MISSION

Seventy levels, nine galaxies, one ship — from the Milky Way out to FATE. Every level asks the same two things: chart the star systems it names, and down the hostiles it names. Meet both and the galactic core opens; dive it and you move on. Level 1 starts small — 40 systems and 8 hostiles — and the ask climbs from there, all the way to 1,800 systems and 1,000 hostiles in FATE.

Your objective readout always shows what this level wants and how far in you are. Charts and kills reset each time you cross into a new galaxy, and credits reset to zero at the start of every level — earn and spend them inside the level they belong to. Your ship carries over the whole way. You get 3 ship reserves per level — spend them wisely.

CONTROLS

THE GALAXY

The Milky Way's spiral arms act as a river current that naturally carries your ship. Ride the blue flow streaks to travel faster — fight them to go your own way. Fly close to a dim star icon to chart it. Charted systems turn bright and earn you +5 credits. Chart enough systems and the galactic core unlocks.

THE WANDERERS — WHERE THE ENEMY COMES FROM

There are no factions out here. Every hostile ship in the game launches from a Wanderer — one of the derelict capital hulls drifting through every galaxy. They are 1,680 units stem to stern, thirty-five times your own length, and completely solid: you cannot fly through one, and neither can a bolt.

Fighters come out of the plating and hold a patrol ring around their hull. Down one and the bay sends another. A Wanderer is not a territory you can decide to avoid — it drifts, so the danger moves.

Every hull in the sky is listed in the panel on the left and rings the minimap in its own colour. The deeper the galaxy, the more of them are out there.

AND ONE OF THEM WILL WAKE UP. Log the chart, down the hostiles the level asks for — and the nearest Wanderer comes to life, breaks formation, and hunts you with four batteries. The core stays shut until it is destroyed. It is slower than you are, so it can never run you down; what it can do is out-gun you and crush you against its own plating. Its health is the red bar at the top of the screen.

A brief grace window after launching or respawning lets you clear the area before defenses lock on.

GUARD SQUADS & THREAT

Many star systems are guarded. Approach one and a defence squad scrambles and opens fire — the system cannot be charted while its guards live. Destroy the whole squad to unlock the chart (kills pay +15 credits each), or break off and leave it for later — the guards re-form if you return.

Three hostiles stalk every galaxy — and all of them grow deadlier the deeper you fly: Kamikaze drones arrive in waves and detonate on your hull — shoot them down on approach (+8 credits each). Shielded guardians raise an energy dome that must be broken before the hull takes damage — leave them alone and the dome regenerates. Sniper turrets dig in around contested systems: their targeting beam means a heavy shot is coming — break range, dodge, or destroy the turret (+20 credits). A contested system stays locked until the turrets fall along with the squad.

Your THREAT meter (top-right) climbs as you chart toward the goal — and every hostile grows more savage with it: fighters chase from farther, fly faster, shoot quicker, and hit harder; guard squads field more ships with heavier armour. The closer you are to finishing a level, the harder the galaxy fights back. Levels beyond the first begin at elevated threat.

BLACK HOLES

Gravity wells warp your trajectory and bend the blue flow streaks. ⚠ GRAVITY WELL flashes red when you're inside a gravity field. Fly past at speed for a slingshot boost. Too close to the event horizon = ship lost. Detected black holes appear as purple rings on the minimap.

ANDROMEDA LEVELS 3–8 Neighbouring Galaxy

Diving into the Level 2 core sends your ship across the void to Andromeda — three times the size of the Milky Way, wrapped in a vast, unseen dark matter halo (the faint purple-blue mist and slow-drifting currents surrounding everything — mysterious background energy, not a hazard). Expect a dense golden-white core, four sweeping spiral arms threaded with dark dust lanes, glowing nebulae, ring structures, ancient stellar streams, globular clusters, and a handful of dwarf satellite galaxies adrift in the outer halo. Nine Wanderer hulls drift here against the Milky Way's three, and the fleet they launch grows with them. Your ship carries over — the star chart and your credits both reset.

