▶ Space Couch Command // CREW GUIDE
CREW GUIDE
Everything a new bridge
needs to survive its first run.
Space Couch Command is a couch co-op starship-bridge simulator: one TV shows the shared viewscreen, everyone else crews a station from the browser on their own phone, tablet or laptop, and nobody can see the whole ship at once — so you have to talk. Together you fly a single warship through an endless, escalating run of jump-to-jump encounters (pirate patrols, derelict hulks, minefields, first contact with an alien envoy, an elite hunter-killer every fifth system), and when the hull hits zero the run is over and your salvage is banked toward permanent upgrades for the next crew. The Captain is a real role but a purely verbal one: they sit on the couch with no device and give orders out loud.
▶ THE SETUP
HOW IT ALL FITS TOGETHER
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SETUP
One machine is the HOST. It runs the authoritative game server (Colyseus) and displays the main screen — the TV view. The server is the only source of truth: it advances the whole simulation on a fixed 20-ticks-per-second clock (a tick every 50 ms) and every client just sends it typed requests called 'intents' (fire this phaser, set this slider). The server checks each intent against the sender's seat duties and the current phase before it changes anything, so nobody can operate a station they don't hold.
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SETUP
The TV (packages/viewport) is the shared stage. In the lobby it shows the game's ROOM CODE in huge type plus a QR code to join. In flight it shows a thin persistent frame — sector number, current objective, alert colour (green/yellow/red), jump charge %, salvage and kills — wrapped around ONE swappable 'channel': the tactical map by default, Helm's pseudo-3D flight view or star chart, Science's scan card or probe feed, Comms' probe radar, or the COMMS hail theater. There is no engineering channel. Deliberately absent from the TV: hull and shield numbers. Those live on phones so the crew has to report them out loud.
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SETUP
Each crew member's device runs the officer terminal (packages/terminal) — an ordinary web page showing only their own console. No install, no per-device setup: the clients work out the server's address from whatever page they were opened from, which is why you must open the TV view at the host's network address rather than 'localhost'.
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SETUP
Channel ownership is enforced: Tactical can push the MAP to the TV, Helm the flight view or the star chart, Science the scan card or probe view, Comms the hail theater or the probe radar, and Comms also carries a five-entry screen router that can select any of them. Two boards never reach the TV at all — Engineering's power schematic and a Helm nav card; no client can send either. Hail dialogue, by contrast, does go up: the COMMS channel is a full-screen theater.
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SETUP
A room holds up to 16 connections: the host viewscreen, the officers, and any number of extra read-only mirrors of the main screen (the lobby has a CAST option that opens the viewscreen URL in any other browser).
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SETUP
Three ways to be the host, all functionally identical for players: (1) a dev/LAN setup where the server, TV view and terminal run on a laptop; (2) the desktop app (packages/app, Electron) — one executable that embeds the server and serves both clients on the usual ports, and adds MAIN SCREEN / MY STATION tabs so the host can also crew a seat; (3) the phone-host app (packages/mobile, Capacitor) — the phone runs an embedded Node engine and IS the TV, with the crew joining over the same LAN QR.
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SETUP
Remote friends (desktop app + Steam) join through a Steam P2P tunnel instead of the LAN: no port forwarding, no IP sharing. They see a live mirror of the host's main screen and take a seat through MY STATION. Phones on the host's own network stay free controllers.
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SETUP
Disconnects are survivable by design. A dropped phone stores its reconnect token and retries automatically; a seated officer's seat is held (the lobby shows RECONNECTING) for a 120-second grace window, and mid-mission a seated player's chair is held for the rest of the run so they can always get back in.
▶ GET EVERYONE IN
HOW TO JOIN
One person installs and hosts. Everyone else needs nothing but a browser on the same network.
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STEP 01
The host opens the main screen on the TV. It displays a four-character ROOM CODE (drawn from a TV-legible alphabet with no I, O, 0 or 1), a 'SCAN TO JOIN' QR code, and the join URL in plain text underneath.
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STEP 02
On any device with a browser, scan the QR. It encodes the officer-terminal address on the host's local network with the room pre-filled — e.g. http://192.168.1.50:5174/?room=ABCD. If you can't scan, type that URL, or open the terminal page and type the four-character code by hand.
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STEP 03
On the join screen, enter the room code (it auto-uppercases) and your name (up to 20 characters; it is remembered on that device for next time), then tap BOARD SHIP.
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STEP 04
You land in the lobby, which shows the hull the host has selected, its stats, and a list of seat tiles for that hull. Tap a seat tile to claim it; tap your own tile again to leave it. A seat held by another connected player is locked; a seat whose holder has dropped shows RECONNECTING and can be taken over.
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STEP 05
Optionally tap MARK READY (a green tick appears by your name). Ready is social, not a gate — the host can launch as soon as at least one seat is claimed.
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STEP 06
Everything else in the lobby is the host's job on the TV: choosing the hull, naming the ship (the name is the save slot), and spending banked salvage on upgrades. Phones display those read-only.
