Field manual

A cooperative, preparation-driven expedition campaign. Choose a role and build, join the crew, counter advertised threats and extract with persistent progress. Operations resolve autonomously; repeated chat commands do not attack faster or alter an already calculated result.

Rules

Every operator receives functional issued gear and a Pathfinder Shuttle. The six weapons and nine role selections are free. Owned equipment and ships remain after an operation, including defeat. The wallet is protected; risk applies to unbanked expedition earnings and supplies actually used. There is no fuel bill, hangar rent, passive fleet income, trading, permanent ship destruction, paid currency or real-money gameplay advantage in this implementation.

One combat, defense and utility module may be equipped, plus one optional tactical preparation and one emergency charge. Medkits are conditional passive stock. A hull has exactly two fitting bays, including after refits. Identical fittings cannot occupy both bays. Equipping and changing owned equipment between unlocked operations is free. A saved preset never buys anything.

The roster, votes and preparation lock at Final Call. Only deployed operators' mission votes select the contract. Ties use the first matching contract, and Contract A is the default when nobody votes. The next launch time is shown in your local timezone; launches require an eligible live session. The owner pauses or resumes that session. No offline catch-up or empty-roster territory penalty occurs.

Getting started

Select a role and weapon in Operator. Open the Command briefing: primary goal, threat, targeted material, difficulty and rarity are separate. Join with Deploy or !deploy. A prepared viewer remains useful without typing during resolution. Read your personal outcome after extraction and pin a module, blueprint or ship as your next goal.

The first few operations are your introduction; the Command, Operator, Fabrication and Hangar screens contain the next actions. No mandatory tutorial or purchase prevents participation. Prices below are the current source configuration, not promised acquisition dates.

Equipment and supplies

Prices are base Cord prices. Dominant Helios control gives a five-percent item-purchase discount; the confirmed quote shows the actual price. Hulls, cosmetics, assembly fees and refits do not receive that item discount. Permanent items cannot be sold. Supply salvage values are shown separately.

Supplies

Permanent operator hardware

Permanent ship fittings

A tactical charge is limited to one activation per operation. Failed attempts still use an attempted Probe/Siege Charge; carrying one without a suitable attempt does not. Emergency priority is the armed charge, then the permanent Phoenix relic check, then a live eligible teammate. Teammate rescue attempts and total successful team rescues are capped. Clean beacons do not create a new injury; they do not erase an earlier unrelated wound.

Permanent stats are limited by processed-roll floors/caps: lethal 2–30%, injury 3–35%, critical 5–60%. These are stage-roll probabilities, not whole-expedition survival. The readiness preview is before unknown autonomous team actions or new injuries. Role, module, fitting and hull skill contributions use bounded combination rules: only the best overlapping module and the best overlapping fitting skill bonus apply. An upgrade cannot bypass the caps.

Hangar and refits

Select one owned hull; parked ships grant nothing. Refits require actual mastery uses: 5 for Mk II, then 15 for Mk III. Module/fitting upgrade fees are 500 then 1,000 Cord. Hull refits are 1,500 then 2,500. A 6,000-Cord specialist hull therefore totals 10,000 Cord through Mk III before fittings, not the earlier superseded 7,000 example. Bays remain fixed at two. The free Pathfinder can also earn mastery through its actual flexible assists.

Try a hull with Practice in the Hangar. It is an isolated scenario and does not award career assets; its result is not a guarantee of your next live expedition. Cosmetic liveries, a dossier frame and the hangar theme can be purchased and applied independently of gameplay power.

Research and fabrication

Blueprint ownership is permanent and never consumed. Its research unlock is not a Cord purchase. Every missing blueprint has a directed route; random blueprint drops are shortcuts, not the only method. A personal extraction awards two research points, with bounded matching/boss/classified bonuses up to four. Overflow stays banked. After all five technologies are unlocked, new research is recorded as mastery; 50 mastery points unlock the selectable Research Laureate title.

A recipe requires the exact named blueprint, every material and the assembly fee. Crafting succeeds once those validated requirements are committed; there is no random craft-failure fee. Quantities for consumables are recipe batches. A duplicate permanent craft is rejected before charging.

The material IDs are Scrap (scrap), Alien Tech (alien), Flux Components (flux) and Weapon Parts (weapon). Advertised target materials are banked on primary success plus personal extraction. A successful salvage specialization can add bounded extra materials. No currency value is invented for a component to claim guaranteed investment profit.

Relics and career

All six relics remain account-bound, unpurchasable and untradeable. The first drop binds rank one, duplicates advance one rank through five, and further max-rank duplicates convert to 125–225 Cord recorded separately from mission earnings. There is no relic XP bar or paid relic upgrade. The Career section shows collected/uncollected state, current and next rank, all five ranks and career XP/rank thresholds.

Void Core and Flux Heart multiply: rank five of both means 1.20 × 1.25 = 1.50 on the eligible base stage term. Fortune boosts ordinary stage payout and the field-cache roll only when that stage did not require a lethal save; it does not increase blueprint or relic drop chance. A Phoenix save uses 45% of the eligible base stage term and causes a feedback wound. Phoenix is an eligible lethal-check rescue probability, not a whole-operation survival rate. Ordinary career XP and MVP scoring are based on performed actions/objectives/extraction, not wallet multipliers.

Each real expedition awards 5 XP, plus 5 per completed risk stage, 2 per successful action (capped at 12), 10 for your primary-objective contribution, 15 for extraction, and 3 per boss phase participated in. XP earned before a death is retained. Relics do not multiply XP. Career shows the confirmed cumulative XP, progress to the next rank and all rank thresholds; report rows show the actual XP earned. Practice and weekly challenges do not add career XP.

