once the job is done, and a handed-in job has no mark; click one to read what it asks, its reward and where to hand it in. Click the selected label or row again to clear the selection and keep the view, or press Reframe to clear it and frame the whole grid. While nothing is selected, the panel shows the OBJECTIVES block: what you have to do now. Its heading carries the focused layer, as OBJECTIVES LAYER 6 (for example); hover it for the visited-cell count on that layer. It lists each job you hold as a row with its kind icon, its JOB-1 code, title, have / need (or done) and the code of the station it hands in at, then your start role's goal title over its next unmet milestone with have / need. EMPTY shows only when no held job, open milestone or reached goal remains. A met milestone leaves the list. Once you meet the last one, the block reads Goal reached at the play time it happened, which the save keeps. Reaching it ends nothing: the world plays on. The Jobs pane shows the same milestone over your held jobs. Click a job's row to select its JOB mark. Under it, the discovery log lists your last twelve finds newest first as icon rows: the find's icon, its code, its sector and how long ago it happened (just now, 4 min ago, 2 h ago). Click a row to select that find. Under the log, the STANCES block lists each civilization you have moved or whose station you charted: its name, a stance badge and an ADV 15% chip for its seeded advancement (hover for its meaning), then compact status labels: HOSTILE 0:12:40 while provoked, CLEAR 1:42:10 for an Enemy due to thaw, SEEDED for an Enemy from the start, FINE 1,090 cr @ STN-1 for the fine and a charted station that takes it, or FINE NONE when no charted station takes it, and OFFENCES 2/3 and MERITS 1/3 for the next stance step. Hover a label for its explanation. Select a station and the block lists each Enemy neighbour of it as a row: its name, ENEMY, its fine and Pay fine. The button works only while you are docked at that station with the fine in hand. While you are not, one line under the rows says DOCK STN-1 or STN-1 REFUSED; hover a row to read what paying does, the charted stations that take the fine instead (STN-1 refuses docking; pay at STN-2, STN-3), or how short your balance is. Paying moves the fine to that station and returns the civilization to Neutral. The result shows on the Map's notice line over the side panel for four seconds, green for a result and red for a refusal, with one sound: the interface click for a result, the deny buzz for a refusal. The button is silent on press. The legend is an icon row naming the four cluster types, the station, wreck and job marks, and you. The chart view's footer drops the Select and GOTO hints: a click picks a mark, and the chart has nowhere to fly to. A scene with no generated world has no chart.

The ship

The Ship pane is a schematic 3D viewer of your own hull: one block per section, a badge on each, and a section panel beside it. The footer under the view holds the section legend on the left, one line of the keys that apply now in the middle and, on the right, Catalogue at a refit dock, Fit and Reset. The section panel is where the selection is named. Sections carry short codes, stable for the whole session, and a family icon:

The footer legend shows all seven family icons: Weapon, Thruster, Controller, Hull, Docking, Mining and Cargo Intake. The Dock and Helm keys are in Settings > Controls > FLIGHT; their defaults are D and H. Each mining beam has its own key, which you rebind here like a weapon's. A thruster fires on the Main Drive until you give it its own key here.

Select a section by clicking its badge or with [ / ]. The panel shows its family icon, code and name, condition bar and, for a section with a key, its Control row, then the actions that apply: Rebind, and Delete under Salvage. A damaged section that repair can restore also shows the repair form below them; a section at full integrity, destroyed or with no integrity to restore shows no form.

Rebinding a section

Your weapon, thruster and mining beam sections answer rebindable keys, and the Ship pane is where you rebind them:

1. Select a thruster, turret, torpedo bay, railgun or mining beam and press B (or click Rebind). A gun, bay, railgun or beam with no key reads UNBOUND and Rebind gives it one. A thruster with no key of its own reads Main Drive: W / Space (your Main Drive keys) and fires with the Main Drive.
2. The Rebind button lights and a banner over the view reads Press a key or button to bind PDC-1 PDC Turret (Kinetic), Esc to cancel.
3. The next key, mouse button or controller button you press takes over that device's half of the section's trigger: Bound engine_port to K. The other half is left alone, so a key never costs you the pad and a pad button never costs you the key. With both set, the Control row shows both, for example J / Right Trigger 2.

