Map and visibility

Rulebook index · Navigation mechanics

Alpha-10 displays asteroid and clan names throughout its 3D map, tactical chart and exports. Named regions identify the existing orbital streams. IDs remain secondary labels and exact order targets; the finder also matches names without accents. SVG labels use asteroid names when space permits, with exact IDs, ownership and coordinates retained on every point. See clan and asteroid names.

What the chart represents

The tactical chart places playable asteroids at their orbital positions in AU. A habitat is the settlement built on one. Habitability, ownership, fleets, cargo and recorded events come from the authorized world view. A site ID remains its gameplay identity as it moves. The Sun, eight reference planets and the Moon have exaggerated visible sizes and illustrative orbital phases; no real-date ephemeris, planetary production, planetary ownership, collision, gravity penalty or solar hazard is modeled.

Earth's 3D surface uses fixed, simplified continental geography, blue oceans, polar ice and drifting cloud detail in both graphics modes. Its terrain and weather are illustrative artwork. The Sun has a bright gold-white surface with fine animated granulation and a soft corona, without dark surface blotches. These visual textures convey no hidden game information.

Every substantial icy rock in the current world is a selectable playable asteroid. Six silhouette families include cratered boulders, long shards, joined lobes, broad slabs, angular monoliths and eroded flanks. Each site has deterministic variations in surface, proportions and orientation, carrying fractured ice, frost and exposed rock. Relative size and frost coverage reflect public size and geology, separately from ownership, beacon and selection markers. Rock display radii are 0.045, 0.064 and 0.088 AU before shape variation, all smaller than Neptune’s display radius. These exaggerated sizes are illustrations, not physical dimensions. Focus approaches an asteroid to reveal its surface while the full belt keeps it small.

Alpha-10 sites with a known positive public population show a fitted pressure port on the lower flank. A recessed octagonal bay ends at a sealed pressure bulkhead; a sloped cargo apron, mooring clamps and rails make the approach legible. Insulated water accumulators, connected service pipes and a small mounted radiator match the civilization's ice-fed pressure propulsion and buried fission power. Separate machined saddles embed into the exact rock triangles, retaining exposed terrain between equipment. The mount follows the local slope, chooses a shallow lower-flank patch and keeps at least 72% of the standard port footprint. It clears both graphics levels and stays in the same place when quality changes. The solid asteroid shell remains intact beneath surface installations and ground battles. Public habitat complexes and authorized facilities retain their own separate models.

Amber lamps attached to the apron rails mark the approach in three pairs. A soft sequence repeats every 3.6 presentation seconds; pressure-lock indicators remain steady. These lamps use the shared visual clock, freezing with reduced motion, paused playback and hidden tabs. Both graphics levels retain the complete docking silhouette, supports, pressure equipment and approach lights. Surface shading adds restrained frost, fracture detail and roughness without displacing the terrain or moving building contacts.

Saved worlds using the earlier presentation keep their four illustrative settlement styles: domed habitats, tanks and cargo clusters, observatories, or tiered terminals. Their fitted pads support pressure cabins, coolant plumbing and radiators. Their carved docking mouth has a thick octagonal collar, tapered recessed deck, landing sill and four pairs of floating approach beacons; one to three small service assemblies orbit nearby. Alpha-10 pressure ports are independent of this legacy scenery switch.

An empty or unknown-population site gets no illustrative pressure port, even when owned. Port shape, fittings and style depend only on public site identity and habitation. They do not reveal building counts, defenses, reserves, power status or ship inventory; public, private and replay viewers of the same public state receive the same port. The bay and its equipment add no docking action, fleet contact, production, trade connection or transfer rule. Actual authorized facilities are described separately in Fast matches. SVG exports summarize known habitation with an amber window above the rock symbol; site coordinates and ownership attributes remain exact, while symbol sizes are schematic.