In the Armory, choose 1–100 charges on an individual supply card or 1–100 bundles on a restock card. Quick choices are 1, 5, 10 and 25. Set all supply quantities applies one quantity to all supply and bundle cards. Contents, price and confirmation show the full purchase. Permanent equipment, ships and cosmetics remain quantity one. In chat, use !buy medkit 5 or !buykit field 3. Craft-only supplies use recipe batches in Fabrication.

Campaign, bosses and Warfront

Primary objective, secondary objective, boss victory and extraction are distinct outcomes. The primary requires actual checkpoint attempts; survival alone is not delivery success. A boss resolves its shield, armor and core phases before extraction. Counter nodes, damage and retaliation have recorded consequences. Solo crews have a fallback attempt rather than an absolute required role.

Normal encounter rounds use a 25% base boss chance, with a guaranteed boss after four eligible misses. The guarantee makes the long-run encounter rate higher than 25%. Recovery/empty/offline opportunities do not waste that counter. Preparation is locked after the advertised board; purchases do not secretly change an underway result.

A completed operation contributes one chapter step; a successful primary adds another. The named-target route does not require losing a boss. A legitimately destroyed target stays destroyed; an incomplete command-key objective can be recovered without resurrecting it. The final victory requires the target down, primary success and at least one extraction. It records the ending once, then leaves repeatable contracts, collection and challenges available.

Original story campaign rules (before a persistent warfront is activated): The Warfront records clamped before/after changes. Counterattacks advertise a two-completed-operation defense window, with a bounded setback if not countered. Participating operators may vote to spend 20 shared Intel on scouting (three chapter steps) or fortification (two sector-control points). There is one equal-weighted vote per participant, not extra votes for wealth. The terminal stops offering campaign scouting after victory. The unlocked Veiled sector does not relock when Intel is spent.

Weekly objectives and standardized challenge

Three weekly objectives are accepted when you participate or use Accept contracts: three extractions, two extracted primary successes and eight bounded contribution credits. Earlier accepted weeks carry forward. Missing a whole week does not secretly create an unlimited retroactive reward claim.

The standardized challenge has three counted attempts per UTC week. It issues the same gear/hull, removes relic and supply advantages and allows role/weapon choice. Best score is primary 100 + extraction 50 + actions ×5 + criticals ×2. It pays no mission money/materials or normal career XP. Its clear grants an earned title. Fixed weekly/attempt scenarios are deliberate and separate from private production-operation seeds.

Reports and transaction safety

Your personal report shows exactly credited mission Cord, unbanked losses, separate relic conversion, XP, resources, research and actual contributions. A supply bought yesterday and used today is inventory consumption, not another wallet debit. Crew totals are not your individual reward. Chronicle text is generated from the mechanical record; no narrative generator can reroll your rewards.

A queued request is not a completed purchase. Retain the original request while it is processing or uncertain. An unclaimed expiry means nothing applied; a review state needs owner reconciliation. Changing tabs, reloading or checking the receipt never intentionally purchases again. Do not submit a replacement for an unknown outcome.

Achievements and rewards

Every achievement below grants a selectable in-game dossier title, not an arbitrary Twitch channel badge or an unimplemented armor skin. Legacy titles retain their meaning; Guardian is rescue-recipient history, while Lifeline requires performing teammate rescues. New action-based history starts from recorded events. Purchases, role-switching and replayed animations do not farm mastery.

Support and boundaries

Ask the channel owner about a transaction using its request ID/operation number. Never share private Sync secrets, WebSocket passwords, tokens or raw backups. The game has a published cap of 30 operators in this implementation; installed capacity and balance still require the owner's acceptance tests. Internal practice/sample data is explicitly labeled and must not be confused with a real account.

Persistent warfront campaigns

After the original story campaign is complete, the owner can begin a warfront from Owner controls while the session is paused and the waiting crew is empty. The update does not automatically start or reset a campaign. Existing careers, Cord, inventory, Intel, campaign victory and territory are preserved.

Each of the five fronts has four stages: reconnaissance, supply disruption, stronghold siege and consolidation. Each stage requires four primary victories with at least one survivor. This creates a minimum of 80 offensive expeditions; defenses, supply missions, recovery and unsuccessful attempts add to that total. No Intel project skips these objectives.

Siege and consolidation use one shared campaign supply charge per attempt. Convoy successes restore three, to a maximum of six. Below 40% local control, reclaim the route first; successful reclamation restores up to 12 additional control points. The contract board advertises these routes and costs before voting.

After three operations without an active assault, an enemy counteroffensive begins. Two successful defense expeditions repel it. Each unanswered three-operation window causes a breach: 8, then 10, then 12 control points, after which the assault exhausts its reserves. Successful defense renews the window. Targets rotate through the five sectors. Previously secured offensive objectives are retained.

Deployed participants have one equal Intel vote each. Scout costs 20 shared Intel and adds two operation opportunities to the current assault windows, or prepares the next assault, once per assault. Fortify costs 30 shared Intel for one charge in the advertised sector, up to three charges. Each charge absorbs four control points from one breach. Completed or unaffordable projects are not charged; ties select Scout. Personal Cord buys no extra votes.

The enemy advances only when actual rewarded expeditions settle. Offline time, empty launches, practice, website refreshes and replayed reports never advance it. Finish all 80 objectives and resolve any already active final assault to record victory. Contributors to at least four successful operations earn a permanent campaign commendation, even if absent from the finale. The owner may then begin another cycle without resetting any personal progress.