A carrier does not die in one pass

Enemy carrier armour comes in three layers. Knock out the perimeter turrets and the shield generators are exposed. Drop the generators and the core opens. The order is fixed and there is no shortcut through it.

The other side is doing the same thing to you. Your carrier has turrets, generators and a core of its own. Fifteen minutes on the clock, and the match is decided by where you put your four fighters while both hulls come apart.

You fly as four

Every sortie is a flight of four. Your wingmen are not scenery - they hold roles. Recon, Support, Engineer, Assault, Jamming, Supply. Six aptitudes, and who you take changes how the fight goes.

The comms panel carries their voices. Who is being shot at, who needs help, what got intercepted off the enemy channel. You can fight without reading it. Reading it makes the next decision faster.

200 parts

Fifty engines, fifty armour sets, fifty primary weapons, fifty secondaries. Pick one of two hulls and fill four slots. Speed, turn rate, armour and firepower all trade against each other, and the hangar shows you the before and after side by side.

Nine paint schemes. Two are free from the start and the rest are bought with gold earned in play. Nothing else is sold for money today.

Ten machine leviathans

Thirty hunts, against ten species of machine. Each has three escalating variants. Their weak points are sealed behind each other in order, and they open one layer at a time.

Where you fight

Ten space arenas. Rock density, rock size, the angle of the sun and where the cover sits all change between them, so a tactic that worked in one does not simply carry to the next. There is also a low-altitude stage over a planet surface.

Modes

Carrier Assault - 4v4, fifteen minutes, both carriers coming apart.

Surface Assault - low-altitude combat over a planet.

Campaign - twelve missions, unlocked in order.

Missions - thirty machine leviathans.

Story - The Carina War, twenty-four chapters across three nations.

Flight Training - the controls, one at a time.

Practice - targets and a sparring partner, nothing else.

All of it plays offline, alone.

Three nations

Astra, Helion and Vestra. Carrier hull colours, fighter markings and twenty-four pilots differ between them. You pick your allegiance on the fleet screen.

Languages

Japanese, English, Simplified Chinese, Traditional Chinese, Korean, Russian, Spanish, Brazilian Portuguese, German and French. All interface text and the Story mode's dialogue are localised.