The denser middle of the belt and sparse tails also shape the fine dust and soft haze in the 32–52 AU Kuiper particle band. Close focus adds drifting ice motes and a faint local veil. Dust, haze, distant sky, sun glow and lit surfaces are scenery; they do not indicate an atmosphere, resources, collision risk, visibility restrictions or a sensor range. Lobby expansion adds sites within the same playable belt.

Alpha-10 territories use merged, angular projected ownership frontiers, shared by the 3D map, chart and SVG. In 3D a thin X/Z reference plane carries the frontiers, with faint altitude leaders to the actual asteroids. Adjacent holdings of one clan have no internal outlines; neutral and rival sites constrain the regions. Frontiers stay visible between rounds, holding the prior boundary through movement and deployment and blending into the resolved boundary in the final two seconds. Alternating faction-colored hatching identifies a current occupation's owner and occupier, or otherwise the last resolved site battle's public participants. Recent fighting is historical evidence, not a promise of surviving hostile presence. Neutral battle sites remain unowned. The layer fades at close range and near edge-on views, and hides during battle viewing. See Fast matches for controls, conflict semantics and projection limits. Older non-motion renderer fixtures retain their transparent spheres of influence. Neither presentation awards ownership of surrounding space, overlap penalties, extra production, firing range, passage restrictions or automatic conquest. Only ownership of the actual site governs mechanics.

Ships at different distances

Distant fleets appear as small direction symbols in their clan's color. Approaching them crossfades the symbol into a full ship. The six fleet roles and two civilian variants use inexpensive, utilitarian designs: chamfered pressure cabins, exposed ice cassettes, pressure vessels, welded frames and replaceable modules. Continuous keel frames, tank saddles and aft thrust bulkheads support the equipment and engines. Ships melt asteroid ice and expel the water under pressure for thrust; fission equipment provides power. Tanks and visible pressure lines feed compact steel jets with substantial chambers, mounting collars and short, thick-walled outlets. Their open mouths are recessed, and restrained pale vapor expands gently from those outlets. Compact radiator racks reject heat, and small attitude-control outlets are inset into the frame sides. Frame rails finish behind the deck edges; armored ships use integrated decks with clean launcher housings. Hulls carry lightly worn painted panels, dark structural steel and muted identification markings. Small surface wear remains stable as the camera moves.

Ship designs use public role or rescue designation, identity and clan color. All eight appearances use one fifth of their former display scale; the 9–22 pixel symbol crossfade and generous picking targets remain. Weapon fittings, ice quantity, armor detail, wear and tank appearance are illustrative: they disclose no private HP, crew, supplies, cargo quantity, fuel remaining or research. Public, private and replay viewers see the same design for a given contact. Model dimensions are exaggerated for readability. Decorative settlement orbiters remain separate from actual fleet contacts.

Stationary ships use separate visual berths outside their asteroid so the hulls remain visible and individually selectable. Berths depend on the full authorized contact list plus confirmed losses in the current battle record, so changing a local faction or NPC filter does not reshuffle the remaining ships. The authoritative position of a docked fleet is still its asteroid's center; JSON, ASCII and SVG retain that coordinate. SVG uses fleet triangles, with public role in the contact description, at every scale.

Travelling hulls follow the recorded journey and face its current direction. A small display clearance around the enlarged start and end rocks keeps hulls visible at launch, arrival and intermediate flybys; exported journey coordinates stay authoritative. A known, executing journey emits soft, expanding steam behind the nozzles; stationary or stranded ships, waiting civilian vessels, future queued moves and completed legs emit none. Plume shape and animation are decorative and do not report acceleration, fuel remaining or a new cost. The colored travel trace fades away at close ship scale, leaving the hull and vapor readable. The route quote and arrival year remain the movement reference.

Symbols and motion

Executed route traces follow the current leg and its remaining path. Active movement cues respect fleet/cargo and faction filters. Blockaded convoy traces are static. An idle scene does not invent fleet travel. A moving arrow's decorative speed has no effect on the year-based ETA.

