Pilot's Handbook

Welcome to the Presidential Games

Congratulations, Host! You have been chosen to serve the United Solar States in the greatest show of all time. You stay safe at home, and a clone printed from you flies your ship: radio links lag, and out there only a mind in the cockpit is fast enough. Over the live link, everything your clone lives through streams into your memory as it happens.*

*When your clone dies, you live through its death, the pain included. The next clone boots, and you remember. The soul rots a little more each time.

The United Solar States are led by the Orange President, for a thousand glorious years and counting. Whenever he dies, a fresh clone of him boots, as brilliant as ever. To the people of the system he gives his Presidential Games, staged by the Ministry of War among the asteroids and broadcast to every planet.*

*Every transfer copies his dementia along with him and makes it worse; nobody can predict him any more. The Games keep the people entertained, and quiet.

Your President protects you. Against the Rockborn, the miners of the belt who keep trying to come back to Earth, he is building the Solar Wall, the biggest wall in the history of walls, and Mars is going to pay for it. Against the “aliens”, you protect yourself: in the Games you may shoot them down in person.*

*The Rockborn mine the very rocks you fight among, and Earth deports them as soon as they come home. The “aliens” are human, changed beyond recognition by generations in deep space; calling them aliens makes it easier to cheer when they die. Mars has not agreed to pay.

Your interceptor is a proud veteran from the Ministry's depots, with centuries of service behind it. The President's own battleship shines in gold, fresh from the newest dock, refitted to his own designs: the greatest ship ever built. When he wants blood, he sends it into the ring.*

*Ships are never printed. Yours is an old fighter from the depots of centuries of war, patched and repainted more often than anyone counts, cheaper to burn up in a show than to scrap. The golden carrier was paid for by abolishing all health care: who needs doctors when clones are printed by the dozen?

A new clone costs you nothing but a moment of attention: our generous sponsors pay for it. The tournament radio drives every round with hard beats, its announcer honors every fallen pilot on air (“an excellent death”), and in your cockpit Nicole, your flight computer, keeps you company: “Do not look so sad, darling. Bodies are cheap. You are not.”*

*Want another clone? Make the sponsor happy. Nicole is a product of the Ministry, made to keep Hosts flying into their deaths gladly. One day, she promises, you will meet her for real. There is always one more round to go first.

Your Hands on the Ship

The flight computer reads whatever hands you bring. Mouse and keyboard work together: one hand on the mouse, one on the keys is how the Ministry's aces fly.

Keyboard and mouse

Mouse / Arrows

Turn the nose: push the pointer the way to turn

W

Main drive

Space / Click

Fire laser

S

Brake: flips, burns and stops by itself

X (hold)

Flip: nose against the flight; with the drive it brakes until you let go

A / D

Thrusters: slide sideways

R / F

Extras: thrusters up and down

A D R F twice

Dodge: a hard kick that way

Shift

Fine aim

T

Autopilot (flies where it points) / free drift

E

Overdrive: one shove forward, last resort, once a minute

G

Torpedo: homes on the ship ahead, two per clone

V / Right click (hold)

Hook: bite a rock or a ship, reel in, let go to fly off

C

Cockpit / chase camera

M

Radio on / off

Esc / P

Pause; Q there quits the round

Tab (hold)

Standings: kills, deaths, score, in a race the lap

F1

The controls sheet, over any screen

Gamepad

Left stick

Steer (pull back: nose up)

RT

Main drive

B (hold)

Brake: flips, burns and stops by itself

Right stick

Thrusters: sideways, up and down

X

Thrusters: backwards

L3

Fine aim

LT / A

Fire laser

Y (hold)

Flip: nose against the flight; with the drive it brakes until you let go

R3

Autopilot (flies where it points) / free drift

LB

Dodge: a hard kick the way the right stick points

RB

Overdrive: one shove forward, last resort, once a minute

D-pad up

Torpedo: homes on the ship ahead, two per clone

D-pad down (hold)

Hook: bite a rock or a ship, reel in, let go to fly off

View

Cockpit / chase camera

Touch screen

Left stick

Steer (drag up: nose up)

Right stick

Appears under your right thumb and fires the thrusters; two quick flicks dodge

Drive

Hold for the main drive

Fire

Hold to fire the laser

Brake

Brakes to a stop by itself

Flip

Hold: nose against the flight; with Drive it brakes until you let go

Hook

Hold: fire the hook and reel in

Auto

Autopilot / free drift

Overdrive

One shove forward, last resort

Torpedo

Launch a torpedo

Fly with the phone held sideways. A key pressed on a hardware keyboard hides the touch controls; a touch brings them back.

