# Experience Contract — Star Freight

> What the player actually does and feels. This is the emotional contract, not the rules doc.

## Core Loop

```
DOCK → READ → CHOOSE → TRAVEL → ENCOUNTER → ARRIVE → RESOLVE
```

1. **Dock** — You're at a station. Check the market, talk to contacts, repair, resupply, browse contracts. The station belongs to a civilization — their customs color every interaction.
2. **Read** — Study the market and the board. What's cheap here? What's valuable elsewhere? What contracts are posted? What's the local situation — festival coming, blockade rumored, pirate activity spiking, faction tensions rising?
3. **Choose** — Buy speculative cargo, accept a contract, or both. Every choice is an economic bet and a reputation bet. Some contracts are trade runs. Some are bounties. Some are smuggling. Some are escort jobs. The mix depends on where you are and who trusts you.
4. **Travel** — Fly the lane. Travel takes time and the lanes are alive. Pirates ambush trade routes. Patrols check cargo. Distress calls could be genuine or traps. Debris fields hide salvage. Rival merchants race you to the same port. Your crew reacts to what you pass through.
5. **Encounter** — Things happen on the lane and at your destination. A pirate wing drops out on your flank — ship combat. A bounty target fights back when cornered — ground combat. A trade deal goes sideways and the merchant's bodyguards draw weapons. A Keth customs inspector demands you explain the Veshan cargo in your hold. Not every encounter is a fight, but plenty are.
6. **Arrive** — Pull into the destination. The station reacts to your reputation with their civilization. Good standing: favorable fees, insider tips, restricted goods access. Bad standing: surcharges, inspections, closed doors. Unknown: prove yourself.
7. **Resolve** — The job ends. Credits change hands. Reputation shifts. Consequences register. The board refreshes. New opportunities appear because of what you just did.

The loop takes 30–60 minutes. Some runs are smooth trades. Some turn into running battles. Most are a mix — just like Portlight.

## Sub-Loop (minute to minute)

**At station (3–8 min):** Scan the market — Keth crystal is cheap because of a surplus, but it's heavy and your hold is small. A bounty contract on the board targets a pirate captain who's been raiding the Deepwell lane — 1,200 credits, but she travels with escorts. Your engineer says the shields need patching — skip it and save 300 credits, or pay now and survive the next ambush. A contact you've traded with before has a tip on stolen cargo: cheap price, high margin, but if a patrol catches you with it, your clean reputation is toast. Decide. Launch.

**In transit (2–5 min):** Lane narration. Sector conditions color the journey. A solar storm forces you to a slower route. You pick up a distress beacon — could be a stranded trader, could be a pirate lure. Your gunner says the signal pattern looks wrong. Investigate or ignore? A Keth convoy passes on the opposite lane — your navigator mentions their formation means a harvest festival is starting at Deepwell. File that away. Then — contacts on the scanner. Two ships, closing fast, no transponder. Pirates.

**In ship combat (5–12 min):** Tactical grid. Your ship and the two pirate vessels. Your crew is at stations: gunner lines up a volley, pilot maneuvers for distance, engineer reroutes power to shields, you call the shots. The pirates try to close for boarding. You keep range and hammer their lead ship. It breaks off, damaged. The second one keeps coming — it grapples. Boarding action: combat shifts to ground theater. Your crew grabs weapons and meets them at the airlock.

**In ground combat (5–12 min):** Tactical grid, tight quarters — your ship's corridors. Your crew of 3–4 vs the boarding party. Cover behind bulkheads. Your fighter holds the chokepoint while your tech hacks the airlock seal. Your medic patches the gunner who took a hit during the ship fight. The pirates break and retreat to their ship. You let them go (mercy = underworld reputation) or finish them (loot + fear, but pirate factions remember).

**At destination (3–8 min):** Deepwell station. Dock, sell cargo, collect on the contract if you had one. The Keth harbor master greets you — your standing is neutral, so it's formal. The market prices are good because of the festival. You sell alloy at 2x what you paid. A Keth merchant approaches with a job — but it requires entering Veshan territory, and they're not friendly. Your Veshan crew member frowns. Do you take it?

