- Sidequest patrol contracts now pay an XP reward alongside credits, fixed at accept as the experience worth of defeated contacts (contacts × wave total × roster xp) and granted via XpManager with a 'sidequest' source tag on claim
- Cargo sales earn 1 XP per credit above each bay's recorded purchase cost; bays with no cost basis or sold at/below cost earn nothing, granted via the same pipe with a 'trade' source tag
- New CargoHold.costsFor() returns FIFO per-bay costs for the profit basis without mutating the hold
- Job board payout/claim lines and console toasts display both credits and XP when present; old saves without an xp field derive it from the encounters spec or fall back to 0
- Level 1 now costs 5 kills of the base craft instead of 10
- Total XP to reach level 80 drops from ~17.4M to ~8.7M
- Update XpManager default, progression data, tests, and README to match
- Kills grant the hostile type's own `xp` (the roster sets XP-per-threat;
the curve lives in data/progression.json, 100 x n^2, capped at level 80)
- Each crossed level fires one `levelup` event: +3 hull / +2 shields with
a full heal, cyan burst + a distinct voice, and a kill-feed line — the
placeholder toughness the skill layer will subscribe to later
- Combat bar gains an XP row below the orbs (level, live gold fill,
banked / next cost; hidden when the snapshot carries no xp, so the
range bar keeps its old face)
- Kills show a gold "+N" reward floater; the level-up's SFX is the new
8th combat event (solar_flare_01)
- XpManager is pure and tested headless (node dev/xp.test.mjs); the
ledger saves as { level, xp } and old saves load fresh at level 0
- dev hooks (xp/grantXp), sfxcheck (range seven, main eight), shot
captures, and README all follow along