You drop a colony onto a hex world that is already dying.
The blight is not an enemy AI. It is a spreading rot that advances a few hexes every turn, deterministically, and eats the ground you are standing on. It cannot be stopped — suppressors only ever delay it — so every turn is the same question asked harder: reach for richer ore, or consolidate what you can still defend?
Ship your quota and you are out. Lose the landing site and the run is over. There is no turn limit, because the blight is the clock.
· Six buildings. Ore is the currency, power is the throughput cap — overbuild and you will watch something go dark and understand exactly why.
· Procedurally generated sectors. One seed reproduces a world exactly.
· Three charters, each a different opening rather than a better one.
· Upgrades that carry between runs, so a loss still moves you forward. You keep what you shipped.
· A daily sector, chosen by the date — the same ground for everyone, no account and no server.
· Runs take ten to fifteen minutes. Built for one hand, in portrait.
Every balance number in the game was measured, not guessed: a headless harness plays a thousand seeded runs against a reference bot and the win rates are asserted in the test suite. The blight rate, the quota curve, and what each charter costs you were all set that way.
Hold the line. Ship the ore.