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.

Switch to the cockpit view and each nation has its own glass instrument panel. Its screens carry the radar, hull and weapon readouts, and change colour for a lock-on warning, a carrier bombardment or heavy damage.

200 parts

Fifty engines, fifty armour sets, fifty primary weapons, fifty secondaries. Each nation flies its own airframe, and you fill its 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.

The leviathans are alive. They writhe even at rest, flinch when hit and wind up before a big attack, and each species has its own growl.

From the second hunt on, the boss also charges a bombardment at your home carrier, at 20, 40, 60 and 80 percent of the mission clock, each one worth a quarter of the carrier's core. Hit its weak points during the ten-second charge and the shot breaks and the boss staggers. Fail to, and the carrier can be lost and the hunt with it.

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. Every arena also carries a bonus objective, for anyone with the margin to chase it.

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.

• Team Deathmatch — 4v4 with no carriers. First to twenty kills wins, or whoever is ahead at eight minutes.

Online 4v4 versus, and online co-op raids where up to eight players fly on the same side against one machine leviathan. Offline, bots fill the empty seats, so all of it can be played 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.