Basket takes the Rock Cruiser out for its first run in the series. The ship is the Bulwark, Layout A, on Normal with Advanced Edition content enabled. It has no lasers at all: the hangar shows an Artemis and a Hull Missile, no drone system and the Rock Plating augmentation. The crew list shows three Rocks, Jose, Fleischy and Cubbin. Over six parts the Bulwark picks up cloaking, lasers and a combat drone, reaches the Rebel Flagship in Sector 8, and the run ends on the game-over screen with a score of 3851.
Part 1: Missiles only
Basket reads the two launchers in the hangar. The Hull Missile "can hurt non-system rooms for a little extra," so the plan is to aim it at empty rooms and save missiles. The pause menu lists the ship's achievements: kill a burning enemy with boarding crew, destroy a ship with a defense drone up using only missiles, and find the secret sector.
Sector 1 is a Civilian Sector. Basket refuses a pirate's toll and fights instead. A beaten ship offers a crew member to end the fight, and Liam joins as the shield operator. At the first store Basket upgrades the shields and passes on a Clone Bay: "maybe the medbay is better to keep than the cloning." Boarders who come aboard get lured into the Medbay and beaten there.
Part 2: The pirate route
Basket picks the route through pirate space, and Sector 2 is a Pirate Controlled Sector. Missiles go fast. One ship has no empty rooms to hit, so it takes several shots: "What a waste." A cloaked ship in an asteroid field is left to the asteroids once its shields are down.
Fuel piles up instead, so Basket trades fuel for drone parts and takes a quest to deliver five of them. At the exit an engineer offers a reactor upgrade for two missiles and two drone parts, and Basket agrees.
Part 3: Cloaking and a Burst Laser
Sector 3 is the Mantis Homeworlds. The drone parts are delivered, a Mind Control ship turns the crew against each other for a while, and with 200 scrap Basket buys Cloaking at a store and upgrades it. At one beacon Rebels are supplying civilians. Basket attacks the Rebels, then decides to steal the supplies too: "I think we're doing pretty good."
Sector 4 is a Rock Controlled Sector. Rock boarders get the oxygen treatment and lose the fight in the Medbay. At a store Basket buys a Burst Laser Mark II, finally a gun that needs no ammunition. Missiles start to "Resist" against Rock ships. A mercenary is paid to delay the Rebels, a store sells a Human named Kadreal, and a Rock crew member's talk about lies on the home world ends in a fight. Siding with a Slug captain against a Rock ship earns a cheap reactor upgrade, and beating slavers frees Lisandra, who joins. "We really need to get some other weapons."
Part 4: The Uncharted Nebula
The part opens with "only four missiles left." Sector 5 is the Uncharted Nebula. Boarders are suffocated, and then cloaking pays off: the ship slips into a weapons storage station and comes out with a Hull Smasher Laser, which the weapons bar calls Hull Laser I. "I'm really glad that we got that weapon."
Pirates surrender, and Basket keeps shooting. At a store Basket sells a spare missile launcher, buys Drone Control with its free Combat Drone Mark I, and adds a Drone Recovery Arm. The part ends at the exit: "Now we actually have some lasers and a combat drone."
Part 5: Losing crew
Sector 6 is the Engi Homeworlds. A frozen wreck offers a strange stasis pod, and Basket takes it in place of the Long-Ranged Scanners. At a smoldering Engi research station the crew boards and Basket takes the drone schematic over the wounded Engi. Jose does not come back: "we lost the guy." A ship offers to pay for damaging, not destroying, some friends who have taken to piracy, and Basket wins that fight and lets them live.
Sector 7 is the Rebel Stronghold. By now the weapons bar reads Burst Laser II, Heavy Laser II, Artemis and Hull Laser I. Fights get long and the cloak gets another upgrade. Near the exit Basket searches a wreck by hand and Liam is gone too. "I keep on losing all my dudes." Next is the Last Stand.
Part 6: The Last Stand
Sector 8 is The Last Stand. The Federation base repairs 10 hull, and Basket heads for the repair stations, picking fights for scrap on the way. One of them goes badly: boarders, a fire and a broken Medbay, and afterward Kadreal is gone from the crew list. "We're down to three guys now."
At the base the Bulwark meets the Rebel Flagship. Missiles on the shields, the Burst Laser on the weapons and the cloak timed for incoming shots win the first fight. The second brings drones and wave after wave of boarders. "There's not a lot I can really do about all this." The crew list drops to Lisandra alone with the hull at critical.
How it ended
Basket tries to get air to the last crew member in the Medbay, but "the hole in the healing room was stronger than my ability to get the oxygen." The game-over screen reads "All crewmembers have died. Your ship will continue to drift for eternity. Or until looters destroy it." The score is 3851, a New High Score. "I did pretty well but then towards the end I was having a lot of problems with the ship," Basket says. In the hangar afterward Basket says the next run will be the Zoltan Cruiser C.