A reserved flight control is refused on the spot - Space is already bound to flight control: Main Drive - and the capture stays armed for another try. LMB binds like any other button: the click that armed Rebind is not taken, and the next fresh click binds and reaches nothing under the pointer. Several sections may share one input (one key can fire every tube). Esc backs out with Rebind cancelled and leaves you on the pane.

A thruster with its own key or button fires on that only: the Main Drive no longer fires it, from the keyboard or the controller, until you put it back. To put it back, press B and then Backspace: engine_port fires on the Main Drive, which clears both halves. The Main Drive inputs stay reserved, the controller's Right Trigger included, so the thruster's own input is any other free one. Every other common controller button already flies the ship or opens the interface, so a thruster's controller button is Right Trigger 2, which it then shares with your guns. While a capture is armed, ; does not open the command shell, Tab is refused as the interface toggle and does not close the interface, and M binds like any other key instead of switching the pane. The key you bind does nothing else: binding T does not also reset the view.

Swapping a section

Docked at a living station that offers refit, the Ship pane footer shows a Catalogue button beside Fit and Reset. It opens the parts gallery over the pane, the same gallery the editor picks parts from: every part the game knows, priced from your hold and its stock. An All/Available pair beside the filter box narrows the grid to the parts you can place right now; switch back to All to see every part again. Switching tab or closing the interface closes the catalogue; it opens on All next time. A part this station does not build, or that neither hold has the parts for, is dimmed and its picture greyed; Place is off for it, and pointing at the tile or Place says why. The price is the part's build recipe, with parts taken from your hold first and the rest bought from the station. A part's card lists each recipe item as an icon with how many of it you already have over how many it needs, such as 1/2, red when you are short; point at the row to see where each one comes from, and when any were bought, the row's right side shows what they cost together. Items of a part the station does not build are dimmed, with no price and no hover. Select a section first, and the card of each part of the same kind and size gets a Swap button with the swap price, such as Swap PDC-2, 100 cr. Click it to fit the part. The new part stands where the old one stood, at full health, with the same code and key. The old part is gone; nothing is refunded. A swap that would split the ship, block a gun or drive, or leave it short of thrust or flight computers is refused on the note line, as is a part of another kind: swap: PDC-1 is a turret, Basic Thruster Section is a thruster. A rebuild of a lost part the station does not build is refused the same way, on the note line. In a saved Open World the new part stays across a Load.

Adding a section

Click a part in the catalogue, then Place on its card, to take that part in hand. Move the pointer over the ship: a ghost of the part snaps to the open point nearest the pointer on the section under it. Only a free point on the hull's surface, with room for the part, takes a ghost; a section inside the hull shows none. A green outline and its price beside the pointer mean it fits; a red outline and the reason mean it does not, such as a part that would block a gun or a drive. The section the ghost aims at turns solid, its badge hides, and the face the part mounts on is lit. Q over a section of your ship takes that section's part in hand instead, and Q over empty space puts the part away. Esc also puts it away and does nothing else: the interface stays open. While a part is in hand, the section panel shows it under Placing in place of the selection: its icon and name, its price, the parts from your hold and the parts bought, and the socket and roll. The footer shows Q/Esc Put away. When you put it away, the panel shows the selection again. With a part in hand R rolls it a quarter turn and F mates it by its next socket; the ghost, the fit and the price follow. The callout counts the parts your hold gives and the parts the click buys from the station at its ask. The docked station and the ships at its other docks show as dim outlines, and a part that would hit them is refused. Click to fit it. The new part spawns at full health under the next code of its kind, and the view eases onto it at the same zoom. A gun takes the key of your other guns of its kind, or none until you Rebind it; a drive is flown by the computer. The part stays in hand for the next one. With nothing in hand, a click on a section selects it. In a saved Open World the new part stays across a Load. The panel scrolls with the wheel while the pointer is over it.

