Player's Guide

Getting started

Standing Orders is a persistent, living galaxy: sixteen star systems across three factions - the policed Core Worlds, the rough Frontier, and the isolated Reaches - plus the neutral hub Concord and the truly lawless Blackreach between them. Every system runs its own live economy, NPC traffic, and pirate activity that keeps going whether you're online or not. There's no single win condition - you're building a life out here, and what "richer" means is up to you.

Your callsign, credits, ships, cargo, reputation, and bases all persist between sessions automatically - register a free account (or just play as a guest and register later from the pause menu) to keep them synced across devices.

First steps

1. Undock and fly to the nearest asteroid belt, shown as dots on your minimap.
2. Hold Space near a rock to mine it - watch your cargo hold fill up.
3. Fly back and press F at the station to dock.
4. Sell what you mined on the Market tab, then spend some of it in the Shipyard or Outfitting tab.
5. Undock and go looking for a contract board, a pirate raid, or a signal worth scanning for.

Controls

Bases anywhere in the galaxy can also be checked on and upgraded remotely from any station's Bases dock tab - no need to fly back.

Shields, armor & hull

Your ship has three layers of defense, drained in order: shield first, then armor, then hull. Losing your hull to zero destroys the ship.

Radiation hazards are the one exception: they bypass shield and armor and hit hull directly, same as before shields existed. Everything else - NPC fire, PvP lasers, collisions, a volatile rock detonating - is absorbed by shield then armor like normal.

A fresh join or a death respawn grants a short window of spawn protection (untargetable by anyone), and opening the pause menu triggers the same untargetable state on a cooldown, so you can safely step away mid-session without it being abusable to duck a fight for free.

Mining

Hold Space on a nearby rock to cut it. Belts are a mix of rock kinds, and each needs a minimum mining rig upgrade level (Outfitting tab) to cut at all:

Volatile rocks: a timing bonus

A Volatile Rock heats up the longer your beam stays on it and detonates (real hull damage to anyone nearby) if you push it too far. But releasing the beam at the right moment - once the heat gauge sits in the highlighted "sweet zone", neither too early nor right at the edge - pays a clean bonus load on top of the normal yield. It's a deliberate risk/reward call, not just "mine until it explodes."

Core veins

Some rocks hide a bonus core that pays out the instant you mine them empty - a faint pulsing glint on the rock if you look closely. Buying a one-time Scanner (Outfitting tab) calls these out by name in your interact prompt so you don't have to guess.

Belts regenerate over time on their own, and NPC miners draw from the same real rocks you do - so a belt that's been picked over recently will visibly be thinner until it recovers.

Trading the market

Every real station runs its own live market with a price for each of the 7 commodities, driven by actual supply and demand - sell into a station and its price for that good drops a little; buy from it and the price rises. Prices revert back toward a resting level over time when nobody's trading.

Each system's status (Trade Hub, Industrial, Mining Colony, and so on) sets what it produces cheap and what it's hungry for - a Mining Colony sells ore for next to nothing, an Industrial world pays well above average for it. The core loop: buy low where something's produced, haul it somewhere it's in demand, sell high. A besieged system (mid-raid, or under a blockade event) has its supply choked and prices spike - dangerous, but a real opportunity if you can get in and out.

Reputation moves prices too

Standing with a system's controlling faction nudges every quote you personally see there - better standing means better buy and sell prices, on top of whatever the live stock is doing. See Contracts & reputation.

Home system discount

Declaring a station "home" (a button in the dock menu, 15-minute cooldown to change it) gives you a flat trade bonus there - better sell, better buy - on top of everything else, and it's also where you respawn after dying.

Refining & fabrication

Two processing steps sit between what you mine and the most valuable goods in the game.

Step 1 - Refining: Ore → Metal

Every station's Market tab has a Refinery row: feed it raw ore, get back refined metal, at a loss (never a 1:1 conversion). The yield improves with your standing at that system's faction - the same reputation number that nudges buy/sell prices.

Step 2 - Fabrication: Metal + Tech → Components

Components are never mined - fabrication at the Outfitting tab is their only source. The recipe is fixed: 4 metal + 1 tech makes 1 component. Components sell for meaningfully more than the raw materials cost, especially at an Industrial world, which pays the deepest premium for finished goods anywhere in the galaxy.

All 7 commodities

Ships & outfitting

The Shipyard dock tab sells eleven hulls across four tiers - starter, standard, elite, and capital. Elite hulls need 20+ standing (Friendly) with the region you're buying from; capital hulls need 60+ (Honored). Once you own a hull, switching back to it later is always free, no rep check, no cooldown - the gate is only on a fresh purchase.