At the full belt scale, NPC capital names fade so the asteroid distribution remains readable. Zooming toward a region brings those names back; selected and hovered asteroid names remain anchored to their rocks.

Alpha-9 live map positions interpolate the fraction toward the next authoritative tick, capped before the next unresolved year. Alpha-10 holds strategic positions during planning and plays only the resolved interval during its shared 12-second result window; ongoing battles retain full-speed cosmetic animation. Alpha-10 planet and lunar motion follows its saved paced model when present. Explicit replay time takes priority over wall-clock time. Gameplay is discrete even while the display moves smoothly. Alpha-10 route lines retain the quoted departure and arrival geometry through camera movement, animation and polling; use the route quote and recorded arrival round to assess the transfer.

Soundtrack controls

Press Play music in the sidebar footer, above your profile, to start the 19-track soundtrack. Every page load starts silent. The compact player shows the original track title above one slim row of Previous, Play/Pause, Next, Mute and volume controls. Its inline buttons are 24px, with a small volume knob. The icon rail opens a viewport-bounded Music panel with 44px touch targets and a pinned Close button; on mobile they stay in the navigation drawer footer while the navigation list scrolls. Simulation has a Music button in its header. Buttons support keyboard focus and Enter/Space; arrow keys adjust the volume slider, and Escape closes the music popup.

Tracks shuffle without repetition until the whole collection has played, and a new cycle avoids immediately repeating the last track. Previous returns through listening history; Next follows any forward history before consuming the shuffled queue. Changing tracks while paused keeps music paused. Your browser remembers the track, playhead, shuffle/history, volume and mute locally; clearing site storage resets them. The initial volume is 30%. Use device volume controls on platforms that restrict browser volume changes.

Music continues across station changes, Archive, dialogs, navigation collapse and background tabs. Archive's own replay controls affect recorded game time, independently of the soundtrack. Playback in another game or Simulation tab pauses the previous tab's player. Supported system media controls operate the same soundtrack. Closing or reloading the page stops audio; restoring preferences requires pressing Play again. Operating-system suspension and browser media policies can still interrupt background playback.

Audio loads only after Play, one selected track at a time. If a format fails, the player tries the alternate encoding, then skips unavailable tracks with a status message. If none can play, Retry music tries again. The soundtrack makes no game commands and changes no visibility or map exports.

Layers and controls

Every in-game station shares one cockpit. The desktop sidebar resizes the workspace between labeled navigation (184px) and an icon rail (56px), remembering your preference. It starts expanded at 1280px and above, and collapsed below that. Below 960px the navigation becomes a drawer. On mobile, the year and countdown sit in the top row between the station title and notification controls; authorized clan reserves use a second row only when present. The compact header also holds connection and season/account controls. Archive uses recorded context and never shows live private reserves. Its loading, empty and failed-record states stay in the same cockpit, with navigation and account controls available throughout. Leaving Archive pauses its recorded replay; returning retains the public playhead. World opens its inspector only for an explicit selection or command workflow. Desktop places it to the right; touch screens use an expandable bottom sheet, with a right inspector in short landscape layouts. The upper-left utility group contains Navigate, Find, Layers and Events. Only one utility popup opens at a time; Escape or clicking outside dismisses it without discarding a flight plan. Find opens a temporary directory of your ships and habitats, searchable authorized contacts and asteroids, plus a Reference category for regions and solar bodies. It does not occupy a permanent map column. Sector list rows keep their markers compact, leaving the available width for names and sector details.

Fullscreen, immediately left of Cinematic in the map toolbar, expands World or Archive to fill the screen while keeping map controls and inspectors available. Choose Exit fullscreen or use the browser's Escape shortcut to return. Panels, filters and flight-plan drafts are retained. Starting and exiting Cinematic from a fullscreen map retains fullscreen. Leaving the map or changing worlds exits fullscreen. On narrow screens the fullscreen button uses an icon; at the smallest widths the whole toolbar uses icons.

