What changed
Starlane is built in the open and mostly built from the signal board. Ideas from players are marked, with what shipping them paid.
Nobody gets a ship. You work for the first one.
U2e2026-09-06 · from the signal board · 5,000 paid
- You start on a dock with a few hundred credits and no hull. Your origin recommends a ship; you buy it.
- The new Dock tab is how — work that needs no ship, no fuel and no capital, paid by the hour.
- You do not have to watch it. Take a shift, close the tab, and the credits are there when you come back.
- About a session of it buys your first hull, and every yard stocks the cheap ones.
- Every existing pilot has lost their ship, with no refund. Credits, skills, licences, standing and chart are untouched.
- Dock work pays badly on purpose. It is the floor of this economy, not a rung on it.
A station is a place now, and your record is a record
U2d2026-09-06 · from the signal board · 5,000 paid
- Every system has a description — what the place is, who runs it, why it makes what it makes.
- The system you are docked at shows what is actually there: the belt, the board, the academy, the yard.
- It also tells you what your hold is worth where you are standing.
- Your account page is a service record: the ship, training, licences, standing, your rank on each board, and the ideas you filed.
Objectives — something to check when you log in
U2c2026-09-06 · from the signal board · 5,000 paid
- Three things to do today and two for the week. They reset at midnight, and on Monday morning.
- Nothing to accept and nothing to tick — the bars have moved by the time you look.
- What you are asked for depends on what you can actually do.
- The rewards are small on purpose. The money in this game comes from flying.
Contracts — somebody else's freight, for a fee
U2b2026-09-06 · from the signal board · 5,000 paid
- Every station posts freight it wants moved: a named load to a named system, for a fee agreed before you leave.
- You buy the cargo yourself, so what you make is the fee less what the load cost you.
- The fee follows hold space and distance, not what the goods are worth.
- Boards are shared. Somebody else can take a posting out from under you.
- Arrive with the cargo and it pays, late or not. Hand one back at any time, from anywhere, for nothing.
The chart is a chart again
U2.92026-09-06 · from the signal board · 2,500 paid
- The star chart is a real graph now — drag, zoom, hover, and click a system to open it.
- It looks like a sky rather than a diagram, and it is flat: two systems twice as far apart on screen are twice as far apart in fuel.
- With JavaScript off you get the same chart as a picture, and the tables carry every fact.
- And this page — what changed, and what you are playing.