The Fly
MARQUEE
▶ The Fly finally reads like an apex.
Ray's verdict on the old FLY: "a lumbering oversized kid — easy to topple, not scary." The first pass fixed the speed — it patrols quicker, turns wide enough that escape stays a real skill check, and won't let you simply outrun it. The follow-up pass fixed the presence: bigger, color-differentiated so you never mistake it for a swarmer, running its own Bastion Mk-I engine, sized to dominate the field without swallowing the screen.
Here's what actually changes how you fight it: you're not meant to finish it off. Chip its hull down and it sheds real salvage at every milestone — light early, heavier the longer the fight runs. The design brief said it first and it's still the mantra: fighting the Fly is harvesting the Fly.
REF · #270 · #255 · #260 · #266 · #267 · #268
NEW
-
Flies hunt in packs now, not just you. Swarm behavior flocks and chases multiple targets instead of one global dogpile — and they'll go after your escorts too, not only human pilots.
· #214 -
Your escorts scavenge when there's nothing to shoot. Friendly NPCs now harvest and bank salvage on their own, competing with you — and each other — for the same wrecks. Lose one carrying a full hold and its loot floats free for the taking.
· #215 #216 #217 #220 #221 #226
BALANCE
-
Tide-wave swarms got fairer. Swarm NPCs go down faster and fire less often. The swarm size itself didn't move — a crest still feels like a crest, it just doesn't unfairly pile on a lone pilot.
· #206 -
Scrap actually litters the field now. Salvage density in MOSCA went up roughly 4.5x. The salvage galaxy finally has salvage in it.
· #274
FIXES
-
MOSCA's ambient hum plays on the first load. Fixed a bug where the galaxy loaded silent until you left and came back.
· #239
PILOT'S NOTE
The FLY’s been through more revisions than any single NPC in the
game. First pass made it faster and meaner — quicker patrol, a wide
turn so escape stays a skill check, its own apex-only weapon (#270).
Then the next playtest found the real problem: Ray had been fighting
swarmers the whole session, not the Fly, because at its old size and
color it never read as anything special. #255 reversed course —
invincible again, much bigger, its own color, a Bastion Mk-I engine —
and #260 / #266 locked the final scale with an actual side-by-side
bench pass, shipping the smallest size that still reads as dominant.
#267 / #268 closed the loop: the apex now sheds authored salvage
at hull milestones, light early and heavy toward the end, so the
fight itself is the payout instead of a corpse you loot once.
Fighting it is harvesting it isn’t just a tagline — it’s what the
ticket says on the box.
The rest of the swarm got smarter too. Flies flock and chase multiple
targets instead of one global dogpile, and they’ll go after your
escorts now, not just you (#214). Tide-wave swarmers got easier to
put down and fire less often — the ask was fairness against a lone
pilot, not a smaller swarm, and the count didn’t move (#206). And
your escorts stopped standing around empty-handed: with nothing to
shoot, they harvest and bank salvage themselves, compete with you and
each other for the same wrecks, and a friendly carrying a full hold
drops everything when it dies (#215, #216, #217, #220, #221,
#226).
Scrap density in MOSCA went up roughly 4.5x (#274), and a small
silent-on-refresh audio bug got fixed along the way (#239).
— Ray