Exploration

Explore should be as good as Trade and Fight. Trading has contracts, an exchange and four companies; fighting has the law, the Marshals and the police hail. A commander who'd rather wander needs the same: a reason to go somewhere, something worth finding when you get there, things to spend on, and something to show for it.

This builds on the first slice (rings, moons, surveys, signals; see ideas) and ties exploring into the companies (companies and contracts), above all Wexley-Yorozu, the terraformers, whose Science Division pays best for what explorers find (lore).

Principles

• Seeded, the same for everyone. Worlds, moons, signals, trails and their stories come from the galaxy's seed: every commander finds the same derelict at the same place, alone or in shared space. That costs nothing to run and lets players compare notes.
• Modern rules pay. Classic stays as it was: rings, moons and the visited record only.
• Grows with use. The shared galaxy adds names (first discoveries, colony charters) as a few records on the server, not a simulation.
• First is an honour, never an advantage, and there's always something new to be first to. Being first puts your name on the galaxy; it never makes your ship stronger. And the galaxy keeps growing (below), so a commander who joins next year has as good a chance at the newest finds as anyone.
• Small stories, our own words. Logs are short, specific and ours: no original prose, no real names.
• Every trail is somebody's story. One person at its heart, told only in what they left behind, and a feeling that turns along the way: glad, sad, mad, bad. Nobody remembers a clause; they remember the girl whose message was never sent. The company plots are the skeleton; the people are what make them real.

What's there (the first slice)

• Worlds: rings on about one planet in eight, up to two moons.
• Surveys: hold low over the planet, close to a moon or hot by the star; the data sells at any station, half price where it was gathered and up to three times far away (five before the October 2026 rebalance).
• What's left to do, at a glance: moons and the planet are bracketed in the explorer's lavender until surveyed, then turn grey with a ✓ after the name. Names show within 30 km of the surface. The docked screen lists the survey records you hold.
• Moons are solid: in-system jumps stop 1.8 km short of a moon and moons mass-lock within 2 km, as the planet and the sun do.
• Signals: derelicts, beacons and wreck fields with written logs and salvage, picked up by a planet survey or by flying near.
  • Each commander finds their own. A system's signals come from its seed; who has found them is kept per commander, so a newcomer finds the same beacon fresh, log and salvage included.
  • Beacons retire. Once found, a beacon's lamp goes out, and on later visits it has drifted off: gone from your sky, though not from anyone else's.
  • Wrecks are solid cover (October 2026). Derelicts, wreck fields and beacons stop lasers, yours and the enemy's, and bounce you off with a scrape. Found wrecks stay, so a system you know has places to hide.
• The record: the chart rings systems you've visited; explorer points and a rank from Homebody to Voyager. (Elite is the combat rank only: nobody reaches it by exploring.)

Surveying needs rethinking (Mark, 28 October 2026)

"The surveying needs to be improved. It's boring and isn't very good, as you could potentially fly into the planet as well." Holding a low orbit while a bar fills is a chore, not play, and flying low over a planet is a crash waiting to happen. To be designed: surveying as something you do, not wait through (sweeps you choose, features to find and frame, a scan that reveals the surface as you pass), with the ship keeping itself out of the ground: a safe orbit the computer holds while you work, or a warning and a pull-up, never a death by survey.

Stage 1: reasons to go, things to spend on (built, October 2026)

Trails

A derelict's log points somewhere. Follow it and the next find continues the story, usually three to five systems long, each within one ordinary jump of the last, ending in something worth the trip.

