The ship flies itself, and the pilot decides where (docs/TODO/205 to 225)

[cgreening]

The ship flies itself, and the pilot decides where

Chris flew the touch controls of docs/TODO/204 on a phone on 2026-09-11 and
could not fly the ship. He wrote MOBILE_CONVERSION.md and set a new
direction. This branch takes the touch controls out and builds it: the pilot
picks where the ship goes, and the ship flies there. Twenty-one plans landed,
205 to 225. The queue is empty.

What a player does now

• Leaving. LAUNCH asks where to go: the jump, the rocks or the star. A
  ship with nowhere to go stays on the pad.
• In flight. Buttons over the view show where the ship can go: the
  station, a derelict, the rock hermit, the star, a canister, the next jump.
  A dimmed button says what the ship needs first. The ▶▶ icon runs the
  world eight times faster while nothing hostile is near, and changes no rule.
• A fight. The computer lines every ship up on the target. The pilot
  holds the trigger, picks a target with the ◎ icon, arms and fires the
  missiles and the E.C.M. A hostile reads red. The bought combat computer
  pulls the trigger and fires the E.C.M., and never spends a missile. RUN FOR
  IT, the bribe and the cargo dump are buttons.
• Docking. The course brings the ship to a halt on the slot's line. The
  rails hold the line, and the pilot matches the station's spin with DRAG TO
  ROLL and the speed with THRUST and BRAKE. A docking computer flies the slot.
• Missions. The Navy's Constrictor after 16 kills. Five arcs across the
  first galaxy, one leading to the next, with dossiers written for each.
  Eight side jobs on the station boards, with gates: the gang hunt at eight
  kills, the lane and the escort at four, recover and rescue with scoops. The
  side hunt is a Fer-de-Lance with an Asp, a Krait and a Mamba. At Above
  Average the Dark Wheel sends for the commander: four trials, a leg in
  witchspace, and a cloaking device no shop sells (Z).
• On a phone. Every command is a button. The station menu is rows, every
  docked screen has its keys as buttons, the gun row lives in the console,
  the fast forward and the targets are icons. A double tap or a pinch never
  zooms, the page opens as an app from the home screen, and the chart's
  names are readable.
• Words. The commander is they. Eighteen dossiers were written under
  prompt version 4. The landing page, the README and the new pilot's
  briefing say what the game is today, in the buttons' own words.

What the work found and mended

• A hermit could appear inside the planet: 2 of about 2,300 ships over 128
  systems. The traffic placement lifts such a ship out now.
• A hunted ship wrecked by somebody else left its leg live for ever.
• The fled branch that three story arcs carry had no sender.
• A recover or rescue row trapped a pilot with no fuel scoops.
• Docking did not work on a phone (docs/TODO/212). One stick had two
  jobs: a roll is how the ship aims, and the slot wants that same roll for
  the wings. The stretch is two stages now. The computer lines the ship up
  and halts it on the line; the rails hold the line, and the pilot thrusts in
  and matches the slot. An ideal pilot docked 0 times in 4 before, and 6 in 6
  after.
• A picked rock or derelict was flown into, not stopped at (docs/TODO/211).
  It brakes to a stop now, measured from the hull.
• The course rolled the ship all the way to its target (docs/TODO/210). A
  median trip fell from 41 full turns of roll to 1.3.
• The torus drive never said what stopped it (docs/TODO/209). The drop
  names it now, and a neutral trader that comes close is announced one time.
• An arc was offered in every galaxy at its seed index (docs/TODO/213).
  Every arc is gated to galaxy 1. A side job comes back a week after it ends.
  A smuggling run leaves its goods at the far end. A hit trader goes back to
  work after twenty calm seconds, so an escort can finish.
• The lone Krait of the side hunt died in 3.8 seconds whatever the pilot
  did (docs/TODO/217). Three gangs flew in the probe; Chris chose the middle
  one, three deaths in eight for a stock Cobra.
• The console grew after the shell measured it on a phone, so the targets
  header stood on the scanner (docs/TODO/222). The shell watches the console
  now.
• The landing page's title did not fit a phone (docs/TODO/223): 409
  pixels in a 338-pixel column, and the page scrolled sideways. The README
  described the missions of July and said a survivor becomes cargo. The
  briefing named keys a phone does not have and never said fuel.

Measurements

what	result
station course, clear sky	40 of 40 trips reach the hand-over, median 40 s
hermit, derelict, star courses	20 of 20, 20 of 20, 40 of 40 arrive
dock probe	504 of 504 docked, no scrape, under the new speed rule
docking mini game, ideal pilot	6 of 6 docked, against 0 of 4 before
roll on a trip to the station, clear sky	7.8 full turns before, 0.2 after
escort side job in the flight probe	8 of 8, from 4 of 8
side hunt, stock Cobra against the chosen gang	3 deaths in 8
authored mission content	about 4 to 6 hours of play
README	505 lines to 372
new pilot's briefing	7 pages of 100 to 180 words to 5 of 76 to 118, every page fits a 390-pixel phone
suite	6,168 assertions, from 5,619 before 204

npm run check passes on every commit. Every save format change carries a
repair, so an existing commander's save loads, and the briefing reopens one
time at its new edition.

Still yours to judge

Whether a fight is fun, and whether the trip feels right on a phone. The
flight probe has not flown the Dark Wheel trials. The landing page keeps its
zoom lock, and the screenshots are from July. Camera views outside the
cockpit wait as issue #50.

🤖 Generated with Claude Code

https://claude.ai/code/session_01Cpi86XPSQzZQhVhRnZED58