Missions

Every station’s mission board (the Missions tab) offers a few contracts. You can have three at once. Accept one and it shows on the galaxy map; Plot route takes you to its system. When it’s done, a toast and a fanfare say so; return to any station to be paid. Docking pays it at once.

The Ship’s computer (O) has a Missions tab too, so you can see yours anywhere: how far along each is, with Plot route. Abandon (tap it twice) gives one up, wherever you are, to make room for another. It pays nothing, and tourists on a tour go home. A finished mission can’t be abandoned: take it to a station to be paid.

For everyone

• Survey: scan every body in a nearby system you haven’t been to.
• Samples: collect a few mineral samples on any world of a given kind.
• Exotic scan: travel to a white dwarf, neutron star or black hole and scan it. A black hole pays more, and survey arrays pay 30% more and look further.
• Delivery: carry a good to another station. It’s handed over when you dock there with it in the hold. The size follows your trader rank.
• Tours: take tourists to see the sights, from black holes to Earth: a trip for two, or a charter for six to twelve. Your ship needs a berth for each. Every stop seen, the tour pays at any station, a quarter more if your hull never fell below where it started. Lose the ship and you lose the tour. The tourists sit in your ship’s seats while you carry them: walk up to one and Use to meet them, with their name and a little of their story.
• Recovery: land on a dead world by a freighter’s black box or a stranded pilot’s escape pod, and bring it aboard. It’s marked on the planet map: tap it there and Fly & land sets you down nearby. It’s a landing site under its world in Bodies too, and flying low or on foot a marker shows over it.

From your ranks

• Deep survey (explorer rank Navigator): an unmapped system far beyond the usual surveys.
• Clear machine sites: always at breaker’s yards, and at every station once your combat rank is Warden.
• Pirate hunt (Gunhand): destroy a pair of raiders in a system in reach.
• Down a Harvester (Vanguard): see Machine sites.
• Wanted ace (Paragon): one pirate, far tougher than the rest, in one of the most dangerous systems near you.

Expeditions

Gateway Station in Sol offers expeditions to particular stars, once each.