Switching hulls carries your current shield/armor/hull condition over as a percentage, not an absolute number, so you can't exploit a switch to heal for free, and you don't show up in a bigger hull pre-damaged either.

Outfitting: four upgrade tracks

Cargo, Mining, Weapon, and Shield each have their own level cap, and a hull's total level count is capped by its own slot count - bigger hulls can fit more, but you still have to choose a build. The final level of each track (and elite/capital hulls themselves) also needs raw materials out of your stash, on top of the credit cost.

Your stash is a separate, global bank of commodities - deposit/withdraw at any station, and unlike your cargo hold it's never touched when you die. It's the safe place to bank the metal/tech you're saving up for an upgrade or a fabrication run.

Drones & the Scanner

Three one-time purchases, none of them slotted upgrade tracks:

At Concord's Foundry specifically, once you own both drone bays, a further exclusive upgrade ("Concord War College") adds a third drone to each bay - available nowhere else in the galaxy.

Planet bases

Fly to a planet and press F to found your own base there - every pilot can found their own on the same planet, independent of anyone else's. A base extracts that planet's commodity automatically and burns provisions to keep running; G in range feeds it from your hold, and it halts if it runs dry. Upgrading, collecting, and checking on bases you already own can all be done remotely from any station's Bases dock tab, no travel required - only founding, supplying, and the first claim need you physically there.

Buildings

Higher base levels unlock module slots you can fill with:

• Crew Quarters - more extraction rate
• Farm - grows some of your own provisions locally
• Solar Array - cuts provision burn
• Warehouse - more storage capacity
• Defense Platform - a real turret NPC guarding the base, and it cuts how much a raid can loot

Factions & security

Every non-lawless system belongs to one of three factions and carries a security tier that sets its garrison strength - more turrets, more troopers, more disruptors, the safer it is.

Reputation is per-faction, not per-system

A faction holds every system in its region, so building standing anywhere in the Frontier (clearing bounties, completing contracts, killing pirates) builds standing with the whole Frontier - felt at every Frontier system, not just the one you're in. Standing nudges your market prices everywhere that faction holds ground, and gates elite/capital hull purchases and elite bounty contracts.

Concord

A neutral hub every faction's main system gates into directly - not a fourth faction fighting for territory, a shared crossroads all three actually rely on. High security, heavy ore belts, and deliberately zero raids or hostile events despite carrying a full garrison - Concord is meant to be safe, full stop.

Four specialized stations, not one

Unlike every other system, Concord has four independently-dockable stations, each doing one job:

Concord genuinely undercuts everywhere else on price to make the extra travel worth it: the best shipyard and outfitting discounts of any system, the best trade margins, and a standing speed + mining buff with no downside - the only system-wide buff in the game that doesn't trade one stat for another.

The Blackreach

Six systems (Scourge, Malice, Wraith, Blight, Ruin, Husk) forming a ring wedged between the three real factions - crossing between factions means crossing it. No stations (with one exception, see below), no turrets, no law. It's the only place Umbral Ore is found, in dense rings unlike any belt in real territory - but there's nothing to sell it to out here. You haul it back through the Blackreach yourself, or you don't sell it.

Gang wars & territorial control

Six rival pirate warbands fight each other for control of these systems, not just you - a system's held gang changes hands when one side wipes the other out in a clash. Killing a controlling gang's own pirates in the system they hold pays extra, since they're the dug-in home team. Which gang holds which system is shown right on the galaxy map.

Ruin's black market

The one exception to "no stations": Ruin has a real, dockable black market. Trade, stash, refining, and repair all work there, but at a worse rate than anywhere in real territory (the smuggler's cut) - and Shipyard, Outfitting, and Contracts aren't available at all. It's a genuine, if pricey, lifeline deep in the most dangerous part of the galaxy.

System events

Every non-lawless, non-Concord system rotates between calm and one live event:

• Blockade - heavier raid waves, a tighter market, and a bonus on pirate bounty payouts while it's live.
• Rush - one commodity pays a real premium to sell there, and it spawns a matching haul contract on the board.
• Derelict - a wreck appears in-system; fly to it and press F to trigger a short salvage hacking minigame for a real payout.

Concord and the Blackreach are both excluded from this rotation, for opposite reasons - Concord is deliberately always safe, Blackreach has nothing to attach a blockade or rush to (no dockable station in most of it) so it only ever rolls derelicts.