The Doctrine of Flight

Out there nothing slows you down. The main drive pushes along the nose with 13 g: the speed limit of 250 m/s is two seconds of burn away, and so is a stop. Let go, and you drift forever.

The maneuvering thrusters

Besides the main drive your ship carries 16 small nozzles: 4 clusters of 4, one at each corner of the hull, fore and aft on both flanks. Each nozzle of a cluster points another way: out from the flank, up, down, and along the ship. Gas leaving a nozzle pushes the ship the other way.

Nozzles on one side firing together move the ship without turning it: both clusters of the right flank fire, and the ship slides left, with up to 4 g. Two nozzles at opposite corners pushing opposite ways turn the ship about its center without moving it, up to 172° a second, reached in 0.125 s; the other two stop the turn, because out there nothing else does. The flight computer picks the nozzles for you. Only the main drive pushes harder, and only forward.

The autopilot

Every round starts with the autopilot on: the ship flies where it points. Turn the nose, and the flight computer brings your flight round behind it with thrusters and drive; the crosshair is where you fly and where you shoot. At speed the flight follows slowly, so the nose waits for it: at the speed limit it leads by at most 32°, and the flight is back within 15° of the nose 1 s after you stop turning. The hardest turn at the speed limit is a circle of about 585 m radius, and the drive only helps while you hold it, or at the limit: coasting below it, a hard turn costs speed. To turn about fast, brake first.

Free drift

T hands you the nose and nothing else. The ship slides on along its course and steering only turns the nose: look back, shoot sideways, drift past a rival with your gun on it. The crosshair is where you shoot, the Course marker where you really go: a faint dashed line joins the two, the marker flashes as you switch, and when it slips off screen an arrow at the edge points to it.

Wherever the nose points, the HUD shows where you move: faint blue streaks flow out of the Course marker the way the world rushes past, faster the faster you go. Sliding sideways, they sweep across the screen; flying backwards, they stream into the Brake marker.

The quick switch

The pros switch all the time: autopilot to get somewhere, free drift for the shot, autopilot again before the next rock. The choice outlives a clone, so read the HUD: AUTOPILOT, or [ FREE DRIFT ] in brighter letters.

Flip and burn

Coasting never slows you down: in space only a burn against the flight brakes. The brake (S) does it all and stops by itself: it flips the ship, burns, takes out the drift sideways too and holds you at rest; slow, it stops you with the thrusters alone. The flip (X) only turns the nose against the flight and holds it there. With W you burn as long as you hold it: let go early and keep some speed, hold on past zero and you speed up backwards. The flip alone changes nothing: you fly on backwards, gun first, which is how you shoot at whatever chases you.

The dodge

Tap a thruster twice: every thruster kicks the ship 40 m/s that way, more than a ship's length out of the line of fire, ready again after 1.5 s. A laser hits the instant it fires, so nobody outruns a beam; a dodge beats the aim.

The overdrive

One shove of 150 m/s along the nose, past the speed limit. It leaves your clone at the edge of blacking out and the main drive dead for 4 s, while thrusters and laser keep working, and recharges for 60 s. Fire it across an attacker's line of fire, never straight away from a ship on your tail: that only makes you a farther target.

Glory at Full Burn

8 gates, 3 laps, around the field's center through the outer rocks. Every gate scores 20 points, first place at the finish 1,000, and less for every place after. Lasers stay on: a kill scores 200.

The line

The dashed ribbon is the ideal line: through the center of every gate, around rock as it lies right now. The farther you stray, the brighter it glows, so you find it again under fire.

The X

The X marks where your flight, held as it is, crosses the next gate's plane. Azure: you will pass through. Orange: you will miss. Steer the X into the ring. A missed gate has to be flown again, from either side.

Brake zones

Where the line ahead bends tighter than you can turn at your speed, it glows orange: brake before the orange, not in it. Hold the drive with your nose on the line, and you take every bend at the speed limit; only rock on the move bends it tighter.

The coils

Every gate is a coil 120 m in radius. Through its inner third, within 40 m of the center, it throws you on 40 m/s faster, even past the speed limit. Off-center it gives nothing, and the housing is solid: hitting it is a crash like rock. The clean line is the fast one.

The start

The clamps hold every ship through the countdown. Light the drive within 0.3 s before BURN! or 0.2 s after it: a perfect start, a shove of 40 m/s. Earlier, and the drive stalls for 1.5 s.

