Trapped underneath the mid section of the Titan, I fire my few remaining bullets at the rocket drone, crashing it right outside with its twin brother still hovering overhead. A few clicks indicate that my gun was of no use now, and with a longing glance at the smoking remains of the drone I retreat back further into the large cargo bay of the ship, not wanting to risk a run outside under the open skies where I would be exposed to the deadly eye of the metal bird while tearing the sweet, precious components from the belly of its downed companion.

Empyrion is a game that manages to do something which most games don't even attempt or, if they do, fall short of: Provide unique, beautiful, unscripted, unplanned, memorable moments that stay with you and are even fun to tell your friends.

So this would be my first base, I thought. This here, the hole-ridden remains of a broken vessel, the few cargo crates harboring a few ingots and ores. But no bullets. With a resigned shrug, I begin to set down my preliminary camp. The emergency constructor, good enough to cook a little bit of food and create the most basic of items. Looking around at the vast, empty, half-sunken expanse of the hull, I wonder where the core might be. Underground, probably. Submerged under layers and layers of rock, well enough protected to make it all but inaccessible. Would it even help to break it? What could this broken, stripped and empty wreck of a ship provide that I don't already have? A constructor, I thought. At least one big enough to help me make a hover.

Empyrion gives you something that I haven't found much elsewhere: A real sense of loss. Even though you can respawn and probably even recover your backpack, there is real loss, and real defeat, when your vehicle, base or ship is blown to pieces, destroying crates of infinitely valuable cargo, taking, perhaps, the last bottles of oxygen, your last pieces of food or the last hunks of iron ore from you, seriously endangering your ability to survive in the harsh environments of one of the less luscious bodies in space.

Just the basics. A cockpit, generator, fuel tank, rts, thruster and two hovers. No, three, for stability. A cargo crate, for good measure. All of it flat enough to fit underneath the low opening of the wreck, to help me escape from this trap I'm in. Longingly, I glace at the motorcycle, far away outside, left there on a silly whim, thinking that it wouldn't be a long run though this small relic of a ship. In and out, and then out of here, I thought. Just a few crates. And then the drones came...

Defeat and loss is almost always your own fault. Lost a cargo crate? Why would you put it on the outside of your vehicle to begin with? Got a hole in your hull? Why did you fly so close to the drone base? Stranded on the moon? Why didn't you bring some emergency generator with you to be able to make a new vehicle once your one (and only) ship got destroyed? There are so many times and situations I've been defeated by this game, and every one of them seemed worthy of its own tale.

Troop transport. The ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ troop transport! And the hover isn't ready yet, a few construction errors made it too big to fit through the narror opening that promises escape. Nervously I eye the red arrow on the map, getting closer, while I frantically piece together the components in a different arrangement, hoping that this time it'll be flat enough. And... turret? That's right, I forgot about the turret I found in one of the boxes! This might be my salvation! I put it on the back of the hover, ammo box underneath, the few rounds of 30mm ammo inside that I've found alongside of it, and just in time. Outside, I hear the purring clicks of the ground team, looking for me.