Credits and discovery

Two currencies run your whole career: credits pay for attempts, discovery pays for permanent progress. Knowing which is which tells you where a reward is going before you even open the toast.

The two currencies

Credits are money. A rocket costs credits to launch, a building's next level costs credits, and hiring a Meek costs credits. They flow both ways: a flight that goes well pays them back, and a flight that goes badly spends them for nothing.

Discovery only ever buys one kind of thing: a tech node on the tech tree, and the buildings a node gates. It never pays for a launch or a hire. You cannot spend your way to more of it either. It comes only from doing things worth discovering.

Your credits show on the chip at the top of the hangar. Tap it to open the Player sheet, where your discovery stands beside them and your whole account lives.

What earns each

Achievements pay both currencies at once, in amounts that match the feat. Lighting an engine for the first time pays 50 credits and 2 discovery; your first launch from Earth pays 200 credits and 5 discovery; going supersonic and opening a parachute in flight each pay 100 credits and 3 discovery. Harder feats pay more of both. Contracts are paid jobs from companies, and they pay in credits only. Readings pay twice over: the first time you measure a place — a world, a band of altitude and, on the ground, a biome — you are paid for the place itself, and there are reading achievements on top, worth more with a scientist aboard. The survey is the steady discovery income and the reason to fly an instrument everywhere; see Science and readings. Recovering a ship pays back credits, covered below.

What a launch costs

Standing on the pad is free. What you pay for is lighting the first stage: the moment it fires, the game adds up every part's own cost and charges you that whole sum in credits. Two ships built from the same parts always cost the same to launch, so the readout in the hangar already tells you the bill before you fly. A flight you resume from orbit was already paid for the day it left the pad, so there is no second charge for continuing it.

Recovery pays back what came home

A landed ship standing still can be recovered from the flight menu: it comes home to the hangar and every part still aboard is refunded in credits. A stage you dropped along the way is not aboard, so nothing from it comes back. A ship that crashes pays back nothing at all: whatever survived a crash was not enough to fly again. This is why an attempt that reaches orbit and comes home whole costs you far less than its sticker price, and a bad flight can cost you all of it.

Starting out

A new pilot begins with 5,000 credits and no discovery at all. That purse is there to carry you through a few early crashes while you learn to fly, not to buy your way up the ladder. Discovery for the tech tree still has to be earned.

Climbing the ladder

The game is built around a ladder of feats: a short hop off the pad, a stable orbit, a landing on the Moon, then Mars, then further out still. Each rung asks for a rocket the one before it could not have built, and reaching a rung pays enough in credits and discovery to cover most, but never all, of what the next one needs. You always have to add something of your own, a better engine, a heavier tank, or a new tech node, to take the next step up.