Experience & Rank
Rank is a 44-tier ladder — 22 tiers running from Civilian up through Galactic Admiral if your alignment is good, or a mirrored 22-tier evil path up through Death Lord if it's not. Which ladder you're on is decided by your alignment's sign; how far up it you are is decided purely by experience, at the same thresholds either way.
Real sources of experience:
- Negotiating a genuinely better price at a port — just accepting the quoted price pays nothing (see Trading & Economy).
- Combat — destroying another commander pays a quarter or half their XP depending on alignment match; destroying an NPC you deliberately attacked pays a flat 50 XP.
- Port robbery — a successful one pays real XP; even a busted attempt costs you some.
Alignment Bands
| Band | Range |
|---|---|
| Very Good | 750 to 2,000 |
| Good | 250 to 749 |
| Neutral | -249 to 249 |
| Shady | -500 to -250 |
| Very Evil | -1,000 to -501 |
| Monstrous | -2,000 to -1,001 |
What alignment actually gates, precisely:
- Port robbery — Shady, Very Evil, or Monstrous only.
- Black market trading — anyone who isn't Good or Very Good. Neutral is welcome; you don't have to be evil, just not a paragon.
- The Sovereign Flagship's cloak — needs 500+ alignment (Good or better) specifically, on top of a Federal Commission and 100,000 XP.
Federal Commission
Four of the sixteen hulls — Sovereign Flagship, Battlecruiser, Carrier, and Dreadnought — won't sell to you without one (see Ships & Combat). Apply at Police HQ for a flat 5,000cr: the only requirement is a clean-enough record, alignment 0 or better. The Federation won't commission a commander with a criminal one, no matter how much you're carrying.
Corporations
Founding one costs a flat 1,000cr, and every planet you personally own transfers into the corp's ownership automatically the moment you found it. Three roles: Member, Officer, and CEO. Joining is invite-only — a Leader or Officer sends an invite that expires after 24 hours; there's no "request to join" flow. A Leader can kick an Officer or a Member; an Officer can only kick a Member; nobody can kick themselves.
Corporations pay a flat 5% of their treasury in tax, once per real day, automatically.
Treasury ÷ 1,000 + Members × 10 — grow the bank or grow the roster, either moves the number.Bounties — How They Really Get Posted
A bad reputation does not automatically put a price on your own head. What it does is make you a legal target for someone else's bounty:
- Federation bounty — posted by a commander of alignment 0 or better, standing in a safe zone, targeting someone whose alignment is negative. Paid upfront by the poster; collected automatically by whoever destroys the target.
- Hit List bounty — the mirror image: posted from a Class 10 black-market port by a commander at alignment 0 or worse, targeting someone whose alignment is positive.
There's a third path that ignores alignment entirely: the Underground, reached through the Tavern's Grimy Trader (a 2,000cr password purchase). With that password, anyone can post a bounty on any commander regardless of either party's alignment — at a real personal cost, though: posting one this way costs the poster's own alignment, 4 points for every 1,000cr put up.
