Operations is the widest console on the bridge. Comms, the alert condition, the
crew, the cargo, the decks, the objectives, the drones — anything about the ship
that is not flying it, shooting it, powering it or scanning with it is yours.
It is the best seat for a player who likes having a lot to do and a lot to say,
and the worst seat for one who wants a single clear job.
The alert condition
Start here, because it is the piece the rest of the ship depends on and the piece
that most often goes unnoticed. You set the ship's alert condition, and it decides
which systems may be switched on at all:
| Condition | For | Locked out |
|---|
| Blue | Docking operations | Shields, weapons, cloak |
| Green | Standard operations | Shields, weapons |
| Yellow | Elevated | Weapons, cloak |
| Red | Battlestations | Cloak |
Tactical cannot raise shields until you give them Yellow, and cannot arm
weapons until you give them Red. A crew that loses the opening exchange of a
fight has usually lost it here. Get to Yellow the moment something looks wrong;
Red is the Captain's call but you are the one who has to hear it and act.
Alert actions can be bound to keys or a gamepad — the four conditions
individually, or a cycle action. Bind them. In a bad moment you do not want to be
hunting for a tab.
Blue is worth remembering separately: it exists for docking, and a vessel trying to
dock with shields up is a vessel that is not docking.
Comms
You are the ship's voice. Your comms panel lists active channels, shows the traffic
on them, and lets you transmit — hailing a contact, answering a distress call,
talking to a station about docking clearance.
There is also a comm link for live voice and video between players,
which is a different thing from in‑fiction channels: it is real people talking to
real people, useful for a distributed crew, and outside the story.
Two warnings. Your Game Master can intercept channels your crew believes are
private — assume anything transmitted may be heard. And what you say as the
ship is a commitment the Captain then has to live with, so check before you promise
anybody anything.
Crew and the interior
Your ship has people on it, and on a large hull it has a lot of them — hundreds
of crew, officers and marines, plus passengers and military complement on the ships
that carry them. Your crew lists show who is aboard and what condition they are in.
The decks panel is the interior of the ship. It matters when the
inside of the ship becomes the story: boarders, fires, a compartment losing
atmosphere, getting a repair team somewhere. On a quiet run you will not open it. On
a bad day it is the most important panel on the bridge.
Cargo and trade
Cargo is yours: what is in the hold, transferring it, and the trade side of the
game — markets, pickups, deliveries, collections. On a mission with an economy
this is a whole job by itself; on a combat mission you will barely touch it.
Objectives
Your console shows the mission's objectives and their state. This makes you the
crew's memory. Officers deep in their own panels lose track of why the ship is out
here, and a quiet "we still need to recover that probe" from Operations is worth more
than it sounds.
Being good at it
- Yellow early, and say so. Cheap, reversible, and it is the thing
that lets Tactical do their job.
- Read the objectives out loud when they change. You are the only
one watching them.
- Hail before shooting. Most contacts will talk. Some of them are
worth talking to, and finding out is your console.
- Answer everything. An unanswered hail is a Game Master with a
prepared scene and nowhere to put it.
- Do not narrate your panels. You have more information than anyone
and most of it is not urgent. Filter.
- Get a second window. Comms on one screen and everything else on
another turns the busiest console on the ship into a manageable one.
