We pay players when their idea ships: the Starlane signal board

Starlane is unfinished on purpose. It is one universe that keeps running while it grows, and a good share of what it should become is better seen from inside it, by the people flying it, than from where we sit. So there is a page in the game for telling us: Signals, under your record. Its first line says what it is for:

The universe is unfinished on purpose. Tell us what is missing from it, back what other pilots have asked for, and when something you asked for gets built, the credits land in your account with the citation attached.

That last part is the point of this article. When an idea you sent in is built, you are paid for it, in the game's own credits.

Sending a signal

A signal is a short title and a few lines: what you were doing, what happened, and what you wanted instead. You pick one of four kinds, and the form says what each is for:

• Idea — something the game should let you do;
• Defect — something that behaved wrongly;
• Balance — a number that feels wrong to play against;
• Story — a faction, a place, a reason to be out there.

Where you are goes with it, so a signal arrives knowing which station you were standing in when you sent it. You don't have to be docked to send one: the page works mid-jump, because a pilot in the middle of a flight is exactly the person with an idea. You can have up to five waiting to be read at once, so the board stays a list of things somebody means rather than a pile.

Who reads it

Nobody but us, at first. The page says so plainly:

What you send goes to an admin, not to the fleet. Nobody else sees it unless an admin publishes it to the board — so say the thing that is actually wrong, including the part where you gave up.

That privacy is deliberate. The most useful signal is the honest one, written by somebody who got stuck, and nobody writes that for an audience. A signal becomes public only when we publish it, one at a time, and building it doesn't publish it.

What happens to it

Every signal carries where it stands, in the game's words: Received, Being read, On the slate, Built, or Not this era. A reply can come back under it, signed the Architects. A signal that isn't going to happen says Not this era rather than going quiet.

Published signals can be backed by other pilots, and the board ranks them by how many have. You can't back your own: a signal that could vote for itself would rank nothing. Backing is the fleet telling us what it wants built next, and it is the first thing we read.

Getting paid

When something you asked for is built, it moves to Built, and the credits land in your account with a citation attached: Signal accepted, and the title you gave it. The amount is set for each idea when it ships. Built signals sit at the top of the board with what they paid beside them, because the only evidence that a board like this is real is the last one that was.

The reward is credits and nothing else, the same credits you earn hauling cargo or working a dock shift. Nothing in Starlane that wins can be bought with money, and this doesn't change that: an idea is paid for in the game's own currency, for work that only a player could do (why we're strict about that).

The paper says so too

The day an idea ships, the Starlane Times counts it: an idea from the fleet went into the game. It doesn't say whose, and it doesn't say what. The board is the author's to read; the paper only says that the universe got a little more finished, and that somebody flying in it was the reason.

Why we do it this way

A suggestion box collects suggestions and then dies, because nobody ever sees one come back built. What makes somebody send a second signal is seeing their first one marked Built, with credits in their account and a citation to show for it. So that's what the board is built around: the shipped ones first, the reward in plain sight, and a status on every signal, Not this era included, so that none of them just disappears.

If you're new, start with your first evening. By the end of it you'll have flown enough to know what you'd change.

Create a pilot. It's free, and there's nothing to download.