Stick: put a thumb down anywhere and hold it off-centre — a joystick appears under it. Left/right keeps turning; up/down tilts the nose, and the nose stays where you leave it. Hover in place and tilt almost straight down to aim at the street.
⬆ ⬇ HOVER raise and lower the Kestrel without tilting. ⏫ ⏬ SPEED set the thrust in steps (stop, slow, cruise, fast, boost): THR (left) shows the throttle you set, SPD your real speed in km/h. ⇉ MATCH (left of ⏫⏬) is a mode you switch ON or OFF (it stays as you left it). While it is ON, every craft you scan, tap or lock onto gets matched: the throttle closes to about 40 m behind it and keeps its speed, slowing or stopping when it does, so you can follow it; scan another one and you follow that one. You still steer, climb and shoot. ⏫ or ⏬ lets go of that craft and gives you the throttle back (the mode stays ON for the next scan). While it is OFF, scanning never touches your throttle. Bumping into a building or the dome wall costs shield but never changes your throttle: turn away and you pick up speed again — thrust goes where the nose points, so nose down at speed is a dive.
⌖ SCAN scans the vehicle in your sights (or tap a vehicle): its ID and what it carries. Clean ones drive on. HOT ones run — take them down. Any vehicle can carry supplies for the Kestrel (more ammo for any weapon, a shield patch, or special gatling rounds: 💥 BLAST rounds burst on impact, 🌩 SHOCK rounds stun raiders and stall a HOT car after a few hits): pull that vehicle in with the 🧲 tractor beam to take them (a vehicle held in the beam gets scanned too). Contraband aboard makes it a smuggler: HOT, it runs.
FIRE fires whichever weapon chip is lit: 🔫 GATLING spins up and streams glowing tracers while you hold (mind the heat); 🚀 HOMING fires one missile per press and locks onto whatever is in your sights (careful: civilians too); 🔷 HYPER-V is a dead-straight dart along the crosshair, no lock needed, one hit stops most craft; ⚡ EMP is the police weapon: a pulse at exactly what the dot is on cuts its power, and it glides down to the nearest street intact, police cruisers race in and box it in — a scanned HOT craft caught this way is an ARREST, worth more than a kill (a civilian still counts against you); 🎇 ROCKETS fire a left-right pair straight along the sights, no lock, with a blast where they land — hold FIRE to ripple them.
Shield: the bubble around the Kestrel is your shield. It flares where a shot or a wall hits it, a band sweeps up it while it recharges, and it turns red and flickers when it is nearly gone.
CLOAK makes the Kestrel invisible for as long as you like: raiders and runners can't see you or shoot at you, and raiders circle where they last saw you. The moment you start shooting the cloak drops. A HOT suspect you scan while cloaked doesn't know it's been caught until the cloak drops. Tap again to drop it yourself.
🧲 TRACTOR (its own button, left of FIRE): tap it and a beam reaches along the dot; it grabs the first vehicle the dot finds (up to 100 m), pulls it in and holds it just in front of you, for as long as you like. Tap again to let go: traffic flies back to its lane, a HOT car runs, a raider is dazed for a moment. You can FIRE at the same time, so pull something in and shoot it; the beam switches off when what it holds goes down. A suspect in the beam gets scanned; a HOT car held for 3 s is secured and lowered to the nearest street, where the police cruisers take it into custody: an ARREST. A raider in the beam can't shoot.
🎥 (top right) switches between the chase view and the cockpit, and back.
Hitting civilian traffic costs you. Traffic: hover-bikes (fast, small, weave in their lane, go down easily), bubble microcars, taxis, sports racers (very fast), vans, limousines (VIPs: hitting one costs double) and hover-buses (slow, very tough, full of passengers: hitting one costs triple, and too heavy for the tractor beam). Destroy civilians and the raiders come for you: after the second one, every civilian you shoot down sends a bigger wave of raiders hunting the Kestrel (2, then 3, then 4…). Shoot them all down and the heat is gone. Land on the blue HQ pad (stop over it, drop low) to rearm and repair.