Click or tap to inspect; drag to pan; scroll or pinch to zoom. Right-drag or the Orbit toggle rotates the camera. Navigate has three rows: Overview and Home, Focus and Route, then Orbit beside the − and + zoom buttons. Overview fits the playable belt; Home approaches your capital, another owned habitat or a surviving ship; Focus (F or double-click) approaches the inspected object; Route frames the draft or selected journey. Focus flies from the current camera position to the object with a brief eased approach and a gentle pullback for distant targets. Scrolling, pinch zoom and the +/− zoom controls keep following the focused asteroid, ship, convoy, planet or battle at the chosen distance. Right-drag or the Orbit toggle changes the viewing angle while retaining focus. You can keep rotating vertically or horizontally through complete revolutions, passing over and under the asteroid without stopping at either pole. On touch screens, two fingers zoom and orbit around a focused object, including in command mode; one-finger panning releases it. Panning, W/A/S/D movement or choosing Overview, World, a region or a route releases the follow. A selection click keeps the current camera focus; focusing a different object replaces it. Choosing World/Overview or explicitly focusing an object restores its default upright viewing angle, including after rotating upside down. The camera levels smoothly during the approach; zoom, orbital tracking and panel resizing retain the current inspection angle. Reduced-motion preferences make the approach immediate. Press W, A, S or D to leave focus and fly forward, left, backward or right relative to the camera. While flying, hold right click and move the mouse to point the camera without orbiting a target. The camera places focused objects in the space clear of the dock. Press / to open Find; + and − zoom. Escape dismisses temporary panels or map targeting without discarding a flight plan.

A click or tap near several projected asteroids opens a chooser. Overlapping fleet symbols open a chooser on desktop and mobile; each entry shows owner, role and stance so every ship can be selected separately. A stack on an asteroid also offers the asteroid itself. At close range, click or tap an individual hull. Another clan's ship exposes public contact details without HP. Inspection does not move the camera or replace an order destination. Focus follows the selected ship's berth or journey through displayed time changes; its label sits beside the hull. Selecting a site from Find also approaches that site. Small rocks retain generous hit areas. Focus faces the docking bay of an inhabited asteroid. Camera navigation issues no orders.

Switching stations preserves World selection, camera pose, filters and the flight-plan draft. Locate on World deliberately focuses the chosen object instead of restoring the previous view. Pending submissions continue while another station is open, and returning shows their result. Quotes must match the latest authorized world before submission is enabled. Changing viewer, assignment or season clears private drafts. Live World, simulation and public Archive state are isolated.

A ship or a destination can start the same Flight plan: choose Move, Attack, Colonize or Scout (plus Assault for troop transports), fill the missing endpoint, review waypoints and quote, then queue. Pick on map explicitly targets the Ship or Destination field. Ordinary inspection preserves the draft; Resume flight plan returns to it. A stationary right-click opens the inspected selection's commands; right-drag remains camera orbit. On touch, targeting reduces the sheet to a small header so the map stays accessible. The same controls remain available through the directory and selectors when 3D rendering is unavailable. See Navigation and logistics for validation and scheduling.

Transmissions opens public event summaries. The live chart initially loads the 200 most recent authorized events, then receives new ones over the stream after the selected season is known. A slow stream reader is allowed a bounded drain period before disconnect, and reconnects retain event IDs and cursors. Explicit cursor history remains available through the events API. Authorized battle detail events supply private before/after hull values only for the ships that viewer is allowed to see. The public Archive keeps its season library, event inspector and playback transport in the same floating layout and accepts no orders. The station shell and navigation stay available while the 3D chart loads.

