Start flying

Choose Scout to explore with Mineral Scan, or Hauler to deliver ore with Tow Cable, then select Enter Game (a blank callsign gets a random one, your last is remembered, and names must be unique among online pilots). New pilots launch at Town Square; the camera dives from the whole world to your ship (any key or tap skips it, and reduced-motion settings skip it). Other tools must be salvaged before you can equip them. Your ship keeps moving without a throttle; learn steering and firing before heading out.

Your expedition

Everyone shares one crew, one chart, and a persistent world. Mine rocks, collect loot, and deliver ore to lit furnaces for score; harvested fields slowly regrow.

Your next life

Cargo protects your hull by spilling recoverable points on a hit. Deaths lose your carried points. Banked points, salvaged tools, and silk remain safe. Respawns are unlimited. A brief disconnect returns you to the same ship. Returning with the other kit keeps your bank and tools, resets your health, and discards cargo above the new hold.

North-up view

The viewport and maps keep north at the top while your ship turns. Point or drag toward a direction to steer toward it; holding the pointer still keeps that target direction, and pointing at or very near your own hull stops the turn. Drift and knockback can carry the ship sideways without rotating the view.

Mouse

Move the pointer to steer toward it, click to fire (each click is one shot; holding does not repeat), and right-click to toggle Contour Lock. Keyboard steering takes over until you move the pointer again.

Touch

Hold or drag one finger to steer; release to keep your heading. A quick tap fires once, or hold two fingers on the playfield to charge a large beam while the first keeps steering; lifting either finger releases it. Use the on-screen ability and Contour Lock buttons for tools and contour travel. Leaving the tab or app releases every held control.

Contour Lock

Near a visible contour, tap Contour Lock to catch it and follow its curves at extra speed. The lock follows the direction your nose points, with distinct chimes when it engages or releases. Tap the same control again to release; steering is ignored while locked. Damage, a hard shove, the world wall, asteroid contact (even while protected), opening a menu or map, death, and furnace travel also release it, and you cannot lock during knockback or while a menu is open. Lasers pass through invulnerable hulls. There is no charge or cooldown, but the button needs a nearby contour. A connection interruption releases the lock; reacquire it after reconnecting.

Mobile contour hopping

While settled in Contour Lock, flick back along your line to reverse, or flick toward an adjacent line to glide onto it; a diagonal flick chooses your new travel direction. Use one finger, move at least 24 screen pixels within 220 milliseconds, and release briskly. Make at most three adjacent hops without a two-second pause; the third leaves a crew bridge. A rising chime confirms a successful change and a softer falling chime marks a blocked attempt; flicks reach a little farther than ordinary lock pickup, but unreachable lines and flicks made while still joining a line leave your route unchanged.

Contour travel

Follow the gray lines for extra speed in either direction; crossing them keeps normal cruise. Contour Lock follows a nearby line for stronger speed. See Contour travel.

Inventory and menus

V or Inventory opens your ship schematic to choose owned tools and equip satellites. Map, Inventory, and the furnace menu hold your ship safely while the world keeps moving; satellite health still drains and you cannot collect pickups. Your ship stops dead and drops Contour Lock. Close with Escape or the close control to resume flight with brief blink protection. Return to flight also restores keyboard focus to the playfield. Each join starts with Tow Cable or Mineral Scan.

Furnace travel and store

Inside a lit furnace's visible footprint, press E or tap the travel prompt to open the destination map (on desktop E opens the menu instead of your tool there; fly off the footprint to use the tool); B also toggles the menu. At Town Square, tap Enter or press E, then choose Store or Fast Travel; Back to Town Square returns to that choice. The mobile ability button keeps your equipped tool available over a furnace.

Pinch the destination map to zoom in or out, and drag to explore. Keyboard users can focus the map and use +/− to zoom. Choose another lit furnace for a free ride along the pipes in your equipped ship; dark foundations are not destinations. Boarding releases your tow or armed coupling, and you cannot steer, fire, change tools, collect loot, or take damage during the ride.

Town Square's Store offers placeholders purchased with banked points. Higher settlement levels unlock more offers; each placeholder can be bought once and has no gameplay effect.

