How to play Orbital Blackout

Cockpit

Controls

Step one

Enlist and take a hull out

Orbital Blackout runs entirely in the browser. There is no client, no install and no cost to fly. Registration takes an email and a password, and the first thing the game asks for is an allegiance.

The Solaris Accord runs registered hulls and open channels — order through visibility. The Umbral Pact runs dark and explains nothing — survival through silence. Your nation decides your home space, your chat channels and who shoots at you on sight. Pick a starter hull, name your callsign, and you are launched into your nation's core sector.

• Your first sector is Ring 0: light Xaruun presence, common ore and no enemy nation traffic.
• Nothing you loot counts until it is banked at a station. Fly out, fill the hold, come home.
• Losing a hull is real. Insurance returns part of the value, not the ship you had fitted.

Handling

Naval flight, turret arcs and the flank burn

Flight is naval, not arcade. Throttle and rudder are separate inputs, so a ship under full burn takes distance to turn and distance to stop. Every weapon sits on a physical mount with a fixed firing arc — a bow turret cannot shoot behind you, and a broadside battery is dead weight until the target is off your beam.

That turns fights into positioning problems. You are constantly trading your own arc against theirs, and the flank burn on Q is the tool that decides who gets the angle. Each archetype burns differently: Chase hulls sprint, Broadside hulls slide sideways to hold a beam, Bulwark hulls brace and eat the hit.

Shields

Regenerate between fights, not during one — sustained contact keeps them suppressed.

Hull

Does not come back on its own. Repair kits, station services or you go home.

Frontal armour

Blunts damage taken through the bow, which is why nose-on brawls favour heavy frames.

Logistics

Stations, docking and banking

Every sector has a station at its centre with marked docking points. Line up on the ring, cut throttle and press E to dock. Docking is the only way to bank cargo, and everything in your hold is at risk until you do.

Docked, you get the full command deck: hangar and fitting, market, research, contracts, skills, battlegroup and store. Undock when you are ready and the sector picks up where you left it — the world keeps running whether or not your tab has focus.

Risk and reward

Wrecks: looting other pilots and recovering your own

When a pilot dies, every module fitted to that hull rolls independently against a destruction chance set by its rarity — some of the loadout is simply gone. What survives is ejected into a drifting hulk at the exact spot they fell, along with 60% of everything they had not banked. That hulk is visible to everyone in the sector, and whoever gets there first takes it.

That includes the pilot who died. Respawn, fly back out and you can strip your own wreck — the game does not care who owns it, only who reaches it and holds station. Every death is a race: the killer wants to finish the job, you want your surviving gear and cargo back, and anyone else who saw the fight now has a reason to be there too.

Claiming is not instant. You have to sit on the wreck's clamps at close range for five seconds — long enough that a third party can interrupt you, and long enough that stripping a wreck in contested space is genuinely dangerous. The moment the hold completes the hulk is spent; there is no second claim.

Wreck lifetime

10 minutes before the hulk breaks up on its own

Carried over

60% of unbanked cargo, plus the modules that survive their loss roll

Claim hold

5 seconds inside 240 units, uninterrupted

Claims

One only — first pilot to finish the hold takes everything

• Not everything makes it into the wreck: each fitted module has its own chance to be destroyed outright, and rarer gear is judged on its own roll.
• Surviving modules are heavy — a full hold means you leave gear in the hulk for the next pilot.
• Killing an enemy-nation pilot in contested space is the fastest way to a rich wreck, and the fastest way to become one.
• Insurance refunds part of a lost hull's value, but never your cargo. Only the wreck can give that back.
• This is why banking matters. Anything already docked at a station can never end up in someone else's hold.

The map

Rings, gates and contested space

The galaxy is a set of concentric rings. Ring 0 is national home space. Ring 1 is your nation's reach. Ring 2 holds the picket lines and the Seam, where both nations meet. Rings 3 and 4 are Xaruun incursion space and the Deep Maw.

Gates are physical objects: fly into one and you arrive on the paired gate in the destination sector. Gates enforce level requirements, so the deeper rings stay shut until you have earned them.

Ring 1

Level 8

Ring 2

Level 14

Ring 3

Level 20

Ring 4

Level 24

• Contested sectors carry control relays. Holding them swings buffs to the nation that owns them.
• Hourly sector events shift what spawns and what it pays.
• Deeper rings are the only place the rarer resources exist at all.

The enemy

The Xaruun Devourment and its Ascendants

The Xaruun are not a nation and do not negotiate. They range from light skirmishers that roam sector space to heavy biomechanical warforms that will end an unprepared frigate in seconds. Standard hostiles drift and patrol on their own, so a quiet sector is never guaranteed to stay quiet.