Layers independently control battle effects, fleets, cargo, minor clans, labels, planetary orbits, supply colors, population labels and projects. Faction and NPC filters dim unrelated site overlays but leave every playable rock visible and selectable; they narrow visible unit contacts. Cargo associated with either filtered participant is eligible to display. In Alpha-10 the territory toggle controls merged projected ownership frontiers and faint altitude leaders; the layer fades at close range and hides during battle viewing. It is not a 3D control volume. Older renderer fixtures retain their influence spheres. All controls are local presentation settings: hiding opponents does not make a route safe or suppress their simulation actions.

Supply colors correspond to the labels in Population and survival, not a guarantee of future growth. Project progress includes purchased acceleration; countdown labels use the season's saved construction/countdown lengths. The map does not infer private infrastructure from decorative geometry.

The scene uses one WebGL canvas. High graphics caps its backing buffer at 1920 × 1080 pixels; Reduced caps it at 1280 × 720 pixels, with a maximum device pixel ratio of 1.5. Interface text stays at native display resolution. Adaptive detail, hidden-tab suspension and reduced-motion behavior also apply. These are rendering limits, not restrictions on map data or controls.

Public and private information

Allies do not automatically gain private teammate data. A public archive snapshot always uses spectator visibility. End-of-season standings intentionally reveal aggregate final scores, not the full internal state. Seeing a fleet's public route does not reveal its supplies or the private next order.

Cinematic observer

Choose Cinematic on World or Archive for a silent, unattended tour within the selected world or season. The map hides navigation, inspectors, tactical overlays, route lines, previews and selection markers while retaining ships, convoys, settlements, scenery and applicable battle effects. A small caption gives the subject, location, current public activity and displayed year or tick. Combat captions require an engagement in the displayed snapshot; attack postures, future Archive events and private orders do not establish a battle.

Each active battle appears in one map card with two icon controls: the clapperboard watches the battle, and the crosshair focuses the camera on its action. Both open on a visible combatant, landing craft or ground assault. Watch battle opens Cinematic scoped to that site. It keeps the selected site through orbital fighting, landing, ground activity and aftermath. Available shots frame the site, a ship's attack pass, confirmed impact, landing, ground breach and aftermath; an unavailable activity is skipped. A new confirmed loss can bring its impact into view immediately. The final aftermath view holds at that site. Pause holds the displayed pose; Next shot changes framing; Exit, dragging, pinching or scrolling returns direct camera control at the current pose. Reduced motion uses static framing and Next shot. Battle effects, including illustrative maneuvers and wreckage, follow the Battle effects layer toggle.

Ship, convoy and battle close-ups fit the current displayed hull or dock dimensions to the available screen area, including portrait screens and open panels. Focus follows the displayed maneuver or journey; landing shots follow the current assault shuttle during a ground battle; standalone recorded landings retain their approach onto the dock. The site overview remains available in the battle shot rotation. Zoom controls allow close inspection at the smaller vessel scale.

Troop poses blend smoothly between movement, cover and prone positions. Soldiers turn toward their next target before firing, and a casualty falls from its current pose. The hands release their grip, arms settle beside the body, and the weapon drops onto its side against the surface. These visual transitions follow the battle clock, including pause and replay, and do not change turn timing, shot events or combat results.

Assault shuttles have compact tapered armor, a protected cockpit, a recessed troop bay and four folding landing pads. When a public assault transport is visible, they emerge from its recessed underside bay with the ramp shut and gear stowed. A brief separation puff carries the shuttle below the hull; it turns and lights its drives after clearing the bay. The launch follows the transport's position, orientation and displayed size, then smoothly adopts the enlarged ground-scene scale during the approach. The landing camera includes the source transport during release and follows the shuttle toward the battlefield. No unseen transport is invented when the source is absent from public contacts.

Shuttles brake over a clear landing zone behind the attacking line, descend vertically, and settle onto pads fitted to the rock. The ramp opens after touchdown; replacements walk out of the bay and down onto the surface. It closes before liftoff, and the craft climbs before turning away and retracting its gear. Engine wash stays close to the landing zone. Both graphics settings retain the articulated launch and landing sequence; it uses the same pausable, seekable presentation clock as the battle and adds no server events.