Tunnels: the lit gates in the dome wall lead to the other domes; the sign over each gate says where it goes. Fly in and keep going. Eleven domes: Sunhaven's sunshine, Meridian in the rain, New Halcyon by night, Greenacre's farms, snowy Frostline, the canals of Port Coral, the Ironworks, the night bazaar of Lantern Market, Red Mesa's canyons, the giant trees of Canopy and Tranquility on the moon. East leads to the next dome, West to the one before, North four on and South four back; pick where your shift starts with ◀ ▶ on the main menu. Dome map: tap the radar (or 🗺 Dome map in the pause menu, M on a computer) to see all eleven domes and which gate leads where. 📍 This dome shows the dome you are in from above (north at the top), the gates with the domes they lead to, and your Kestrel pointing the way you face; 🌐 All domes shows how they all connect. Tap a dome and the radar marks the gate to take in green. A runner that dives into a tunnel can still be caught if you follow it straight in.
⚡ BURST (top right, next to 🎥) sets off an EMP burst all around the Kestrel: a blue shock wave rolls out about 110 m in every direction, through the walls. Raiders it touches lose power and go down. A scanned HOT suspect loses power and glides down to the nearest street for the police cruisers: an ARREST. Civilian traffic just blacks out for a few seconds, hanging dark where it was, then restarts (no penalty). Then the burst has to recharge: the bar along the button fills up again in about 25 seconds. Firing a burst drops the cloak, like any shot.
🚨 HOT PURSUIT (main menu): an arcade run. Every round, getaway cars make a run for the tunnels and you stop them before they get there: shoot them down, or catch them with the EMP, the net, the tractor beam or a burst for an arrest (worth more). Each round is faster, brings more runners (up to three at once) and, from round 3, raider gunships flying cover. Catch runners in a row for a streak bonus (up to ×3); catch every runner in a round and you get a round bonus, a shield boost and your ammo topped up. The gates are sealed, so a runner that reaches a tunnel gets away: three get away and the run is over (so is being shot down). Your best five runs on each difficulty are kept on the 🏆 board.
💰 MONEY & 🛠 HANGAR: your career starts with just the 🔫 gatling. Every point you score is also money (CASH, under your score), in shifts, missions, Hot Pursuit and free flight; hitting civilians costs money. The end-of-shift screen shows what you have; tap 🛠 HANGAR there to spend it. Land on the blue HQ pad (or tap 🛠 Hangar on the main menu) to open the hangar: buy new weapons and gear, upgrade what you own (an upgrade only raises that item's own next price), fit the Kestrel, and pick up to six weapons for the FIRE bar. Locked buttons show 🔒 until you buy them. Being shot down costs a repair bill. 🎖 CAMPAIGN (main menu): twelve missions across the domes, all open, each paying money for its objectives. During a mission the tunnel gates are sealed (a red striped field): the mission stays in its dome, and a runner who reaches a tunnel gets away. To stop a mission early, pause and tap ✖ Cancel mission twice: no mission pay, and a fee of a quarter of its pay. 📋 BOUNTIES in free flight: jobs come in on the radio; tap the radio box (J on a computer) to see the board and take one.
X-RAY (top right, next to 🎥) is a heat scan of the buildings: tap it and the view turns x-ray blue, the city shows as wireframes, and a few buildings have a glow inside them, on one floor: a heat signature (they show on the radar too). Fly within 260 m and hold the dot on the glow for a moment to read it. Most are just residents. A suspect hideout pays a bonus, and seconds later the suspect bolts from the roof in a getaway craft: HOT, stop it like any runner. A contraband stash pays a bonus and the cruisers come to seize it. Read glows go out and new ones light up elsewhere during your shift. Tap X-RAY again to switch it off.
⌨️ On a computer (the same list shows along the bottom of the screen while you fly; H hides it):