Deleting a section

Docked at a living station that offers refit, select a section and press Delete (or click Delete) to take it off for good. Its parts go back in your hold as a strip of a wreck gives them: the recipe's strip share, less for a damaged section. Salvage lists them before you press it, over the Delete button, down a column of one tile per part such as +1 Frame spar and +3 Section panel, or nothing to salvage. After the delete the note line opens with deleted PDC-2 to the hold: and then lists the parts one per line, such as +1 Frame spar and +3 Section panel, or reads deleted PDC-2: nothing to salvage when it gave back none, and the plating closes over the hole. A rebuild does not list a deleted section, and in a saved Open World it stays gone across a Load. Delete is greyed, with the reason as its hover hint, when the delete would split the ship, take off your last working flight computer, take off the port the dock holds you by, leave the drives too weak or overfill the hold, or when the dock offers no refit. A delete that would split the ship paints the sections that would come off the dock red, fill and outline, while that section is selected. The Delete key then shows the same reason on the note line and changes nothing. A second flight computer is yours to take off: the ship flies on one. With a part in hand, Delete hides and the key does nothing; put the part away first.

The station

Docked at a living station, the Station pane shows what it sells: This station, Ships for sale and Escorts for hire, each offer with its price and a button. A button you cannot use is greyed: hover it to read why. Buy station asks twice: the first press puts Cancel where the button was, beside a red Confirm and over Buy <station> for <price>?. Cancel, Esc, any other button or a pane switch cancels. When your credits fall short, the card shows (missing <amount>) in red beside the price. Above the ships for sale, Your ships lists the ships you own parked at that station, each with Board; it shows only while you have a ship parked there. The station's job board is on the Jobs pane. A station that offers none of these and holds none of your ships says so. Each result or refusal shows on the notice line above the lists for four seconds, green for a result and red for a refusal, with one sound: the interface click for a result, the deny buzz for a refusal. The buttons themselves are silent. Refit (rebuild, swap and add) stays in the Ship pane, beside the ship it changes. The wreck strip is in the Inventory pane, over the wreck's column. Goods, ammo and hull plates are not sold here: trade them in the Inventory pane against a docked partner that trades (see Buy and sell). The Station and Jobs buttons have no key or gamepad button of their own, so click them.

Buying a ship

Every ship a station sells is parked at one of its docking ports, and one port is always left free for you. Docked at a living station in an Open World that offers refit, open the Station pane: Ships for sale lists each parked ship. Each card shows the ship itself, turning slowly, then its name, length and price over Buy. Click Buy to take it: you pay the full price and take the controls of the parked ship. Your old ship stays yours. It stays parked at its port with its hold, and its hold shows in the Inventory pane as storage while you are docked at that station. It lists under Your ships, above the ships for sale, and its card says your ship in place of a price, over Board: Board swaps you back into it for free, and the ship you leave parks in the same way. The new ship has full health and an empty hold, and its keys are the default ones for its weapons, the same as a new game's. A price your credits cannot cover is refused. In a saved Open World your new ship and the parked ships stay across a Load.

Info on any card, a ship for sale or an escort for hire, opens that ship in the Ship pane to look at before you pay: turn it with the right mouse button, zoom with the wheel, and click a section to see its name and condition. Nothing can be changed there: no catalogue, no delete, no rebind, no repair. Close takes you back to the Station pane, and the Ship tab shows your own ship again.

Hiring an escort

Under Ships for sale, the same station lists its Escorts for hire: armed hulls with a crew, waiting outside the station. You can see them coast beside it, ahead of it and behind it. Each card shows the escort turning slowly, then its name, length and price, half again what the hull would cost. Click Hire and the escort joins your side where it waited, then comes to you. It flies on your starboard side, the second on your port side; a third hire is refused. The list's header shows both fleet slots, STBD and PORT, each with the name of the escort that holds it or -- while it is free. An escort flies on its own drive: while you travel it takes its place 200 m off your side and 100 m behind, and matches your speed; while you stop or turn in place it holds where it is. It follows you across sectors and fights what attacks you. In a saved Open World your escorts stay across a Load. An escort that loses its last flight computer is out of your fleet and stays behind as a wreck.

Buying a station

Docked at a living station in an Open World, the Station pane shows This station: its name and its price, twice what its sections, its hold and its credits are worth at ask. Click Buy station to make it yours; the credits go to its civilization. The station leaves its civilization: it joins your side, so its guns fire on your foes, and it is named Owned station. An owned station wears OWNED: hover it for what owning changes. A station sold to allies only wears ALLIES ONLY, with Buy greyed. An owned station lets you dock whatever side you are flagged, and its hold sells to you at the price it would pay. It earns nothing yet. In a saved Open World it stays yours across a Load. A price your credits cannot cover is refused.