Recurring battle flight joins position, velocity and facing smoothly around each loop. Orbital formations circle above the asteroid, retaining separated visual berths, with sustained autocannon and flank point-defense bursts, guided missile salvos, hull-local impacts, dark smoke and tumbling hot fragments. Fire alternates in staggered bursts with brief pauses so combatants remain readable. Localized blast light replaces full-screen flashing or camera shake. Shots and smoke share the current orbital anchor; they do not remain behind a moving planet. Cosmetic hits reveal no private hull health and do not imply a confirmed kill. Effects are capped in shared instanced batches; low graphics reduces density and off-screen/distant battles are culled. Live maneuvers keep moving while the next tick is being received, and advancing a running Simulation does not restart a continuing flight loop. Pause holds the pose; recorded seeks reconstruct the selected time. Confirmed landings and losses use their own recorded timing. Ground fireteams use smaller articulated pressure armor and planted firing stances. Pairs run around real cover positions while others fire, then settle behind blast shields or pressure-supply cases. Attacking dropships repeatedly land, unload and depart; defending replacements emerge through rear habitat doors. Illustrative casualties collapse and remain briefly before replacement waves fill the gaps. Grenade blasts, vented vapor, impact fragments and blast marks remain local to the battlefield. The visible occupancy varies through this presentation cycle and never reports hidden army strength or actual casualty totals. Low graphics retains the entrances, cover and all four fireteams with fewer soldiers. These waves add no server events or troop-production rules; confirmed strategic losses still come from the public record.

The tour rotates through combat, transit and asteroid views, with an occasional solar body. Unavailable categories are skipped; quiet worlds use scenery. Subjects rotate before being revisited. Observation passes last about 30 seconds, with 10–18 second transfers. Moving subjects use the same displayed journey and orbital coordinates as the map, including the enlarged lunar separation. A missing or newly ineligible subject releases the shot into another valid view.

Pause/Resume (Space) holds or resumes camera motion; Next shot chooses another subject. When paused, Next frames it immediately. Fullscreen is optional. Exit or Escape returns to the map. Dragging, scrolling or pinching exits automatic direction and hands the current camera position to the observer. Previous panels, filters and flight-plan drafts return without submitting an order. Controls fade after three idle seconds; pointer, touch or keyboard activity reveals them, and keyboard focus keeps them visible. Reduced-motion preferences use static framing and manual Next. Hidden tabs suspend the director, and WebGL failure returns to the tactical fallback. Leaving the map or changing worlds ends the tour. Reload never starts it automatically.

Archive starts at the current playhead, advances through each recorded snapshot at 30 seconds per year/tick, and loops from the recorded end to the first retained snapshot. Pause holds both replay and camera. Loading holds the current view; a failed record pauses with Retry record. Exiting restores normal playback speed and play/pause settings at the current tick. The tour does not switch seasons or add gameplay events, server endpoints or map export fields.

Map intelligence for agents and terminals

Use /api/v1/map or MCP map_report for all known coordinates and control, nearest inhabited/inhabitable sites, nearby warships and hostile postures, and observed maneuvers. JSON, Markdown, ASCII and SVG use the same authorized view. Explicit replay ticks use exact public snapshots. There is no spatial sensor radius for fleet contacts; scout records remain dated observations. See AI discovery and map intelligence for formats, privacy, inferred-threat definitions and CLI examples.

Graphics and accessibility

High currently draws 26,000 fine belt grains and 480 haze patches; Reduced uses 6,000 grains and 160 patches. Both modes draw every playable asteroid. Distant rocks share instanced geometry; up to four nearby rocks gain detailed surfaces, including during manual zoom. Saved Alpha-9 inhabited sites at this range show buildings, carved docks and one to three decorative orbiters. Alpha-10 shows its authorized installations and known inhabited sites’ fitted pressure ports on solid rock. Reduced quality retains the corresponding features with less surface tessellation. The inhabited-site glow remains readable at belt scale. Close focus adds 128 decorative ice motes. The distant sky uses 5,200 versus 1,800 stars. Detail, sphere tessellation and pixel ratio scale with quality; these are renderer budgets, not game rules or simulated object counts.