The probes on the track

A race's probes are sealed, and luck favors the back of the field: torpedoes, overdrives and the nova cores go to the last third, plating and repairs to the leaders.

Victory Through Superior Position

Armor and the drive

There are no shields. Nose and flanks are armor: a beam only scorches it, 2 of 100 hull points. From behind, within 50° of the axis, a beam hits the main drive: each hit costs a fifth of its thrust, and the fifth sends the reactor critical. Five hits from behind win the fight.

So a fight is won by position: get behind the other ship, and keep your armored nose to anyone behind you. The crosshair glows orange only over a drive. ON YOUR TAIL means: turn your nose to that ship, now.

Getting behind a bot on autopilot is hard, because your flight follows your nose and carries you past it. Switch to free drift for the fight: your flight slides on, and your nose stays on its drive.

Heat and bursts

The laser needs no ammunition, only cooling. Each shot adds 20 % heat: a cool laser fires a burst of 6 in sunlight, 9 in a rock's shadow. Overheated, it locks until it has cooled to 30 %. Fire short bursts while the crosshair glows, and cool off in the shade (☾ beside the heat gauge).

Hot radiators glow for everyone to see: dull red, then orange-red as the laser nears its lock. A rival glowing bright is about to fall silent; while yours glow, every rival knows the same of you.

Cover

Rock stops everything: beams, sensors and torpedo seekers. A ship behind a rock vanishes from the HUD, and the bots cannot see it either. In a rock's shadow your laser also cools more than twice as fast.

Not every rock lasts. A rock's fragments stay all round, but their fragments, the smallest pieces, crumble to dust 90 s after they break off, and a comet's head grinds every fragment in its way to dust. Cover behind a small piece is cover for a moment.

Ships stop beams too. A beam ends at the first hull on its line, and it cannot tell friend from foe: a ship of your own side in your line of fire takes the shot, a torpedo goes off at the first hull it meets, and a nova core takes your side with everyone else. A kill of your own side costs you 500 points, a nova's twice that, and the announcer tells the whole system what you are. Your HUD marks your own side with a ring where a rival has a square, and while your nose is on one of them the crosshair is crossed out over FRIEND. Fire past your side, never through it.

Torpedoes

2 per clone. A torpedo locks on the ship closest to your nose within 17° and 3 km: keep the target near the crosshair until the lock holds, then launch. Armor does not stop it: 60 hull points, whatever side it reaches. Two kill.

TORPEDO INBOUND: shoot it down (a small target, 50 points), or break its lock. A seeker that loses sight behind a rock or a hull flies straight on for good.

Or outfly it. A torpedo flies at up to 360 m/s, more than your 250 m/s: running straight away only buys time, and only an overdrive outruns it, for a moment. But it turns with 9 g, you with 11. Nicole counts it down (a thousand, five hundred, three hundred, two hundred, a hundred meters) and calls “Break!” about 1.5 s before it hits: turn hard across its path now, or dodge a moment later, and it overshoots. Hold the turn, and it comes round again; jink one way, then the other, and it burns out after 15 s.

A torpedo on your hook is a bomb on a string. It weighs 1 t, and its motor still pushes for its target at 20 g, but your drive drags it wherever you go; after 15 s it is just a mass on the rope. Its fuse goes off on every ship, yours too: swing it into a rival, or let go to fling it. While you hold it, and 3 s after, its kill is yours. The HUD says TORPEDO ON THE LINE.

The hook

A harpoon flies along the nose and bites the first rock, ship, sponsor probe or torpedo within 1 km; a probe it bites comes in on the cable and is yours when it arrives, unless another ship flies through it first. Held, the winch reels in at 8 g, and the cable never gets longer: a ship flying past its rock swings around it, faster the more cable comes in. Let go, and you fly off along the swing like a stone from a sling. Ready again after 1.2 s.

The cable only pulls, and every jerk is shared by mass: a rock is millions of times your 60 t and stays where it is, a rival of your mass is pulled as hard as you. Hooked to a ship, both drives pull against the rope: a tug of war the stronger drive wins, and an overdrive's shove yanks the other along. In Capture the Flag the hook takes a sponsor core too.

A cable never passes through anything solid: it wraps around it. When rock, ice, junk or a hull comes between you and what you hooked, the cable lies on its edge and you swing around that edge; swing back, and it comes off again. Let go before it winds onto the rock: the winch keeps you clear of it by paying out cable, and that eats your swing. It snaps on a planet's or a black hole's body, on the battleship's hull, on a rock that sweeps right through it, and once it has wound a whole turn round a rock.

