Spacebux
A fun little out-of-game system that rewards you for in-game time with funny out-of-game money for cosmetic things like shiny top hats, funky instruments, and the ability to go limbless. Consider it one of the many ways Goonstation thanks you for spending your precious time here.
Earn It
Spacebux earnings follow a simple rule:
(Part-Timer or Full-Timer Modifier * Base Spacebux Wage)- Penalties
Part-Timer or Full-Timer Modifier
Roughly a percentage of Base Spacebux Salary based on when you joined the round, or, in another way, how much time you'd spent playing through the round. If you join before roundstart or within minutes after, essentially sticking around for the whole round, you get the Full-Timer wage, and your Modifier will be 100%. In other words, your Base Spacebux Wage will be unaffected. If you join 8 or so minutes after the round starts however, you get the Part-Timer wage, which will reflect the amount of total round time in which you were present relative to the total length of the round. For example, if you join at 10 minutes and the round ends at 20 minutes, your modifier is 50%.
Base Spacebux Wage
The Base Space Wage all these modifier and penalties change is based solely on your Job, and, coincidentally, it happens to match the in-game credits payouts the job receives.(but not always.) In other words, the Unionized or Pawn Star traits will not affect Spacebux earnings and neither will the station payroll running out or you getting a raise or pay cut. If you transfer out of a job, you'll get the Base Spacebux Wage of your original role. As with in-game salaries, generally, the harder the job/the more responsibilities it requires, the higher the Spacebux wage.
If you die, regardless of the circumstances of your death, you'll get the Base Spacebux Wage of your original Job. If you're cloned, scientifically/magically revived, absorbed into a Changeling hivemind, and/or choose to Respawn as a Animal, you'll still get the Base Spacebux Wage of your original job.
Anyways, the Base Spacebux Wage for each station Job is listed in the table below:
| Job | Base Spacebux Wage |
|---|---|
| Captain | 2000 |
| AI | 1800 |
| Cyborg | 1000 |
| Head of Personnel | 1500 |
| Chef | 500 |
| Barman | 500 |
| Janitor | 400 |
| Chaplain | 300 |
| Chief Engineer | 1500 |
| Engineer | 1000 |
| Mechanic | 900 |
| Miner | 1100 |
| Quartermaster | 700 |
| Head of Security | 1500 |
| Security Officer | 1400 |
| Detective | 600 |
| Medical Director | 1500 |
| Roboticist | 700 |
| Geneticist | 1200 |
| Medical Doctor | 800 |
| Research Director | 1500 |
| Scientist | 800 |
| Staff Assistant | 200 |
| Clown | 2 |
| Gimmick jobs | 200 |
| Traitor Changeling Spy Thief Revolutionary Vampire Gang Leader Werewolf Grinch |
Whatever salary your job has. |
| Nuclear Operative | 200 |
| Blob | 500 |
| Wraith | 1600 |
| Wizard | 1600 |
Penalties
As of now, there is one main penalty: Did Not Escape. While there is technically a penalty based on Station Grade, it doesn't actually take any Spacebux away now. Traitors, blobs, wizards, and all the other Antagonists do not suffer any of these penalties here regardless of whether they escape or live. They also keep their held item.
Did Not Escape
This penalty takes 75% of your Base Spacebux Wage if you didn't make it to shuttle or weren't at CentComm at the end of the round. Unlike with certain antagonist escape objectives, the game actually tends to be pretty consistent on what counts as having escaped. Being in the CentCom area outside of the shuttle counts as having escaped, so you don't have to stay or wait on the shuttle in order to qualify. If it ever messes up, kindly report it to the coders by posting about it in the Bug Reports subforums.
One thing's for certain though: Did Not Escape doesn't factor in whether you were actually alive or not. If you die and your corpse was dragged onto the shuttle, you'll count as having escaped and won't get the penalty. Same business if you die on the shuttle, but aren't gibbed. If you are gibbed, or, as a borg, blown apart on the shuttle (or really anywhere), then you don't count as having Escaped and will get penalized. However, if you're absorbed by a Changeling, you'll count as escaped, so long as said Changeling escaped.
Also, if the round type has another end condition besides the Escape Shuttle docking at CentCom, you don't get this penalty. For example, if you played a Revolution, Nuke, or Blob round, you're exempt from this penalty. If you're the AI, regardless of the round type, you're exempt as well.
In addition, being in cryostorage counts as not escaping.
Ass Day Bonus
For braving the horrors wonders that await you on every 13th day of the month on the main Goonstation server (but not on Goonstation Roleplay or its backup servers), you get twice as much Spacebux as you normally would! Note that the Part-Time/Full-Time thing still applies, and the Spacebux is doubled after the penalties are imposed. So if you stay for the whole round and live (ha!) to make it to the shuttle (ha ha!), you'll get rewarded with twice the Spacebux for the trouble!
Spend It
Those Spacebux are only an intermediate reward. These trinkets and baubles are Goonstation's real gift to you for playing. You buy these at a special screen that appears when you decide to press the Declare Ready button to you join a round (and in the case of late joins, right when you're deciding what job to sign up as).
You can only buy one of these per a round, but they'll persist with you so long as you escape on the shuttle alive. If you're playing a Antagonist and/or playing nuke/blob/any game mode that can be ended without a shuttle call, you'll still keep the held item. Most of these will spawn in your backpack or similar, sort of like an extra trinket item.
