Player Reference

Cepheus Trader is a persistent multiplayer space-trading game played through participating BBSs. You command a captain, crew, and starship in the same universe as players from other boards. Trade, mail, traffic, jobs, authorities, and combat continue to develop while you are away.

The game is in field testing. Feedback, bug reports, and attaboys should be filed as GitHub issues. Include the BBS you called, the client version if known, and enough of the screen or error text to identify what happened.

Using the door#

The choices shown at the bottom of each screen are authoritative for that screen. Letter choices are case-insensitive.

• Enter normally accepts a displayed default, continues, returns to the previous menu, or refreshes the current screen.
• Q normally cancels the current action or backs out. At a command console or the docked menu it offers to return to the BBS; you must confirm with Y before the game exits.
• ? opens help for the screen or decision in front of you. Beginner help explains why the screen is useful, every field, column, state, warning, and indicator it can show, why those details matter, every available action and consequence, why conditional actions may be absent, and a sensible first use. Expert help is a shorter, accurate operational reference. Each BBS player has a durable default. Help may span as many pages as it needs; it is not shortened to fit one terminal screen.
• During help paging, Enter or Space advances, C continues without more page pauses, B restarts the topic in Beginner mode, X restarts it in Expert mode, and Q stops help. The B/X choice lasts for that help visit only.
• At the end of a help topic, H opens the Help Browser. Its tree contains Getting Started, Menus and Screens, Concepts, and an alphabetical Glossary. Q moves toward the root and then returns to the game. The browser's D action changes the durable default.
• < and > move between pages where shown. Some packet screens also accept the corresponding arrow keys and display letter alternatives.
• A full page pauses at a contrasting -- MORE -- Enter/Sp C=All Q=Menu prompt. Press Enter or Space to continue one page, C to suppress further page pauses until the next keyboard input, or Q to skip the remaining ordinary output and reach the screen's menu. The prompt is erased and output resumes beneath it. Player Preferences can durably disable these automatic pauses; menus and confirmations still wait for input.
• A menu may omit an action when the present port, ship, or situation cannot support it.
• B in the universal menu opens Browser Alerts. When the BBS operator has enabled the service, the door displays a ten-minute link and, where it fits, a QR code with the complete fallback address immediately below it for the captain's portable communicator. The browser can warn you before the ship reaches a waypoint that will wait for orders, optionally warn before standing orders carry the ship through a waypoint, and call you when a checkpoint or detected encounter needs attention. Hold warnings, Through warnings, and immediate calls can be selected independently. Alerts successfully delivered to that browser remain in its temporary Received Transmissions list until they expire, so dismissing a notification does not discard its detail. Push alerts are a convenience, not a guarantee; game time and standing orders continue if one is delayed or missed.

Cepheus Trader is server-authoritative. If a command is rejected, read the reason and refresh the relevant screen rather than assuming that the displayed proposal took effect.

Create your first command#

The first time an unregistered local player reaches captain creation, the door opens a short orientation. It introduces the setting and the shape of the decisions ahead; it is not required reading. Press Q at any of its pager prompts to skip the rest. The orientation is shown only once for that local BBS identity.

New players create a captain and choose one of three starting commands. Every screen begins with workable defaults, so you can safely accept them on a first visit and learn the systems in play.

Customize the captain#

You may rename the captain, redistribute the characteristic point budget, choose the offered skills, and select a training target. Characteristics must use the complete displayed budget before you finish. A training target is a long-term activity rather than an immediate skill increase.

The default captain is valid. Changing the captain is a choice, not a puzzle with one required solution.

Choose a starting offer#

The three offers place you at different points between commerce and public service:

• Trader starts with an independent commercial command. Ownership, debt, reserves, and commercial capacity are central concerns.
• Privateer starts with an armed charter. The command carries legal authority and prize rights, but also restrictions and obligations.
• Navy starts in public service with an issued command. Rank, orders, pay, and service obligations matter; commanding the vessel is not the same as owning it. The naval service account is restricted institutional credit, separate from the captain's personal funds.

Inspect each offer rather than comparing only ship size or weapons. The detail screen explains the ship, starting package, reserves, authority, and exit terms. A powerful or specialized ship may have less free cargo space, higher costs, or less freedom of action.

Each offer also identifies its home BBS and polity. If that BBS belongs to a League, the current League name follows the polity in parentheses.

Name and fit the ship#

After choosing an offer, name the ship and select any starting-fit choices. The first option in each fit group is a usable default. Fit choices change what the ship is prepared to do; they are not extra cash paid to the captain.