Map

M or Map opens the shared universe chart centred on your ship. Drag to pan and pinch to zoom; desktop also supports arrow keys, the mouse wheel, and +/− keys. Use Center on you or Home to restore the nearby ship view. M, Escape, or Close returns to flight.

Keyboard access and motion

Tab reaches menu controls and the touch tool and Contour Lock buttons; Enter or Space activates a focused button. Focus the universe chart itself for arrow-key panning and +/− zoom, because a focused button keeps its normal keyboard behavior. On the furnace destination map, Tab selects a lit stop and Enter chooses it.

Your device's reduced-motion setting skips the opening camera dive, steadies prominent loot and travel flames, and replaces Wiki animations with still images. The game still moves in real time. The universe chart also exposes a text list of revealed landmarks and crew coordinates for assistive technology.

Campaign controls

Use Help here or Nest here to signal nearby crew; Shift-click Map on desktop or tap without dragging on touch to place a help signal. With a keyboard, pan with the arrow keys, then choose Signal help at center or press Shift+Enter on the chart; signals reach nearby crew only. Hold Revive near a downed pilot, or activate it with a keyboard or assistive control to start or cancel; see rescue rules. At a stocked furnace, a Hauler with Tow Cable can choose Tow supply for frontier restoration.

Survey probe

Find Survey Probe as a rare equipment drop, usually in a spider nest, then equip it in Inventory and aim at a rock or spider and press E to shoot a beacon that attaches on contact. Missed probes disintegrate and still use the shared Scan recharge. An attached beacon scans along its host's route and earns delivery credit, but can be shot off, expires, and is lost on a server restart; probes do not repel spiders.

Probe limits

Aim your nose at a living host without a beacon; powered rocks cannot take a probe. Launching beyond your active-beacon limit replaces your oldest beacon. Destroying the host removes its beacon, while changing tools leaves already attached beacons working.

Build

At a dark furnace foundation, E becomes Build: enter the grate and spend your score to light it, with the inward furnace already lit. Your named furnaces persist, provide delivery and fast-travel stops, and serve the shared settlement. A popup on a dark foundation shows how many more points you need to build. A failed build spends nothing and shows why (not enough banked points, or the inward furnace is unlit), but it uses up that E press, so no Scan or Probe fires.

Exploration

Scout reveals more of the shared chart as it flies than Hauler. Mineral colors stay with identified rocks: cyan ice, gold metal, orange rubble, and violet crystal; many rocks contain no ore. Use the map to return to discoveries.

Utility slot

Hauler is the larger cargo ship with stronger mining lasers and Tow Cable as its starter tool. Find Resource Tap and Boost Coupling as rare equipment drops, usually in spider nests, then choose them in Inventory with V or its button. E uses the selected tool.

Resource Tap E

Press E near a rock to extract collectible canisters without destroying it; E again cancels extraction. Ice repairs damage, metal adds cargo, rubble supplies fiber, and crystal briefly widens the reach of Contour Lock. Tap a spider for limited silk instead, but expect it to turn on you; fiber and silk share your material inventory and have no crafting use yet.

Cargo collisions

Ordinary towed rocks break when they hit another rock or ship, damaging other ships but sparing their own Hauler. Colossal deposits survive these collisions and need two Haulers towing together to move. Untowed rocks pass through each other.

Reach and release

Resource Tap and Boost Coupling choose a nearby eligible hull; an empty attempt costs no cooldown. Tow Cable follows your aim, uses recharge even on a miss, and E can recall the outgoing line or release latched cargo during recharge. Changing utilities releases attachments, and they break if their host dies or gets too far away; towing preserves momentum rather than reeling the cargo in.

Boost Coupling E

Press E to arm a rock (not a spider) toward its nearest furnace, then E again to ignite autonomous delivery. One coupling pushes a colossal deposit at a crawl; a second Hauler's coupling, before or after ignition, brings it to full speed. Swap tools before ignition to cancel, or lose the attachment by leaving range. Once ignited, cargo ignores hazards and other tools until delivery pays its launchers and recorded scanning pilots.

Spider bites

A towed spider can still bite nearby ships, including your Hauler if you double back into it. Only proximity to the spider triggers a bite; crossing the cable is safe. Mineral Scan and safe areas still protect you.

Spider rescue

Towing a living spider attracts rescuers that can bite through your cable. Bring a Scout to repel them with Mineral Scan. Furnaces do not consume spiders. Releasing the spider ends its rescue call.

