The game had spent months teaching you to mine and to shoot, and saying nothing about the rest. The shop, squads, the log, ranks, the Forge, the front maps: all of it was there and nobody told you.

Twelve lessons

Every system now has a lesson that arrives when its turn comes, over the radio, in your faction’s voice. They are not a separate tutorial or a window that covers the screen: they use the same channel the missions already spoke through.

And they arrive when the system actually shows up in your game, not when a script says so. Kit gets explained when you unlock the first piece, because rank gates it. The portal, when your faction takes a map, because until then it does not open. The Forge, once you have something worth upgrading.

Each lesson shows once. If you already knew how it worked, it never bothers you again.

Rewards you can feel

The arc now hands out 100 Elisium in total — spread across the closing missions — and kit instead of only Nexite and experience. A hull sealant handed to you right before a hard fight teaches more than any amount of text explaining what it is for.

Act VI: twenty-eight missions

The arc goes from twenty-five missions to twenty-eight.

Your nemesis did not die in the Chamber. He comes back, and he does not come alone.

Mission 26 sends you into an incursion. It can stall you, and that is deliberate: it requires your faction to hold a map and for you to have the day’s attempt left. It is the first story mission that depends on how the war is going.

Mission 27 exists so nobody reaches the finale in the ship they flew in mission 25, and it gives you a real reason to walk into the shop and the Forge — which is exactly what the lessons just explained.

And 28: five against five

The last one is not a duel. You cross into a dungeon with four ships of your side against five of his, and the allies appear in your squad panel like any other wingman would.

One of yours is a support hull: it carries five anti-missile guns and flies ahead of the formation, not glued to you. The enemy has none. That is your whole advantage, and you have to play it: leave the screen ship behind and his fleet’s missiles arrive intact.

If one of your allies lands the kill, the reward goes straight to you.

Dying cancels the mission and restarts it from zero. If your connection drops, the same ninety seconds of grace as in the incursions.

A fix every big ship will feel

An old bug turned up along the way: reloading was global instead of per slot. With four missile launchers, two per side, you would fire the two to port and then turn — and the starboard tubes were still locked, waiting on the other pair’s reload.

Now each slot reloads its own, cannons and missiles alike. Turning the hull to present the other side becomes what it always should have been: the manoeuvre that buys you a second volley.

The Cruiser’s missile range was wrong too, carrying an absurd number inherited from the earliest tests. It is now 1,400 units, measured against how far the missile actually flies.