• Sixteen trails a galaxy, placed from the seed. The first find of each is an ordinary-looking signal in its starting system; each later one appears only once you've found the one before (it's what the clue told you to look for), already marked on your scanner when you arrive.
• Finding a step plots your course to the next system and adds the log to your survey data (it sells like any other). The end pays: a cache of salvage, valuable data and 25 explorer points.
• Four stories to start:
  • The colony that stopped answering (Wexley-Yorozu). A relay beacon still repeating "all well" eleven years on, and behind it in the queue a message never sent: nine-year-old Mira asking her gran whether the yellow flowers came up. The tug Hold Fast, cable cut, forty bunks rigged in the hold: pilot Sam Dray was told not to answer the Ninefold's call, and answered. The survey tender Patience, whose agronomist warned that the seed was never tested. A quarantine buoy asking ships not to render assistance, rewired by someone to give the course anyway. And the colony ship Ninefold in a parking orbit, lights on, air good, two hundred bunks made, nobody aboard; on the bridge, the report, and a note from the administrator, Teodor Vasse: "Read it. Then decide who you give it to."
  • The long way home. Ada's letters to Noor, one per system, after nine years away: glad to be coming home, sad when her escort's drive gives out, done being angry about why she left. Her ship is found one jump short, out of fuel, the escape pod gone and aimed at home, and a last letter: sell what's in the hold, send Noor the money, tell her I was nearly there.
  • The lost survey. O. Fenn, chartmaker, racing her failing eyesight: "The doctors give me a year of good sight. Forty systems left. I can do forty." She turns down Wexley-Yorozu's offer for the unfinished chart ("it goes to everyone or no one"), and the last beacon has the full chart, the compass rose complete, its last point drawn big and crooked: "Done. For anyone who flies."
  • A debt unpaid. What looks like a pirate's kill tally (eleven marks, some crossed through) is Bel's: the twelfth hauler of a convoy whose route was sold for 300 Cr. She is crossing off the ones who sold them. Her cache holds the guns and narcotics she took off them, and eleven envelopes for the families, to go to the Mutual.
• The Ninefold report: the explorer's choice. Read it first (Read the Ninefold report at any station): the agronomist's warning, Regional Director Corwin Ashe's memo (relief would cost 31,000,000 Cr, recovery under clause 214 only 4,000,000; keep the relay running so the families aren't alarmed), Vasse's plea from the sealed bridge, the recovery count (158 taken for yard work, 41 missing with Sam Dray, Vasse taken last, having stayed so the tug could leave), and Mira's message. Then choose:
  • Hand it to Wexley-Yorozu (any W-Y station): the Science Division pays 1,200 Cr and remembers you kindly (+3 standing). The relay keeps saying all well, and they go looking for Sam Dray.
  • Publish it anywhere else: the Mutual's newsletter pays 300 Cr, the families learn what happened, Mira's message reaches her gran, and Wexley-Yorozu remembers you differently (−3).
  • It doesn't sell with the rest of your data. The game records which you chose, for later: where Sam Dray and the forty went, and what Corwin Ashe does next.
• On the Station tab: trails under way, how far along, and where the last clue pointed.

Terraforming candidates

Every system's planet is already home to someone, so Wexley-Yorozu looks at the moons. A moon survey now grades it: Barren (about half), Marginal (a third) or Candidate (about one in six; bigger moons more often). A Candidate's data is worth four times as much: it's the start of a colony.

Wexley-Yorozu: the best price for data, and survey contracts

• At any station where Wexley-Yorozu works, survey data sells for a quarter more.
• Survey contracts on the Contracts tab at W-Y stations: survey the moons at Riedquat, data to any Wexley-Yorozu station within so many jumps. No cargo, so any ship can take one; paid like a contract, with standing. When you hand it in, W-Y keeps the moon data (it's theirs now), so it isn't paid twice. Not lost if your ship is.

Explorer's kit

• Long-Range Fuel Tanks (2,200 Cr, tech 8): ten light years in the tank instead of seven. Structural: they can't be knocked out.
• Deep Survey Scanner (1,800 Cr, tech 7): surveys from twice as far and in half the time, and picks up signals from four times as far.

Both Modern only.

Stage 1b: the explorer's road (built, October 2026)

Exploring paid, but it didn't lead anywhere: the rank was only a word on the Station tab. Trading buys a better ship; fighting climbs to Elite and the Marshals. Now the explorer's rank opens doors, and what you find carries your name. (Elite stays the combat rank: nobody reaches it by exploring.)

The rank opens doors

Reaching a rank says what it opened, there and then.

Advanced autopilots

The explorer's work is long flights and patient holding. The autopilots do the flying; you choose where.