Above the standard ranks sit the Ascendants — boss-tier Xaruun that hold station with a tight escort ring of guards. They hit far harder and soak far more than their base form, and they pay accordingly.

Verdant

Tier 1 — Rings 0-1, triple rewards

Azure

Tier 2 — Ring 1, five times rewards

Violet

Tier 3 — Ring 2, eight times rewards

Ember

Tier 4 — Rings 3-4, twelve times rewards

• At most three Ascendants are alive in a sector at once; a killed one is replaced after three minutes.
• Escorts orbit the Ascendant and re-form — pulling the boss alone is most of the fight.

Economy

Credits, honor and five materials

Credits buy hulls, modules and upgrades. Honor is earned in combat and buys gear credits cannot. Underneath both sits a five-tier material chain, and each material only spawns from its origin ring outward.

Materials come from mining nodes, Xaruun wrecks, sealed caches and breaking down gear you no longer fly. Rarer material is worth far more per unit but also weighs far more, so hold capacity — not greed — decides when you turn for home.

Ore

Ring 0 · 12 cr · 1 lb per unit

Plasma

Ring 1 · 72 cr · 2 lb

Crystal

Ring 2 · 360 cr · 4 lb

Alloy

Ring 3 · 1,680 cr · 8 lb

Cores

Ring 4 · 9,600 cr · 16 lb

• Loose, unfitted modules ride in the hold and weigh more than any single core. Fitted gear is free to carry.
• Sealed caches drift sparsely in every sector. Crack one with E for materials, credits, and occasionally a short-lived booster.
• Salvaging a module returns 40% of its credit value and half the materials sunk into its upgrades, itemised for confirmation before you commit.

Fitting

The hangar: slots, tiers and refits

Every hull has a fixed slot layout across weapons, launchers, shields, engines and utility, from a two-slot starter frigate up to a nine-slot dreadnought. Modules come in ten tiers, and any module can be pushed up to twenty upgrade levels using credits and materials.

The hull itself levels separately, up to ship level 50. Refit milestones are visible: tuned cannon barbettes, applique armour, keel reinforcement, radiator banks and capital drives all physically appear on your ship as you reach them. Hull paints bought in the store are selectable from the same screen.

• Upgrade costs scale steeply with both tier and level — a maxed low-tier module is often better value than a bare high-tier one.
• The fitting bay previews stat changes live before you commit.

Support

The drone wing

Sentinel drones fly escort in a Vanguard Ring formation around your hull, adding sustained damage that never needs an arc. You start with none and build the wing one link at a time, up to eight.

Each link is a separate unlock with its own escalating cost, and every drone levels on its own up to level 50. The drone tab in the hangar lays out all eight slots as a roadmap so you can see what the next link will take before you commit to it.

Progression

Levels, skills, research, contracts and rank

Levels run to 120 on a steep curve — total XP required is 420 x (level - 1) ^ 2.35 — so every level is a real step rather than a tick. Levels unlock gates, hulls and skills.

Skills are a permanent point spend across offense, defense and industry branches, each with its own level requirement and rank cap. Research runs in real time: queue a node and it completes on the clock whether you are flying or logged out. Contracts refresh daily on UTC midnight, and you carry one at a time, so choosing which to run matters.

• Fleet rank is a capped ladder of American-style military ranks, from Recruit up to Imperator — one seat only.
• Rank points come from service length, total XP, honor, Xaruun kills and confirmed kills on opposing-nation pilots.
• Because seats are capped, holding a rank means holding it against everyone below you. Your insignia shows beside your callsign in chat and on your nameplate.

Fleet

Battlegroups, chat and standings

Battlegroups are player corporations with ranked membership, a shared level track and perks that improve as the group grows. Founding one costs credits; leaving one puts you on a rejoin cooldown.

Chat runs on separate channels for your nation, your battlegroup and your local sector, with a resizable panel alongside the flight log. The Fleet Standings board tracks the leaders across the whole server.

Store

Boosters and cosmetics

Boosters add a flat 10% to credits, XP or honor for a fixed window — 24 hours, 7 days or 30 days — and stack with nothing else that would break the economy. Hull paints, trails and titles are cosmetic only.

There is no paid weapon, no paid hull tier and no paid material. Everything that decides a fight is earned in flight.

Checklist

Surviving your first hour

• Bank early. A short run that reaches the station beats a long one that does not.
• Learn your arcs before you learn your loadout. Position wins more fights than tier does.
• Upgrade one module properly rather than three modules halfway.
• Do not gate into a new ring the moment it unlocks — the spawns there are tuned for the level above you.
• Take the daily contract that matches what you were going to do anyway.
• Watch your hold weight. Cores are worth a fortune and will drown a light hull's speed.