The terms

Consolidated Dynamics will finance a survey vessel, a crew of five, and a tank of fuel to anyone prepared to fly it somewhere the company has not been. The ship pays for itself in ore, if you like hauling. It pays for you in what you find: a survey filed on a world nobody has stood on is worth more than the hold, and a claim is information before it is money.

The ship

Everything happens through the instruments. The chart plots a course sector by sector and tells you the odds before you commit; the transit screen crosses them one decision at a time; the comms officer talks, at the comms officer's competence. You land when there is a reason to, and the bridge does not follow you down.

The neighbours

Several powers hold the space around home, each with a temperament, a reach, and an opinion of you that moves with everything you do. Standing with one is subtracted from its enemies. Their patrols stop the ships they do not like; pirates work the thin space between; on a war's border the settlers stop the ships the patrols do not. Every one of those is a conversation before it is a fight, and running is always a choice with a number on it.

The pace

Turn-based, in a browser tab. Nothing is timed and nothing needs reflexes; a crossing can wait a week and the ship will be where you left it. A first run is thirty to fifty hours of play, and what it leaves in the archive outlasts the ship. It was built for people who remember the space-trading games of the 1980s and have since acquired a mortgage.

The archive

Every ship flies alone, but the record is shared. What you publish, every other crew can read; what you take from the ground stays taken. Ore prices move because somebody else sold before you did. The company keeps a prospectus on the whole quadrant and grades you by it at the end, and the archive does not always agree with the company.