• Survey Autopilot (3,000 Cr, tech 8, Pathfinder and above). Press 9 (or the Survey button). It picks the nearest thing in the system still to survey or find (the planet, a moon, a signal you've detected), flies there, using in-system jumps when it can, steering wide of the planet, and holds you in survey range until it's done, then moves on to the next. It leaves the star to you: no autopilot flies into that heat. Any stick or throttle input, or 9 again, hands control back. A hostile ship coming close, damage, or nothing left to do also hands it back, but it brings the ship to a stop first: it never leaves you coasting into a moon.
• Route Autopilot (5,000 Cr, tech 10, Pioneer and above). With a course plotted, it starts the next jump by itself about twelve seconds after you arrive in each system on the way, as long as there's fuel and nothing hostile nearby. Press H during the countdown to stop it. It never lands you anywhere you didn't plot.

Both Modern only, and both can be knocked out in a fight like any other equipment.

The lost courier and the Will-o'-the-Wisp

Somewhere in each galaxy a Science Division courier, the Quiet Hand, drifts with no crew and its bay sealed from the inside. In the rack is a prototype stamped WILL-O'-THE-WISP: the marsh light you chase and never catch. Its last order: "Under no circumstances let this fall into private hands."

• Found, never bought. One courier a galaxy, placed from the seed. Its signal shows only to Pioneers and up, found like any other (survey the planet, then fly to it). Within 20 light years, the Station tab carries bar talk of it ("a Science Division courier went dark within 15 light years of here"); in its system, "survey the planet and listen".
• What it does (Modern): it jinks the ship out of the way, so enemy lasers miss half the time, and half the missiles fired at you are spoofed as they close, while your lasers are cold (none fired for 10 seconds): an explorer's way out of a fight, not armour for starting one. It can't be knocked out, and nobody will buy it from you. Hard to shoot down, not impossible: shields, hull and good flying still matter.
• Finding it is worth 25 explorer points. Wexley-Yorozu will want it back (a thread for later).

Your name on the galaxy

When you sell or hand in data at a station while signed in with a callsign, the shared galaxy records who got there first: one record per world, moon and signal, the first commander to bring its data home.

• The chart shows it: Charted first by CMDR Nova for a system's planet, Candidate charter: CMDR Nova for a terraforming Candidate (your name on the colony charter, for stage 2), Found first by … for signals and trail steps.
• The Station tab counts your firsts.
• First come, first named: whoever reaches a station with the data first. Not signed in? The game works as before, and nobody's name goes down.
• It costs one small record per body on the server (a table in the accounts object), read a galaxy at a time and cached. The client says what it surveyed; the server checks every claim against the galaxy's seed (that moon, signal, trail step or courier really is in that system: isRealFind in explore.ts, which the Worker shares), takes at most a hold's worth at once, and lets one account win at most 60 firsts an hour and 300 a day. Anything over stays unclaimed for the next commander. It can't prove you flew there, so an admin tool (npx tsx tools/firsts.ts list | wipe "<callsign>") shows who's claiming fastest and wipes a cheat's claims.

Discoveries make the news (idea, Mark, 29 October 2026)

Mark: "add news to station news feeds where CMDRs discover stuff... if a CMDR docks and posts surveys then this becomes news!" Commanders' firsts already reach the home page's live feed (live-feed.md: CMDR JAMESON charted Lave first: the planet, a moon and a derelict). This brings them into the game's own station news boards.

• Only when you publish. It's news only if the explorer chooses to publish (the Mutual's newsletter, above), never automatically. That gives publishing its reward: your callsign on news boards across the region. Selling quietly to a company keeps the find secret and pays better.
• At the speed of news. The find is news where it was filed first, and reaches nearby systems over the following days, like every other story (information that travels).
• One line per explorer. Several firsts are grouped into one line, as the feed does, so one busy explorer can't flood a board.
• Callsigns are public, so the same moderation as the feed and clip pages applies.
• Single-player shows your own finds; the shared galaxy shows everyone's.
• Parked for later: big finds draw the companies and move prices, feeding Mark's parked money and factions idea.

