How to play
You fly a nimble propeller aircraft over a generated island while computer-controlled drones attack in waves. The drones are unmanned machines: dark grey, with twin tail fins and orange wing tips. Clear a wave and the next one brings more and smarter drones.
- The guns fire 12 tracer rounds a second and overheat after about five seconds of continuous fire, then stay silent for about two.
- The yellow circle beside the targeted drone shows where it will be when your bullets arrive. Put the green gun cross on it and fire.
- Missiles home on the heat of a drone. Keep the target inside the dashed circle until LOCK appears (about a second), then launch. You start with four; every cleared wave adds two (one on Hard), up to six.
- The radar (top right) shows drones within 4 km, your heading up; a plus or minus beside a dot means more than 150 m above or below you.
A rookie drone is worth 100 points, a veteran 150 and an ace 200; a drone that flies into the ground gives half. Clearing wave n adds 100 × n points and repairs part of the damage. The game ends when your hull reaches zero, when you hit the ground, water, a building or a tree, or when you ram a drone. The best score of each difficulty is saved in this browser.
Controls
- Mouse: with Point to fly the aircraft turns toward the pointer. After Start, move the pointer into the small circle in the middle to take control. If the pointer leaves the view, bringing it back takes control again, and the turn builds up over about a second instead of starting at full strength. The left button fires, the right button launches a missile and the wheel sets the throttle. Settings can switch to Yoke, where the pointer works like a control column.
- Keyboard: ↓ or S raises the nose, ↑ or W lowers it, ← → or A D bank, Q E work the rudder, Shift or + adds power and Ctrl or − reduces it. Space fires, M launches a missile, T picks the next target, C changes the view, P or Esc pauses and F is full screen.
- Touch: drag on the left part of the view to steer, hold FIRE, tap MSL and slide the throttle on the right; Easy is preselected.
Assist is on by default: the wings level when you let go, turns hold their height and the wing cannot stall. Switch it off on Normal or Hard for free aerobatics; on Easy it is always on.
How it works
Your aircraft uses the simplified flight model of the Flight Simulator game on this site, computed 120 times a second, with lift L = ½ ρ v² S CL(α). For combat the engine is stronger, 6 kN of static thrust instead of 2.5 kN, which gives about 170 knots in level flight. Drag grows with the square of the lift coefficient, so a tight turn bleeds speed: at full power and a typical 700 m the best steady turn is about 4 g, flown at roughly 125 to 140 knots, and a harder pull slows the aircraft down.
The lead circle solves where a bullet and the drone meet. A bullet leaves at 820 m/s plus the speed of your aircraft. If r is the position of the drone relative to you and u its velocity relative to yours, the flight time t is the positive solution of
|r + u t| = 820 t
The circle marks where the drone will be after that time, and the gun cross where a bullet fired now will be, including its drop of ½gt². When they meet, the bullets hit.
Missiles use proportional navigation, the guidance law of real homing missiles: the missile turns its velocity four times faster than the line of sight to the target rotates, limited to about 25 g on Normal.
a = 4 · Ω × v, Ω = (r × ṓ) / |r|²
When the line of sight stops rotating, the missile is on a collision course. A drone that turns hard enough to leave the 45° field of view of the seeker breaks the lock. The drones fly the same physics and react with a delay. All of them aim ahead of you as if you flew straight. Veterans also lead your turns, attack from behind and break hard when you sit on their tail or launch a missile; aces react fastest and manage their energy, climbing for height and diving for speed.
Tips
- Never fly straight with a drone behind you: a steady hard turn makes you much harder to hit.
- Attack from behind and slightly above; a drone flying straight at you is a small, fast target.
- Fire short bursts when the gun cross touches the yellow circle; spraying only overheats the guns.
- Save missiles for veterans and aces, which dodge bullets better.
- Watch the radar: the next wave appears ahead of you.
Frequently asked questions
Why do I miss when the gun cross is on the drone?
The bullets need time to get there and the drone keeps moving. Aim at the yellow circle, not at the drone.
Why did my missile miss?
A sharp turn can take the drone out of the view of the seeker, and a missile launched very close cannot turn fast enough. The seeker can lock on between 120 m and 2.3 km.
Are there pilots in the drones?
No. All enemies are unmanned machines, and nothing in the game shows people.
Is this realistic?
Only partly. The forces use real formulas, but ammunition never runs out, damage is simplified and the missiles are idealised. It is a game, not a training device.
Sources
- NASA Glenn Research Center (2024). Lift Equation. The lift formula of the flight model.
- Palumbo NF, Blauwkamp RA, Lloyd JM (2010). Basic Principles of Homing Guidance. Johns Hopkins APL Technical Digest 29(1), 25–41. Proportional navigation, the pure form a = k Ω × v that the missiles use, and why a line of sight that stops rotating means a collision course.