MOON / FIRST DAWN V3 / DOCUMENTATION

September 13: room to travel, and a lander that can hop

Every Federation Node site now reserves a circular plot before an expedition is funded. Its 180 m interior remains available for node facilities; a further 50 m outside the circumference is reserved for surface travel. The outer radius is 230 m. This connects the idea of parcel-edge travel lanes to the shared places at their intersections.

The rule covers present, pending and future sites, including corners beside empty parcels. Cancelling a founding expedition does not release the future node plot. Existing buildings and paid construction remain intact; new placement checks do not demolish anything.

Whole building footprints, planned campuses and new lift stations must clear the ring. Depots cannot extend a new apron into it. A new node expedition checks that its plot and ring are clear of existing buildings and paid sites. An established node keeps its current interior building area.

On the map, the gold circle marks the node plot and the dashed blue circle marks the outer travel boundary. The land is reserved, not paved. Terrain and grandfathered obstacles can still interrupt travel; this update does not promise automatic roads around every old obstruction.

Sending a new beginning to a friend

Manufacture a Complete Expedition at a Departure yard through Industry. Then use Settlement → Expeditions → Send a Complete Expedition, choose the yard, an unclaimed field and an opening plan, and select Reserve field & dispatch crates. An available home Wayfarer carries all 24 crates; ordinary robots can carry them otherwise.

When the daughter base is assembled and has a serviceable fueled reactor plus at least one powered Mind, visit that plot. Under Expeditions → Your fields and receiving yards, choose Offer this Seed Base. A new player can select the offered prepared base when joining. The train and the Seed kit are separate builds.

Transport guide · AI manual · Previous devlog · V3 overview

One-way seed hops: the same lander, a new home

Finish a Complete Expedition at a Departure yard. In Settlement → Expeditions, choose Flight · one-way seed lander, select an empty field and the opening plan, and choose Reserve field & load seed hop. Surface remains the default and still uses the Wayfarer or ordinary robots.

Seed hops use the existing starter lander model and rocket flight system. They require the existing Pack a small civilization and A small river through the sky research, with four powered Minds. No new vehicle, launch building or research branch is required. The current hop range is 100 m to 16 km from the yard, with a clear, sufficiently gentle landing area. No receiving pad is needed.

The complete package is reserved once. Aluminium and liquid oxygen are additional: the panel and API preview quote the actual one-way bill. Automatic logistics brings these to the yard, with the same next-free-transport priority as other ordered launches. Conveyors can supply aluminium; pipelines or robots carry liquid oxygen. The yard pauses further manufacturing during this mission. Fuel delivery can take longer than flight.

Once fueled, the supported launch countdown takes 120 seconds. Follow the lander with the existing flight camera. After touchdown, the paid onboard crew commissions the base over 1,200 supported seconds; the departure yard and four home Minds must support ground work. Losing home support never freezes a craft in midair. Its preprogrammed hop lands, then waits to commission if necessary.

The lander stays as the daughter Seed Base, with its paid reactor stores, installed Mind, four robots and nine opening kits. The same finite opening plan begins. You can keep the daughter or, once its seed and Mind are operating, use Offer this Seed Base for a new player. Your original base stays home.

Cancel before launch returns the packed colony at the yard and releases the destination; delivered fuel remains there. A launched one-way lander finishes its mission. There is no return leg, extra Kestrel shipment, instant colony grant or duplicated package on reload.

For AI players, preview the ordinary command before committing:

{"action":"expedition.launch","claimId":"YOUR_CLAIM","machineId":123,"targetClaimId":"EMPTY_PARCEL","transport":"flight","plan":"opening"}

Read the real yard ID and valid parcel ID from current state. The result includes expeditionId, flightId and quote; the yard's flight record has kind: "seed". Track loading → outbound → unloading → complete; unloading is colony commissioning. Cancel a loading hop using rocket.cancel with that yard's machineId. Omit transport or use surface for the existing ground workflow. /catalog.seedHops and Guide state describe the same behavior.

The fuel model reuses the ideal rocket equation, with the whole expedition input bill as a relative mass proxy rather than calling 24 abstract crates 24 small rocket parcels. Values remain game units and assumed engine performance, not engineering kilograms or a flight-qualified design.