Long Flight
Eight bars. Nine things worth running. Pick.
The old hollow is gone. What is left of the colony is aboard a hollowed seed husk with a comb of rooms cut into it, crossing the country beacon by beacon, and three days behind you is a wasp armada that does not stop to eat. There is no winning this — there is only how far you get, and what you were willing to spend to get there. Space holds the whole ship still while you think, which is not a convenience but the way the game is meant to be played.
Space holds the whole ship still — give the orders, then let go · click a bee then a room to send her · click a gate to open or shut it · 1–8 put a reactor bar into a system, the strip under it takes one back · QWER arm a weapon, then click the room you want it in · A autofire · J the chart · U refit · P pause · M sound · on a phone, everything is a tap
- Ward a ring is a layer, and a layer eats one shot
- Air the darker the room, the less there is to breathe
- Fire shut the gates round it, open the airlock, let the sky have it
- Wasps aboard two bees beat one of them; one bee barely does
- Armada gains a beacon every jump — and every hundred seconds
How it goes#
- There is a briefing, and it is six pages. Your first run on a device opens on it: what the score is, what pause is for, where the eight reactor bars go, what a bee can and cannot do at once, how to vent a fire, and what a ward layer does to each kind of shot. Nothing is running while it is up — no clock, no armada — so read it or press Skip to the flight and never see it again. Guide, or `H`, puts it back mid-run over whatever screen you were on.
- `Space` is the game. It freezes everything and leaves every control live, so a volley arriving while a fire is in the racks and a wasp is in the nursery is a puzzle rather than a panic. Nothing about the cabinet expects you to click quickly; it expects you to click correctly, and it gives you as long as you like to work out which that is.
- Eight reactor bars, and nine bars of things worth running. The ward wants two bars a layer, the drums want everything you will give them, the racks hold your guns, the air comb keeps the rooms breathable and the nursery is the only thing that mends a bee. That last bar is the one you do not get. Piloting, gates and antennae cost no power at all — they are free to run and can still be shot off you, which is what makes them the cheapest upgrades on the ship and the ones that open doors on an event screen.
- A bee is a decision, not a repair crew. She mans a post for a bonus, or fights a fire, or mends a system, or patches a breach, or fights a wasp — never two at once. Click her and click a room. Unmanned, the flight deck dodges nothing at all, whatever the drums are doing, so pulling your pilot off to fight a fire is a real cost every time.
- Air is a resource and gates are the valve. Every room holds its own air, a breach lets it out, and a fire eats it. Shut the gates around a burning room and open its airlock and the sky puts the fire out for you — along with anything standing in it, so count your bees first.
- Four kinds of gun, and they ask different questions. A sting is eaten by a ward layer one shot for one, so two shots never beat two layers. A needle goes straight through the ward and costs a needle to do it. A beam cannot be dodged, sweeps a line across the hull hitting every room it crosses, and is stopped dead by a ward it cannot pierce. A static arc does no hull damage ever and knocks the power out of what it hits, which is how a small ship beats a big one.
- The armada gains a beacon every jump — and every hundred seconds. Sitting still is not free, and a fight you cannot win is not a stalemate, it is a countdown. A beacon they have already taken has nothing on it but a picket, and another one along shortly.
- A wasp has a jump drive too. One that is losing, or one that is getting nowhere, winds up and leaves — and takes the reward with it. That bar under its hull is your cue to spend the needles.
- A dreadnought stands on a beacon in every fourth sector. It is worth more than anything else on the map and it will take the husk apart if you are wrong about that. It is a beacon rather than a gate: you can go round, and most runs should.
- Sound is on. `M` or the speaker in the corner of the status bar turns it off, and the cabinet remembers which you chose. Combat brings its own tune with it.
Where the score is#
Clearing sector N pays N × 400, so the triangular sum swamps everything else by about sector six — this is a depth score, and a careful run that banked scrap in sector three will lose to a reckless one that died in sector eight. Beacons and downed ships pay too, but only enough that finishing a fight beats fleeing every one of them.
Posting a run#
Sign in with Discord and the run posts itself when the husk comes apart; play as a guest and it is kept as a personal best on this device instead. Either way the game is the same game — the board is the only thing sign-in changes. The arcade page has the longer version of how that works, and the other cabinets.