Andromeda is six levels deep. Your chart keeps climbing across all of them — each core dive advances you to the next: 120 → 280 → 430 → 550 → 670 → 800 systems. Clear Level 8 at 800 and the core sends you on to Sculptor.

SCULPTOR LEVELS 9–16 Neighbouring Galaxy

Dive Andromeda's core and your ship crosses into the Sculptor Galaxy (NGC 253) — twice the size of Andromeda and utterly different: a slender, edge-on starburst choked with dust. Its gold core fades to silvery-blue at the rim through flocculent, broken spiral arms — patchy and chaotic, never clean. Watch for glowing magenta H II star-forming regions, heavy dark dust lanes that slice across and eclipse the core, and the galactic superwind: two faint red plumes of gas venting straight up and down out of the core. The disk is haunted by 180 black holes — the largest field in the game, and the darkest: these carry no accretion glow and no storm, just a faint dark-ember edge, so out here the hazard is something you detect rather than something you see. They are spread across the whole disk, rim to core, and show on the minimap as purple rings once detected. 2,200 star systems ride the dust; each level tells you how many of them it wants before the core will open. Eighteen Wanderer hulls drift the dust here — more than any galaxy before it — and they field the largest fleet in the campaign. It looks rough and disordered — but the current still carries you smooth.

⇆ Wormholes. Two glowing gates drift in the Sculptor disk, separate from the black holes — a cyan gate and a violet gate, linked to each other. Fly into either one and you're instantly flung out of its partner clear across the galaxy — a shortcut through Sculptor's vast oval (and a fast escape from a well's pull). Both show on the minimap as bright ringed dots.

TRIANGULUM LEVELS 17–25 Neighbouring Galaxy

Dive Sculptor's core and you arrive at the Triangulum Galaxy (Messier 33) — a compact spiral, twice the size of the Milky Way but far smaller than the giants behind you. It is a pure-disk, bulge-less galaxy: no bright central bulge, no bar, and (like the real M33) no central black hole — the density just rises smoothly to a soft, warm yellowish-white core. Its arms are flocculent: loosely wound and broken into fragmented, fleecy star-forming patches rather than clean sweeping lines. They blaze with electric-blue young star clusters, punctuated by deep magenta H II pockets and threaded by fine dark dust filaments. One nursery dominates — the giant NGC 604 in a northern arm, far larger than any other cloud (a magenta landmark on the minimap). The whole outer disk is warped, its edges tilting up and down out of plane — the tidal scar of Andromeda's pull. Chart 1,100 systems, then dive its core.

⚠ The gauntlet. Triangulum is the deadliest of the three neighbouring galaxies: the entire galaxy is under enemy occupation. There is no neutral space — the moment you arrive you're already near lockdown threat, hostiles hunt you from anywhere on the map (not just inside their zones), and every enemy hit lands about twice as hard as anywhere else — harder still as the threat meter climbs, when the factions also grow more aggressive and their downed fighters return faster.

🛡 Shields don't self-heal — and here you will feel it. As in every galaxy, your shields do not regenerate on their own. Press R to buy a shield recharge with credits — and it's expensive (2 credits per point). Chart systems and down hostiles to bankroll it. You cannot arrive rich — every level starts you at zero credits — so bring your best hull and heaviest shields, and earn your shield money here.

OUTER GALAXY LEVELS 26–33 Distant Frontier

Beyond the galaxies proper lies a dark frontier ruled by two supernovae. A core-collapse giant sheds its onion shells and detonates; a thermonuclear white dwarf devours its companion until it obliterates — both on an endless loop. A wormhole links the two, so you can travel between them. Sized to match the Milky Way; chart 400 of its 600 systems, then dive the core.

🛡 As in every galaxy, your shields never self-heal — press R to buy a recharge with credits (2 cr per point). From here on the bubble shield (G) also runs on each hull's own timer instead of the flat 5 seconds of levels 1–25.

