Engagement

RELIEF IS FIFTEEN MINUTES OUT. THE HOLLOW ARE ALREADY HERE.

You command a single Concord capital ship in the Belt of Ashes. Everything you destroy drops salvage, and every level bolts something onto your hull: a flak battery, a rail cannon, tesla coils, a drone hangar, a shield dome. Each one is a turret on a real hardpoint. You watch it traverse and fire, and by minute ten your ship looks like the build you chose.

You do not fight alone. Recruit escorts, give them orders and promote the ones who live. Two Veterans whose hulls fit a recipe can fuse into a new class of ship. Three can drill as a squad. An escort that goes down ejects its pilot in a pod you can still pull aboard; a pilot nobody reaches goes on the memorial wall with their rank, callsign and kills.

The Hollow come in swarms, then in capital ships, then in things the Signals Office has stopped trying to name. Every charged beam, arcing pulse and incoming torpedo is marked on screen and in your ears before it lands, so the hit you take is one you saw coming.

NO "+8% DAMAGE" CARDS

A refit might blow armour plates off your hull as a flak burst, relaunch a lost fighter wing or turn your first volley into guaranteed critical hits. Max a module and pair it with the right partner and it evolves. When two modules that work together have both evolved, they can become a mega evolution: a heavy strike on its own timer, and your drive flame burns in its colour. Your drydock, your doctrines and your Bridge Crew work the same way, as mechanics you can see rather than numbers you have to trust.

THE FIELD KEEPS CHANGING

Between the bosses, the fight throws things at you. A Concord capital drops out of the jump under fire and needs covering until her drive spools. A prison hulk runs for the edge with captured crews in its hold. An artillery spire unfolds and starts shelling your wing, Hollow included. Two claimers race you to a supply canister, and a hunter pack jumps in behind the fleet looking for your best pilot. There are ten kinds of field event, and each one pays for going and costs you for ignoring it.

FEATURES

- Six flagships, from a line cruiser to a carrier to a cloaking raider. Each has its own hardpoint layout, its own signature system and a tree of seven refits.

- 25 modules, 29 evolutions and 11 mega evolutions, all built onto the hull where you can see them. Strip a module mid-run when the build needs the slot.

- A wing that grows with you: 9 escort classes to recruit, promote and branch, 10 fused classes, 6 squad drills, and pilots whose careers carry from one run to the next.

- A Bridge Crew of nine officers. Seat three and they take stations on your bridge: one fires the side burn, one lays the spinal gun, one runs your orders.

- 23 Hollow ship types across five sectors, each sector with its own weather: ice shard storms in the Glass Ring, collapsing girders in the Drowned Yard, a lightning nebula that halves your sensors, and Hollow space itself.

- Bosses with phases: the Reaver dreadnought, the Maw that swallows escorts whole, the Choir that sings its dead back, and the Hollow Crown.