Deadstick

Thrust a deadstick lander through procedural caves on refuel, cargo, rescue, defuse, and tether missions.

Objective

Each cave drops you in with a finite fuel tank and a single mission objective. Pilot the lander to its goal, then touch down upright and slow on a pad. Brushing a wall, ceiling, or floor is instant death. Clear caves in sequence to climb the mission ladder — they get tighter and twistier as you go.

Controls

Input	Action
←  →  /  A  D	Rotate lander left / right
↑  /  W	Thrust along nose direction (burns fuel)
Space	Toggle tether lock (only on tether missions); also confirms menus
Esc	Pause
Touch left third	Hold to rotate left and thrust
Touch right third	Hold to rotate right and thrust
Touch middle	Hold for pure thrust (no rotation)

How it works

• Physics — gravity pulls down at 0.022 px/frame², thrust pushes along the nose at 0.055 px/frame² (roughly 2.5× gravity). Drag is almost nonexistent, so every nudge carries.
• Fuel — tank starts at 1000; each frame of thrust burns 0.28. The HUD bar turns amber under 60%, red under 30%, and pulses below 20%. Run out and you're a passenger.
• Landing tolerances — touchdown is only safe when vertical speed ≤ 2.0, horizontal speed ≤ 1.4, and tilt within ~23°. The on-canvas HVEL / VVEL / TILT readouts turn red the instant any value is unsafe.
• Mission rotation — caves cycle through six types in order: LAND, REFUEL (hit 3 fuel pads in order, each gives +380 fuel), CARGO (pickup then deliver — cargo makes you 1.35× heavier), RESCUE (land and hold 3s to board the miner), DEFUSE (hover within the dashed circle for 4s), TETHER (snag the crate, fly it to the green pad — wall contact destroys the crate).
• Pad cues — pads glow green when your current speed and tilt would survive a touchdown, red when they wouldn't. A rising sine tone climbs as you near a clean approach.
• Crash & retry — a wreck doesn't end the run. You respawn on the same cave with full fuel, but your streak resets to ×1.0.

Scoring

• Mission base: 1000 points awarded on every clear.
• Fuel bonus: remaining fuel × 10 — a full tank is worth almost 10,000 on its own.
• Streak multiplier: total payout is (1000 + fuel × 10) × streak. The streak starts at ×1.0 and gains +0.1 per clean clear, capped at ×5.0.
• Streak reset: any crash — wall, ceiling, hard landing, bomb contact — snaps the streak back to ×1.0.
• Run progress: each cave is harder (tighter walls, more drift), so the same mission deeper into a run is worth more because your streak is higher.

Strategy

• Feather the thruster. Thrust is 2.5× gravity, so short taps are usually enough to hold altitude. Long burns waste fuel and build sideways velocity you'll fight on the pad.
• Kill horizontal speed early. Drag is near zero, so any sideways drift you don't cancel meters above the pad will still be there at touchdown — and ±1.4 is a tight cap.
• Read the HUD readouts, not the pad. The pad glow only checks alignment when you're close; HVEL / VVEL / TILT tell you the truth from anywhere. If any is red, abort the approach.
• Refuel pads in order. Hitting F2 before F1 does nothing — no fuel, no progress. Plan the descent line so you flow F1 → F2 → F3 down the cave instead of backtracking.
• Carry cargo light. Cargo bumps effective gravity by 35%, so pickup-to-delivery is the danger zone. Top off rotation correction before you grab the box, not while holding it.
• Tether: never let the crate touch a wall. Wall contact destroys the crate and the mission. Fly slow, swing the pendulum out wide of every choke point, and toggle tether free for a moment if you need a tight maneuver.
• Protect the streak more than the score. At ×5.0 a single mission is worth 5× what it pays at ×1.0. Bail out of a sketchy approach and reset to hover rather than risk a crash that wipes the multiplier.

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