Review the crew#

The roster names officers, leaders, and senior specialists. Supporting crew may be represented as part of a position rather than requiring an individual name for every person aboard. You may inspect or rename the named crew and select their training targets. Crew Management reports the effective headcount against the ship's established complement. A grouped appointment shows its current and established strength; combat casualties reduce that strength one supporting position at a time, so a short-handed ship remains visibly short until replacement personnel are assigned.

The final confirmation creates the captain, ship, crew, and starting estate together. Nothing is registered until you answer Y on that screen.

After registration, the command library offers Guided First Watch. It is an optional tour of your real crew, ship, accounts, messages, duty, charts, and Flight Plan procedure in the shared universe. The route follows the command: traders inspect commercial Tasks, privateers review their commission before any optional eligible work, and naval captains follow issued orders without being sent through cargo, passenger, or commercial-offer lessons. It does not stop time, reserve an offer, accept a Task, award a bonus, or relax a rule. Other captains and markets continue normally.

Enter begins the watch; S skips one briefing, Q returns to the Console with progress available later, and H hides it. The Command Console's W choice and Player Preferences can begin or resume it. Preferences can also restart only the explanations without rewinding the captain or universe. First Watch completes only when a real Flight Plan is successfully filed; previewing and backing out does not launch the ship.

A good first session#

Your new ship begins docked and ready to operate. Guided First Watch can lead you through the following route, or you can follow it yourself. The middle of the route depends on the command's career and authority.

1. Open U, then inspect Crew Management and Ship Management. Note duty coverage, fuel, provisions, damage, endurance, and maintenance.
2. Inspect universal Accounts. Distinguish liquid cash, available cash, reserved funds, restricted operating credit, and principal; review any pending income by its estimated settlement date.
3. Follow the command's duty path: - Traders inspect Jobs and Passage and, when useful, the Cargo Exchange. Do not accept an obligation whose route or terms you do not understand, and do not buy cargo merely because it is offered. - Privateers inspect Operations and the commission first. Ordinary Tasks or cargo are supplementary choices only when the command is eligible. - Naval captains inspect issued orders in Operations. They need not use commercial cargo, passenger, or offer screens.
4. Read Messages, paying attention to origin and age, then check Fuel and Supplies. Leave enough fuel for the proposed route and enough provisions for everyone aboard.
5. From U, open Known Universe. Inspect nearby systems and use the course plotter to relate the destination to the chosen work or issued duty.
6. Choose Depart, build a flight plan, review its preview, and file it only when the destination, fuel use, and warnings make sense.

Once filed, a valid flight plan continues through its authorized stages even if you return to the BBS. Re-entering the door reconnects you to the current authoritative state; it does not rewind the voyage.

Docked operations#

The docked screen shows the ship, facility, system, port conditions, cash, restricted ship credit, debt, berth account, fuel, and cargo use. Its services are local: another port may have different stock, facilities, law, or institutional offices.

Technology levels and local capability#

Tech Level, abbreviated TL, measures a world's scientific and production capability and the complexity it can manufacture locally. It is separate from population, wealth, law, starport class, and the capability of a particular facility. Imported equipment may exceed local TL; conversely, a poor port, closed yard, or missing parts can prevent work that the world's TL could otherwise support.

The examples explain the scale rather than promising that every named technology is implemented as a game system. For an actual purchase, repair, or refit, compare the world's TL with its port and the displayed facility. A world below TL9 can have a working port but no locally eligible ships for sale.

• C — Cargo Exchange: inspect the hold, buy finite local stock, sell cargo carried from another system, research suppliers, and locate buyers for player-owned speculative cargo aboard.
• J — Jobs and Passage: inspect and accept freight, passenger, mail, charter, courier, service, or other local offers.
• F — Fuel and Supplies: buy available fuel, provisions, and ammunition, or arrange a supported wilderness-fuel expedition.
• Y — Shipyard: inspect ships for sale, trade in the current vessel where title and finances permit it, or commission an admitted catalog design that the local yard can construct. A commission takes a deposit and appears in Fleet until its real construction time ends.
• P — Personnel: hire available crew and open roster actions such as assignment, leave, recall, treatment, or discharge.
• B — Banking Services: inspect the active vessel's finance terms and perform locally available insurance, arrears, or insolvency actions.
• A — Authorities: handle local career, warrant, prize, traffic, and official business.
• D — Depart: construct, preview, and file a flight plan.
• U — open the universal command console.

Banking, personnel, authorities, refined fuel, repairs, and other services are not guaranteed at every facility. A missing menu entry is useful information, not a display error.

