Official Guide on Big Bang Smugglers

Getting Started

Tue, 04 Aug 2026 00:00:00 +0000

Get the game

Android: Google Play.
Web: play.bigbangsmugglers.com — no invite code, no download.

Sign in with email and password (you must verify the address before you can play) or Google. Then pick a captain handle: 3 to 20 characters, letters, numbers and spaces only. Runs of spaces collapse to one. You can rename yourself later — but renames carry a cooldown and post a public feed story connecting the old name to the new one, so a handle is not a disguise.

Turns, Credits & Basics

Tue, 04 Aug 2026 00:00:00 +0000

The turn cycle

Turns are the whole pacing system. You get a fixed allowance, you spend it, and you wait.

Cap: 250 turns (season configuration).
Cycle: 4 hours (season configuration, valid range 1–24).
Boundaries: aligned to UTC — 00:00, 04:00, 08:00, 12:00, 16:00, 20:00.
Reset behavior: full reset to the cap, not an increment.
Carryover: none, ever. This is a design doctrine with no configuration knob behind it.

The reset is lazy: it lands the moment you next touch the game after a boundary passes, so you never lose turns by being offline. When you’re out, the game tells you how many minutes remain until the next reset.

Navigation & Travel

Tue, 04 Aug 2026 00:00:00 +0000

Moving

Sectors are connected by links. Most links are bidirectional grid adjacency; about one sector in five also carries a diagonal link, and a fraction of those diagonals are one-way. A galaxy also gets a handful of long-range Federation highways connecting the core to distant regions, and a handful of one-way smuggling routes running out of pirate and rim space toward distant sectors.

A move to a linked sector costs 1 turn and runs the full arrival stack:

The Galaxy & Territory

Tue, 04 Aug 2026 00:00:00 +0000

How a galaxy is built

Every season generates a brand-new galaxy from a seed, in seven deterministic passes: topology, ports, planets, hazards, wormholes, named NPCs, landmarks. Nothing is hand-placed and nothing repeats between seasons.

Sector count is free-form per season — the default is 500, the admissible range is 20 to 65,536. The old game’s four fixed sizes are gone.

Default densities: 15% of sectors have a port, 10% a planet, 6% a hazard. Three landmarks and twelve named NPCs per galaxy — five pirates, five Federation officers, and two merchant princes.

Scanners, Cloaks & Intel

Tue, 04 Aug 2026 00:00:00 +0000

StarNav 2002

The passive scanner. Once installed it runs continuously, costs nothing, and takes no turns.


Install	100,000 cr
Upgrade	100,000 cr × the new level — L2 200k, L3 300k, L4 400k, L5 500k
Gates	Each level has its own season-ladder gate, mid-early at L1 to deep at L5
Max level	5

Range is min(level, 3) hops. Level 4 and 5 do not see further — they see better.

NPCs & Encounters

Tue, 04 Aug 2026 00:00:00 +0000

The three types

Type	Base rate per move	Never appears in	Max per sector	Drops
Pirate	3.0%	Federation territory	3	500–2,000 cr
Trader	2.0%	—	2	100–500 cr
Patrol	1.5%	Pirate territory	2	nothing

Region multiplies the base rate:

Region	Pirate	Trader	Patrol
`fed_core`	—	—	×4.0
`fed_space`	—	×0.5	×2.5
`inner`	×0.5	×1.0	×1.5
`middle`	×1.0	×1.2	×1.0
`outer`	×1.5	×0.8	×0.5
`outer_rim`	×2.0	×0.5	—

Pirates take priority over patrols, which take priority over traders. One NPC maximum per roll.

Trading & the Market

Tue, 04 Aug 2026 00:00:00 +0000

The three commodities

Commodity	Volume per unit
Fuel	1
Organics	1
Equipment	2

A 200-hold ship carries 200 fuel or 100 equipment. Equipment has the highest prices in the game and the highest spread, but you move half as many units per run. That trade-off is the point.

