How to play

1 · Pick work.

A contract from the board, or your calling’s own work (patrols, grounds, itineraries).

2 · Plan.

Choose Fastest, Cheapest or Safest. The receipt shows every cost the sea can charge: fuel, tolls, fees, tariff, tribute risk, and whose waters you’ll cross.

3 · Dispatch.

One ad, then she sails in real time. Your standing orders handle whatever the sea throws at her.

4 · Come back.

Collect, earn Elo, grow the tree, fit modules, buy hulls, queue the next job.

Everyone profits from someone.

Pirates tax traffic, Shepherds are paid to stop them, Tankers keep the ports full, and maydays pay whoever answers.

What you never lose

Ships are never destroyed or confiscated. Your Elo is never taken from you. The worst that the sea can do is cost you money and time, and both are capped.

What the money is for

The tree makes a ship who she is, permanently. Modules are what she wears, swapped in port. Hulls are bought at a shipyard, one per fleet slot; tree levels 8, 17 and 25 open the next slots, and two achievements add one each.

Glossary

Company · Brethren · Watch

A flag captains sail under together, any calling mixed: a shared board, a wire, a tag before every name, a home port, three contracts a fortnight and standing earned by finishing them. Founding costs $25,000; nothing in it moves a ship faster.

Standing

A company's record of contracts completed. Levels at 3, 10, 25 and 50 add one percent per level to every member's landed voyage.

Achievement

A thing done, counted by the Admiralty: landings, distance, each calling's own work, the fleet, the company. Most pay a little cash; a few give a berth (one more fleet slot) or a free tree node.

Berth

A fleet slot. You start with one; tree levels 8, 17 and 25 open the next three, and two achievements add one each.

Tribute

A cut a pirate demands on a hot route. You can pay it, refuse it through your standing orders, or hire a Shepherd. It is not a tax.

Tariff

A customs duty paid at the port where the cargo is landed, by that port’s tier. Passing through a nation’s waters is free (innocent passage).

Toll

A fixed fee to use a canal: Suez, Panama, Kiel or Corinth. It scales with hull size.

Ransom

Paid to release a seized ship. It’s capped at half the voyage’s gross. Never the ship, never the whole hold.

Elo · Infamy

Your reputation for each class. Pirates read it upside down: Infamy is negative Elo. Win above your level and it climbs fast.

CR (Combat Rating)

How well a hull fights, built from Defense, tree and modules. Both sides can see it, because nothing in the game is hidden.

Heat

How dangerous a zone is. It is lower inside territorial seas, higher on the high seas, and highest in contested water.

Territorial sea · EEZ · High seas

12 nm of a coast, 200 nm of a coast, and nobody’s. Pirates can’t hold station inside a territorial sea.

Contested water

Where two or more nations claim the same sea. Either claimant’s coast guard may stop you, and pirates like the confusion.

Refuel call

A fuel stop planned automatically when a leg is longer than her tank. Scarce ports charge more, and empty ones can’t fill you.

Range by tier

T1 hulls hop along coasts and T2 can cross oceans. The planner never sells you a voyage she can’t make.

Standing orders

What a ship does while you’re away. The rules get richer with hull tier, from three presets at T1 to a chain of rules at T5.

Tender

An escort job you post, offering a share of gross to any Shepherd who accepts it, even mid-voyage.

Rookie shield

Your first 7 in-game days online, or first 10 contracts: tribute-exempt and seizure-proof.

Modules

What a ship wears, swappable in port: install for a 5% fee, resell at 70%. The tree is who she is, and it’s permanent.

Mayday

A distress beacon. The nearest Tankers and Shepherds can answer it for money and Elo.

Sea zone

One of 85 named waters, from the Aegean to the Sargasso. Zones carry heat, patrols and events.