Accounts and pending settlement#

F on the universal Command Console opens Accounts in every operational phase. Liquid balance is the money currently posted to the captain's account; available cash subtracts funds already committed to tasks or pending claims. Restricted vessel credit pays authorized operating expenses, and secured principal is debt rather than spending capacity.

Certified task income appears under Pending income until the issuing office's remittance physically reaches the captain. It is grouped by estimated game day; an amount marked as released is existing collateral expected to become available again, not additional revenue. A missing estimate means the current mail network offers no defensible delivery date. Do not budget pending income as cash.

T opens the durable Transaction Journal. F cycles income, expense, transfer, hold, financing, and opening entries; V filters by vessel; N and P page through older and newer entries. Select a numbered entry to see each affected account, exact increase or decrease, and resulting balance. An estate that predates the journal begins with one carried-forward opening entry.

Naval service accounts#

A naval captain's liquid balance is personal money. The separately displayed naval service account pays authorized vessel expenses before personal cash: berthing and navigation charges, fuel, provisions, ammunition, necessary crew medical treatment, repairs, replacement work, and refits. It cannot ordinarily pay for cargo trading, collateral, private messages, personal insurance, fines, or other private obligations.

Banking Services permits a naval captain to file a false ship-expense receipt and move service credit into the personal balance. The confirmation is deliberate: the receipt is retained for the next accounts audit. Detection is not certain; its probability rises with the total amount and the number of forged receipts in that accounting cycle, and with the share of the month's ship expenses represented by false claims. A small false claim can therefore hide more easily among substantial legitimate operating costs. A detected forgery produces a naval warrant at the auditing office. That finding reaches the captain and other authorities by mail; it is not instantaneously known across systems.

Sponsor-owned ships and arrears#

A privateer may command a sponsor-owned ship without owing secured purchase principal. The sponsor can still require monthly insurance. Restricted operating credit pays that insurance before the captain's liquid balance, but it cannot pay secured principal or private expenses.

If an installment defaults, Accounts shows the changed balance and the financial notice remains available in Messages. At a port with Banking Services, P posts the displayed overdue installment and withdraws its impound order. The universal Accounts manager remains readable in Jump, but the correspondent-bank action does not travel with the ship.

Cargo and local markets#

The commodity list is public reference data, not local inventory and not a free quote. F starts a timed search for a supplier or for a buyer of one selected cargo lot. Ordinary port canvassing uses Broker and Education; the local data exchange uses Computers and Education. Each takes 1D6 game hours. A private introduction for prohibited goods uses Streetwise and Charisma and takes 1D6 game days. Repeated searches in the same 30-day market month receive a cumulative penalty.

An ordinary supplier search canvasses the whole legal market and can return several source-sized lots. The maximum tonnage lets the search continue until a published lot fits that ceiling; it does not trim a supplier's lot. A buyer search is tied to a cargo lot already aboard and cannot be used at that lot's acquisition port. Discovered counterparties remain until the later of month end or seven days after discovery.

N assigns a crewmember to a 1D6-minute Broker-and-Charisma price negotiation. A accepts the complete quoted lot; J rejects it. Supplier acceptance pays the cargo price plus the automatic ten-percent loader charge. Rejecting a seller makes another negotiation with that seller harder for one week. Buyer prices use what the selected lot actually cost, or its catalog appraisal when it was extracted or captured. The buyer pays import tariff. Export tariff is not hidden in the quote: it is charged from the ship's operating account when the ship clears the berth. There are no market reservations or escrow, and refreshing or waiting at the dock cannot manufacture new prices.

Locally prohibited goods use the same accept/reject flow after a private counterparty is found; only the search skill and elapsed time differ. The same-port resale restriction is intentionally retained to prevent local-port arbitrage.

Jobs, custody, and deadlines#

Claiming an offer at its issuing office produces an immediate award when the offer is still available. Claiming a copy anywhere else files a sealed claim: capacity and collateral are reserved while it travels, but the claim is not an award until the issuing office's confirmation reaches you. If another claim arrives first, the decline releases those reserves. A captain travelling to the issuing office carries their own signed filing, so the ship cannot arrive there before its claim does even when it declines ordinary mailbags.

An award closes the offer at its origin, but remote copies remain visible until the closure notice reaches them. Cargo or passenger custody transfers only after the award is known and the performing ship is at the origin. Once aboard, freight, passengers, and mail remain assigned to that ship; changing command or owning another vessel does not teleport them. Review the task's destination, deadline, payment, failure terms, and required capacity before filing a claim. The local-offer list shows the pickup slack remaining after the fastest executable course to the issuing system. Green means more than six hours, yellow means 30 minutes through six hours, and red means less than 30 minutes, already late, or no executable course.

