Earthline, 2187
Three years ago the Kessari Swarm ate the Luna Array in a single night — a tide of biohull gunships pouring out of the dark beyond Kepler. Earth answered with the Earthline: an orbital perimeter held by interceptor squadrons, railgun stations, and sheer refusal.
You are Merlin-1 of Merlin Squadron, flying the last advanced interceptor off the line. Every wave you break is another dawn for the planet below. There is no final victory here. There is only the line — and you are it.
The Swarm learns
Watch the threat rank. The Swarm studies you: the more power you stack and the longer you fly clean, the harder it fights back — aces, revenge fire, plasma lances. Take a hit and it grows overconfident. That is your opening. That is the whole war.
Your evolving arsenal
Hulls progress through Mk I / Mk II / Mk III / Mk IV / Mk V / Apex at waves 1 / 5 / 10 / 15 / 20 / 30. Wings, engines and canopy change; your collision core, hull capacity and combat stats do not. Bronze, Silver and Gold paint is independent. Apex is the final silhouette, not the end of the run.
Fly through labelled supply cores to collect them. Equipment lasts only this run, and weapon modules reflect pickups, not wave number. Each new power caps at three stacks:
- D — Escort drones (eligible from wave 2): up to three companions fire at nearby enemies. They are not extra lives.
- ↗ — Ricochet rounds (wave 3): primary rounds redirect to nearby, distinct enemies, with up to one bounce per stack. Pierce resolves first; splash happens once per round. No repeated-hit loops or mine homing.
- * — Cryo shots (wave 4): primary hits that damage a surviving ship briefly slow its movement. More stacks deepen the slow; bosses resist it. Repeated hits refresh, not accumulate, the duration. Absorbed hits do not slow; mines and pods are excluded.
- I — Interception field (wave 6): periodically removes a bounded number of nearby ordinary hostile bullets, before contact resolution. It does not stop beams, mines or ships and is not a shield.
These are eligibility waves, not guaranteed discovery. The starting Spread and Shield drops and recovery ticket chances are unchanged. S/P/R add spread, piercing and fire rate; L/B/E/K add laser rails, splash, arcs and seekers; H banks shield hits, + repairs hull, N detonates a Nova, and J banks Judgment for the special button without a lock.
Know your enemy
- Skirr (drones) — chaff, a red tide together.
- Darts (strikers) — dive-hunters that fall on your engine glow.
- Looms (weavers) — gunships stitching plasma across your path.
- Seeds (mites) — living ordnance; kill at range, they burst into Cinders.
- Needles (lancers) — railgun snipers. Red line means be elsewhere.
- Haulers (carriers) — fat with stolen cores. Crack them open.
- Bulwarks (bastions) — siege armor around a gun heart.
- Duelists (aces) — champion hunters. They want you, and carry relics.
- Aegis (guardians, GUARD) — absorb hits for nearby regular ships from a finite reserve. The linked screen is not hull damage. Hit the guardian directly to break support; guardians cannot protect themselves, support peers or bosses.
- Sowers (minelayers, MINES) — leave warned, destructible mines. Shoot to disarm; no score or salvage comes from mines.
- Hooks (flankers, FLANK) — outline their approach before committing to a fast pass. Leave the marked path.
- Menders (repair ships, REPAIR) — spend a finite budget healing wounded regular ships. Kill them to stop repairs. They cannot heal themselves, support peers or bosses, or revive the dead.
ADV and family-specific armor mark stronger recruits. Abilities and armor are fixed when a ship spawns; a milestone never transforms a ship already fighting you. Later waves cycle a finite set of patterns rather than growing endless new hulls.
Capital ships
A boss every five waves, in this repeating order. First encounters are at waves 5, 10, 15, 20, 25 and 30:
- TETHYS MAW (Mothership) — the mouth of the Swarm. Starve its radial volleys.
- GRAVITON — a gravity engine. Labelled PULL circles warn before wells activate. Pull does not deal damage itself or disable steering and dash; steer away from the well and incoming fire.
- ANVIL OF SORROWS (Dreadnought) — breaker of fleets, firing aimed spreads. Break it first.
- PRISM TITAN — a sweeping lens. Dashed BEAM lanes outline the complete sweep before firing, with arrows showing direction. Leave the whole marked footprint, not just the current beam position.
- THE BROODMOTHER (Hive) — spawns living Mites. Kill the womb, scatter the children.
- FORGE QUEEN — a drone foundry with exposed PODs, not Hive brood. Destroy pods to interrupt finite production, or hit the Queen directly. Already-built drones survive; pods and produced drones give no score or salvage. Boss death clears its damaging hazards.
Friends in high orbit
The 7th Orbital Wing flies cover when it can. Helios Logistics drops supplies, Samaritan drones patch hulls mid-flight, and the big railgun stations answer as orbital strikes. Earth fights with you.