Locations

Every sector can contain points of interest beyond the standard warp routes. Ports where you trade, landmarks that mark the galaxy’s history, stations that offer specialized services, and hazards best navigated carefully. They appear on the Nav screen when you enter a sector.

Ports

Ports are where you buy and sell cargo. Every port has a price spread on fuel, organics, and equipment. Buy where prices are low, sell where they are high. The spread varies by port type and location in the galaxy.

Standard ports do not offer ship services, recruitment, or mission boards. They are trading posts in the original sense of the word.

Port Types

Fuel Depots Operations built around one commodity — fuel — and built well. Fuel depots tend to be utilitarian facilities with fuel at volume pricing and crew that would rather handle a transaction than a conversation. Found throughout the mid-ring.

Agricultural Stations Organics originate here more often than anywhere else in the galaxy. Agri stations range from tidy operations run by family enterprises to sprawling hydroponic complexes managed by interests you will never meet. The cargo is the same either way.

Tech Hubs Equipment terminals, fabrication services, and the occasional ship component that fell off a manifest. Tech hubs sit in federation-leaning space and attract traders who know what the equipment is worth in other sectors.

Mining Stations Built into asteroid formations or floating in ore-rich sectors. Mining stations smell like metal and recycled atmosphere, and the crew tends to be the type that appreciates directness. Good prices on bulk fuel. Everything else is secondary.

Research Complexes Federation-sponsored, usually. Research complexes trade in equipment and sometimes in things that are not on the standard commodity list. The staff are distracted in ways that occasionally work in your favor.

Pirate Bases The pirate equivalent of a port. Operates in pirate space, prices its goods accordingly, and does not ask about the contraband flag on your cargo manifest. Some are run like serious businesses. Some are run like the thing that happens before a serious business forms. All of them will take your credits.

Player-Built Trading Posts

Captains who own planets can build trading posts directly in their sector. These are buy-only for visitors and stocked from the owner’s planet storage on a four-hour cycle. Prices run below standard market rates by a margin that depends on how much the owner has invested in upgrades.

A trading post is named after its owner. If you see one, someone spent a significant amount building it, which tells you something about how long they have been in the game.

See the Planets Guide for full details on building and operating a trading post.

Landmarks

Landmarks are fixed points of interest scattered across the galaxy. They do not offer services. They are simply there, marking what was or what is, visible on the sector map to anyone who passes through.

Landmark Types

Black Holes Rare. A black hole in a sector does not make the sector impassable, but it tends to make it memorable. Navigation near a black hole is an exercise in trusting your instruments and not thinking too hard about what happens if they are wrong.

Ancient Ruins Scattered throughout unincorporated space and occasionally in older federation sectors. Nobody is sure who built them. The federation has commissioned several studies. None of them have concluded anything useful, which has done nothing to reduce the number of follow-up studies commissioned.

Navigation Beacons Automated relay stations placed by early galaxy explorers. Most of the original network is still running, which is a testament to whoever built the power cells. They ping your nav system when you enter the sector, which is useful if your instruments are having a bad day.

Space Anomalies The catch-all category for things that did not fit the other classifications. Sensor readings that do not resolve into a coherent explanation. Spatial distortions that the instruments measure but cannot describe. Physics working as intended but in a way that makes you double-check. The federation classifies these and then quietly stops talking about them.

Stations

Stations are larger than ports and smaller than starports. They offer specialized services for specific needs without the full infrastructure of a starport.

Station Types

Defense Stations Federation military installations. Defense stations exist to watch over contested sectors and provide a show of force in areas where pirate activity is a concern. They are not particularly welcoming to captains with negative alignment scores, which is intentional.

Repair Stations Independent operations offering hull and shield repair outside of starport facilities. Useful in deep space where the nearest starport is several warps away. Prices vary by how far from civilization you are, which is to say they are higher than you would like.

Research Stations Scientific facilities in isolated sectors where the research benefits from distance from populated space. They occasionally trade in equipment and have been known to offer unusual mission contracts.

Hazards

Some sectors contain hazards that show on your scanner before you enter. Hazards are environmental — they do not attack you, but they affect navigation and combat conditions in the sector.

Nebulae Dense gas clouds that scatter sensor readings and make precise navigation more difficult. Warping into a nebula sector works fine. Knowing exactly where everything in the sector is once you arrive is another matter.

Asteroid Fields Rocky debris at various densities. Asteroid fields show up on long-range scans and are navigable with care. Ships that are not careful are eventually the reason the field gets slightly denser.

Radiation Zones Elevated radiation sectors that stress hull integrity over extended exposure. Short visits are fine. Sitting in a radiation zone while you work something out is inadvisable.

Ion Storms Electromagnetic interference that affects ship systems unpredictably. Ion storms move. A sector that was clear yesterday may not be clear today, which is the kind of thing that makes experienced captains check their route twice.

Minefields Left over from conflicts nobody remembers clearly. Minefields are mapped where they are known, which is not the same as saying all minefields are known. The federation updates charts when it finds new ones, which is itself evidence that discovery is ongoing.