On foot on other worlds

Going outside

Landed, walk to your ship’s lift and ride it down. Where the air can’t be breathed, your suit closes its helmet and its oxygen starts running down. The oxygen readout shows how much is left; a habitat dome at an outpost refills it. Run out and you’re rescued for a fee and come round aboard.

L switches your flashlight on, Shift+L your ship’s lights.

Markers

Markers over the view show what’s worth walking to: machine signals on a scanned world, your ship, your outposts, the nearest sample, finds and relics. Ahead of you a marker sits where the thing is; to the side it becomes an arrow at the edge of the view. They show in low flight too (all but your ship’s, caches and taxi stops), so you can see where to set down. The Markers setting turns them off.

Samples

Each landing site gives up to eight samples, taken within a kilometre of where the ship set down. Their value depends on the world. A site you come back to remembers how many you’ve taken.

Finds

Out on solid worlds lie things worth finding: old wrecks, machine ruins on dead worlds, and vents. The server tells you of up to six within 4 km of your ship, and their markers show in low flight too, so you can set down near one. Until you’re within 150 m a find is just an Unknown signal. Use it (it takes two seconds) to search it: wrecks and ruins pay credits and sometimes an item, vents give data for your cart. Each find pays you once, and the first pilot ever to search one gets half as much again.

Getting about

On open ground, keep running and your pace builds from a jog to about 14 m/s. It drops back when machines are near.

Hold Jump in the air to fire the suit’s jets for a couple of seconds. They push the same in any gravity, and in the air you keep the speed you jumped with. Hold Run (Shift) on the jets and they drive you forward too, up to four times as fast as running.

Over 60 m from your ship, with no machines near, O (or Call ship) flies the ship over to you.

Plants and fungi

Living worlds grow plants coloured by their star’s light: green under a Sun-like star, dark under a red dwarf. Only some have tall growth. A rare few are covered in giant fungi, with gills that glow after dark.