Architectural overviews

While the API reference tells you how to interact with an abstraction, architectural overviews explain how subsystems work end-to-end.

Each overview is short (~3–5KB) and links into the API reference for specifics rather than repeating content.

Planned overviews

Galaxy seeding — How the universe is populated at game start. From god.xml declarative input → engine event_god_created_factory → FinaliseStations MD pipeline → station rendered in world.
Station construction sequence — How a station’s physical structure is rendered after creation. <create_construction_sequence> → event_object_construction_sequence_created → <apply_construction_sequence> → <signal_objects 'init station'>.
Faction economy — How NPC factions decide what to produce, build, or buy. Per-faction Econ_Manager reads shortage data, evaluates per-sector, picks one of 7 corrective actions.
Faction goals — How factions pick strategic actions (invade, defend, plunder, patrol). Registry pattern + two-tier evaluation.
Mission framework — How vanilla generates missions. Generic Mission registry + Reusable Mission Library phases.
Reward calculation — How vanilla computes mission credits, notoriety, mod parts, and info rewards.
Patrol coordination — Galaxy combat bus + per-faction priority queue + per-instance engagement.
Boarding — 5-phase state machine for boarding operations.
NPC orders — How NPC ship behavior is structured (state machine in aiscripts).
Save migration — How vanilla migrates older save formats via <patch sinceversion>.
Assets pipeline — How macros/components/indices fit together.
UI Lua framework — The vanilla Helper API layers + FFI bridge.