Mining lasers

Hauler hits metal and colossal deposits harder. Direct shots are safe for crew hulls; ricochets are dangerous.

Loaded flight

Both ships share acceleration, cruise speed, and turn rate. Cargo and saved hull mass do not change movement. Spiders choose the most loaded eligible pilot first, so an escort can clear the route while the carrier heads for a furnace.

Collecting loot

Mined rocks leave point drops, the main source of cargo; they pull toward human pilots and AI Workers and expire after two minutes. Shards and metal Tap canisters add smaller amounts; other Tap salvage repairs damage or supplies materials and navigation help. Tap canisters and silk pull toward Haulers while one is flying, and collecting loot keeps Contour Lock engaged.

Shards, Tap canisters, and silk normally expire quickly; nest caches last longer, with lifetimes in the reference below. A Scout can collect Tap canisters and silk by touching them even when their attraction favors a nearby Hauler.

Salvaged equipment

Scout starts with Mineral Scan and Hauler with Tow Cable; find Resource Tap, Boost Coupling, or Survey Probe to unlock its inventory card. Look for large, labeled, glowing hardware in spider nests, which have a 65% chance to contain a tool, or among rocks destroyed by an ordinary laser kill, with a 1.5% chance; ramming and tough-rock chip breaks never roll one. Each ship sees only tools its kit can use and does not already own, and every eligible pilot can take their own copy from the same drop.

Tools add no score and survive ordinary deaths, reconnects, and server restarts. Duplicates stay for teammates, and shooting cannot destroy equipment.

Spider silk

Tap a spider for silk, or a rubble rock for salvaged fiber, and collect it into your material inventory. Silk adds no score and has no crafting use yet.

Pickup melody

With Sound Effects on, quick pickups play successive notes of a short melody. Tap extraction supplies lower notes. Returning for the remainder of a points drop plays a new pickup note and local haptic.

Cargo and banks

Every ship has an aft cargo bay that fills with gold crates as you collect points; a full bay pulses with a Cargo Full badge. Full ships leave pickups for the crew, and a nearly full hold takes only the points that fit, leaving the same drop and expiry for the remainder. Switching to a smaller kit discards cargo above the new hold.

Cargo protection

Cargo protects your hull by spilling recoverable points when a hazard hits; hull health takes only the damage your cargo cannot cover. Spills fly outward before pickups and magnetism resume, and bigger cargo losses leave more points to recover. Immunity prevents spills, while a protected hit still delays health regeneration; any cargo left on death is discarded without an extra stash.

Store purchases spend your bank, never carried cargo. See Town Square for the store and survival for damage and respawns.

Cargo and saved hull mass do not change acceleration or ship speed.

Field and materials

Rocks gather in rich fields separated by quiet voids, and they come in every size, speed, and spin. Ice breaks easily, metal takes repeated hits, and larger rubble fragments into smaller pieces. Harvested deposits slowly regrow out of sight, so a mined field fills back in.

Mining and score

Ordinary ice and crystal rocks break on the first laser hit, whatever their size; metal takes repeated hits, larger rubble fragments, and colossal deposits need sustained mining. Mining leaves collectible points and salvage to haul home. Delivery contributors share banked furnace rewards.

Colossal deposits

These rare, stationary landmarks resist rams and need many laser hits to fragment. Move one with two Tow Cables, or launch it with a Boost Coupling: alone it crawls, and a second coupling brings it to full speed. Both Haulers earn delivery credit.

Powered rocks

A cream arrow marks an armed Boost Coupling; exhaust means the rock is delivering itself. Scan it before ignition, because powered cargo ignores new scans, tools, weapons, and collisions. Existing contributors still receive delivery credit.

Asteroid belt

Head east to mine the belt of metal-hulled rocks, only some of which carry ore (scan first) or tow its deposits to a furnace; explored belt locations stay marked on the universe map. Mining or carrying away a deposit starts its recovery timer, which continues through absences and server restarts. An amber warning marks a returning rock even when pilots are nearby; chipping a deposit does not heal it or restart the timer.

The largest belt rocks follow the colossal towing rule: one cable holds them, and two Haulers move them. Smaller belt rocks move with one Hauler; scan for ore before committing the crew.