## Verbs

**Station:** buy, sell, repair, upgrade, hire, browse (market/contracts), talk, refuse, investigate
**Travel:** route, scan, investigate, ignore, evade, hail, flee
**Ship combat:** fire, maneuver, repair, boost (shields/engines/weapons), hail, board, flee, ram
**Ground combat:** move, attack, ability, cover, flank, retreat, interact (hack, breach, barricade)
**Culture:** observe, negotiate, gift, respect (custom), violate (taboo), ask crew, bribe
**Social:** negotiate, intimidate, bribe, bluff, refuse, betray, vouch, surrender

## Tension / Release Rhythm

**Tension builds during:**
- Reading the market (I need money but the good margins are on dangerous routes)
- Choosing contracts (the pirate job pays triple but burns bridges)
- Lane travel (scanner contacts — friend or foe?)
- Combat (injuries persist, retreat costs cargo, every hit matters)
- Cultural navigation (did I just insult them? My crew member is shaking her head)
- The reputation meter approaching a threshold (the Veshan are about to close their ports to me — or the pirates are about to treat me as one of their own)
- Economic pressure (ship needs repairs, crew needs pay, wallet is thin)

**Release comes from:**
- A profitable trade landing (bought low, sold high, margin feels earned)
- Winning a fight that felt dangerous (the pirate ambush you survived, the bounty you collected)
- A cultural interaction going right (the Keth elder grants you access you've been building toward)
- Docking at a friendly port (your reputation is solid, prices are fair, your contact has a drink waiting)
- Crew moments at key beats (your navigator explains why the Keth festival matters to her people)
- Discovering a new opportunity (a hidden trade route, a faction contact, a piece of the conspiracy that framed you)

**The rhythm:** Station is planning. Travel is anticipation and danger. Combat is survival. Arrival is the test. Resolution is the payoff. The balance shifts session to session — some runs are tense from start to finish, others are smooth sailing with a surprise at the end.

## Failure Texture

**You don't die. You get poorer and more desperate.**

- **Bad trade:** Cargo crashed in value. Selling at a loss. The margin you counted on evaporates.
- **Lost ship fight:** Ship takes system damage. Cargo spills or gets captured. Limp to nearest station. Repair bill eats your savings. If they boarded you and won, they took what they wanted.
- **Lost ground fight:** Crew retreats with injuries. Injuries persist until healed at a station (costs money + time). If you were on a bounty, the target escaped.
- **Caught smuggling:** Patrol found contraband. Fine, confiscation, reputation hit with authorities. Bad enough and you're banned from a station temporarily.
- **Cultural misstep:** Standing drops with a civilization. Their ports charge you double. Restricted goods locked out. Your crew member from that culture takes a morale hit.
- **Spiral:** Multiple failures compound. Ship's wrecked, crew's injured, wallet's empty, standing tanked. This is where pirate work starts looking attractive — they pay upfront and don't ask questions. The game pushes you toward hard choices when you're desperate, not comfortable.

**Recovery:** Always possible. Low-risk hauling jobs are always available. Emergency docking on credit exists (at a reputation cost). Crew cultural ties can smooth over some damage. You can't soft-lock, but you can feel the walls closing in.

## Win / Loss Shape

**Micro (single run):** You ran a smart trade, survived an ambush, or collected a bounty. Credits in hand, standing shifted, crew intact. A good run feels like navigating a dangerous world and coming out ahead.

**Meso (arc):** A civilization opens its inner circle. A crew member's loyalty locks in. You've cleared a pirate captain who was blocking a route — now that lane is safer and more profitable. You've uncovered a piece of the conspiracy that framed you. The world has reshaped around your choices.

**Macro (game):** The truth about your disgrace comes out. Merchant path: you've built trade relationships across civilizations that make you untouchable. Pirate path: you've carved out territory the authorities can't touch because alien civilizations protect you for economic reasons. The ending asks: what did you build, and what did it cost?

## Difficulty Philosophy

**Fixed world, player-controlled pacing.**

- The world doesn't scale. Dangerous lanes are dangerous. Expensive repairs are expensive. Pirate captains don't get weaker because you're new.
- The player controls difficulty by choosing routes, contracts, and risk level. Cautious players profit slowly and fight rarely. Aggressive players profit fast, fight often, or spiral.
- Cultural knowledge, crew composition, and economic smarts matter as much as combat ability. A player who understands Keth trade customs makes more money than one who doesn't.
- No difficulty settings. The safety net is the economy (always work available) and the crew (they open doors and save your life). The challenge is managing money, reputation, relationships, and danger simultaneously.

