Crew

Every trade you can hire, what each stat does, the Astronaut Center's levels, the faces a Meek wears, and the figures a flight moves on their card.

The trades

The price below is the trade's base. What a candidate actually asks for on the board moves around it: a higher key stat costs more, and a braver candidate signs for less than a timid one of the same skill. The hire is the only credits a Meek ever costs.

Trade	Judged on	What they do	Base price	From level
Astronaut	Piloting, G-tolerance	Flies the ship. Every pod needs one aboard, and their piloting is what the turn controls answer to.	900 cr	1
Scientist	Science	Raises every science reading's reward by 10 % per point of science while aboard.	1,200 cr	2
Engineer	Wrench	Repacks a spent parachute in flight, which is the only way a ship gets a second descent under the same canopy. How high the wrench is does not change it yet.	1,200 cr	2
Medic	Nerve, Science	Rides as a passenger. Their science does not pay the scientist's bonus.	1,200 cr	2
Botanist	Science	Works every greenhouse on the ship they ride, from any seat. Nothing grows on a ship with no botanist aboard, and a second and third raise every harvest. Their science does not pay the scientist's bonus.	1,200 cr	3
Nuclear Scientist	Science	Runs an AR-8 Antimatter Reactor. No living nuclear scientist aboard and the core stays cold, whoever else is on the ship. Their science does not pay the scientist's bonus.	1,400 cr	3
Tourist	Nerve	Never on the board. A contract hands you tourists when you accept it, free, and takes them back when it ends.	free	—

"From level" is the Astronaut Center level at which that trade starts appearing on the recruit board. Every open trade keeps a place on the board, and the board always carries at least one raw astronaut.

Three trades are asked for by name rather than by a pair of hands. A Botanist has to be aboard the ship — in any seat — for anything to grow in its greenhouses. A Nuclear Scientist has to be alive somewhere aboard for a reactor to make any power at all, and the reactor's own seat is reserved for one. An Engineer repacks a spent parachute from anywhere on the ship. Everyone else can sit anywhere there is room.

Reputation

The Meek know who came home. Every price on the board is also scaled by your reputation, which starts at par and moves with your record:

What happened	Every hire
A Meek lost, of any trade, tourists included	+5 %
A crewed flight recovered, however many rode it	−0.5 %
The best it gets	20 % off, after 40 safe flights
The worst it gets	three times the price, after 40 lost

Ten safe crewed flights pay for one loss. The surcharge is on the prices you see, so the board simply asks more after a crash and less after a run of recoveries, and a line above the cards says the current rate and why. At par it says nothing.

The five stats

Every Meek has all five, from 1 to 10, whatever their trade. The two or three a trade is judged on are drawn in green on their card and start higher when they are rolled.

Stat	What it does	Range of effect
Piloting	How hard the ship turns for the Meek at the controls. Only the pilot's counts.	0.76× at 1 to 1.30× at 10
Nerve	What they sign for. A braver Meek is cheaper to hire. Nothing in flight reads it.	±2 % of the price per point
G-tolerance	The sustained load they stay awake through, and the rate of turn they keep their bearings through. Everyone aboard is judged on their own.	4.6 G at 1 to 10.0 G at 10 19 rpm at 1 to 34 rpm at 10
Science	A scientist's readings pay more. No other trade's science earns anything.	+10 % to +100 %
Wrench	The engineer's trade stat. An engineer aboard can repack a spent parachute; the figure itself is not read yet.	—

A Meek's G limit is 4 G plus 0.6 G per point of G-tolerance. Three seconds past it and they are out; they come to five seconds after the load drops a G back under. Five G past the limit for three seconds kills them.

The same stat sets a spin limit: about 19 rpm at 1 and 34 rpm at 10. Six seconds past that and they are out, whatever the load is; they come to five seconds after both the load and the spin have settled. Spinning never kills.

The Astronaut Center

Its level is how many Meek you may keep at once, and how good a candidate the board may deal you. "Recruits up to" is the highest any one stat on a candidate may be rolled at.

Level	Meek at once	Recruits up to	Cost
1	3	6 / 10	free
2	6	8 / 10	35 discovery + 3,000 credits
3	10	10 / 10	110 discovery + 12,000 credits

The recruit board holds 7 candidates, and each offer stands for 2 days before it is replaced. Tourists a contract lends you sit outside the "Meek at once" figure and never take a place. The building itself is in Buildings.