Exploration

Press V to scan your current system for a hidden signal. Unlike a system event it's completely invisible until someone actually scans for it - once revealed (to everyone in the system at once), it's a race to reach it and hack it open, same salvage minigame as a derelict wreck.

NPCs

The galaxy runs its own economy and conflict independent of players:

• Miners & haulers - miners dig ore into a system stockpile; haulers carry it through gates to other systems, migrating the population between systems over time. Haulers flee to the station during a raid rather than fight, dumping their cargo back into the local stockpile rather than losing it.
• Pirates - spawn in raid waves, not a fixed garrison. Once a wave is cleared, the next one comes after a cooldown - so systems swing between calm and under siege.
• Troopers - a system's defenders. They detect hostiles system-wide and converge fast, call in backup from calm neighboring systems during a raid, and won't abandon a manhunt just because the raid itself cleared.
• Disruptors - fast, fragile Core Worlds-only interceptors that never deal direct damage, but land a jamming pulse that slows you and weakens your shots for a few seconds while their trooper escort does the actual killing.
• Defense turrets - fixed, nearly unkillable emplacements at stations and gates. More of them at higher security tiers.
• Bounty hunters - mercenary NPCs that spawn the moment your wanted level crosses into manhunt territory, chasing you specifically. Killing one carries no wanted or reputation cost.

Killing a lawful NPC (anything but a pirate) is forgiven once as an accident - a warning only. A second strike within a few minutes actually flags you wanted and draws turret fire.

Wanted & bounty hunters

Wanted is tiered 1 through 5. A fresh offense while you're still wanted escalates the level; one after it lapsed starts back at 1. Dying clears it outright - respawning pays the debt.

At tier 4 and up ("manhunt"), it stops being a local problem: spare troopers get recruited from anywhere in the galaxy toward your current system, and a dedicated bounty hunter NPC spawns and chases you specifically. Other players can hunt you too - a live Wanted board (Contracts tab) shows every currently-wanted pilot's system, the same intel an NPC bounty hunter already has. Killing a wanted player pays a bounty on top of the normal PvP reward, scaled to their wanted level.

Defense fund

Docked pilots can pool credits (dock menu) to buy a system temporary extra turrets on top of its normal security tier - meaningful even in an already-safe system. It takes real group effort: the pool decays if nobody keeps contributing, and the boost only lasts a limited time once triggered. Lifetime contributions per system are tracked as a small hall-of-fame in the dock UI. Not available in lawless space - there's no garrison to fund.

Contracts & reputation

The Contracts dock tab offers rotating deliver, bounty, escort, and haul jobs. Haul contracts are only generated when the live market actually backs one - a real scarcity/surplus pair between neighboring systems, not a random ask, and completing one actually moves the market stock it was posted against.

Escort missions spawn a real hauler NPC that either arrives (paid out) or dies (contract fails - you have to abandon it, no partial refund) as it makes its run, with a confirmation prompt before you can abandon so a misclick doesn't drop real progress.

Clearing bounties, delivering, escorting, or just killing pirates anywhere in a faction's territory builds standing with that whole faction - see Factions & security.

Parties, friends & trading

Friends

Add anyone by callsign from the pause menu's Friends panel - they don't need to be online. Online status and current system are shown live for friends who are actually logged in (never leaked for someone who isn't).

Parties

Up to 4 pilots. Invite an online friend directly from the Friends panel; the invite shows as a non-blocking prompt so it never interrupts mid-flight. Party mates in the same system share in pirate-kill rewards regardless of distance, and render in a distinct color on your minimap and the galaxy map so you can always spot them.

Player-to-player trading

Requires both pilots physically docked at the same station. Build an offer (cargo and/or credits), both sides ready up, and the trade only executes once both are simultaneously ready - any change to either offer resets both ready flags, so nobody can lock in a stale confirmation while the other side quietly changes their offer. Cargo hold and credits only - stash, ships, and upgrades can't be traded this way.

Chat

One global channel, not per-system. Enter to open it, /w <name> <message> to whisper someone privately instead of broadcasting.

Accounts & persistence

Playing as a guest (typing any free callsign) needs no account at all, and everything still saves under that callsign. Register an account (landing page, or mid-session from the pause menu's Settings pane if you're already playing as a guest) to lock your callsign to an email+password and keep it consistent across devices/browsers. There's no penalty either way - registering later just protects a callsign you've already been using.