Jobs

Every living generated station posts a board of three jobs. The board is fixed by the world seed, the station and your start: a board slot's offer stands 20 minutes of play, or 60 minutes for an escort offer (the pause menu, the interface and a Load all stop that clock), then the slot posts a new offer. An offer does not change while it stands, and a Load shows the same offers. Two boards never offer the same wreck or hull at once. A job you hold never expires, and a job you hand in is replaced at once. Which kinds a board leans to follows your start role: a trader's boards post procurements and escorts, a scavenger's recoveries, a hunter's distress calls and bounties. A trader that docks for a visit may post up to three extra procurements below the board's three jobs. An extra you do not take goes when one of the station's offers runs out, or after 20 minutes of play; one you take stays until you hand it in or lose it.

The Jobs pane shows two lists and an inspector. Each list scrolls, a long title ends in ..., and in a narrow window a row moves its meter and buttons to a second line. Undocked, the board panel reads Dock at a station to see its job board., and an empty list says what to do next. Docked at a living station, Jobs posted here lists its board, less the jobs you hold, completed or lost and less any offer whose window has passed: each row is the kind's icon, the title, the reward in credits, a meter of the time left with its minutes beside it and Accept. At the issuing station, a row also carries a 100 cr Delete: it asks Delete offer? beside the title and the 100 cr fee, and confirming pays the station and posts a fresh offer in the slot at once in its place. A short balance or a posting that renewed since you opened the row refuses it and changes nothing. Your jobs lists every job you hold, from any station, docked or not: the icon, the title, a have / need meter (the units in your hold for a procurement or a recovery, done or not for the rest) and Hand in, plus an X to drop the job. X asks Drop job? beside the title and replaces the row's actions with Drop and Back; Back keeps the job. Drop is always free, at the job's posting station or away: it gives the job up and despawns any bodies it spawned, with no payout, and the posting station's slot waits out its normal offer window before it posts a fresh one there, same as any offer you never held that expired. Docked at the hand-in station the row reads HAND IN HERE; select the row to see where any other job hands in. Over the list, one row shows your start role's milestone: the goal's title, its next unmet line and a have / need meter; the first unmet line is always Stations owned until you own one. Once you meet the goal, the row reads Goal reached at the play time.

Every job asks something of your hull: a procurement needs hold room for the stack, a recovery or a distress call a docking section, an escort or a bounty a weapon. Your starting station's board lists only the jobs your current hull can do, so a fresh transport sees no escorts until it carries a gun, and when a slot there renews, the board keeps at least one job your hull can do open; every other board lists them all and greys Accept, with the reason under the pointer (accept: the hull has no weapon, accept: 6,000 kg does not fit the 4,000 kg hold). A recovery or a bounty whose target is already gone is greyed the same way. Hand in is greyed, with the reason, while you are not docked at the job's station, the job is not done, the hold is short or the station cannot pay (dock at <station> to hand in, the hold carries 2 of 4 Iron ore, not done yet).

Click a row and the inspector reads the job: what to do, its target and where that is, the hand-in station, the reward, the time left or your progress, and Show on Map, which opens the Map's chart view on the job's mark. A done job shows DONE beside its title. A hand-in takes a procurement's goods out of your hold, pays the reward from the station's balance (OnCreditsChanged with cause JobReward on both sides) and moves the job to completed. The notice line under the lists reports the result for four seconds, green for a result and red for a refusal, with one sound: accepted: Bring 4 Iron ore, or handed in Bring 4 Iron ore for 146 cr; balance 2,146 cr, with ; Vell now holds you ally added when the hand-in steps the station's civilization. Accept and Hand in make no sound of their own.

