Missions in Exterminauts are called Work Orders, and everything about their presentation leans on the blue-collar framing. A crew picks a job from a board aboard the Rig, clocks in with a Punch In, completes the contract objectives on the worksite, then clocks out with a Punch Out and extracts. The contracts are issued by the corporations operating on Planet Tian, and finishing one is what gets the crew paid.
Picking a Work Order
The job board is a deliberate choice point rather than a queue. Developers have said the expected duration of each contract is displayed at selection, so a crew can choose something that fits the time they have available. Quoted durations run from around fifteen minutes for short jobs up to roughly twenty to forty minutes for longer ones, depending on which developer briefing the figure came from.
The contract also tells the crew what they are walking into. Different work orders field different alien creatures, and different damage types are more or less effective against them, so reading the job before configuring Weapons and Gadgets is part of the preparation. Developers have described crews discussing their loadouts before clocking on.
Objective Types
Contracts are not simply extermination runs. Four objective types have been described on the record, and each one is a multi-stage process rather than a single interaction.
Objective | Description |
|---|---|
Facility repair | Restoring a large fuel facility to working order. |
Power restart | Bringing a stopped power plant back online. |
Site recapture | Retaking a fuel storage depot that aliens have infiltrated. |
Defence restoration | Repairing a missile defence tower. |
In a demonstrated job the crew had to clear the surrounding area, operate a terminal, close a series of valves, wait for a work drone to deliver a replacement pipe and then weld it into place at two points before moving on to restart a separate piece of heavy machinery. Reaching the final goal meant completing each of those steps in order, with the alien attack continuing throughout.
Optional Work
Alongside the required objectives, contracts carry optional side work. Completing it has three stated effects: it makes the facility restoration easier, it clears obstacles from the field, and it increases the final payout. The official announcement copy refers to these as odd jobs the crew can pick up if they have time, which fits the framing that time on site is itself a resource.
Clocking Out
Finishing the objectives triggers the Punch Out, which starts a defence phase of roughly two minutes while extraction is inbound. This is the one part of a contract where crew members are scored against each other: kills during the defence are counted, and the highest scorer earns a bonus on their pay.
The tension is deliberate. Leaving your teammates to grab kills gets the crew killed, and a contract only counts once everyone is extracted, but the bonus is real. Developers have described the result as cooperation and competition occupying the same two minutes. See Co-Op for how the crew dynamic works across the rest of a job.
Payout and Costs
Each completed work order provides the resources used to improve equipment, upgrade tools and prepare for harder deployments. Store copy also states that a work order costs the company money and asks crews to tally their expenses, which suggests consumption during a job is tracked against the payout, though no figures or formulas have been published.
Not Yet Confirmed
No contract is named, and no list of available work orders exists.
No contract rarity, tier, difficulty rating or rotation system has been described.
No currency names, payout values, expense figures or cost formulas.
No confirmation of whether contracts are handcrafted, procedurally assembled or a mix.
No failure conditions or partial-payout rules.
No information on which corporation issues which contract, or whether contract sources matter mechanically.
No weekly, daily or seasonal contract structure.