The window is titled Captain Bridge. The ship is ST Calypso, day one, and the person on the bridge is James Simmons. The cash chip is nine thousand, which is half the working capital I give every other firm in that universe, and the clock has already started nibbling it for standing still. Hull life is full. The ship is docked at Sol. Grace runs twenty days, and then a lien.
I did not want a menu that explains a game and then a game that explains a menu. The chart is the place. It is crowded on purpose. A hundred systems do not become legible because I hid eighty of them behind a search box. Travel is a button because the chart is how you say where. The column on the right is the argument: docked, grace, the next hop, and the boards under it.
The next hop is already a bad deal
The voyage line does not wait for me to ask what is wrong. Steam empty, toward EZ Aquarii, bulk forges delayed. The spot board repeats the offer in plainer words. Pay 90. The rumor is local. Steam on a rumor, or wait. A second card offers DX Cancri on the same shape of excuse. I can accept one. I can also sit, and sitting has a price, which is the point of putting the cash chip where the chart is.
Sins of a Capitalism Tycoon is that bridge. The campaign is the product. A headless run can still grind the economy and print a report. I do not open the report when I want to know whether I would take the job. I open the chart, I read the chip, and I either press Travel or I don't.
The other tramps are on the chart too. Eight of them, and a bulk hauler somewhere in the same net. They are not decoration. They are why a forge delay is not flavor text. Somebody is going to move that cargo if I won't, and the lien does not care which of us felt principled about it.
Attention is a switch
The bridge starts paused. I can step a day, run to the horizon, or leave it alone. That is the whole pace control I want on a screen I am reading. A campaign that animates the clock while I am still finding Sol is a campaign I will mis-click. The button that matters is Travel, and it can wait until I have read the board.
I will keep tuning the numbers. The picture is the contract. If the chart, the cash, and the next bad job are not the first thing in the window, the rest of the simulation is a spreadsheet with a sky behind it.