Belt spiders

Black, red-eyed crawlers round rock cover and hop between nearby rocks to chase you. One shot kills an exposed body without destroying its rock; retreat beyond their telegraphed lunges, and solid rock blocks both attacks and shots. When a host breaks, living crawlers leap to a reachable rock, or die if none is reachable. A killed crawler returns only when its host deposit is replaced.

Crawlers cannot be tapped, probed, towed directly, or repelled by Mineral Scan. Tow their host instead; they travel with it and cannot bite during a hop.

Ore and refining

Many asteroids are barren. Scouts and equipped satellites reveal ore on the crew radar: ice, metal, rubble, or crystal. Bring ore-bearing rocks to a furnace using a tow cable or Boost Coupling to refine them into shared materials and banked rewards for delivery contributors; barren rocks still pay a token reward but add no material. Probes also reveal ore. Mining produces point loot to haul home. Fragmenting a rock reduces its total recoverable ore.

Glowtoys

Shine your headlights or engine light on a hidden phosphorescent crystal, or shoot it to charge it without breaking it. Its afterglow fades after you leave the light; a bright crystal draws a dotted trail toward a hidden cache, which releases cargo once you tow the crystal close enough. Bright crystals also attract wandering spiders, so keeping one charged works best with another pilot watching your approach.

Storage and loss

Stored satellites preserve health, but an active satellite cannot be stowed or replaced to save it. Death, leaving, or a long disconnect drops your hardware for anyone to collect; a brief disconnect keeps it reserved. Exhausted satellites return later as healthy loose pickups, and inventory does not survive a server restart.

Orbit sound

With Sound Effects on, your equipped satellite plays a soft directional chime once per orbit. The chime stops when the satellite breaks or leaves orbit.

Cooperative hops

Make up to three adjacent hops in a quick rhythm to leave visible connecting trails; the third creates a bright crew bridge. A teammate following the same line and direction automatically crosses that bridge and gets a brief burst of contour speed, refreshing the bridge for another teammate. Each pilot can use a bridge once; bridges fade quickly, hops never refill tool cooldowns, and a short pause starts a new combo.

Navigation crystals

Some rocks marked by pale curved strokes glide along contours. Break one with lasers, or tap crystal, to collect a navigation crystal that briefly widens Contour Lock pickup reach. The effect refreshes rather than stacks, leaves hop reach and ordinary speed unchanged, and ends on death.

Outer boundary

The circular wall destroys a vulnerable ship on contact. Rocks bounce inward, and reflected lasers become dangerous ricochets.

Ricochet Court

Northeast of Town Square, cyan court panels reflect lasers but let ships pass through. See bank-shot duels for the rules.

Spider nests

Each new nest has a fixed guard pack and mixed salvage, often including rare equipment; guard and cache numbers are in the reference below. Caches are time-limited, subject to the shared pickup limit, and do not refill when you return. Red map webs mark discovered guarded resources; the mark disappears when the last guard dies or the resource is collected or moved.

Guard patrols

Guards chase briefly and return home, while rare roaming hunters pursue farther. Spiders come in small, medium, and large bodies with varied legs and markings; larger ones are easier to hit. A bright red wash on nearby lines marks spiders. A red screen edge means one is hunting you. Killing guards clears that nest for the server session, but collecting its resource does not remove surviving guards.

Survive a hunt

Spiders prefer the most loaded eligible pilot, then the nearest pilot. Furnace refuge, Mineral Scan and guard leashes still limit their hunts.

One bite kills, and one ordinary laser hit kills the spider; otherwise escape its range or reach a lit furnace's safe area; Town Square has a larger sanctuary where spiders will not hunt. Mineral Scan makes spiders in range flee only during its short pulse, then they can return; probes and dark foundations offer no protection.

Spider tools

Haulers can extract silk or tow a living spider, but the captive can still bite ships within reach, including its Hauler, and towing calls rescuers that can cut the cable. Scouts can attach a probe to follow a guard home to its resource. See the Hauler and Scout tools.

Belt crawlers

The eastern belt also has spiders that cling to rocks and hop between them. Their attacks and tool limits differ from terrain spiders; see Belt spiders.