🪐 Crushing gravity. The gravity out here is so heavy that the ships you flew through the earlier galaxies are crushed if you keep flying them — their hulls crack and implode: the Drifter in ~5s, Ironclaw ~10s, Ezno ~15s, and the Death Row & SB-5 Bomber in ~30s. A red countdown warns you — open the Hangar (U) and switch to a gravity-hardened deep-space ship before it fails.

🚀 The deep-space fleet. Five new hulls — Graviton, Aquaris, Dogfighter, Dark Spark and the flagship Ark — are built to survive that gravity. They stay locked until you clear Triangulum, then unlock in the Hangar from the Outer Galaxy onward. They are the only craft that can fly the deep safely.

MAGNETAR LEVELS 34–41 The Ultimate Magnet

The deepest region yet: a lone magnetar — a city-sized neutron star spinning hundreds of times a second, wrapped in a 10¹¹-Tesla magnetic field, the strongest in the known universe. Its ultra-dense iron core blazes blinding blue-white inside a razor-thin crystal crust, while its dipole field streams in vast loops — electric violet at the poles, stretching to neon cyan along the outer arcs. The whole star spins on an inclined axis, slowly dragged by a cosmic "brake."

⚡ The starquake. Watch the field lines wind up and twist, dragging the rigid crust with them until it snaps — and the instant it does, a gamma-ray flash erupts from both poles alongside a shockwave blasting across the equator (the real 2004 SGR 1806-20 event, powerful enough to reach across thousands of light-years). It's a harmless spectacle from your cockpit — chart 640 of its 960 systems, then dive the core at the magnetar's heart. This galaxy is 1.5× the size of the Milky Way.

🛡 As in every galaxy, shields don't self-heal — press R to buy a recharge with credits (2 cr per point).

COMBAT

Press F to fire your laser. Shields never self-heal — in any galaxy, from level 1 to level 70. Press R to buy a recharge with credits (2 cr per point), so charting systems and downing hostiles is what keeps you alive. Hull never regenerates once damaged. Every faction fighter and guard is hostile; each kill earns +15 credits.

🛡 Bubble shield. Press G to become completely untouchable for a few seconds — no enemy fire can hurt you and no enemy ship can enter the sphere. Every spaceship carries one in levels 1–25: 5 seconds of immunity on a 30-second cooldown. From level 26 the deep-space fleet flies its own stronger timers (up to 18 seconds).

SUPERMANEUVERS E

Hold E to override the flight computer. On its own it does nothing — held together with a flight key it lets the hull point somewhere it is not going, which is the whole trick. Four moves, and every one of them is a real manoeuvre a real aircraft flies.

⚠ There is a speed window. Too slow and you have no energy to trade; too fast and the hull will not come round inside the arc. The game tells you which it was. There is also a short cooldown, and half a second of soft steering on the way out — that is the price, and it is the only one.

✈ The throttle is dead while the nose is off the flight path, and so is your steering: the engines push where the nose points, and during a Cobra that is 110° away from where the ship is going. Turning side-on also makes you much harder to hit — not immune, just a far smaller target, and hardest of all at the top of the arc.

HANGAR U

Opens the hangar and pauses the game — switch to any hull you've already unlocked. Ships can't be upgraded with credits; each hull flies on its own fixed stats.

MINIMAP LEGEND

HUD GUIDE

TIPS

• The current is strongest in the spiral arms — let it carry you between systems.
• Faction space is hostile — dip in, chart fast, and dodge out before the swarm closes in.
• Guarded systems pay double: +15 per guard destroyed, then +5 for the chart.
• Use Top-Down camera (C three times) to get a map view of your surroundings.
• Each hull flies differently — switch in the Hangar (U) to fit the fight.
• Black holes bend the blue flow streaks — follow the bends to spot them early.
• Chart systems in all 4 spiral arms, not just one — 40 is a big target.
• You keep your credits and charted systems after dying — reserves aren't wasted. Only starting a new level clears your credits.