Stage 2: worlds you can watch change

Finds that change the world: precious deposits, found by explorers and sold to a company, that become developments every career supplies, guards or raids. Designed in from discovery to development.

Alongside the station yards of building worlds:

• Worlds being terraformed. A few systems with thin populations have Wexley-Yorozu processors at work: a point of interest in orbit, and a planet whose sky shifts colour over real weeks, driven by the clock so everyone sees the same stage. Survey the progress for W-Y.
• Candidates become colonies. The first commander to hand in a Candidate's data already has their callsign on its charter (stage 1b); here the colony is founded and grows.
• The darker side. W-Y wants Candidates before anyone files a claim. Sell a find to a rival, or warn the people who'd be moved off: the explorer's own moral choices.

New signals over time (proposed, not built). Today a system's signals are fixed, so a commander who has found them all has nothing left there but its trails. Instead, a few signals could be tied to the clock as well as the seed: a fresh beacon or wreck now and then, the same for everyone at the same moment (a stricken ship's beacon this week, gone by the next), so places you know keep giving. The old ones fall sunward as the new ones arrive. Each new one needs its people and its feeling, like the rest.

Hiding in the clutter (stage 1 built October 2026; stage 2 proposed)

Wrecks already stop lasers. Clutter goes further: a ship in among the wreckage is hard to pick out at all. It gives the fight somewhere to go besides "shoot or run", and gives running dark a second use.

The rule.

• Inside a wreck field (about 700 m round its centre), you're lost in the clutter to any ship more than 1,500 m away; with your transponder off (running dark), more than 600 m.
• Firing gives you away. For 3 seconds after you fire, everyone can see you wherever you are.
• It works both ways. While you're in the clutter your scanner is cluttered too: contacts beyond 1,500 m drop off it. You don't get to watch them hunt you.
• Derelicts (a single hull) are cover, not clutter.

What the hunter does. An enemy that loses you doesn't forget you. It flies to where it last saw you and searches, circling the spot, for 30 seconds. See you again and it attacks; time out and it gives up (a pirate goes back to hunting traders, police back to patrol). Police hunting a wanted commander search the same way: you can lie low from the law, too.

What you're told. Entering a field: In the clutter · hidden beyond 1.5 km. When a hunter loses you: Lost them · they're searching where they last saw you. When one gives up: They've given up the search.

Stage 2 (proposed). New places to hide, each with its people:

• Old battle zones: a field of wrecks from a fight people still remember, for example the Marshals' last stand, with a memorial beacon left by the wing leader's widow, and salvage still out there for the brave.
• Asteroid fields: rocks as cover, and later a reason for mining.
• Ambushes: pirates lying in wait inside a field, so you enter one warily.
• Steering round: enemies fly round wrecks and rocks instead of through them.

Planetfall (proposed, later)

Going below orbit, in stages: first skimming a planet's upper atmosphere (a Dragonfly's wings make it the first ship that can, the Dragonfly), then landing pads at settlements, then real surfaces to fly over and explore. Each stage needs its places and its people, like everything else here.

Stage 3: witchspace itself

• Misjumps. Rarely, a jump drops you in deep space between systems, with a wreck field or a signal and little fuel. Danger and drama, and the door to Thargoid space later.
• Rifts like the Marshals' that open on their own and lead somewhere unmarked.

Stage 4: Legends

Very rare seeded encounters at the end of the longest trails. The first: the original game's first mission, the hunt for a stolen prototype, the Constrictor, as a trail of sightings across a galaxy.

The Falcon (built, October 2026; to be redesigned)

Next: the Falcons, a Legend: one named captain a galaxy (the Solo sons, who hid the Ninefold's forty-one), met on her own circuit, who disables rather than destroys and remembers you. The first version below is a random pirate roll, and plays as a hazard rather than a Legend.

The first Legend in the lanes: a pirate, and a nod to CMDR Solo (Samuel Penn, who flew Elite in 1984 and draws its ships for Traveller; see CREDITS).

