“Welcome aboard the Soraia, your last stop before the big leagues!”
You have spent the half year of your combat pilot training aboard the patrol carrier AICN Soraia and are just about done with your tour when things go south. Your last tour has lead you to the Jaka system, a remote and desolate place that is primarily used as a transit system between populated systems of the Akhinnae Empire.


Combat drills and routine suddenly get replaced by live action combat against an unknown enemy that is invading the system. Can your squadron, the “Ashen Ravens” help to get the carrier safely back to the jump gate?

What is this?

This is a scenario that aims to combine a game like Wing Commander and Space Engineers. You will get straight “Search and destroy” missions and save allied ships against the enemy while trying to stay alive. If your fighter gets damaged or destroyed… equip your welder and rectify the situation!
You start with basic, unsophisticated patrol fighters and will find better fighters, equipment and weaponry along the way in later missions. Take along drones and blueprints for better combat fighters, scavenge the remains of your enemy or get supplies from freighters you save – but keep your carrier intact.

Who is this for?

“Operation Spearhead” is aimed at teams of 2 to 4 players but can be played as single player as well. The less people there are in your squad, the higher the difficulty will be.
Playing this scenario in single player is absolutely manageable but it will be rather difficult. Save often and make sure to keep your fighter in top condition.
This is a scenario for the seasoned space engineer player. If you do not know how to punch in FTL jump block coordinates or how to find steel plates in a conveyor-equipped ship, this scenario is NOT (yet) for you. Having experience with utilizing scripts such as WHAM from Whiplash also helps.

How to play it

The AICN Soraia is your mobile base of operations. You receive your mission briefings there and the coordinates of the mission area. Use them to jump the carrier into the mission area. Then take off with your fighters, find all enemy signals and eliminate them.
In many missions, you are required to protect allied ships or stations. You might find additional information or resources on these allied ships, so take a look and board them after the fight.
Finally, get back to the Soraia and repair and rearm your fighters before starting the next mission.
The fighters
You will start the scenario with the lightest and overall unimpressive fighter of the Imperial Fleet, the Wasp class patrol fighter. During later missions, you will get access to faster, more manoeuvrable and better armoured fighters and their blueprints. Some of them favour speed, others have versatile weaponry or heavy armour.

A mission starts with you pressing the green “NEXT” button in the briefing room and reading the mission description. You will get a set of GPS coordinates in the briefing – make sure to note those down in the GPS menu. (ATTENTION: due to the formatting of the briefing, the GPS coordinates might be in two lines. To avoid this, remove the line break in the briefing before making the GPS coordinates permanent in the menu).


Go to the CIC and access the ship’s systems. Find the jump block and punch in the next mission’s GPS coordinates. Jump the ship to the mission area.
In some areas, you will find enemies very close by. In those cases, calling for action stations and an alarm start will be a prudent course of action.

Take off and approach any enemy signals or mission target signals. Neutralise all threatening enemy signals and board the mission targets to gain additional information, resources or blueprints.
Return with your fighter.

You might want to dock the Soraia to a mission target if possible to gain fast access to their resources.

The Soraia is your home for this scenario. If she is lost, the game is lost. That being said, the carrier is a tough and versatile combat ship that has some staying power. The Soraia has an impressive array of weaponry, including four powerful “Geyser” type advanced turrets. She should be able to keep you and your fighters out of harm’s way.


That being said, you are encouraged to NOT bring the Soraia into every fight as she is expensive to repair and maintain. Should you decide otherwise because a mission proves to be too hard or you have no choice, the ship features AI systems to help you.


The CIC (blue lights) will have protocols readily available for your convenience. The Action Stations button will bring weaponry, repair systems and batteries online, while the AI offensive system will engage the ship’s search-and-destroy mode and the defensive system will remove it from the area if encountering enemies. Should you run into trouble unprepared, the repair protocols will kick in if damage occurs. Finally, the take-off protocols and the landing protocols will disengage the AI systems for a while to allow save interactions with the runway.


The Soraia has repair bays with projectors for producing new fighters from scratch. She has also production facilities to get you the components you need for the job.

The enemy will come at you with several different large grid and small grid vessels of differing strength. Some of them are prone to overload and might explode rather easily. Some will be much more resilient.

• Use curved approaches and change course during engagements to stay outside the enemy firing patterns. Use drift attacks by deactivating inertia dampening.
  
  
• Unguided rockets are powerful but limited in availability. Use them only on a safely locked target.
  
  
• Rotate when under fire to spread damage evenly.
  
  
• Hunter fighters, such as the Moth and the Dragonfly, have decoys on their sides to draw fire away from the centre of the craft.
  
  
• Your seeking missiles are alpha-strike tools. Use them from greater range against stationary targets or slow-moving enemies for maximum effect. They can, however, also double as active decoys in a fight that will take heat attention away from you.
  
  
• When damaged, you can leave the combat zone and make basic repairs in space. Most fighters have a limited material supply aboard.

Later fighters usually also feature missile hard-points for Whiplash’s missile system. Those fighters are pre-configured to be able to use camera-aiming for two Hamus type missiles that can tear rather big holes in large-grid enemies or give you the edge as a first-strike weapon at the beginning of an enemy encounter.


Take the following steps to use them properly:

• (1) Access a frontal facing camera from the quick slot bar and aim at the enemy.
  
• (2) Press the FIRST of the two programmable block symbols in the quick slot bar to lock on. Sometimes, the PB symbols will be available on the second page of the quick slot bar.
  
• (3) Press the SECOND of the two programmable block symbols to fire one missile.
  
• (4) Missile lock indicators in the cockpit will tell you if you lose missile lock.

The missiles have their own targeting cameras and will maintain lock on the target after firing on their own.

You can either use the onboard projectors for later fighters to directly re-build missiles that will immediately function – or you utilize one of the missile projector drones that are on the Soraia or can be found later.

You can also take the time and take another missile type and equip your fighter with it. You will, however, need to make sure that all naming conventions for the missiles are upheld.