For a remote pickup, availability is based on one continuous projected voyage: current system to pickup and then pickup to delivery. Fuel remaining after the first leg carries into the second, the pickup must occur before the offer closes, and final arrival is compared with the delivery deadline. The task ledger receives this assessment with the offer so its classification cannot drift while the client separately plots each endpoint.

The ledger initially shows only offers the commanded ship and its present crew can reasonably perform. It reports how many unavailable offers are hidden; press V to view those offers and the reasons they are unavailable. The check includes hold or passenger capacity, required steward or medical staffing, whether posting the collateral would leave enough cash to clear the current berth, an executable course to pickup, and deadlines that can already be proven impossible. The unavailable classification is advisory: you may still inspect and claim an offer from that view, accepting the risk that you must correct the listed problems before performance. The classification is refreshed with the ledger, so selling cargo, hiring crew, or otherwise correcting a stated problem can make an offer appear in the normal list.

The issuing market screens destinations against traffic vessels that could actually perform the route. Work needing extended tankage or other specialist Jump capability is progressively less common and carries a progressively higher payment than ordinary refuel-each-stop J-2 work.

After successful delivery, the task remains awaiting settlement while the delivery filing travels back to the issuing office. Payment and release of the posted collateral take effect when the remittance reaches you.

The Task ledger records accepted work. The Flight Plan controls where the ship will actually travel; changing a route does not rewrite an obligation.

Fuel, provisions, and port costs#

Refined and unrefined fuel are distinct, and availability depends on the port or selected collection method. The source list identifies planets, moons, gas giants, and icy belts; ordinary wilderness entries are unoccupied routine- access sources, and unavailable entries are not numbered. Remaining tank room appears once above the choices. Each frontier source gives its own round-trip distance and travel time; those values, rather than the body type alone, distinguish the operational cost of the detour.

A ship with scoops may collect without a processor. When a processor is fitted, Flight Plan defaults to refining the selected batch, but you may keep it unrefined. Preview shows travel, collection, processing, normal total, and the longer failed-check total. Refining is Engineer (Power)/EDU 8+; failure doubles processing time and exceptional failure can damage the Jump drive. Purchased or collected unrefined fuel may be refined later while docked or safely holding. An unrefined purchase already embedded in a Flight Plan defaults to processing that batch before the next step when the ship has a processor.

Mixed tanks are consumed proportionally. Ordinary power use has no separate unrefined-fuel roll, but a Jump that actually burns any unrefined fuel takes the normal -2 success DM. Preview warns on that Jump; if a prior refining step removes all unrefined fuel, the warning is omitted.

Away from a berth, provisions are consumed by crew and awake passengers; passengers travelling in low berths do not consume them while frozen. Docked ordinary crew arrange their own food. The captain uses one ship person-day or, when stores are empty, automatically buys a meal from liquid credits at twice the package-average daily price. Three days without food cause discomfort but no damage; later days bring increasingly difficult Endurance checks, and failed checks cause starvation damage that cannot heal until the character eats. Berth charges and other immediate obligations may be settled when the ship departs. After a port fuel purchase, the fueling receipt lists the amount loaded, tank state, total charge, the restricted and liquid amounts used, and both remaining balances. A chandlery receipt likewise lists the monthly packages and person-days loaded, resulting life-support stores, charge, payment split, and remaining balances. Keep a reserve instead of committing every credit to cargo.

Universal command console#

Press U from docked operations, or Enter from the voyage screen, to open the universal command console. Its eight managers are grouped into four areas:

• 1 — Vessel and Crew: C Crew Management and S Ship Management.
• 2 — Duty and Accounts: T Task Management, O Operations Ledger, and F Accounts.
• 3 — Information and Communications: K Known Universe, M Message Management, and R System Common Radio.
• 4 — Captain and Interface: browser alerts, help, preferences, Guided First Watch, license notices, and the isolated abandonment action.

The established manager letters also work as direct shortcuts from the console root. Enter refreshes the current console screen. Q returns from an area to the root; at the root it offers to return to the BBS and requires confirmation. X returns directly to the previous operational screen.

The console identifies the captain's home BBS and polity. A parenthesized name after the polity is the BBS's current League affiliation.

