Is there really any penalty on giving up a sector and starting fresh?

[jeeplaw]

I know in the gamenotes that it says you can incur a little xp penalty, but maybe i'm not seeing it?

[PixelLord]

As far as I know, if you abandon a sector, you only incur an XP penalty if you are playing a hardcore ship.

[Tuidjy]

There is definitely an experience penalty when you abandon a sector with a hardcore ship. Supposedly you earn 50% of your regular experience until you reach a preset point, but the only times I've recently seen it is when generating empty sectors with level 100 ships, and then it really does not matter.

Even when I have done it with lower level ships, the penalty is not too bad. It's probably half a level worth of experience, which is quite nice compared to the threat of dying, which is what makes me abandon sectors with a low level ship.

[Tuidjy]

OK, here's how it works.

I started a new ship, and for the interests of research, I valiantly... actually, a bunch of Inhibitors ganged up on me, and forced me to abandon the sector. Aaaaaanyway.

When you abandon a sector, you incur a experience debt. Every time you see a green message that tells you that you gained experience, the experience debt is reduced by the full amount, while your total experience is increased by the half of the experience you earned. When the debt is erased, you start gaining experience as normal.

How can you confirm this for yourself? Read on.

When you owe experience, there is a white mark on your experience bar. It points at the sum of your current experience and the experience debt. So when you earn X experience, your experience bar moves X/2 to the right, and the white mark moves X/2 to the left (the result of moving X/2 to the right because your experience increased, and moving X to the left because your experience debt decreased)