Real-time strategy · iPhone · iPad · Mac
SYSTEM B10C0001 · VOIDWATCH vs THE TALLY
You start with a base, a drone yard, two drones on the nearest rock and 600 credits. So does your rival, mirrored across the star. Every asteroid between you is finite. Whoever mines faster builds more, and whoever builds more gets to the other homeworld first.
A match
The economy is tuned so that every match has the same shape, and every system changes where the pressure lands.
Buy more drones at 300 credits each and spread them over the nearest asteroids. A rock you hold alone pays double, so the first question is which rocks you can hold and which your rival is closer to. Buy a fighter yard before someone tests you.
Drones meet at the shared rocks in the middle and income halves for both of you. Send fighters as escort. Warships that cross paths stop and fight until one side is gone, so every escort you send is a commitment.
Upgrade the base to open the frigate yard, then the destroyer yard. Fly a fighter past the enemy base to spy: two seconds of live positions, then ghost markers that age. Break a wall segment, take a station, hold a wormhole mouth.
The outer rocks run dry and income tightens. Someone commits a fleet to the other homeworld. Destroyers do double damage to structures, and drones can mine a base straight through its shields. The match ends the moment a homeworld reaches zero.
How you play
Orders
One tap selects a ship, two selects its class, three selects the fleet, or use the idle buttons on the HUD. Tap an asteroid, an enemy, a wall or the enemy base and the valid orders appear: mine, escort, attack, breach, spy, capture. A mixed group sent to a rock mines and escorts on its own.
Command Focus
You have a 100-point Focus meter that drains at 25 a second while you hold and refills at 4. Hold a drone to double its mining. Hold a warship to recharge its shields at 50 a second. Hold anything in transit to move it 60% faster. Hold a visible enemy drone to burn it down in about three seconds. The AI has the same meter.
Fog
Enemy ships appear only where your drones share a rock with theirs, where your navy is fighting them, or for two seconds after a spy run. An idle armada at the enemy base is invisible until you go and look, and looking costs a fighter under turret fire.
Interception
Ships that meet in transit stop where they are and fight to the end. You can send reinforcements, or order a retreat and take fire on the way out with shields down for five seconds. A fight you walk away from runs to annihilation.
Base
Base L1 has one turret and 4,000 hull. L3 has three turrets, 9,000 hull, a 3,500 shield, builds 55% faster and repairs idle ships at 24 a second. The 7,000 credits to get there buy tempo as well as armour.
Raids
Sent against a homeworld, drones strip hull into credits at their normal rate. Shields don't stop them. Turrets do, so a raid only pays with an escort or when the defenders are somewhere else. A raid that reaches zero wins.
The fleet
Each level adds a weapon and sharpens the ones below it. Each level is also about 20% more efficient per credit than the one under it, so teching up beats spamming, once the yard is paid for.
| Hull | L1 | L3 | Role | Beats | Loses to |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Drone | 300 c · 5 c/s | 800 c · 19 c/s | Mines. Unarmed. | Nothing | Everything |
| Fighter | 400 c · 12 DPS | 1,200 c · 52 DPS | Fast. Escorts, spies, swarms. | Destroyers | Frigates |
| Frigate | 1,000 c · 30 DPS | 2,800 c · 121 DPS | Flak and tracking lasers. | Fighters | Destroyers |
| Destroyer | 2,500 c · 70 DPS | 6,500 c · 262 DPS | Slow. Siege guns. | Frigates, bases, walls | Fighters |
Every edge in the triangle is 50%. A destroyer hits structures for double. Fighters get blasters, then lasers, then a railgun. Frigates add flak and missiles. Destroyers add heavy lasers and torpedoes. Hull only repairs at home; shields recharge anywhere after three seconds out of fire.
The system
Two to fifteen asteroids, placed as mirrored pairs so both sides face the same geography. The map grows with the rock count: two rocks is a knife fight where both fleets are always in reach, fifteen is a campaign where crossing the board is itself a decision.
Solar flares
Every 90 to 150 seconds the star charges a 60-degree sector. The corona swells, the HUD counts down, then the sector burns for four seconds at 30 damage a second, shields first. A fleet caught mid-transit arrives stripped. A fleet that attacks just after the enemy eats one arrives on time.
Dividing wall
A belt of rock across the middle, in segments of 60,000 hull. A mid-size fleet needs about two and a half minutes of undefended fire to open one. Three drones can dig through in about the same time and bank a slice of the rock. Once open, every route replans through the breach, and both fleets meet there.
Wormholes
Up to two portal pairs a seed, never within a third of the map of a homeworld. Routes take a portal whenever it beats flying, and portals pass over walls. A wall seed with a portal makes that portal the only early road between halves.
Debris
One to three fields a seed. Inside one, ships move at 60% and lose two and a half hull a second. Lanes route around them by default. You can order the crossing anyway and pay for it.
Stations
Every seed places one or two derelict stations. Fifteen seconds of uncontested drone time captures one. A Sensor Array reveals every enemy hull within 900 units. A Mercenary Dock hands you a free fighter every 90 seconds. A Repair Yard mends nearby hulls at 8 a second, the only field repair in the game.
Losing
When a homeworld hits zero the camera flies to it, the planet shudders, flares, tears apart in a white flash, throws shockwaves and debris, and leaves a scar. Only then does the verdict appear. It's built in-engine on that seed's planet, in the loser's colour.
The opponent
The AI pays the same prices, obeys the same fog and spends the same Focus meter. What changes is how often it thinks, how much it wants, and what it's willing to do to your drones. Its form is rolled with the seed, so a rung never plays quite the same way twice.
Every day
One seed per UTC day, the same for everyone. The enemy homeworld can't be destroyed. It can be mined, right on the spawn point, if you dare.
The waves
The gap starts at 62 seconds and tightens to 34. Each wave carries one more fighter than the last, with no cap. Frigates join from wave four, destroyers from wave eight, and every hull steps up a level every eight waves.
The coalition
Voidwatch flies the fighter wing, The Tally the frigate line, Redmark the capitals. The assignment never rotates, so a later wave is always harder than an earlier one.
The score
A strong player lasts about twenty minutes. Your best run for the day is kept on the device. The start screen shows the countdown to the next seed.
Screens
One codebase, one purchase, the same match on every screen.
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