Held jobs stay on the pane undocked, and the Map's chart view marks each in the sector of its mark, the wreck, the hauler, the caller or the hull, or the posting station for a procurement; its note says what is left to do (see the map). In flight, the body a held job sends you to wears a gold objective chip with the job's code, what to do and the distance, such as JOB-1 Answer 4.2 km; off screen the chip pins to the edge and points at it. The moment a job's work is done, a HUD notice reads JOB-1 done: hand in at STN-1; the reward is paid at the hand-in. The chip moves to the station that pays it (JOB-1 Hand in), and jobs that hand in at one station share its chip (JOB-1, JOB-2 Hand in). A procurement has no chip. A body in a sector that is not streamed in has no chip; its chart mark shows where it is. A saved Open World keeps the jobs you hold, have done and have completed; a Load brings them back. A held job never expires. You lose a job if its hauler is disabled, neutralized or destroyed, if its wreck or caller is destroyed before the job is done, or if its station dies. A lost job is dropped for free: its slot waits out its normal offer window, same as an offer that expired unheld, before the station posts a fresh one, and a Load keeps the lost job off it.

Stripping a wreck

Docked with a derelict wreck or a neutralized ship, the Inventory pane shows a strip block over the wreck's column: a Strip button and four meters. Total shows the whole strip and its time, Step the section coming off now, Sections the sections taken of all, and Hold your hold's mass of its capacity, with the mass of the parts still to come. Under them, one tile per part shows what the strip has recovered so far of what it plans to give, such as 2/23 Section panel. The plan counts the sections still on the wreck at their current health, so it drops if they take damage. Strip first takes everything in the wreck's hold, everything you stored at a dead station, and all its credits into your ship, as Take all does (see The inventory). If your hold has no room for all of it, Strip is disabled and nothing moves; point at it for what has no room, such as no room for 6 Hull plate. Make room in your hold, then strip. The note line names what the strip took, such as took 6 Hull plate and 50 cr; stripping the wreck: 40 s. A strip takes the wreck apart one section at a time, the section farthest from your port first, and the port you are docked through last. Each section takes 1 s per part of its build recipe, at least 3 s, and runs only while the game runs: close the interface and fly on docked, and the HUD chip over your ship reads STRIP 40%. As each section comes off, its parts go into your hold: each part of its recipe times its strip yield times its health, rounded down. When the port comes off, the wreck is gone and your ship floats free, and the note line names the loot and the parts together, such as the wreck is stripped and gone: took 6 Hull plate and 50 cr, stripped 3 Section panel. Anything put into its hold during the strip comes off before the port, as much as fits, and the strip holds there until the rest fits. A hold without room holds the strip at that section until you make room: the HUD chip reads STRIP HELD: HOLD FULL, the Total meter reads Held and the Hold meter names what the section needs, such as needs 70 kg. Undock and the strip stops; what it took stays taken, when its sector streams away and back and across a Load. A strip is refused at a living station, while one is already running and at a hull that is not a wreck you may loot. At your own dead station, or while a ship you own is parked at a dead station, Strip is disabled: point at it for the reason, such as this is your station or 1 of your ships is parked here.

The inventory

The Inventory pane lists what your ship carries in the left column and, while you are docked, what the docked ship carries in the right column. Undocked, the right column is blank. A ship that carries nothing reads Inventory empty. A ship's hold takes 100 kg per hull section. Under your ship's name, Cargo shows your load against the hold, for example 3520 kg / 13100 kg. Your balance shows in the interface title row on every pane, beside the play clock, as the credit mark (a ring cut by a vertical bar) and the number, for example 2,000. The docked ship's column shows its Credits the same way, and so do row prices and job rewards. In the open world your ship starts with its start role's kit of credits and cargo; a hull with point-defense mounts carries 1,000 PDC rounds in its hold. A generated ship, intact or a derelict wreck, starts with its own role-specific goods and a credit balance too (see Generated ships): stop with one of your docking collars beside one of its docking ports to dock, then Take what a neutralized or derelict one carries, or Take credits for its whole balance in one click. Other ships start as their scenario authors them; an AI raider or a tutorial drone carries no reserve of its own, so its magazines do not refill once spent. A repair spends hull plates, and a weapon's idle reload spends matching ammunition. In a saved Open World, spent and moved items and credits persist for your ship and for every ship in the world: a Load brings them back from the last save, on the desktop build (see Saved worlds); within a session, a retired sector already keeps a generated ship's stock and credits as you left them. Any other scenario saves nothing: items and credits return to their starting values when it loads again. With cheats armed, item give adds items to a ship's hold, and credits give and credits set change its credits.

