The latest Galactic Gladiators encounter now features two medium support ships, each arriving with a pair of smaller craft attached beneath them.
Three act as conventional escorts, adding staggered fire while protecting their carrier. The fourth behaves rather differently.
Known internally as the Sneak, it hides behind the formation, briefly peeks out to fire, retreats and then disappears around the edge of the battlefield. Just when the player might assume it has gone, it returns lower down for a surprise attack from the side.
All of this is running through the buffered renderer in Visual FoxPro 9—four independently moving escorts, two carriers, enemy fire, collisions and explosions without adding more conventional form controls.
The enemy ships are no longer merely moving. They are beginning to have ideas.