Setup & components

Commander’s manual · Rules v3Print page

1 Objective

Construct the highest-scoring orbital refuge before the module supply is exhausted and the final solar storm arrives.

Commanders earn Renown from:

• Department Readiness: holding first, second, or third place in six station departments.
• The Storm Shield: screening the sunward lanes of the station with reinforced bulkheads.
• Synergy: installing modules that open corridors to two other departments.

Renown, once scored, is never lost.

2 Players and components

The game supports two to four human players.

• 72credit cards in three guild suitsValues 1 through 6, with four copies of each value in every suit.
• 60station modulesAcross six departments.
• 5market berths
• 6face-up credit-card spaces
• 1station board, one Command Core, and one Dry DockFor every player.
• 1score markerFor every player.
• 1purchase counter
• ·Drift discount stateFor every market module.

Guilds

The three salvage guilds are Fabrication, Energy, and Research. Every module is sold by exactly one guild, printed on the module. A module's guild never changes and does not depend on the berth it occupies.

• FabricationHatched
• EnergyDotted
• ResearchLattice

Module distribution

Each of the six departments has ten modules: Observatory, Reactor, Laboratory, Greenhouse, Habitation, and Dock. Printed costs within every department are 4, 5, 5, 6, 6, 7, 7, 8, 9, and 10.

Module distribution

Department	Modules	Printed costs
Observatory	10	4, 5, 5, 6, 6, 7, 7, 8, 9, 10
Reactor	10	4, 5, 5, 6, 6, 7, 7, 8, 9, 10
Laboratory	10	4, 5, 5, 6, 6, 7, 7, 8, 9, 10
Greenhouse	10	4, 5, 5, 6, 6, 7, 7, 8, 9, 10
Habitation	10	4, 5, 5, 6, 6, 7, 7, 8, 9, 10
Dock	10	4, 5, 5, 6, 6, 7, 7, 8, 9, 10
Readiness awards are the same for every department; see section 13.

The cost, guild, and socket layout of every module is defined by the module catalog that accompanies these rules. Every module has a unique identifier. The catalog satisfies these invariants:

• Every guild sells exactly twenty modules.
• Within each department, one guild sells four modules and the other two guilds sell three each. The guild that sells four differs across departments so that every guild sells four in exactly two departments.
• No module has four sealed bulkheads.

3 Module anatomy

Every module shows:

• Its department.
• Its guild.
• Its printed salvage cost.
• Its inward marker.
• Four sockets: inward, outward, clockwise, and counterclockwise. Each socket is either a docking port or a sealed bulkhead.

A module is installed with its inward marker toward the Command Core. Modules cannot be flipped or turned. A socket's position is fixed by the module, so the same module always presents the same socket toward the Core, away from it, and to either side.

An exposed docking port is a self-sealing airlock. It is safe, but it does not screen the station.

Figure 1 · Module anatomy

A Laboratory module sold by the Research guild with a printed salvage cost of 6, drawn as it sits in a sunward lane with its outward socket at the top. A docking port is drawn as a short blue bar centred on the edge; a sealed bulkhead as a thick orange bar along the whole edge. Here the inward and clockwise sockets are ports, the outward and counterclockwise sockets are bulkheads. The inward marker always points to the Command Core.

Sealed bulkhead Docking port

4 The station board

Every commander builds on an identical station board.

• Three rings around the Command Core: inner, middle, and outer.
• Ten sectors, numbered 0 to 9 clockwise. Sector 9 is adjacent to sector 0.
• Thirty docking nodes, one in every ring of every sector. A node holds at most one module.

Two nodes are neighbors when they are in the same sector on adjacent rings, or in adjacent sectors on the same ring. The Command Core is a pentagon; each of its five facets carries two docking ports, so the Core is a neighbor of every inner-ring node and presents a docking port toward each of them. The facets face the sector pairs 0 and 1, 2 and 3, 4 and 5, 6 and 7, and 8 and 9.

A corridor exists between two neighboring modules when the sockets facing each other are both docking ports. A corridor exists between an inner-ring module and the Core when the module's inward socket is a docking port. Any other combination of facing sockets is sealed. Sealed contact is legal.

The sunward axis passes through the center of sector 0. Sectors 8, 9, 0, 1, and 2 are the five sunward lanes, centered on that axis. The other five sectors are leeward.

Figure 2 · The station board

The pentagonal Command Core in the centre, with two docking ports on each of its five facets, one toward each inner-ring node the facet faces. Around it, three rings, ten sectors numbered clockwise with sector 0 centred on the sunward axis, and thirty nodes, drawn as dashed slots. The shaded sectors 8, 9, 0, 1, and 2 are the sunward lanes, centred on that axis. Eleven pods are docked, each with its inward marker toward the Core.

• A corridor: two facing docking ports, here drawn as a blue bridge between them.
• ○ A sealed contact: a bulkhead facing a neighbouring socket. Legal, but no corridor. Two are ringed: between the inner-ring pods of sectors 9 and 0, and between the middle-ring pods of sectors 0 and 1.

Preparing a printed copy

For a printed playtest, print at 100% scale, check the size on a single sheet, and cut only on the separate cut guides. Test front/back alignment before printing a complete set. Keep each module’s ID, guild, cost, sockets and inward marker visible. Do not resize modules separately for different rings.

Prepare the full component list above before playing. Keep a written record of every module that has earned Synergy, identified by its permanent ID. Track each market berth’s discount (0–2) and which modules were present at round start. These records are required to resolve later turns correctly.

No batteries or consumer-applied labels are required for paper play. Use the module anatomy and board diagrams to check orientation.

5 Setup

Commanders sit in seat order: seat one, seat two, and so on. Seat order is fixed for the match.

1. Every commander takes a station board with the Command Core in the center, an empty Dry Dock, and a score marker on zero.
2. In a two-player game, remove twelve modules at random while satisfying both totals: two from every department and four from every guild, leaving 48.
3. Shuffle the modules into the hidden salvage supply. Set the Storm thresholds (section 13) from the supply size.
4. Fill the five market berths in berth order from the top of the supply.
5. In a two-player game, remove one copy of every credit card, leaving 54. Shuffle the credits.
6. Deal credits one card at a time from the top of the deck, in seat order starting with seat one. A commander whose hand total has reached 15 receives no further cards. Stop when every commander has reached 15. Hands become private after dealing.
7. The commander with the fewest cards starts. Break a tie by lowest total value, then randomly.
8. Reveal six credit cards from the top of the deck into the shared display.
9. Set the purchase counter to zero.