Click an item to inspect it, or step through the shown items with [ / ], your column first; a step opens the same form a click does. The inspector shows its category, what it is, how many the selected ship carries and the weight of one item. A PDC round weighs 0.2 kg. While a Take, Give, Buy, Sell or Jettison is open, Total weight shows the weight of the quantity you chose: 2 hull plates read 20 kg however many you carry. The description keeps four lines, so the rows under it stay in place as you change items. A longer one is cut off with an I Full text cue: point at it, or press I, to read all of it. I again, or another item, closes it. You can rebind I as Item Details in Settings > Controls > INVENTORY.

Take and give

Docked, a click on an item opens a transfer form in the inspector at a quantity of 1:

Set the quantity with the mouse wheel over the quantity row, the slider, the number field, or All for the whole stack. The slider hides when the stack holds one item. Confirm moves the items at once and the note line reads TOOK x3 Hull plate or GAVE x3 Hull plate. The partner is named in the column beside the form. A refused move changes nothing and keeps the form open so you can fix the quantity: Refused: enter a quantity, Refused: quantity is zero, Refused: only 2 Hull plate in <ship>, Refused: <ship> has room for 30 kg more, Refused: <ship> is not neutralized or lootable, or Refused: not docked. A move never splits to fit: with room for 30 kg, a move of 5 hull plates is refused whole. Take and Give have no price. Items you give a ship stay with it even if the open world streams it away, and a wreck you emptied stays empty when its sector streams back in.

The partner column's Credits row carries a Take all button while the partner is neutralized or lootable and holds a stack, a stored item or a credit. One click takes as much of every stack as your hold has room for, then as much of what you stored at a dead station, then the whole credit balance, and the note line names what was taken and what stayed, for example TOOK x2 Hull plate, +50 cr; no room for 6 Hull plate. With no room for any of it, it refuses with Refused: no room for 6 Hull plate and changes nothing.

The Credits row also carries a Take credits button, shown only while the partner is neutralized or lootable and holds a credit above zero. One click moves its whole balance into your ship and leaves the partner at zero, and the note line reads TOOK +500 cr. Repeating it against the now-empty balance refuses with Refused: <ship> holds no credits, an intact, non-neutralized partner refuses with Refused: <ship> is not neutralized or lootable, and a take that would overflow your own balance refuses with Refused: your ship cannot hold more credits - every refusal changes nothing. Take credits has no form and no quantity: it always moves the whole balance in one click.

Buy and sell

Every live ship trades: any docked ship that is neither neutralized nor lootable. It sells only what its hold carries and pays only from its own credits. A generated trader restocks toward the goods it spawned with by the play time its sector stood unloaded; an authored scenario's ship never restocks. A generated wreck is lootable, not a trader.

The table lists each item's reference price. Every item prices by one except the PDC round, which prices by its lot of 100: a trade of any other count pays its share, rounded up for a Buy and down for a Sell.

A living generated station or ship computes its own prices from the reference when you trade: its stock against the stock it started with (scarce goods cost and pay more, a glut less), the type of the cluster it stands in (ore is cheap where asteroids are many and dear among planets), and what its civilization's ships do. While the partner trades, each row shows the Price of one item, what the partner pays for yours and asks for its own, with a Deal badge of the percent off the reference: green when it favours you (a bid over the reference, an ask under it), amber when not. The PDC round's row shows the price of its lot of 100, as 10 cr / 100. Select an item and the inspector shows the Reference, Pays and Asks with the same percent, each as 4 cr / 3 cr for a lot of one or 10 cr / 100 | 7 cr / 100 for the PDC round's lot of 100, and the Scarcity, Cluster and Civilization factors that made it, with their Total, marked clamped when the price hit its limit. Under the columns, a generated trader's MARKET strip names the three items it pays most over the reference for and the three it sells cheapest among what it holds, its restock gap (the item furthest under its target, a meter of stock against target, and the play minutes until it is full) and, while its civilization refuses you, a red REFUSED badge with the minutes left or none when only a settlement ends it. The interface title row shows the play clock while a world runs. A station or ship placed by a scenario deals at the reference price and shows no strip. A Buy pays the ask and a Sell earns the bid, each as its share of the item's lot, rounded up for a Buy and down for a Sell; a Sell that would earn 0 cr is refused, and otherwise selling back what you bought loses credits. At a station you own, a Buy pays the bid instead, rounded up the same way. While the form is open it shows the price and your balance after, for example Price 20 cr Balance 1,980 cr. Confirm moves the items and the credits at once, and Buy all or Sell all beside it confirms the whole stack in one click, disabled while that trade would be refused; and the note line reads BOUGHT x5 Stone ore -20 cr or SOLD x10 Stone ore +30 cr. A refused trade changes nothing and keeps the form open: Refused: enter a quantity, Refused: quantity is zero, Refused: sale pays 0 cr, Refused: only 2 Stone ore in Light Freighter, Refused: Line Warship has room for 30 kg more, Refused: Light Freighter has only 20 cr, Refused: Light Freighter cannot hold more credits, Refused: Light Freighter does not trade, or Refused: not docked. A trade never splits to fit the hold or the credits.