Frontier queens

Campaign hive queens have shields: pin one with a Hauler Tow Cable, or coordinate shots from opposite sides to expose her. Living queens regularly birth children while nearby crew keep the encounter awake; defeating a queen permanently clears her hive and exposes its furnace ruin. Ordinary resource nests elsewhere retain their separate patrol rules.

Timed egg sacs

Destroy every sac around a hive before the countdown from the first pop expires. Failed attempts regrow the sacs; a completed set stays destroyed through travel and restarts. One pilot can complete the challenge.

Scheduled hazards

Meteor showers and spider swarms alternate on UTC half-hours, with a warning followed by a short active window. They threaten nearby ships and cargo; built furnaces, shared discoveries and campaign progress remain intact. See network and HUD for the shared countdown.

Roly-polys

Look for pale green segmented wildlife near the contours. Roly-polys curl when a ship approaches; nudge a curled shell to send it rolling along the slope's contour before it uncurls. They are neutral, cannot hurt your hull, and carry no mining or towing reward.

Light and wreck shadows

Your headlights illuminate the route ahead, while your engine casts blue light that turns violet at contour speed. Recent wrecks interrupt those beams with ghostly shadows; their broken hull marks fade with the temporary wreck record. The light is shared by nearby pilots and can charge glowtoys.

Ride the music

Follow the paired stone-like arches through the narrow passages between contour districts. With Music enabled, traveling along a passage gradually brings forward a richer mix of the same track, at the same point in the song. Leaving the route fades back to the quiet mix; threat music still takes priority.

Firing while moving

Shots inherit your ship's motion; hold Space to repeat them, while a mouse click fires once. Direct crew shots mine rocks, kill spiders, and damage AI Raiders without hurting friendly pilots or AI Workers. After a wall, reflective-rock, or court-panel bounce, a shot becomes a dangerous ricochet that can hit anyone.

AI Raiders

Red ships named AI Raider pursue nearby pilots and workers and fire ordinary damaging bolts. Shoot them directly, or return to the Town Square sanctuary where raider bolts cannot hurt you; normal protection still applies outside town. Raiders respawn and carry no kill bounty.

Charged beam

Hold two playfield fingers, or F on desktop, then release for a larger, stronger shot; a growing ring shows the charge. Longer holds increase mining damage up to a fixed maximum, followed by a short charge cooldown; a quick tap does not fire. Opening a menu, losing focus, cancelling a touch, or dying cancels the charge, and abandoned holds expire.

Ricochet Court

Meet at the cyan court northeast of Town Square for informal bank-shot duels; it stays marked on both maps before exploration. Its indestructible panels reflect lasers without changing their energy, while ships pass through safely. Banked shots can escape through the gaps and hurt anyone, with normal death and protection rules and no separate duel score.

Lives and respawn

Death loses your carried points. You respawn at Town Square with restored health and brief protection; banked points, salvaged tools, and silk remain safe. Death also releases any tow and drops satellites. There are no lives or game over. Returning after a brief disconnect skips spawn protection.

Recovery

Avoid damage for a short time and your hull repairs itself automatically. A hit that removes health or spills protective cargo restarts the wait; repairs stop at full health and never revive a destroyed ship. Bank cargo at a lit furnace, then spend banked points on placeholders at Town Square.

Downed and rescue

On a campaign-enabled server, a lethal hit leaves you downed with a rescue beacon and a countdown. Another live pilot can hold Revive beside you, or activate it with a keyboard or assistive control to start or cancel; moving, damage, releasing a pointer hold, opening an overlay or either pilot disconnecting cancels the attempt. A completed rescue restores part of your hull with brief protection; Give up or an expired countdown causes the ordinary death and cargo loss, even if you reconnect after the deadline.

Hull deployment

Your hull pieces snap together on deployment and respawn while flight controls remain available. Reduced motion skips the assembly.

One crew

Human pilots fly on the same team, with informal duels at the Ricochet Court. Direct lasers and ship collisions are safe, but ricochets and towed rocks can hurt teammates.

AI Workers

Green ships named AI Worker collect nearby loose point cargo and return it to a lit furnace, contributing to the shared settlement rather than a pilot's bank. They leave equipment, silk, and satellites for you; protect them from AI Raiders. The world has one worker and one raider while pilots are connected; workers need a lit furnace near the crew to offload.