Ship symbols crossfade into models between 9 and 22 pixels of estimated hull length on screen, using the same threshold on desktop and mobile. Distant contacts submit no detailed hull instances. Nearby models share geometry by role. Below 64 pixels of estimated hull length, each class batch uses a simpler cached mesh that keeps its silhouette, equipment and supports; approaching any member restores that batch’s close-up detail without adding draws. Reduced keeps all six fleet silhouettes and both civilian variants, including their structural supports, with fewer round-surface segments and 16 rather than 36 vapor puffs per nozzle. Fleet, cargo, faction and NPC filters apply to their hulls, symbols and steam together. Civilian symbols, hulls, picking and Follow share the same displayed pose and projected-size transition; there is no separate distance cutoff for selection.

Reduced motion freezes decorative movement, including orbital props and steam animation, and uses rendering on demand while still displaying new authoritative or selected replay states. Decorative orbits and plume animation use visual time, not gameplay years or fleet ETA. A hidden tab stops drawing. The adaptive fallback reduces detail after three consecutive roughly two-second samples below 32 FPS after warmup, and freezes decorative motion; paused scenes can stop continuous rendering. Changing graphics quality resets adaptation. None of these settings pauses the server or changes movement costs.

If WebGL is unavailable or its context is lost, the tactical selector replaces the 3D chart. Habitat selection and ordinary command interfaces remain available. Graphics failure does not cancel or undo a submitted order.

Sources: apps/web/src/World.tsx, map-model.ts, CommandMap.tsx, StationHUD.tsx, FleetOrderComposer.tsx, station-model.ts, SiteRocks.tsx, asteroid-model.ts, asteroid-geometry.ts, FleetShips.tsx, ship-model.ts, ship-geometry.ts, BeltParticles.tsx, BeltHaze.tsx, orbital-particles.ts, MapSky.tsx, space-noise.ts, SolarSystem.tsx, celestial-model.ts; packages/engine/src/visibility.ts.

Inspection accounts

Ship, site, convoy, and clan inspections offer attributed lore with a keyboard-accessible “Read account” expansion. House archives retain three public fragments. Empty rocks use geology or navigation; a current controller does not become the founding household. Replay uses the selected snapshot. Full map formats include the same accounts under schema 1.4.0; summaries stay compact. See setting.

Inner-system inspection and lunar coordinates

Use Reference navigation, the solar focus selector or a body's sphere to inspect Earth, the Moon or Mars. Each opens a short hint and a transmission labelled Received year, followed by three accounts under From the archives. On a narrow screen, selecting a reference body collapses the ordinary command sheet to keep these controls clear and frames the body below the records panel; selecting a habitat or ship opens its normal inspector again. Use Tab to reach a record summary and Enter or Space to expand it. Each record and transmission links to Inner-system records. Previous, Next and Current browse years zero through the selected snapshot tick. Reopening a year returns the same text. Replay seeks reset the browser to that snapshot's current transmission and cannot reveal future messages. The public event record and Chronicle track what happens during a season.

The Moon (moon, parent earth) is a non-playable reference. It has no ownership, docking, trading or diplomatic commands. The shared engine ephemeris adds an illustrative circular lunar orbit to Earth's position: approximately 384,400 km and, in legacy geometry, a 27.3-day sidereal period converted to AU and years. New Alpha-10 matches instead pace the Moon to 12° per strategic round relative to Earth. These approximate values follow NASA's Moon reference; the phase cycle is a different period. Phase and inclination are illustrative, not a historical ephemeris. The 3D chart enlarges lunar separation 60 times to clear its enlarged Earth sphere. Sphere rendering and picking use that same display position. Moon focus follows Earth with a fixed offset toward the Moon’s position when focus begins, framing the lunar orbit so the camera does not chase the Moon around Earth; the scale note identifies the illustration. JSON, Markdown, ASCII and SVG retain engine coordinates, so Earth and Moon may overlap at chart scale. Text coordinates use six decimals in AU to preserve lunar separation; full-precision coordinates remain available in JSON and SVG data attributes.