Probes

From 20 s into a round a sponsor probe shows up every 25 s, each carrying one thing. Fly within 15 m of it to take it. Its color says what it holds:

• Twin laser (pink): twice as fast, half the heat per shot, for the clone's life.
• Plating (blue): two hits into the drive bounce off, or one torpedo.
• Torpedoes (orange): two more.
• Overdrive (yellow): charged at once.
• Repair (green): hull, drive and thrusters as new.
• Nova core (white): see below.

A dead clone's twin laser, plating and nova core fly out again as probes, for whoever gets there first.

The nova core

One probe in fourteen. Your next press of fire is no laser: the core goes off and destroys every other ship within 800 m, your own side's too, each rival a double kill. Your clone burns up with it, free of charge: no death, no ad. So fly into the crowd first, then fire. Within 1.2 km of a holder the siren tells everyone else to run.

Unsportsmanlike Conduct, Approved

The Ministry calls it entertainment, and the rules allow all of it.

Shoves and knockouts

A ship struck by another at 5 m/s or more is shoved, and if it crashes within 3 s (into rock, a gate's housing, the battleship's hull, the flare or deep space), the shover gets the kill: a knockout. Your tool is the dodge: kicked into a ship alongside, it throws that ship off at about 26 m/s. The shove barely scratches; the rock beside the line does the killing. At a race's speed a ship shoved off its line meets the housing ahead at full speed.

Ramming

Below 15 m/s two ships only bump. Faster, it is a ram, and its blow grows with the square of the speed. Where it lands decides: the armored nose takes 30 % of the blow, a flank 50 %, an open drive all of it. Ram with your nose into their drive, never the other way round. A ram that kills is your kill, a kamikaze too.

The sling

Hook a rock, swing around it, let go: you leave faster than you came, on a line nobody expects. Let go at the wrong moment, and the same sling throws you into the next rock.

On the rope

A rival on your cable cannot get away from you while its drive fights your winch. Reel it in and give it the laser, or a torpedo, from close range.

The grill

A main drive burning hard throws plasma 150 m behind it. Whoever tails you too closely gets grilled, and a clone that burns up counts as your kill. Overtake beside a plume, never through it.

Deathmatch: The Purest Show

Five minutes, everyone against everyone. A kill scores 500, a rock 200, its fragments 120 and theirs 80, a close call past a rock 25. The best score wins.

The bots hunt the nearest ship they see, at most two on the same one. Keep moving: steady flight is easy to lead, jinking with the thrusters makes them miss. A ship crossing your nose fast up close: switch to free drift, slide on, and turn the nose onto it.

Last Clone Standing: Run from the Sun

3 clones each; when your last one dies, you are out until the next round. From the first minute a solar flare eats into the arena from the sun's side at 30 m/s, and at four minutes it holds, leaving a pocket on the far side about 1.35 km deep, with the field's outermost rocks as cover.

In the plasma a ship burns, 40 heat and 6 hull a second; behind a rock, away from the sun, a quarter of that. A rock buys time, not safety. The HUD marks the pocket: get there early, before the crowd. Whoever has the most clones left at the end wins, then whoever held out longest.

Capture the Flag: For Sponsor and Side

Orange against Blue, each side with a ring for a base and its sponsor core inside. Take the other side's core with your hook (100 points): fly within 40 m of it, or fire the harpoon at it from up to 1 km. It then hangs on a cable of 75 m behind you, a trailer of 15 t with a mind of its own: it swings out in turns, overtakes you when you brake and bounces off whatever it meets, harming nothing. Fly it through your own ring while your own core is at home: when the core itself passes through the ring, it is a capture, 1,000 points. 3 captures win at once.

A tow cable wraps around rock as the hook's does. A carrier that dies, or whose tow cable snaps, lets the core go where it hangs, and its thrusters brake it to rest at 2 g. Take your own core adrift with your hook to send it home (150 points); after 30 s adrift it goes home by itself. Your own side does not spare you: its beams, torpedoes and novas hurt you as a rival's do, and a kill of your own side costs its killer 500 points. Guard with a few, raid with the rest, and never fly straight at a core under the guards' guns: swing out wide and dive through it already heading home, or hook it from afar.

A core is solid: a beam stops on it and a torpedo goes off at it, so a core in tow covers its carrier from behind. Shoot the carrier from the side. A core adrift that falls into a gravity well or meets a comet's head is lost, and its sponsor's spare waits at home.