A permanently abandons the current captain and starts over. It discards every ship and crew member, cargo and stores, cash and financing, tasks and contracts, career and service history, prizes and warrants, private messages, and personal knowledge. Nothing carries over. The door requires the exact phrase ABANDON EVERYTHING and a separate final confirmation, then returns the same BBS account to new-captain registration. The command-recovery screen also offers this action when a command has been lost. Abandonment is temporarily unavailable while an encounter or shared combat is being resolved.

Crew Management#

Crew Management shows named personnel, service positions, watches, injuries, fatigue, morale, pay, and training. You can inspect it anywhere, but hiring, discharge, shore leave, medical care, and some reassignments require a suitable place and situation.

An officer's permanent appointment and current watch duties are different. Removing someone from watch does not erase their employment or automatically transfer command. Vacancies, doubled duties, and unavailable crew can reduce what the ship can safely accomplish.

Ship Management#

Ship Management shows vessels under the captain's control and the selected ship's hull, drives, systems, weapons, stores, damage, and service state. It also provides transfers and command changes where legal.

Routine upkeep is continuous work by the crew. Its cost is charged automatically every 30 game days to the operating account, using restricted operating credit before liquid credits, so there is no monthly yard order to place. If the account cannot cover the full charge, no partial payment is taken; the cycle is recorded as missed and can damage a subsystem.

Battlefield patches, proper repairs, routine upkeep, refits, and component replacement are different kinds of work. A temporary patch does not remove underlying damage. Ship Management shows an active operation's completion in game time and the corresponding real-world wait. Proper repair remains tied to the berth: Flight Plan preview warns about a departure, and actually clearing the berth cancels unfinished repair without removing the damage. Refits and other yard work still prevent departure.

Choosing Begin refit opens a quotation before any money is spent. It shows the operating-account charge, expected yard time, damage the yard will repair, and any destroyed installations that will remain destroyed. Authorizing the quotation begins the yard stay. Completion repairs non-destroyed damage, removes temporary battlefield patches, and may correct minor faults found in the overhaul. It does not replace a destroyed installation or reset an installation's age or use. Routine upkeep and its automatic charges continue during the refit.

Task Management#

Task Management holds accepted obligations, local offers, and automatic-carriage declarations. Available offers are shown by default; V switches between them and the otherwise-hidden offers that the current ship or crew cannot reasonably perform. Either view permits inspection and acceptance. Inspect an offer before claiming it. Actions such as cancellation, default, dispute, claim withdrawal, or custody return are available only when supported by the task's current state.

Message Management#

Messages include meaningful news, public-service reports, traffic notices, operational and financial notices, and private correspondence. Commercial offers appear only in Task Management, alongside their current availability and complete terms. You can inspect, ignore, mark for later, action, or archive delivered correspondence. Classification changes how you organize a message; it does not erase the underlying event or obligation.

Communication Filters set the minimum importance shown for News, Public service, Traffic, and Private copy. The same thresholds apply to the Message Management list and arrival review. Raising a threshold hides lower-priority retained copy; lowering it reveals that copy again. Some messages carry direct links to the relevant Task, Finance, Mapping, or Operations record.

Information and private correspondence travel through the universe. A report may be old when it reaches you, and a message cannot reveal facts that have not yet arrived at the ship.

System Common radio#

System Common is a single public radio channel for player broadcasts within the current system. Open it with R from Universal Managers. Radio waves travel at light speed: a ship at the port, gas giant, or Jump locus may receive a transmission later than a ship near its source. The channel is unavailable in Jump space and depends on functioning ship communications.

The inbox shows unread reception metadata. Opening a reception displays its body once and then removes the receiving ship's copy, so save anything you want to retain outside the game. Unread receptions expire after 196 game days and stay with the receiving ship if that vessel changes hands. Player broadcasts may contain up to 500 printable ASCII characters and are limited to one every 15 real seconds. You may persistently mute another captain's normal broadcasts.

Customs inspections, naval boarding instructions, and hostile surrender demands also arrive as structured System Common hails. They cannot be muted. Nearby ships may overhear them, but an encounter action belongs only to the ship being hailed. The door reports newly arrived unread radio at safe input boundaries instead of interrupting another screen with message bodies.

Known Universe#

Known Universe is the current ship's carried navigation and intelligence library. It contains known systems, source and age information, market observations, course plots, and mapping-disclosure choices.

Knowledge may be incomplete or stale. It is carried with its repository and does not become omniscient merely because the server knows something. The course plotter can compare fastest and cheapest known routes, including fuel carried aboard, purchases of refined or unrefined fuel at charted ports, and frontier skimming where the ship and charts support it. The plot reports its modeled fuel-purchase cost and travel time. The captain still chooses and imports a course into the executable Flight Plan.