• The ship: a long blade of a hull with a dorsal spine and two radiator vanes swept forward like talons. They aren't wings (there's no air to fly on): her drive runs hot and the vanes shed the heat. Pirate red, full glow. Built by Solo & Sons. 75 m long and 72 m across the vanes: longer than the Cobra she hunts (she was Cobra-sized at first and read as a sliver). Faster than a Cobra (340 m/s against 280), 3 missiles (under Modern rules, never two at you at once, and 20 s apart), an ECM.
• The homage stays ours (homage rules): the name, the maker and the flavour text wink; the geometry is original, nothing like the film ship.
• Meeting her: a small chance in each pirate encounter (4% in an anarchy, down to 0.5% in the safest systems), never two at once, Modern only. She hunts alone and runs dark: an unidentified contact on the scanner, a cold white ship, until she's inside 2 km and the hull read says FALCON · the one the haulers warn you about (see how a dark ship looks).
• The prize: a 2,000 Cr bounty, and gems and gold in her hold.

The galaxy grows: made by players, found by explorers

The heart of exploring in the long run. Nobody needs to generate more galaxy: the community grows it, and explorers are how the community finds what it made.

• What people make: derelicts and their logs, trails and backstories, ships (with the story of where one was first seen), stations and outposts, Legends; one day whole galaxies (a seed plus hand-made places), reached through rifts.
• How it arrives: a data file, checked by a validator like ships are, reviewed under the same rules (original work, no real names, the homage rules), and shipped with the next release. Classic stays untouched.
• Where it appears: placed from its id and the galaxy's seed, so everyone finds it in the same place, at no running cost. It isn't on the chart and isn't announced; explorers of rank hear bar talk; surveys and signals reveal it as usual.
• Credit both ways: the first explorer to bring it home is named on it beside its maker (Found by CMDR Nova · made by CMDR Quill), and the maker sees how many commanders have found their work.
• Why it's fair: new things to be first to arrive with every release, so firsts never run out and joining late is never too late.
• It needs honest claims first (below): if a script could claim everything the moment a release ships, community content would be grabbed the same way.
• Also: a photo gallery of the best P-key shots, by system.

Fairness and pacing (reviewed October 2026)

Measured from the game's own seed and prices (averages over all 2,048 systems): a system holds 2.7 bodies and 0.6 signals, worth about 12 explorer points and 190 Cr of data (600–950 Cr once carried 20–40 light years). Surveying a system and jumping on takes 5–6 minutes, so a keen explorer manages about 10 systems an hour.

Who is first, and does it matter?

Firsts are prestige, not power, but if the only names on the galaxy are early names, a new commander arrives to a finished map. So:

1. Honest claims (built, October 2026): claims capped at a human pace (about 60 an hour an account), checked on the server against the seed (the moon or signal must exist in that system; the galaxy generator is plain TypeScript and runs in the Worker), and an admin tool to wipe one account's claims.
2. Firsts that renew: Latest survey beside Charted first by on the chart (surveys go stale after a few weeks, and the Science Division pays again); deposits arrive in survey seasons (a few new ones a galaxy each month, from the clock); and above all, the galaxy grows with community content.

Pacing (built, October 2026). Before the rebalance Voyager took about 12 hours and exploring paid 6,000–9,000 Cr an hour against 1,500–3,000 from contracts (median 167 Cr a run): too fast and too rich. Elite, at a kill every 3–6 minutes, is 300–600 hours. Each explorer rank is now paired with a combat rank of similar effort:

The data distance bonus is capped at 3× instead of 5× (about 4,000–5,000 Cr an hour, level with good trading), and the Will-o'-the-Wisp is found at Pioneer and works only while your lasers are cold (none fired for 10 seconds): an escape tool for explorers, not armour for pirates. Commanders who passed a door under the old numbers keep what they bought or found; the rank shown follows the new table. Elite stays above everything, earned in combat only. See routes to Elite.

Numbers (stage 1)

Think something here should change? Say so on the ideas board, where others can vote it up, or email hello@witchspace.org.uk. If you code: this page is docs/design/exploration.md on GitHub, open to pull requests.