How a Meek grows

Stats grow only when the Meek comes home, which means recovering the ship they were on. Each stat has a counter of its own; when the counter reaches four times the stat's current value, the stat goes up one point and the counter starts again against the higher target. Piloting 5 therefore needs 20 points to reach 6. Ten is the ceiling and nothing ever falls.

What happened	Who gets it	Stat	Points
The flight's hardest feat	The pilot	Piloting	see the ladder below
The flight's hardest feat	Everyone aboard	Nerve	see the ladder below
A feat that Meek had never reached	Everyone aboard	Nerve	+3 on top
Peak load came within 1 G of their limit	Everyone aboard	G-tolerance	+1
Every blackout of their own they survived, from load or from spin	The one who blacked out	G-tolerance	+2 each
Every full hour aboard	Everyone aboard	G-tolerance	+1 each, at most 8 a flight
A reading filed while they were aboard	The scientist	Science	+1
A reading on a world they had never read	The scientist	Science	+3

The hours count from boarding to recovery on the world's own clock, so a ship left parked in orbit for a day toughens its crew when it finally comes home.

The feat ladder

A flight's hardest feat is what pays. Only the hardest one counts, so a flight that lands on the Moon does not also pay for the launch and the orbit on the way.

Feat	Piloting, for the pilot	Nerve, for everyone
Leaving the pad	2	1
Reaching space	3	1
Holding an orbit	6	1
Orbiting the Moon	10	2
Landing on the Moon	15	2
Orbiting Mars	18	3
Landing on Mars	25	3

The history

Every Meek keeps a dated list of what they did, read by tapping any face on the Open the Meek sheet. It holds the last 100 lines; older ones fall off the end. Beside it stand three career figures: the highest they have ever been, the worlds they have flown at, and the atmospheres they have flown in.

Line	When it is written
Signed on	Hired off the recruit board.
Came aboard as a passenger	A contract's tourist, the moment you accept it.
Lifted off	The first stage lights. Says the pad and the ship's name.
A rung reached	Space, orbit, flying clear, the Moon's or Mars' orbit — once a flight.
First flight at a world	The first time they are in that world's sphere.
First flight in its air	The first time they are inside that world's atmosphere.
A new altitude record	When the climb has finished and the flight's peak beats their own best.
Landed	Coming to rest, with the landform and the biome underneath.
A reading	An instrument aboard takes one.
A spacewalk or a transfer	Moving between modules, or crossing to a ship not joined to yours.
Docked	The latches close.
Blacked out	Their own blackout, with the G that did it.
Came home	The recovery, with which flight it was and which stats stepped up.
Lost	How they went and over which world.

The faces

A Meek wears one face for life, and it changes with what their body is doing. There are nine of them:

Face	When you see it
Idle	The resting face. Everywhere a Meek is shown and nothing else applies.
Working	While that Meek's own trade has something to do — the pilot flying, a crop growing for the botanists, a lit reactor for the nuclear scientist, a burning engine for the engineer. It is the trade's own face, so an astronaut is at the controls and an engineer has a wrench. Who is working, and when.
Panicked	Within two G of their own limit.
Passed out	Blacked out under the load.
Scared	On a collision course at speed, and while the ship is out of food.
Really happy	Coming down under an open canopy, slow enough to land safely.
Excited	For twenty seconds after a feat that Meek had never reached.
Happy	Not asked for in flight.
Sick	Not asked for in flight.

A Meek with no picture yet is drawn as a plain coloured disc, and a face nobody has drawn falls back to the idle one.

What loses a Meek

Cause	What the Lost tab says
The ship broke up on the ground or in the air	crashed
The ship was destroyed while you were away from it	lost on rails
The larder ran dry	starved
Killed by the load, or left aboard a flight you walked away from	lost

Each entry keeps the world it happened over and how many flights that Meek had flown. Nothing brings them back.

Every entry also carries an obituary: a few lines written for that Meek alone, out of the history above, a minute or so after they are lost. It is kept for good and never written twice. Until it arrives the card reads "Their obituary is being written."; in sandbox, where nothing about a flight is saved, there is none to write.