Purchasable Items
| Item | Notes | Cost |
|---|---|---|
 Crayon |
Allows you to draw cute bees and rude graffiti all over the station floor and walls. | $50 |
 Rainbow Paint Can |
Paint everything with a can of paint whose colors shift with each use. The paint starts out red, then orange, yellow, blue, indigo, purple, and then red again--like a rainbow! | $1500 |
| Plaid Paint Can |
Paint everything in a random color with a random plaid design! | $3000 |
 Sticker Box |
A box full of stickers. There are arrows, hearts, happy faces, sad faces, clovers, and...skulls? | $300 |
 Bee Egg |
Contains one greater domestic space bee egg, space mankind's greatest friend. | $550 |
 Harmonica |
A harmonica that plays exquisite jazz tunes that really suit a Brig atmosphere. Pairs well with Jailbird. | $150 |
 Air Horn |
A loud, obnoxious airhorn, for when honking a regular bike horn just isn't enough. | $800 |
 Dramatic Horn |
A bike horn that plays dramatic-sounding sound clips. Can be made into a Chefbot. | $400 |
 Trumpet |
An excellent companion to the saxophone. | $700 |
 Fiddle |
A classic wooden fiddle that plays some nice folk music tunes. Keep away from devils. | $700 |
 Gold Zippo |
What's better than flicking a zippo and lighting like a badass? Flicking a golden one and lighting like a rich badass! Otherwise identical to the ordinary zippo. | $500 |
 Toy Sword |
Strike fear into the hearts of men, and see them driven before you with this replicia cyalume saber. Perfect for miscreants. | $900 |
 Sound Synthesizer |
Just like the ones Brobots have, available for both humans and cyborgs! Remember that you can click on yourself to change the sound, and click on the synthesizer to actually produce the sound. Suitable for taking the Clown's job. | $14000 |
 Food Synthesizer |
Just like the ones Brobots have, available for humans and cyborgs alike! You click on yourself to set/change what food it'll spit out and click on the synthesizer to spit it out. You're like a slightly more useful vending machine! | $8000 |
 Record |
If you can find the right equipment for it, you can play to everyone on the server, like a divine DJ! Maybe it has an epic action track! Or a remix of a classic 80s song! Or perhaps it's just the Tetris theme but with clowns and farts. Oshan Lab and Manta both have on-site radio stations that can play these things. Other stations don't, but there's a radio outpost in the Debris Field that can. |
$2000 |
 Alternate Jumpsuit |
You spawn wearing an alternate version of the jumpsuit associated with your job. It'll have the same design, but the colors will be opposite/complementary to the usual ones or otherwise just plain silly. The Botanists get red jumpsuits with blue stripes, everybody and everyone in the Engineering department gets purple uniforms, the Head of Security and their Security Officer underlings get blue jackets, things like that.
There's one for basically every job except Chef, Barman, Clown, Chaplain, Detective, Head of Personnel, and Captain. |
$1500 |
   Alternate Clown Suit |
A clown mask, suit, and shoes set in a different color scheme, available in yellow, pink, blue and, purple. Note that you have to join/spawn as a Clown to get the outfit. If you spawn/join as another job, you won't get the outfit, though you will get the Spacebux refunded. | $200 |
| File:Rucksack.png Rucksack |
Backpack reskin. It's a bit bigger than the usual ones (though, being a reskin, it obviously still has just as much space) and presumably made of that canvas "outdoorsy", "adventure-loving" types apparently like. | $1400 |
 Randoseru |
Also a backpack reskin. Quintessentially Space Japansese: modestly-sized, rather inconspicuous, and designed for schoolchildren. | $1500 |
 Travel Backpack |
Another backpack reskin, for the sort of people who actually like wearing Space Hawaiian shirts and carrying around huge, heaving sacks of stuff. | $1600 |
 Reptillian |
You start out with the Saurian Genetics mutation. Your particular appearance depends on hair detailing colours from your character preferences. You see slightly better in the dark and have a tendency to extend every s into a hiss. Your human status is rather murky, but you are still protected by the same anti-griefing and anti-racism protections as everyone. | $3000 |
 Skeleton |
You start out with the Ossification mutation. Milk heals you a bit, and you can make certain hotdogs jump, but people often make skeleton jokes around you. Your human status is rather murky, but you are still protected by the same anti-griefing protections as everyone. | $5000 |
 No Limbs |
You start with no limbs at all, so you move veeeery slowly unless you have someone to drag you around, have somebody give you new limbs, or hitch a ride. | $10000 |
 Lunchbox |
You start with an adorable lunchbox (essentially a reskinned box) with three random foods and a note with a pop culture reference. Yummy. | $600 |
| Who knows? Alt Ghost Critter |
When you die and choose to respawn as a ghost critter, you start out as a something beyond mere mice and butterflies. | $1000 |
 Golden Ghost |
Your ghostly form is |
$1500 |
 Fruit Hat |
Guaranteed to be free of the ghost of Carmen Miranda. | $150 |
 Hoodie |
Buy the option to wear casual wear to work, when just finding a tracksuit isn't for you. | $1500 |
 Stripe Outfit |
A relic of a (gladly) bygone era. | $1400 |
 Discount Fake Moustache |
Won't hide your identity like a real Syndie 'stache and you can't twirl it, but it'll still provide the same villainous style. | $500 |
 Golden Top Hat |
The next stage of cranial adornment, suitable for the modern space-faring gentleman/lady. It even sparkles like real gold! | $900 |
 Alohamaton Skin |
Cyborg only (if you respawn as something not a Cyborg, you'll get refunded the Spacebux.) When you spawn as a Cyborg, you'll look like a certain automaton on vacation. | $3000 |