The President's Fleet: Sink His Pride

Everyone on one side, against the President's battleship. It comes in 12 s into the round and circles the field. Its hull takes no harm and stops every beam, so the side away from a battery is cover. Its turrets, their barrels and its drive bells are as solid as its hull, and a beam that strikes them hits the battery or the drive. Its parts break: a battery after 64 laser hits, a drive after 94, the reactor after 188. A torpedo counts 10 hits on every part near where it goes off.

A nova core is the heaviest blow it can take: every part within 200 m of the core breaks outright, and every part it reaches farther out loses a share of all the hits it takes, down to 33 % at 800 m. Set it off over the deck between the batteries, with your own side clear of the blast. The reactor stays sealed under its dome until the batteries are gone.

Take out the batteries first: every 1.6 s each fires at the nearest ship it sees within 1.5 km, and speed spoils its aim. With half its batteries gone it turns its stern on the nearest pilot and lights its drives: stay out of that plume. With every battery gone the reactor opens. When it breaks, get clear: four seconds later the ship goes up and takes everything within 1 km. Sinking it scores 500 for everyone; if the five minutes run out first, the President wins.

Under the flight deck 3 hangar tunnels run straight through the hull from flank to flank, 75 m wide and 53 m high: dive in on one side and out the other. Inside, no battery sees you, and a chaser has to follow you through or lose you. The battleship moves at 30 m/s, so lead the far mouth as you lead a crossing ship, or its wall catches you.

Seven Arenas, One Glorious Death

• The Belt. The home of the Games: forty huge rocks, cover everywhere. The Rockborn mine them: their rigs, buoys and cutters are solid steel: ships crash on them, and beams, torpedoes and hooks stop at them, so they are cover too. The dust from their drill holes does no harm, it only patters on the hull.
• Rings of Saturn. Inside Saturn's ring: a layer of ice grains 250 m thick runs through the middle, small chunks of ice in it, a few big ones in the open space above and below. The grains do no harm, they only patter on the hull; dive through the layer to shake off a chaser, or hide among its chunks. The race course dives through it four times a lap. The sun gives a hundredth of the light it gives Earth; the flight computer's sensors brighten the picture to make up for it. Ice breaks easier, and the weaker sun lets lasers cool a little faster.

• The Satellite Junkyard. The dead satellites, spent stages and fairings of the Orbital Freedom Network on crossing orbits, all at 25 m/s: your cover moves. The dead relay hub in the middle never breaks. Earth glows below, out of reach.*

  *They promised internet for everyone. Now everyone gets junk, darling.

• Jupiter. Its cloud deck runs through the middle of the arena: above it open space, below it the air, thicker the deeper you go, and its pull, almost a g, draws everything down into it. Half the fight is in the clouds (see In Jupiter's clouds).
• Corona. In the sun's glare the radiators shed only about half their heat: fight from the shadows. Every 50 s a solar storm blinds the sensors for 8 s.
• Event Horizon. A black hole in the middle. Within about 555 m no drive gets out; watch the PULL gauge and burn away early, or fall around it in an orbit (see Orbits).

• The Derelict. A broken world ship and nothing else: no rocks, only its hull to hide behind, and lasers only scorch it. The mist of ice crystals still escaping at the break does no harm, it only patters on the hull. Its dead drift there, frozen; nothing you fire touches them.*

  *They set out together for the stars. Now they watch you die over their grave, darling. Mind them as you pass.

Hazards and Alarms

Below the crosshair the flight computer names the worst danger: CAUTION in azure, WARNING in orange, CRITICAL in red with a siren. One line per danger, with an arrow to where it comes from and a countdown where it has one.

Impact

IMPACT means your course hits something sooner than you could flip and brake. Turn or brake now. Below 12.5 m/s a rock only scratches the paint; at about 72 m/s it wrecks the ship.

Comets

COMET INBOUND comes 8 s before a comet reaches the arena. Its head runs down every ship and breaks rock; on a hull it breaks up and sets the hull drifting. Its two tails, pointing away from the sun, are only dust and gas and harm nobody. The danger is the shower that glints orange along its route behind the head: every piece strikes half again as hard as a laser beam and bursts on whatever solid it meets. Get into the lee of a rock, which stops the shower, or of a hull (the battleship, the world ship, the dead relay hub), which stops head and shower alike, or turn your armored nose into the shower.

