Ostranauts Gigs and Gig Nexus

Before the boneyard pays your mortgage, the Gig Nexus kiosks on OKLG keep broke captains solvent. Green job boards offer courier runs, station hops, and later interplanetary deliveries that do not require a salvage permit or a combat-ready hull. After the 1.0 launch and the PASS and Gigs Rebalance patch, gigs are more reliable with multiple active contracts — and less exploitable as a free teleport loop.

This guide covers where to find Gig Nexus boards, which early jobs are realistic, how lockers and turn-ins work, short-hop gigs around Ceres and Europa, and how ferry timing changes your route planning. Pair it with Getting Started, the PASS ferry guide, and the mortgage shift planner.

Where Gig Nexus lives

Look for green Gig Nexus kiosks on OKLG floors — Port Azikiwe and commercial decks are the usual first stops after character creation. The kiosk UI splits into available jobs, My Gigs, and locker access for turn-in cargo. PDA apps also surface active gigs with target range hints when the destination is a ship or derelict rather than a station floor.

Early careers often unlock only simple intra-station courier work: pick an item from one Nexus locker or floor, walk or ride station transit to another deck, and turn it in before the timer expires. Pay scales with speed. Platinum-tier payouts reward captains who treat the clock like a mortgage countdown.

Early money without undocking

If police seized your hull, your reactor died, or you woke broke after a fine, gigs are the recovery ladder:

1. Open a Gig Nexus board and take the cheapest courier you can finish on foot.
2. Use station transit between floors — you do not need a ship for starter runs.
3. Turn in at the marked locker; confirm the Funds line shows payment.
4. Stack a second gig only when you can finish both before either timer dies.

This loop funds PASS trips back to a dead ship, emergency batteries, and your first salvage permit (~$5000/day). Read Rescue When Stranded when the goal is recovering a hull rather than grinding tips.

Multi-gig tracking after the rebalance

Community patches before v0.15.1.x left some gig types unfinished when too many similar contracts were open. Workshop and Across the System milestones fixed multi-gig completion, money log lines, and locker behavior. Practical habits now:

• Prefer a small active set you can finish — abandoned broken gigs may still need canceling on old saves.
• Interplanetary courier gigs require the item delivered before pay; do not assume a PASS hop alone clears the contract.
• Gig Nexus lockers stay accessible outside turn-in moments, and turn-in only pulls required items instead of vacuuming your entire inventory.

When a target is a drifting ship, use the gig app distance readout to triangulate: fly a heading, check whether range fell, then correct. Powered nav helps — see How to Fly and Dock.

Ceres and Europa short hops

Stations around Ceres and Europa now host short-hop gigs so captains stuck in foreign ports can earn cash without a full OKLG commute. Treat them as port survival tools after a botched torch burn, not as a replacement for How to Salvage income at home.

Short hops still consume shift time. Mortgage and docking fees keep ticking — map the payout against the ship mortgage installment before you accept a glamorous long courier that strands you mid-shift.

Why PASS is a weak gig taxi now

Before the rebalance, players chained PASS ferries to teleport across OKLG space and finish courier timers with almost no calendar cost. v0.15.1.20 makes every PASS voyage advance the game clock for the trip duration, and gig timers were retuned so slow ferry spam is rarely optimal.

Use PASS to recover batteries, crew, or a dead hull — not to cheese Nexus timers. Details live on the PASS ferry page and the PASS and Gigs Rebalance update notes.

Gigs versus salvage and trading

Loop	Needs ship?	Risk	Best for
Station courier gigs	No	Low	Day-one cash, stranded recovery
Licensed salvage	Yes	Medium	Mortgage baseline
Bulk cargo trade	Yes + pods	Medium	Mid-game mass moves
Bounty warrants	Combat hull	High	Mid-game spikes

Ordinary barter and bulk trading are separate systems. Mixing them is a common mistake — cargo pods sell cheaper from some zones than when carried to a kiosk individually. See salvage economy before you treat every crate like a Nexus package.

Practical shift plan

A clean early shift:

1. Clear one or two station gigs for liquid cash.
2. Buy or renew the Ayotimiwa salvage permit if you will undock.
3. Run a short boneyard loop from How to Salvage.
4. Return before shift end; pay mortgage via Funds.
5. Only then queue Ceres short hops or long couriers.

Print the mortgage shift planner when gig income becomes your primary buffer between salvage dry spells.

Related pages

• PASS ferry — ferry timing and PDA booking
• Getting Started — first docked hour
• Zones and Hauling — when crew mishandle gig cargo
• Updates hub — patch history after 1.0
• Tools hub — planners and checklists