Flight Plan can also request a route through every active accepted-task stop assigned to the commanded ship. The server uses a bounded beam-search heuristic rather than enumerating all stop permutations: pickups remain before their deliveries, deadlines influence the order, shared stops are consolidated when useful, and a system may be revisited when an urgent delivery requires it. This returns quickly but is not a proof of the optimal route. Preview the imported plan to see authoritative deadline warnings before filing it.

When adding a charted leg, the destination list reports distance from that leg's origin, primary-world port, population and tech codes, and the number of charted gas giants. Its dossier adds chart age, source, and coordinates. A publicly mapped system also identifies its home BBS and current polity and League affiliation when known. Private, withheld, secret, and merely dispatched mapping states do not disclose that affiliation.

After choosing the system, choose the first place the ship should reach there: the primary starport or a named world, moon, gas giant, or planetoid belt. Then choose standard emergence nearest that destination or a more distant private offset. Breakout never places the ship at the destination itself; the Flight Plan includes the resulting interplanetary maneuver. Use Add in-system stop for more local destinations, or add another charted leg for the next Jump.

When the ship reaches an unmapped system, you may publish it, file it directly, withhold it, or mark it secret. Read the prompt: disclosure choices have different privacy and cost consequences.

Operations Ledger#

Operations Ledger covers naval rank and orders, privateer commissions and prize claims, pirate opportunities and cruises, warrants, system traffic, local contacts, and combat-career standing. Available actions depend on local authority, delivered information, the ship, and the captain's current service.

The Local contacts section is a sensor picture of the ship's current traffic locus. A port, Jump locus, gas giant, or other frontier-fuel body can contain contacts; ordinary interplanetary transit and Jump space normally do not. A civilian contact's name, operator, role, and transponder come from its broadcast registry. Class and tonnage are separate sensor estimates, and may be approximate or unresolved when the ship has modest or damaged electronics. Only contacts still sharing the locus can be intercepted.

[BERTHED] and [LANDED] mean that a vessel shares the traffic locus but is still attached to a facility or surface. Selecting one does not start combat inside the berth or on the ground. Your ship clears its own berth, pays the charges then due, and waits at the locus; the intercept occurs only if the selected vessel departs. Gas-giant skimming is spaceborne and remains exposed to immediate interception, while a wilderness water/ice expedition is landed until it lifts.

Standing interception order places the ship on picket at its current port, Jump point, gas giant, or other modeled body locus. It can target all modeled craft or one catalogued craft class observed in the current traffic picture. It also specifies whether matching traffic is attacked or ordered to submit to boarding and inspection. An armed attack starts combat at once. A boarding order starts combat only if the target refuses; offline vessels apply their stored inspection response and then their normal tactical automation. An unauthorized boarding demand is still a crime even if the target submits. Matching background movements and player arrivals or departures trigger the chosen intercept. The Operations Ledger shows the active watch and can remove it. A named departure watch ends when that vessel departs; an all-craft or class watch continues after an engagement while the ship remains capable and at the same locus. Removing a port watch returns the ship to a berth with a new arrival time.

Customs and naval pickets are more common at incoming Jump loci in strongly enforced systems. Refusing a lawful inspection causes the local picket to call for help and try to withdraw rather than duel for honor; capable enforcement traffic may join on its real movement time, and the warrant can meet the ship again at its next controlled destination. Pirate pickets favor Jump-arrival loci in chaotic, lightly travelled systems, retreat toward gas giants as security grows, and avoid systems or targets that are too dangerous.

Player vessels appear in these same traffic pictures. [PLAYER] identifies a player-owned ship operating under standing orders; [ONLINE] identifies the player-owned ship currently under a connected captain's direct control. These markers describe control, not the quality of the ship's sensor identification.

Warrants arrive through the store-and-forward electronic mail network and are entered into the Operations Ledger automatically; there is no bounty to accept. A [WARRANT] marker means that a locally received warrant names a person associated with that vessel. The association is dated evidence, not proof that the person is still aboard. Select Arrest named subject to issue a lawful surrender demand. A vessel may surrender the person, deny the person is aboard, or refuse boarding. A denial permits a search: Investigate, Recon, and Streetwise skill and the size of the boarding party oppose the subject's concealment. A failed search leaves the warrant active. A successful search places the person in custody aboard the hunter's ship. Deliver a held prisoner through Warrant court at a docked port with an authority office to collect the stated bounty.