Gravity wells

Near the black hole and over Jupiter the PULL gauge shows how much of your drive it would take to get out: CAUTION from 15 %, WARNING from 35 %, CRITICAL from 60 %, and when it would take all of it, NO RETURN. Burn away early: falling, the gauge climbs fast. The speed limit holds only against your own drive; gravity pulls you past 250 m/s.

Orbits

Near the black hole the flight computer keeps asking where free drift would take you, and shows it under the PULL gauge. ORBIT READY: let go now, and you fall around the hole, never closer than 715 m to its center, where its pull alone takes 60 % of your drive, and never beyond the arena's edge. Pe and Ap give the path's nearest and farthest point over the horizon. Switch to free drift, and you fly it: STABLE ORBIT, and the alarms fall silent, for you keep falling and keep missing. A burn, a ram or a hit that takes that margin away brings them back at once.

NO ORBIT · FALLS IN: too slow, the path ends in the hole. NO ORBIT · LEAVES ARENA: too fast, it carries you out. Both give the orbit speed where you are: point your nose across the line to the hole, and burn up to it. A circle a kilometer out takes 198 m/s, once around in 32 s; at the arena's edge 108 m/s. Over Jupiter no orbit fits: its center lies far below the arena, and its air would brake you out of any.

In Jupiter's clouds

The haze hides whatever is in it: just under the deck you see about 2.5 km, a kilometer down 790 m, two kilometers down 250 m. Ships turn into shadows, then into nothing. Your laser reaches as far as you see, the radar twice as far, a torpedo's lock two thirds as far. The deck itself is a veil: dive through it, and a chaser above loses sight of you, unless it looks almost straight down.

The air brakes you by your speed squared, 1.5 g at the deck at 250 m/s and ten times as much two kilometers down: a hard turn in the clouds costs speed, a climb out of them lets you have it back. It heats your hull too. At 250 m/s it gets too hot from 600 m below the deck on; a kilometer down 215 m/s is safe, two kilometers down 146 m/s. HULL HEAT names the safe speed where you are. The heat locks your laser first, then it burns the hull: slow down, or climb.

In the air, for once, you hear what is outside: the wind roaring past the hull, and thunder after the lightning in the clouds.

The arena's edge

Space has no walls, but the Games do. More than 3.4 km from the center the clock runs: 20 s to get back, or the clone is lost in deep space. Outside, the whole edge glows orange, so the way home is always in sight.

Hull failing

At 30 hull points or less: HULL FAILING. One more hit and you are dead. Find cover, or a repair probe.

Points, Coins and the Hangar

A kill 500 (in a race 200), rocks 200, 120 and 80, a close call 25, a gate 20, first place in a race 1,000. Every point is paid out as one Solar Coin at the round's end; training is free and pays nothing.

Kills close together are a show, and the crowd pays for it: a kill within 4 s of your last one makes a streak. The second earns half a kill more (250), the third and every one after a whole kill more (500); the bots' streaks pay alike. A nova's kills already count double and earn no bonus, but they count in the streak; a kill of your own side counts in none, and your clone's death ends it.

In the hangar the coins buy upgrades for both interceptors, three steps each: radiators, thrusters, main drive, torpedo tubes, plating, and the looks (neon trim, drive flame). Online every upgrade counts for one step at most, so newcomers meet veterans almost as equals; the looks count in full. Complete both interceptors, and the President gives you the Sovereign: a trophy, not a better ship.

Honor among Hosts

The Games run without a central server. The Hosts' browsers build the tournament's network among themselves and agree on what happens by consensus.

The standings (held with Tab, or shown between rounds) name each other Host's ping beside their name: in milliseconds, calm blue until it climbs, orange from 150 ms and red from 300 ms. A bot's ping always goes to the lead browser, the one that runs it; yours shows a dash, and so does a bot's while you lead. A small star marks the browser that leads: it runs the round and the bots.

The Host who has been in the room longest is its game master: the HUD says so on their screen, and a star marks them in the standings. From the pause menu the game master can cut a round short for everyone and start a new one, in any arena and mode; everyone's points are paid out on a short scoreboard. The mode chosen holds for the rounds after it, the arenas go on in the room's order. When the game master leaves, the next Host in the room takes over.

They are meant to be flown with friends. Whoever cheats, cheats their friends. If that is fun for you, have fun while it lasts: the other Hosts will cast you out.

Whoever cheats their friends is an asshole. Period.

And yes, we know what DevTools are. Go ahead and edit your localStorage. Out there are Hosts who fly the flight school themselves and earn their Solar Coins round by round, to build the perfect ship the honest way. Online the upgrades count only up to their cap anyway.