How a price is actually computed

Every port archetype has an anchor price per commodity — the price it would charge if its shelves were exactly at baseline. Two forces move the real price off the anchor.

Ports & Services

Tue, 04 Aug 2026 00:00:00 +0000

The eleven services

A port runs a fixed set of services determined by its archetype. If the service isn’t there, the action isn’t available.

Service	What it does	Where
`trading`	Buy and sell commodities	Every port
`banking`	Deposit and withdraw — you must be at a teller	The three starports, Federation Ports
`shipyard`	Buy, sell and switch hulls; restock; limpet sweeps	The three starports
`repair`	Restore shields and hull	The three starports, Federation Ports
`upgrade`	Buy stat upgrades, drives and tech modules	Tech Ports, Pirate Haven, Merchant Exchange
`research`	Tech modules and intel	Research Ports
`supplies`	Deployables and provisions (turns)	The three starports, Agricultural Ports
`recruitment`	Security personnel and mining workers	The three starports
`defense`	Defense contracts (purchased PvP immunity)	Stardock, Merchant Exchange, Federation Ports
`blackmarket`	Buy and fence contraband; cloaking devices	Pirate Bases, Black Markets, Pirate Haven
`tavern`	Rumors and intel; mercenary retinue hiring	Stardock, Pirate Bases, Pirate Haven
`priceboard`	Galaxy-wide live price sheet	Merchant Exchange only

The bounty office is not a service key: posting a bounty and redeeming faction claims happen at the two faction capitals — the Stardock and the Pirate Haven — and nowhere else.

Smuggling & Contraband

Tue, 04 Aug 2026 00:00:00 +0000

The catalog

Three contraband rows, each riding on a real commodity’s price and volume.

Contraband	Rides on	Fence buy price	Max per purchase	Sell multiplier	Risk
Illicit Organics	Organics (1 vol)	follows local organics	100	×2.0	low
Stolen Equipment	Equipment (2 vol)	follows local equipment	100	×2.0	medium
Black Tech	Equipment (2 vol)	follows local equipment, ×3+	100	×3.5	high

Fence prices follow the market (since v2.3.0). A Black Market’s buy price rides on the port’s own price for the underlying commodity, so the same Black Tech costs more where equipment is dear. The old flat shelf (30 / 40 / 150) is gone. Selling straight back to the same fence still turns a modest, safe profit; the big money is still in lawful space, at real risk.

Combat

Tue, 04 Aug 2026 00:00:00 +0000

Combat is instant and automatic. You engage, the server resolves the whole fight in one shot, and you read the report. There is no round-by-round input.

Before the dice: the gates

Every engagement runs the same checks, in this order:

Not yourself.
Safe territory. Federation territory and flagged safe zones are an absolute block — they override even a PvP-enabled galaxy.
The galaxy has PvP enabled.
Same sector, same galaxy.
The target isn’t cloaked — a cloaked ship reads as simply not there unless your effective StarNav is 4 or better.
Not in your corporation.
The target isn’t landed on their own or their corp’s planet.
Neither of you is under PvP immunity.

Engaging costs 1 turn.

Ships

Tue, 04 Aug 2026 00:00:00 +0000

The shape of the catalog

45 purchasable hulls, plus the SS Starter you can’t buy, plus six epic hulls you can only earn.

The 45 are three archetypes × three lines × five tiers. Every one of the 45 has a provably unique stat block — that is enforced by an automated test, not a convention.

The three archetypes

Archetype	Holds	Combat	Hull multiplier
Trading	Deepest	Weakest	×0.80
War	Shallowest	Heaviest	×1.25
Balanced	Middle	Middle	×1.00

The three lines

Line	Roles	Doctrine
Neutral spine	trading, war, balanced	The baseline. No faction, no lock, no bonus. Stocked everywhere.
Federation	patrol, enforcer, dreadnought	+10% base shields at every tier.
Pirate	smuggling, raider, corsair	+0.10 escape over the Federation mirror, plus hidden holds.