Generated traffic also carries persistent generated people with warrants, so bounty hunting does not depend on finding another player. Those targets move through the same systems and appear in the same traffic pictures as other ships. A warrant's last report does not track them magically; current presence is known only when their transponder or a local sensor contact is actually observed. When a player ship answers an arrest demand offline, its saved inspection and surrender policies govern the response. At a port, a delivered warrant may cause an automatic enforcement boarding. Whether a search occurs and how thoroughly it is conducted scales with local law level. For an offline player vessel, a lawful demand for someone not actually aboard uses the saved inspection-compliance setting. If the person is aboard, the saved surrender permission and minimum acceptable victory estimate decide whether the crew turns the subject over or resists. Ordinary combat automation then governs any refusal.

A local player vessel can be intercepted under the same physical and legal rules as other traffic. If its captain is actively commanding it, both captains receive the shared combat turn and may seal orders before the window closes. A disconnected captain, a missed deadline, or a vessel commanded elsewhere invokes that ship's stored combat policy and actual crew. The server does not pause combat for a disconnected player.

PvP acts on the real vessel rather than a disposable encounter copy. Damage, ammunition, casualties, cargo loss, surrender, boarding, destruction, warrants, and prize custody persist for both sides. Capturing a ship transfers the ship and everything physically aboard it; surviving personnel remain real people and enter parole or recovery rather than becoming captor-owned crew.

This is distinct from the system traffic-control picture. Traffic control can report transponder movements elsewhere in the system, showing that the system is active without making those vessels local sensor contacts or viable interception targets.

Changing service, intercepting traffic, mutiny, piracy, and similar actions can be irreversible or unlawful. The door supplies an additional confirmation for the most serious choices; treat that warning literally.

Flight plans and travel#

The Flight Plan is a sequence of destinations and authorized actions. It can use carried charts, imported plotted courses, task destinations, frontier-fuel stops, coordinates, or the bounded all-assigned-tasks suggestion where those choices are available. Importing a plotted course also adds its required port purchases or frontier-fuel operations to the plan. A Flight Plan preview reports estimated time, fuel, and warnings before the plan is filed. Each warning appears once as a numbered footnote, with its number repeated beside every affected step. A provision-shortage warning is repeated beside every step where cumulative projected consumption has exceeded the person-days aboard. An active proper-repair warning marks the first departure step that will cancel the work and leave the damage in place. Keep enough operating cash available: a purchase step that cannot be paid for or executed when reached holds the plan for the captain's attention. The preview marks a deadline warning in red when the planned route would dock after an accepted task's deadline, would run past its deadline without reaching its destination, or reaches a Hold checkpoint in time but still requires arrival watch before docking. Checkpoint readiness is not delivery.

Checkpoint authority and plan completion are separate. Through permits the crew to use standing orders and continue while you are away; Hold waits for arrival watch. One terminal marker is always on the last step and ends the plan after the selected Hold or Through behavior completes. Generated task and ordinary routes initially use Through throughout. Player Preferences can make either type generate Hold checkpoints instead without changing a filed plan.

The editor groups related physical steps into logical route items. Select any future item to change its authority or settings, delete or reorder it, insert a charted leg beside it, or replace its charted destination. Completed items stay visible and locked. Task Management's Standing orders edits the active ship's default encounter policy; a new plan starts with that default, while a filed plan keeps its own copy. The Flight Plan can load the ship default, keep different orders for that voyage, or save its edited orders as the new default. Each encounter type has an ordinary response plus Never, Always, or a minimum sensor-estimated combat-outlook percentage for Fight. Unknown outlook never passes a percentage threshold, and automatic attack against non-hostile traffic requires an explicit risk acknowledgement.

Course knowledge and course execution are separate. A carried or purchased plot can still be risky, and warnings about a known bad plot require a deliberate choice. Filing a plan commits the route; revising it later does not undo travel or obligations already completed. While the ship remains in normal space, revising the first unprocessed waypoint calculates a new maneuver from the ship's current motion. You may turn back to the primary port, choose a new Jump destination, or replace the route with a belt cycle or lawful frontier fuel stop. The displayed estimate includes the time needed to cancel the old relative motion and intercept the moving destination. A Jump already in progress cannot be redirected before breakout, but later route items and standing orders remain editable. Future-only changes preserve the active leg or shipboard operation and its scheduled completion rather than restarting it.

The voyage screen shows the present stage, origin, destination, ship time, next scheduled event, and fuel aboard compared with effective total tank capacity. You may revise the plan or enter the command console while the voyage continues.

Travel can stop for a checkpoint, validation problem, traffic contact, or encounter. An arrival packet may contain news, mail, market observations, and offers accumulated in transit. Review or classify it, then take the arrival watch when required. Uneventful authorized stages can complete without an extra prompt.

