Cold Start

CNS Aurelian, launch bay 2, 04:17 ship time. General quarters. A Kharon battle group has dropped out of jump right on top of the Concord fleet – and Lance Six is asleep in the cockpit of a cold, dark Lancer.

Bring the fighter to life by hand: battery, fuel pumps, APU, coolant, reactor priming and ignition, generators, avionics, INS alignment, radar, comms, flight controls, engines, canopy, shields and weapons. Every switch is in the cockpit and every system has real interlocks – ignite the reactor without coolant and it SCRAMs. Behind the armoured shutter you can only hear the battle. The ten fighters of your squadron come alive together with yours.

Then the shutter opens. Five carriers, ten battleships, three flak frigates and a hundred fighters per side are already fighting. Catapult out with Lance squadron, dogfight with pulse lasers, autocannon and seeker missiles, and take capital ships apart system by system – shield generators, engines, bridges, hangars and gun batteries – with torpedoes. Kill a flak frigate's fire-control mast and its barrage goes wild. Carriers keep launching fighters as long as their hangars stand; capital ships never come back. Land on a friendly carrier to rearm. There is no respawn: you fly the ship you started with.

Needs a desktop browser with WebGL 2, a keyboard and a mouse. Headphones recommended.

Log in to keep your progress in the cloud. Completing the cold start once unlocks the hot start.