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STEP 07
When the host launches, every screen runs a power-on boot sequence flavoured by your station. Hold anywhere on your console for 1.2 seconds to skip; the mission starts when every seated officer has skipped, when the host skips for the whole room, or when the 72-second reel finishes on its own.
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STEP 08
If you drop mid-mission, just reload the join page and board again with the SAME name — the server hands your chair straight back. If you end up with no station, your phone shows a seat picker listing vacant seats and seats whose holder is disconnected.
▶ SEVEN WAYS TO PLAY
PICK A STATION
Five claimable consoles, four optional gun seats, and one role the game does not even model. Each has its own page.
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STATION
HELM
You are the pilot: you point the ship, set its speed, dodge what is trying to hit you, fire the one gun bolted to the nose, and press the button that leaves the star system.
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STATION
TACTICAL
You decide what the ship shoots at, and you pull the triggers — locking a target for the whole crew, then picking the right weapon for the range.
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STATION
ENGINEERING
You run the ship's power company: one reactor that can never feed everything at once, plus the heat, the repairs, the deflectors and the life-support breaker that keep the crew alive.
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STATION
SCIENCE
You are the ship's eyes: you turn anonymous blips into named ships with weak points, you survey the strange things in the sector for salvage and story, and you fly the survey probe when someone has to go inside.
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STATION
COMMS
You are the ship's voice and its ears: you talk to everyone out there, you smother their calls for backup, and you hear things nobody else on the bridge can hear — so you say them out loud.
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OPTIONAL
CANNONEER
You own one of the ship's phaser banks and pull its trigger at whatever target Tactical has locked — one huge FIRE button, no aiming, no missing.
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NO CONSOLE
CAPTAIN
No console and no seat — you sit on the couch, watch the viewscreen, and give the orders.
▶ ONE TO SIX PLAYERS
THE SHIPS
Fewer players does not mean a cut-down game — it means duties merge onto fewer consoles. One person really can fly the whole ship.
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1 required seat
WREN (skiff) — 1-crew
One seat, 'Shipmaster', carrying ALL five duties (Helm, Tactical, Engineering, Science, Comms) on a single merged 'solo' console. Because one pair of hands can't do everything, the server runs auto-officer modules for the depth the merged console drops: an auto-jammer that holds 25% of an enemy's reinforcement call blocked (a human Comms officer can chase nearly 100%), auto-repair at 25% of the manual rate, and auto-venting of reactor heat. No manual overclock. Stats: 55 hull, 70 reactor output, 1.35x speed, 1 phaser bank, no gun turrets, 1 torpedo tube, 3 torpedoes, 10 flares (the biggest flare rack in the fleet, because flares are this hull's only point defence).
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2 required seats
SPARROW (cutter) — 2-crew
Pilot-Gunner (Helm + Tactical on one merged flight/fire-control console) and Operations (Engineering + Science + Comms on one slim console with the auto-jammer, auto-repair and auto-vent modules, and no overclock). Stats: 70 hull, 80 reactor, 1.25x speed, 1 phaser, no turrets, 2 tubes, 4 torpedoes, 8 flares.
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3 required seats
TALON (corvette) — 3-crew
Pilot-Gunner (Helm + Tactical), Science & Comms (one slim console with the 25% auto-jammer), and a full dedicated Engineering seat. Stats: 90 hull, 90 reactor, 1.1x speed, 1 phaser, no turrets, 2 tubes, 6 torpedoes, 9 flares.
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4 required seats
VANGUARD (frigate) — 4-crew
Helm, Tactical and Engineering each get their own full console; only Science & Comms merge (slim console, auto-jammer). Stats: 100 hull, 100 reactor, 1.0x speed, 2 phasers, 1 point-defence turret, 2 tubes, 8 torpedoes.
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5 required seats
SOVEREIGN (cruiser) — 5-crew, the default hull
The classic bridge: Helm, Tactical, Engineering, Science and Comms, one duty each, every console at full depth, no auto-officer modules. Stats: 120 hull, 110 reactor, 0.9x speed, 2 phasers, 2 turrets, 4 tubes, 10 torpedoes.
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5 required seats (plus the optional gun seats below — 6+ players)
COLOSSUS (dreadnought) — the heavy hull for the biggest couch
Same five full consoles as the SOVEREIGN, on a far heavier ship: 150 hull, 125 reactor, 3 phaser banks, 3 turrets, 4 tubes, 12 torpedoes — but the slowest and clumsiest hull in the fleet (0.75x speed, 38 degrees/second of turn versus the WREN's 130).
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up to 4 extra players on any ship
Optional Cannoneer seats (on EVERY hull)
Four optional seats labelled 'Cannoneer — Phaser I' through 'Phaser IV', flagged in the lobby as 'designed for young crew members'. A Cannoneer is Tactical's assistant: they take over one of the ship's phaser banks and fire it at whatever Tactical has locked (aiming and target selection stay Tactical's job — the Cannoneer's console is essentially a big FIRE button). If the hull has no spare bank, one is materialised for them at launch, so an extra kid makes the ship slightly stronger rather than sitting idle. Optional seats never block launch and never count toward the 'recommended crew' number.
