Peoples’ stations, orders and trust

The order board, the ring race, convoys, trust standings and the peoples’ great gifts.

At the dock of every people’s station stands an order board Order Board. Walk up and right-click it: the board holds one order of each kind per day, the same for every player, while what you take is yours alone. You can hold three orders at once. The reward is your road’s supply (stardust, void shards, deep embers), emeralds and the people’s trust. The mouse wheel flips through the cards.

The orders you have taken are always at hand in the task window (the F7 key), on the Orders tab: what to do, which station gave it, where to fly and how many blocks away it is, how long is left and what you will get; for “bring” orders, how many you already carry. Orders are taken, dropped and handed in at the board.

Order kinds

Order	What to do	Trust	From standing
Ore	bring ore from this space’s belts or islands	+15	at once
Parcel	carry a Station Parcel to another station of the same space within 10 minutes	+20 (and +10 to the sender)	at once
Survey	fly to a point 1,200–2,400 blocks away and pulse the scanner within 160 blocks	+25	Acquaintance
Rescue	find the stranded shuttle and come up to it with four hull plates and a canister	+30	Friend
Ring race	fly through 12 rings of light around the station within 90 seconds	+9, +6 more for the station record	at once
Hunt	bring trophies (rockgnawer teeth, drifter tallies, eel glands…); every fifth gives a module I	+15	at once
Comet ice	8 comet ice, only while a comet is in the sky; every third gives a comet core	+18	at once
Convoy	escort the station’s cargo drone and beat off two waves of drifters	+21	Friend
Order of the week	a large two-part order for seven days, each player gets their own	+36…48	Friend

A late parcel or weekly order costs −10 trust, a failed convoy −6. You see a loss at once: a line “Trust · people: −N — why” in the uplink and in chat.

A ship on the dock pad: orders are taken and handed in here

Ring race

Take the race and fly to the station: a track of twelve rings of light rises around it. The clock starts at the first ring. The next ring shines brighter than the rest and points the way on with a beam. Missing a ring does not end the race but adds 5 seconds. Your instruments show the timer, the ring number and how far behind the station record you are. The record (name and time) is shown on the race card at the board. A freighter makes it on the limit, a scout with time to spare.

At Interrift stations the rings are woven of threads, at Depths stations they are made of magma. The first race you hand in gives the Racer's Ribbon: a pennant of light flies behind your ship, a golden one for a record holder.

Convoy

Take a convoy and fly your ship to the meeting point (a mark in the sky, 350 blocks from the station): the station’s cargo drone comes out to meet you. The drone only moves while you are within 160 blocks and heads for a buoy 3,000–3,600 blocks away. At one third and two thirds of the way drifters attack it, three ships first, then four. The raiders go for the cargo and ignore your ship until you shoot at them, but every second ship of a wave is a hunter that comes straight for you. Choose whom to shoot first: while you chase the hunter, the others wreck the drone (its hull is 120; a wave nobody drives off destroys it in a little over a minute). Slow down as you close in: at full speed it is easy to miss the ships circling the drone. On a class B Hornet with a single Pulse Cannon II the convoy is risky — you reach the buoy with about half your hull; on a class A ship with Cannon III and a shield it is easy. Fall behind for more than a minute and the drone turns home, and the convoy fails. At the buoy the drone jumps, and you can hand the order in at the board. If you own a station, its cargo drones on their runs also go under the people’s guard. You can only escort one convoy at a time.

Trust standings

Standing	Points	What it gives
Stranger	0	ore, parcel, race, hunt, comet ice
Acquaintance	60	survey; docking 20% cheaper, station stalls 10% cheaper
Friend	180	rescue, convoy, order of the week; stalls cheaper still; the station master’s last task, the treasury key
Kin	420	class S for a ship at the dock and the shipyard (Kin with any one people of this space is enough); 30% discounts
Sworn	720	the people’s great gift, a title in the uplink and on the board, the people’s banner behind your ship

Trust grows not only with the station peoples: a people’s task in their settlement gives +18, a tablet shown to the elder +9, defeating the master of a space +60 to every people of that space. Striking one of the people costs −30.

Great gifts

To a Sworn friend the station board first shows a gift card with an “Accept” button. A gift cannot be bought, and it does one clear thing. The gift stays with you forever, even if you lose the item itself. While the item is in the pilot’s inventory, the people’s banner flies behind the ship.

Spoiler: this lists rewards.

Gift	What it does
Lens of the Unmoving	your station’s telescope sees sky anomalies a day early
Core of the First Storm	your station’s water never runs dry
Drift Bubble	your ship lifts off from any world without burning fuel
Jar of the First Lightning	your station charges itself without generators
Rim of the Crown	comet ice appears at your station once a day
The First Weight	no event can sweep your station from its place
Facet of the Seam	the beacon calls your ship across the worlds free of charge
Seal of the Hive	you can hold five orders instead of three
Lens of the Eye	every board gives you all its orders, whatever your standing
The First Breath	every second breath from your suit tank costs nothing
The Golden Seam	your ship’s hull mends itself: one point every 10 seconds
The Progenitor Spore	you never go hungry at the helm
The Unshed Tear	once a day a blow that would wreck your ship leaves it one point of hull
Ember of the First Fire	the cold of the worlds cannot touch you