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 1: light Devourment presence, common Carbon and no enemy nation traffic.
• Nothing you loot counts until it is deposited 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.

The Aegis cruiser mounts unusually wide-traverse turrets for flexible coverage, but its paired arcs are arranged so no angle ever brings more than four turrets onto one target.

Shields

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

Hull

Does not come back on its own. Use station repair, or fit Repair Nanites and press 1 for an emergency patch.

Starter repairs

Kiowa and Bollard repair free at a station; other hulls use the reduced damage-based repair curve.

Frontal armour

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

Logistics

Stations, docking and deposits

Most sectors have a station at their centre with marked docking points. Line up on the ring, cut throttle and press E to dock. Docking is the only way to deposit 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.

A few lawless sectors have no station at all — including both Severance Blackout Shipyards. You launch from somewhere else, fight there, and live or die by whatever you can carry back through the gate.

Risk and reward

Wrecks: looting other pilots and recovering your own

Cargo resources follow one rule: destruction empties your entire undeposited resource hold. Exactly 60% of each resource enters the wreck; the remaining 40% is permanently destroyed. Resources already deposited at a station are protected.

Modules follow a separate rule. Every fitted module and every loose module carried in the hold rolls independently: 20% critically damaged and gone forever, 50% salvageable in the wreck with its upgrade levels intact, and 30% returned directly to station hangar storage by Emergency Auto-Recovery Ejection (E.A.R.E.). Rarity, tier, upgrade level and the number of modules carried do not soften those per-module odds.

E.A.R.E. is automatic; there is no key to press. If your nation controls a station providing Recovery Nets, 5 percentage points shift from the salvageable result into E.A.R.E., up to a 10-point total shift. The fixed 20% critically-damaged chance never changes.

The pilot who died may return for their wreck, but receives no ownership priority. Every death is a race: the killer, the dead pilot, or any observer can claim it by getting close and holding R for five uninterrupted seconds. The first completed claim takes what fits; the wreck cannot be claimed twice.

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

Cargo resources

100% leaves your hold · 60% enters the wreck · 40% is destroyed

Module fates

20% critically damaged · 50% salvageable · 30% E.A.R.E. to hangar

Claim hold

5 seconds inside 240 units, uninterrupted

Claims

One only — first pilot to finish the hold takes everything

• Every module rolls separately, so a big loadout usually loses a piece somewhere — spread across all three outcomes.
• Salvageable 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 is only a credit payout on the destroyed hull. It does not return the hull, cargo resources or modules.
• This is why depositing 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 1 is national home space. Ring 2 is your nation's reach. Ring 3 holds the picket lines and the Seam, where both nations meet. Rings 4 and 5 are incursion space and the Devouring Maw. The outer Picket flanks lead to two mirrored Severance Blackout Shipyards in Ring 4 — stationless level-30 PvPvE hunting grounds. Ring 6 holds the Devourment Borders, and Ring 7 is Hollow Crown — a circular arena that holds a single shared world boss.

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

Home space · Level 1

Ring 2

Level 8

Ring 3

Level 14

Ring 4

Level 20

Ring 5

Level 24

Ring 6 · Devourment Borders

Level 28

Ring 7 · Hollow Crown

Level 28 — entered from the north gate of either Border

Ring 4 · Severance Shipyards

Level 30 — from the outer Picket flank gates

• 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 Blackout Shipyards are open-loot PvPvE space: any pilot can take a physical Severance drop, and only extraction makes it yours.

The enemy

The Devourment and its Ascendants

The Devourment 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 Devourment 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 1-2, triple rewards

Azure

Tier 2 — Ring 2, five times rewards

Violet

Tier 3 — Ring 3 and the Devourment Borders, eight times rewards

Ember

Tier 4 — Ring 4 and deeper, twelve times rewards

• At most five 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, Devourment 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.

Carbon

Ring 1 · 12 cr · 1 lb per unit

Plasma

Ring 2 · 72 cr · 2 lb

Crystal

Ring 3 · 360 cr · 4 lb

Alloy

Ring 4 · 1,680 cr · 8 lb

Cores

Ring 5 · 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 visual modifications

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 how far one can be upgraded depends on its quality colour: grey stops at +5, green at +10, blue at +15, purple at +20 and gold at +25. Each level adds 3.2% to the module's stats, so only gold gear reaches 1.8x its base.

The hull itself levels separately, up to ship level 50. Every tenth level unlocks an upgrade trim — a powered light package on the hull that changes colour as you climb: Grey Trim at 10, Green Trim at 20, Blue Trim at 30, Purple Trim at 40 and Amber Trim at 50, each lighting more of the ship. Hull paints bought in the store, and Emergency Red recovered from the Severance, are selectable from the same screen. Each Emergency Red token paints one random hull you have not painted yet, so the full set is a long chase; once all nine hulls are painted, further tokens pay out 10 Severance components.

• Gold modules unlock at level 50. Upgrade costs scale steeply with tier and level, and levels 21-25 on gold gear are steeper again — grey gear is deliberately capped early so nobody sinks a fortune into kit they will replace.
• Severance schematics fabricate three modules about 10% above their Gold counterparts. Each craft consumes the selected Gold donor, 25 components, 10 command cores and 1.5 million credits; donor upgrades do not transfer.
• The fitting bay previews stat changes live before you commit.

Support

The drone wing

Sentinel fighter drones fly independent carrier sorties around your hull. Once your own shot lands, each fighter pursues that target and fires a level-matched Laser Repeater from half normal weapon range. 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 come in two kinds — daily and weekly — and you carry one of each at a time. The daily board rerolls at UTC midnight with a deep pool of kill and mining jobs at different sizes, and payouts vary from job to job, so it is worth reading the board rather than taking the first line.

• 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, Devourment 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, honor or mining yield for a fixed window — 24 hours, 7 days or 30 days — and never stack past that 10% ceiling. 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

• Deposit 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.