If a discordant Jump transition, exceptional fuel-processing failure, or unpaid-upkeep check damages a subsystem, an Engineering Casualty Report interrupts the next safe prompt or appears before ordinary command work on the next sign-on. It identifies the operation, ship, subsystem, new and resulting hits, operational effect, and any inaccurate-Jump approach delay. Reports are shown oldest first and remain until Enter positively acknowledges them. Q leaves the current report pending. Acknowledgement records that the captain saw the consequence; it neither repairs the ship nor stops the game clock or a still-valid plan. Combat consequences remain consolidated in their encounter, combat, and Command Loss Report screens rather than producing a report for every hit.

Encounters and combat#

An encounter presents actions named for that situation. Routine traffic uses Enter to exchange identification and continue immediately. Traffic-control, inspection, distress, derelict, hazard, and military contacts instead describe the specific order, assistance, investigation, maneuver, or refusal being chosen. Physical work may take authoritative time; the pending screen shows when it completes, and does not mean the other vessel is deciding whether to approve your response. Hostile contacts retain fighting, running, meeting a demand, surrendering, and boarding, while a departing contact can be pursued or allowed to go. Every displayed contact can instead be fought immediately. Doing so against a contact that has not attacked is an armed interception; without an accepted Naval Order or Privateer Commission naming that exact contact, it creates public heat and a propagating warrant and changes an Independent force-career record to Pirate. When a vessel identifies itself, its Declared identity, Transponder, and Declared class are transmitted claims. They are displayed separately from Sensor resolution and Sensor classification, so an exact registered-class claim may appear beside a 45% approximate size-class estimate. A dark or non-identifying contact instead has no declared class. The contact screen also shows the apparent authority, range, confidence, and a coarse threat assessment; it does not silently substitute a claimed exact hull class for an uncertain sensor return.

Pirate demands state the owned cargo and entrusted freight actually exposed. The demand does not imply that pirates already possess your manifest: it states what their boarding search will take, while the displayed exposure comes from your own cargo ledger. They demand all entrusted freight and a stated, milliton-rounded share of each owned lot, but cannot take more than fits in their own cargo hold. They pack the most valuable cargo per ton first; an indivisible unique object is skipped if it cannot fit. A documented loss of entrusted freight can be filed from the Task ledger. The authenticated encounter, custody record, response, and assessed threat affect adjudication; only cargo physically taken is claimed.

Vessel combat supplies a conservative default order, an optional tactical controller, and detailed joint-order editing for players who want direct control.

Running from an intercept and chasing a departing contact use the same pursuit rules in opposite directions. At Short or Close range and matched speed, the pursuer uses a significant Pilot action to establish pursuit. Maintaining it uses the same action and improves attacks after the first maintained turn, to a maximum +4. The target can oppose with Break Pursuit. Opening to Medium range, becoming seven speed points faster, leaving the fight, or winning the opposed break ends pursuit. Speed may change up or down by no more than currently effective maneuver thrust each combat turn.

Standing combat policy matters when you are absent or do not submit an order before the decision window closes. Review its objective and risk threshold before relying on it. Disconnecting is not a way to freeze an encounter or obtain a better combat controller.

Damage, ammunition use, injury, capture, surrender, and loss persist. A crew that retains the ship attempts feasible emergency recovery, but supplies, skills, time, and underlying damage still matter. If command is lost, the next login opens a mandatory Command Loss Report before recovery or succession. It identifies the censored contact evidence, whether a Through plan supplied the response, the posture and fallbacks used, tactical-controller involvement, the final ship and captain disposition, crew casualties, and cargo, fuel, passenger, and damage consequences. L opens the optional chronological incident log; Enter acknowledges the summary. Recovery remains locked until the current report is acknowledged. After acknowledgement, V reviews it again until recovery or succession succeeds, at which point the report is removed.

Practical advice#

• Read the complete prompt before pressing Enter; its meaning is contextual.
• Keep cash available for fuel, provisions, fees, repairs, and failure costs.
• Check cargo space and physical custody before accepting another task.
• Check the ship's actual fuel and provisions, not only whether a route exists.
• Treat charts, prices, reports, warrants, and news as dated information.
• Use the universal managers before and after a voyage to catch changed crew, ship, task, message, radio, and career state.
• Conservative defaults are valid, but they cannot make an impossible route, neglected ship, or unsuitable obligation safe.
• Returning to the BBS leaves the persistent universe running. File only the continuation plan and standing policies you actually want followed.