Scan, tow, deliver

Scan a rock before a Hauler tows or boosts it into a lit furnace. The delivering Haulers and recorded scanning pilots each earn rewards; each contributor receives the same base reward. Bring two Haulers for a colossal deposit.

Leapfrog on contours

Follow a teammate's line through the bright bridge left by their third quick hop to glide onto the next line with a brief drafting boost. Your crossing keeps the connection open for the next pilot; each pilot gets one use, and the connection has a fixed maximum lifetime. See cooperative hops.

Shared chart

Every pilot reveals part of the persistent crew map, with Scout covering more ground. Discovered resources and furnaces help teammates find work beyond their local radar. Open M or Map to plan a route together.

Named furnaces

Town Square starts lit; Scouts spend score to build outward through dark furnace foundations, and a Hauler crossing one is reminded that only Scouts can build. A lit furnace gains a fire trail back to the square and becomes a shared delivery site and spider refuge. See furnace travel and store to ride your ship between lit stops or buy placeholders at Town Square.

Persistent world

Exploration, built furnaces, and the asteroid field survive server restarts until the expedition resets. Harvested deposits regrow out of sight, so a mined field is worth revisiting.

Build the settlement

Everyone shares settlement progress. Reaching the next level requires deposited points and four materials, each scaling with the current level (per-level amounts are in the reference below). Deposits and every contributor's delivery reward count toward it. All requirements must be met; the recipe is consumed and surplus carries forward. The central docking station grows as the settlement levels up. Higher levels unlock more store placeholders; these spend banked points but grant no upgrade or gameplay effect.

Escort carriers

A loaded carrier draws nearby spiders. Escort the carrier and clear its route to a lit furnace.

Crew signals and rescue

On a campaign-enabled server, use Help here or Nest here; Shift-click the chart, or tap it on touch, to place a nearby help signal. Downed pilots automatically broadcast a rescue beacon; hold Revive beside one, or activate it with a keyboard or assistive control to start or cancel the countdown; choose Give up to respawn. See survival for interruption and reconnect rules.

Restore the frontier

Clear a queen to expose her furnace ruin, then haul physical supply from a lit settlement closer to Town Square. Deliver ore to stock a settlement, select Tow Cable, and use Tow supply while inside its intake; carry the shipment outward to the ruin. Finishing construction permanently lights the furnace and charts its surroundings; surplus becomes stock there, while destroyed shipments lose their supply.

Deep Scanner

Physical ore delivered to Town Square also fills the shared Deep Scanner project while keeping ordinary contributor rewards. Finishing it reveals the outer hive frontier to everyone; banked points cannot fund this project or a frontier ruin. These campaign systems appear only after the server's reviewed world migration is activated.

Read the HUD

Gold crates fill the cargo bay inside local and crew hulls as they collect points; a full hold pulses with Cargo Full, and offloading shows a stream, countdown and completion flash. The HUD shows your bank, cargo capacity, kit, shared settlement progress and resource requirements, and the crew leaderboard, ranked by bank (top ten on desktop, top three on touch, so you may not appear). The settlement percentage averages its five requirements. A thin health bar always appears above living crew ships and above your own damaged ship, and the Contour Lock button shows whether a contour is available or locked. On mobile, two compact lines show bank and cargo, then kit and settlement level progress; the detailed points and resource requirements remain in the desktop HUD. On touch, the ability button names your tool and a ring shows its cooldown; desktop has no cooldown indicator. One line at the top briefly shows satellite pickups, Delivery +N or Team delivery +N each, and Scout build results; no message appears on death.

Travel prompt

Inside a lit furnace's visible footprint, the prompt offers travel; at Town Square it says Enter and opens a choice of Store or Fast Travel. Living pilots appear by name on the destination map; off-chart pilots get an edge arrow, and their markers do not select a destination. See furnace travel and store for controls and boarding rules.

Radar and universe map

The minimap shows nearby space; M or Map opens the full shared chart. Both keep north at the top, matching the viewport and furnace destination map. Your ship marker turns to show its heading. Pinch the full chart to zoom and drag to pan; desktop also supports the mouse wheel and +/− keys. The north arrow and legend sit inside the chart, and Center on you restores the nearby ship view. Furnace marks keep their exact world position as you approach and cross them. The minimap shows furnaces once explored and pins off-radar crew to its rim, while the full chart always shows every lit furnace and foundation; their names appear on the chart only after you zoom in close, and only lit furnaces show fire trails. Explored ground has a pale blue tint; dark fog hides uncharted rocks and loot.