## A Great 10-Minute Stretch

You're docked at Thorngate, a human trade hub. Ship needs reactor coolant — 400 credits or you risk a breakdown. You have 900.

The board has three options:

1. **Alloy run to Deepwell** (Keth station). Alloy is 60/unit here, historically 140+ at Deepwell during harvest festival — which starts tomorrow. Low danger lane. But your Keth standing is neutral and the festival requires a gift ritual.
2. **Bounty: pirate skip-tracer** operating near the Veshan border. 800 credits. Moderate danger — she flies with one escort. Ship combat likely.
3. **Unmarked cargo to a dead drop** in the Sargasso Belt. 600 credits. No questions asked. The posting smells like smuggling. Pirate reputation lean.

You take the alloy run AND the bounty — the pirate's last known position is on the lane to Deepwell. Two birds.

You buy coolant (400), Earth tea for the gift ritual (50, your navigator's suggestion), and 5 units of alloy (300). That leaves 150 in reserve.

The lane is smooth until it isn't. Scanner picks up a ship running dark near the Veshan border — that's your bounty. Your gunner powers up. Ship combat: tactical grid, your vessel vs the pirate and her escort. You focus fire on the escort — your gunner lands a critical hit on their engine. The escort limps away. The pirate captain tries to flee. Your pilot cuts her off. She hails: "I'll pay you double to forget you saw me." Accept the bribe (pirate lean, 1,600 credits, no fight) or take her in (clean lean, 800 credits, possible fight)?

You take her in. She doesn't go quietly — boarding action. Ground combat in her ship's cargo bay. Your fighter pins her bodyguard behind a crate. Your tech disables the ship's lockdown. The captain surrenders. Bounty collected. Your crew took a minor injury — your medic patches it in transit.

Deepwell. You present the tea to the elder. Standing ticks up. You sell the alloy at festival prices: 750 for the lot. You turn in the bounty at the Keth security office — 800 credits. Your navigator is quiet during the festival. She's watching the celebrations. Later she tells you her sister works at a station in the next sector. First time she's mentioned family.

Total haul: 1,550 credits. Minus 750 in costs. Net: 800. Plus a Keth standing bump, restricted goods access, a crew story thread, and a pirate faction that now knows your name.

The board at Deepwell has a new posting: the pirate captain you brought in has friends, and they're offering a job — to you. Ironic. Pays well. Very pirate.

---

## Unresolved Questions

- Grid size for combat? Small (6x6) keeps fights fast. Fights should resolve in 5–10 turns.
- How many abilities per crew member? 3–4 feels right for scope.
- How does cultural knowledge work mechanically? Per-civilization track? Crew passive bonuses? Both?
- How does the market simulation work? Portlight's economy with supply/demand + event modifiers?
- How many trade goods per civilization? Portlight has 17 — same, more, or civilization-exclusive?
- How does crew pay work? Salary drain? Loyalty-based? Share of profits?
- Does the ship have a physical layout or is it abstracted?
- How does the boarding transition work mechanically? HP carries over? Fatigue? Positional advantage from ship combat?

## Contradictions Discovered

- "Key moments only" crew dialogue vs deep civilizations — crew should speak when cultural context matters. Not constant banter, but cultural voice when approaching ports, navigating customs, or encountering their homeland. More than "key moments" but less than "constant."
- "Fixed world" difficulty vs accessibility — the world must be readable. Markets, danger levels, cultural rules need to be surfaced clearly so the player can make informed decisions. Information is the player's primary tool.

## What Must Be Proven Next

- System Laws: combat engine (grid, turns, abilities, ship roles vs ground roles), trade/economy engine, cultural knowledge system, reputation spectrum with per-civilization breakpoints.
- Civilization sketches: what are the 5 cultures and what makes each gameplay-distinct?
- Economy proof: a 3-run simulation showing margins, costs, and cultural standing effects.
- Combat proof: one ship encounter and one ground encounter, turn by turn.