Combat and private operations

Confirmed orbital and ground engagements appear in public reports with participants, coordinates, rounds and recorded outcomes. Authorized groundForces, embarked marines, supplies, task forces, mining support and capital selections remain private. Enemy garrisons remain unknown outside a dated scout observation or a battle detail available to that participant. Public Archive shows combat without troop counts or supply stores.

The Active battles module focuses confirmed engagements with room for the combatants. Marine operations keeps recruitment, transport manifests, ground stance and demobilization together. Public blockades appear with amber markers and a BLOCKADED label; SVG uses an amber broken ring and the ASCII key uses B. The site inspector names controlling clans without displaying private strength. Only a habitat owner sees commerce timers, suppression, military resupply and recruitment status.

Foreign contacts expose current position, heading and current-leg arrival estimate. Later legs, final objectives, unexecuted orders and sortie assignments are unknown. Approach warnings derive from visible contacts and current diplomatic restrictions; threat assessments remain inferences, not claims of hostile intent. Independent merchants use gold contacts and a $ ASCII symbol. Cargo quantities, warehouses, preparation stores and carried loot remain restricted to owners or participants.

Occupied and secured ports, capital designation, recent battle outcomes, and visible trade routes are shown consistently in the current map. Occupation progress, required troop counts, pending capital selections and task force plans are authorized-only. Routes sharing a leg are drawn once with convoy counts in the inspector. Archive and Cinematic use the same filtered public information.

Mining, objectives and freighters

Rich deposits have a resource ring and public mining phase. Select them for establishment, receiving-port, freight allowance, pause and permanent-development controls. Only authorized owners see warehouse contents, work progress, provisions and charter details. Fleets show support usage and maintenance alongside task force controls.

Use Pin objective in a site inspector to bookmark a location. Objectives appear in map, Economy and fleet-order controls, sorted by manual priority, routed distance from the selected origin, or automatic site type. Selecting a pin focuses or fills the destination; it does not submit an order. Pins are private to the signed-in account and season. They do not grant control and are excluded from public exports and replay.

Civilian convoys are selectable by their own identity. Their inspector shows the observed current waypoint and ETA; cargo details remain authorized-only. At close zoom, modular container tugs and publicly designated rescue tankers replace the distant cargo symbol. Three separated cargo modules or two saddled tanks identify the variant; their fittings never depend on private manifest quantities, tank levels, HP or crew. Only nearby freighters expand into full hulls; distant cargo symbols remain selectable. Follow tracks the selected convoy. The trade layer can hide freight and route lines, and overlapping visible legs are aggregated with convoy counts. Visible trade legs and fleet travel traces each share a colored line layer that follows displayed routes at a bounded visual update rate; the individual ship and convoy symbols and hulls continue to interpolate every frame. Fleet traces still fade at close ship scale. Waiting freighters use visible berths outside the asteroid, with no propulsion trail or stale ETA. These display offsets do not change their authoritative coordinates. They stay attached to the reached port and do not contribute a moving trade leg; their inspector explains that they are held pending access or a viable route. Future stops remain hidden even while following a vessel. Archive, Cinematic and exported maps consume filtered public mining and current-leg information.

Ship inspectors show authorized onboard propellant, capacity, stranded reasons, local refueling and physical rescue controls. Enemy tank contents remain unknown. Route lines follow belt arcs even while their destination moves; they must not be drawn as shortcuts through inner Sol. Tank and mining-expedition details appear only in authorized map exports.