Wrecks and nest ruins

Red nest marks identify discovered guarded resources, even while their guards sleep offscreen; the marker disappears when its resource is collected or moved, or its last guard dies. Final guard deaths leave gray ruins, and pilot deaths leave broken hulls nearby. These temporary remains give no loot and block nothing; they expire and disappear after a server restart.

Ricochet Court

The cyan open-corner marker northeast of Town Square is always visible on both maps. See bank-shot duels before entering.

Probe beacons

A pulsing cyan radar marker identifies a live Survey Probe. Follow its moving host to find scanned minerals; a low battery makes the beacon itself flicker pale yellow in the world while the radar marker stays steady.

Sound and haptics

The title screen has separate Sound, Music, and Haptics settings, saved in this browser; Sound starts off and Music starts on. They live only on the title screen. Haptics appears only on touch devices whose browser can vibrate, so it is hidden on desktop and iPhone. If sound stops, tap the game to let automatic audio recovery retry, and check your device volume and output.

Connection interruptions

The game retries about fifteen seconds, then returns to the title screen; choose Enter Game. A brief interruption restores your ship, and carrying cargo preserves your field position even after a longer absence. Progress is tied to this browser's saved pilot, so a private window, cleared site data, blocked storage, or another device starts a new pilot. A crash or restart can undo about the last second of play, with no warning beyond the Reconnecting banner.

When an update is available, choose Later to keep playing or finish your input; Update available reopens the notice. Choose Update and reload and confirm when ready; it loads the latest version, disconnects your flight and clears unfinished input, while other tabs stay open. This tab never reloads automatically, but a server update may disconnect you or require a reload before you can rejoin.

Generated scripts and styles remain available across website updates for at least 30 days, so deferred tabs can still load audio and other features. A server update can still require you to reload before joining.

Can't join

A disconnected-from-server banner can mean your nickname is in use by an online pilot (try another), the server is full, or your tab is outdated (reload). An "unexpected error" notice returns you to the title screen; choose Enter Game to restart, or reload if the problem repeats.

Diagnostics

On /debug, open Report a problem on the title screen or from the bug icon during play, describe the issue, then Send. Saved, pending delivery confirms server storage; Delivered confirms the team's inbox. Opening the report button after delivery starts a fresh report; New report beside a pending or blocked receipt opens another editor without closing the dialog. Reports include editor event counts and focus state to diagnose keyboard trouble, without recording keys or clipboard content; keep secrets out and save a copy until storage is confirmed.

The bug icon expands or collapses player and page session IDs, frame rate, and connection health; this browser remembers your choice. Logging defaults to Info; add ?log-level=debug, info, or warn to change it for that visit. Use Copy Diagnostics when reporting trouble, including silent audio or unexpected Contour Lock releases. Lock-release records name the cause; server position or heading rejections also record rail distance, alignment, and the acquisition window.

For a device performance check, open /debug?performance=collect, enter the game, warm up, then choose Start. Choose Stop after the run, then send a report with the test conditions; it includes a timing summary. Download the full recording before starting another collection, and treat incomplete runs as unverified.

Graphics option

Live diagnostics include a Device label: Low-end, Commodity, High-end, or Unknown. Unknown means the browser did not supply enough hardware information to classify it.

Try the experimental WebGL version to compare graphics performance on your device. It uses the same scene and controls and falls back automatically if the renderer is unavailable. Reload the standard version to return to the default renderer.

For a flight-resolution comparison, open /debug?performance=collect&renderDpr=1; test &renderGlow=off separately at the original resolution. Lower resolution softens canvas details; these diagnostic choices apply only to that visit. Low-end Mineral Scan keeps its separate resolution limit.

Campaign status

Campaign-enabled servers show the shared Deep Scanner ore total and UTC hazard warnings above the playfield. Crew signals and downed beacons appear nearby, at the playfield edge and on the chart; rescue and sac countdowns use the server clock. Downed deadlines and permanent frontier progress survive reconnects and server restarts, subject to the normal last-checkpoint crash window.