Federation and Pirate hulls are mirror images: same holds, same fighters, same torpedoes, same hull. The line decides what they do better.

Upgrades, Drives & Tech

Tue, 04 Aug 2026 00:00:00 +0000

Three separate systems live behind the “upgrade” button, and they behave differently.

Stat upgrades are five-tier ladders on holds, shields, fighters and torpedoes. Bound to the ship.
Drives are warp, StarNav and Tesseract. Bound to the ship.
Tech modules are one-per-ship permanent installs. Bound to the ship.

All three die with the ship. There is no salvage.

Stat upgrades

Each of the four stats has a five-tier ladder. The total you can add is a fixed fraction of the hull’s base stat:

Bounties

Tue, 04 Aug 2026 00:00:00 +0000

There are two kinds of bounty and they pay out completely differently.

Player-posted bounties

Anyone past an early level gate can put a price on a rival’s head at a bounty office. Offices exist at exactly two docks — the faction capitals: the Stardock and the Pirate Haven. (They used to be keyed to the tavern; since v2.0.15 the office and the registry are the same two sectors.)


Amount	500 – 100,000 cr
Posting fee	+10% on top
Payment	Wallet only
Expiry	7 days
Restrictions	Not on yourself; target must be in your galaxy

Posting 50,000 costs you 55,000.

Ordnance, Limpets & Beacons

Tue, 04 Aug 2026 00:00:00 +0000

Everything in this section follows the same model: buy it as an item, carry it, consume it at deploy. Deploying charges no credits — the purchase was the price.

Deployables are bought at the supplies service: the three starports and Agricultural Ports.

The catalog

Item	Price	Sector cap	Your cap
Proximity Mine	250	100 (+50 where you own a planet)	500
Sentry Drone	1,500	50	20
Turret	3,000	20	8
Sensor Buoy	800	10	5
Cloak Field	5,000	1	2
Limpet Tracker	4,000	—	10 live
Navigation Beacon	2,500	—	one per sector

There is no per-purchase cap any more (v2.0.16 dropped it — it never limited anything, it just made you tap the buy button repeatedly). What actually bounds an arsenal is the sector cap and your cap at deploy time, plus cargo room and your wallet.

Planets

Tue, 04 Aug 2026 00:00:00 +0000

Planets are the late-game economy: a slow, compounding, defensible income that runs whether or not you’re logged in — and a fixed target other captains can find.

Claiming


Level gate	A mid-early ladder gate — roughly a fifth of the way up
Cost	150,000 cr, wallet only
Turns	1
Requirements	Be in the sector, planet unowned
Truce after claim	12 hours

Alignment gates by territory:

In Federation territory you need alignment ≥ +100.
In pirate territory you need alignment ≤ −100.
Unincorporated space has no alignment gate.

Claiming in aligned territory pays ±250 alignment — the single largest alignment swing available from one action.

Corporations & Fleets

Tue, 04 Aug 2026 00:00:00 +0000

Founding


Level gate	Early ladder — your first sessions
Cost	50,000 cr — wallet first, then bank
Name	3–50 characters, unique in the galaxy
Member cap	`max(10, seasonPlayerCap ÷ 5)`

Corp founding is one of only two things in the game the bank can pay for — the other is ship repair.

Join policy is set at creation and changeable by the leader:

open — anyone joins instantly
request — applications go to a queue leaders and officers approve
invite — invitation only

Roles

Three roles, and the ladder is deliberately blunt.

Factions, Alignment & Standing

Tue, 04 Aug 2026 00:00:00 +0000

There are two numbers, they are not the same thing, and confusing them will cost you money.

Alignment is which side you’re on. One score, ranging from −1,000 (Syndicate) to +1,000 (Federation), zero at the start.