Store and withdraw

Docked at a living station that offers storage, a Storage column lists what the station keeps for you, with Stored showing its load against the station's cap. From 1200 px wide your column, the station's and Storage share the width equally; in a narrower window Storage sits under the station's column, which keeps two thirds of the height. A column whose rows run past its height scrolls with the mouse wheel. Click an item in your column to open Store, or an item in the storage column to open Withdraw. At a station that also trades, your item opens Sell: click the Store button to switch the form. Confirm moves the items at once and the note line reads Stored 5 Hull plate at <station> or Withdrew 5 Hull plate from <station>. No credits move. A refused move changes nothing: Refused: storage full, 70 kg free, Refused: only 3 Hull plate in storage, Refused: <ship> has room for 5 kg more, or Refused: <station> offers no storage.

Your own ships are storage too. Each of your ships docked at the same station, or docked with you directly, shows as its own section of the storage column, headed by its name and its load against its own hold, for example Escort 300 kg / 400 kg. Click its item to Withdraw it into your hold. To store into it, click an item in your column, then the To Escort button. The note line reads Stored 12 Hull plate in Escort or Withdrew 30 Hull plate from Escort. A move that does not fit is refused whole: Refused: <ship> has room for 0 kg more. Docked directly with one of your ships, it does not trade and has no column of its own: its hold is the storage section.

Quick moves

Double-click an item to move its whole stack at once: the double click confirms the form a click opens, with the stack as the quantity. Hold Shift while you double-click to move one item instead.

The Give, Sell, Store and To buttons stay as you set them from item to item, so after one click on Store, each double click stores. A quick move is refused exactly as Confirm would refuse it, with the reason on the note line and in the form, and nothing changes: double-clicking a stack the storage cannot take reads Refused: storage full, 100 kg free. Jettison has no quick move. Two clicks count as a double click when they land on the same item within half a second.

Jettison and pickup

Undocked, with a working cargo intake, a click on an item in your column opens a Jettison form. Confirm takes the whole quantity out of your hold at once and packs it into canisters queued on the intake, and the note line reads Jettisoned 4 Hull plate: 1 canister queued with the number of canisters now waiting. A canister holds at most 1,000 kg across all its stacks, so a larger quantity fills several: 6 torpedoes of 150 kg, 50 rail slugs of 20 kg, 100 hull plates of 10 kg or 5,000 PDC rounds of 0.2 kg each. A confirmed stack first tops up the last waiting canister where whole items still fit, even in the same frame. A refused jettison changes nothing: Refused: undock to jettison, Refused: no working cargo intake, Refused: enter a quantity, Refused: quantity is zero, or Refused: only 2 Hull plate in Line Warship.

Once you close the interface, the intake's door folds open and the canisters leave through it one at a time. To take a canister back in, or one a mining beam cut loose, fly the intake's door onto it. Cargo intake has the door, the pickup sight, the drop and the canister rules.

The command shell

Press ; for NOVA COMMANDS: a text prompt on the ship's CRT monitor, over the interface, flight, the menus and the editor. It reads the run, changes your settings and prints the flight log. The Commands page has the whole catalog, and the monitor's own knobs and sounds.