Standing is what a side owes you. Three separate scores — Federation, Syndicate and Merchant Guild — earned by service and decaying 1% every day.

You can be a Federation Admiral by standing and a Scourge by alignment. They move independently.

Progression

Tue, 04 Aug 2026 00:00:00 +0000

The level curve

level = floor(sqrt(XP ÷ divisor)) + 1 capped at the season's max level
XP for level n = (n − 1)² × divisor

The ladder is pinned per season. The curve’s divisor and level cap are set when a season’s galaxy is created and never move mid-season. Seasons created before the ladder migration run a 50-level ladder; every newer season runs a 100-level ladder whose divisor is tuned to its length, so each unlock lands at the same fraction of the season whether it’s a 30-day sprint or a long grind. Same content spine, different pace.

Missions, Goals & Streaks

Tue, 04 Aug 2026 00:00:00 +0000

Three separate systems, and it’s worth keeping them apart:

Events are dated missions — daily, season-long, or ad-hoc GM drops.
Goals are permanent Bronze/Silver/Gold ladders that run all season.
Epic goals are one-sided dedication ladders that pay out in ships.

Events

There is no accept step and no limit. You are enrolled lazily and your progress accrues from your ordinary play — including while you have never opened the Events screen. The 1.x “one mission at a time” rule is gone.

Seasons

Tue, 04 Aug 2026 00:00:00 +0000

What a season is

A season is a freshly generated galaxy with a player cap and an end date. It is the container for essentially everything you own.

Sector count is set per season — anywhere from 20 to 65,536, with 500 as the working default. Player cap, duration, PvP on or off, the XP multiplier, and every tuning number in the formulas appendix are all per-season configuration.

Very large galaxies (over 5,000 sectors) are generated in the background, and the season sits unjoinable until generation finishes.

Formulas & Numbers

Tue, 04 Aug 2026 00:00:00 +0000

Everything on this page is a current season default. Almost every number here is season configuration and can be retuned between seasons — or mid-season by the operators — without a client update. Where a rule is structural rather than tunable, it says so.

If a number here disagrees with what the game shows you, the game is right and this page is stale. Tell us.

Turns

Knob	Default
Turn cap	250
Cycle length	4 hours
Cycle boundaries	00:00, 04:00, 08:00, 12:00, 16:00, 20:00 UTC
Carryover	None, ever — doctrine, not a knob
Provision price	800 cr per turn
Provision ration	5 turns per cycle

Turn costs

Action	Turns
Move to a linked sector	1
Wormhole transit	1
Buy or sell cargo (one leg)	1
Buy or sell contraband	1
Engage in combat	1
Fleet strike	1
Trade with a trader NPC (per deal)	1
Rob a trader NPC	1
Deploy ordnance	1
Attack ordnance	1
Destroy a foreign beacon	1
Lay mines from a planet garrison	1
Active scan	1 per ring (radius 1–3)
Warp jump	`max(1, ceil(hops ÷ warpLevel))`
Tesseract jump	25, flat
Port siege attack	3
Capture or raze a port	1
Claim a planet	1
Build or upgrade a structure	1
Raid or capture a planet	1 each
Port repair	0
Landmark interaction	0
Banking, limpets, beacons, vault, planet storage, claim redemption	0

Warp Optimizer (−1) and the Explorer role (−1 to −3) stack, floor at 1 turn, and never apply to the Tesseract.

Glossary

Tue, 22 Sep 2026 00:00:00 +0000

Short definitions, alphabetical. Each entry links to the page that explains the mechanic properly.

A–C

Alignment. Which side you’re on: one score from −1,000 (Syndicate) to +1,000 (Federation), starting at zero. Sets prices at faction ports, docking rights at the capitals, and which faction hulls you may fly. Factions, Alignment & Standing.

Anchor price. The price a port archetype charges when its stock sits exactly at baseline. Stock deviation and trade pressure move the real price off it. Trading.