▶ START TO FINISH
WHAT A SESSION LOOKS LIKE
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STEP 01
LOBBY. The TV shows the room code, the join QR, the hull selector, any saved ships, the outfitting panel and the LAUNCH chip. The host cycles hulls with the on-screen arrows (host-only — changing the hull clears everyone's seat claims), types a ship name (that name IS the save slot), and spends banked salvage on the five permanent unlocks. Crew claim seats on their phones. Launch needs the host plus at least one claimed seat.
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STEP 02
THE CAPTAIN. Nobody claims it — there is no Captain seat on any hull and no Captain console anywhere. In the code, Role.CAPTAIN exists only for wire compatibility, is excluded from the list of claimable duties, and owns no intents. Whoever is captaining simply sits on the couch, watches the TV, listens to the reports the officers read off their phones, and gives orders out loud. On the one- to three-crew hulls the Pilot/Shipmaster is the captain socially.
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STEP 03
BOOT. Every screen — TV and phones — runs a station-flavoured power-on self-test. Hold your console for 1.2 seconds to report ready; the mission begins when all seated officers have, when the host skips for the room, or after the 72-second reel.
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STEP 04
SECTOR 1 is always FIRST LIGHT SURVEY: no hostiles at all, 2-3 anomalies (including a planet) seeded in the system, and the objective is simply to fly to one and scan it to 100%. It exists to teach the loop safely.
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STEP 05
EACH SECTOR AFTER THAT is one encounter drawn from a weighted pool: pirate PATROL (they approach from far off, and may open by hailing you with a tribute demand), AMBUSH (they spawn close, alert red immediately), ASTEROID FIELD, DRIFT FIELD (moving, tumbling rocks), DERELICT hulk (a slow deep scan for big salvage — with a 35% chance it is a trap), DISTRESS call (an incoming mayday; respond and escort the freighter, or ignore it — the Captain's call, out loud), MINEFIELD (24 hunting mines around a salvage lure), FIRST CONTACT with a Vel'Shaar envoy that sits dormant until you talk to it or shoot it, and a Guild TRADER to barter with (who is occasionally a disguised warship). Every 5th sector is a HUNTER-KILLER: an elite reaver with escorts that opens with a taunt. From sector 6 there is a small chance of a boss.
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STEP 06
IN FLIGHT the phase flips between EXPLORATION and COMBAT automatically: any hostile closing within 1500 units (or opening fire) escalates to combat. Enemy count scales as 1 + sector/2, capped at 4 hulls per pack.
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STEP 07
COMPLETING the objective (all hostiles destroyed, the hulk fully scanned, the envoy talked down, and so on) pays salvage — 30 + 8 per sector, +8 per kill, plus encounter-specific bonuses — turns the alert green and prints a SECTOR CLEAR banner on the TV.
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STEP 08
JUMPING OUT is a two-person act: Engineering spools the jump drive (a heavy 30-unit power draw; roughly 18 seconds at full allocation) and Helm engages it once it reads 100%. Helm can also choose the destination on the star chart — each run generates a 22-system galaxy of linked jump lanes, and some hazards (like a debris storm) are marked on the chart so the crew can opt in or route around. Transit is 2.5 seconds of streaks on the TV, then you arrive: sector +1, +10 salvage, a fresh encounter. Note that a charged-but-unfired jump capacitor bleeds heat into the reactor at 8/second, so 'spool it early and sit on it' is not free.
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STEP 09
YOU CAN ALWAYS RUN. Jumping is legal in the middle of combat — the log records 'objective abandoned' and you forfeit that sector's reward.
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STEP 10
BETWEEN SECTORS the server writes a checkpoint save under the ship's name, so a session can be stopped and continued later from the lobby (host-only CONTINUE).
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STEP 11
THE RUN NEVER 'WINS'. It escalates forever: enemy packs grow, and a background pressure dial called THE UNMAKING starts climbing once you reach the mid-game (it arms itself by sector 14 at the latest and never recedes), adding corrupted 'husk' enemies, bigger packs, faster reinforcement calls and eventually convoy-evacuation encounters where the score is colonies saved.
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STEP 12
GAME OVER. When the hull reaches zero the TV goes to SHIP LOST with a summary — sector, kills, colonies saved, salvage — and the run's salvage is banked permanently into the host's profile. The checkpoint is deleted; death is death. From there anyone can hit RESTART RUN (straight back to sector 1 with the same seats) or RETURN TO LOBBY to re-outfit, change hull or re-crew.
▶ EVERYBODY NEEDS THIS
SHIP-WIDE SYSTEMS
These belong to no single station, and every officer should understand them.
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SYSTEM
The power budget (the reason the crew argues)
The reactor makes a fixed number of units per second — 70 on the WREN up to 125 on the COLOSSUS (+10 with the Aux Reactor unlock), scaled down by reactor damage. Full demand always exceeds supply. Each system draws its demand multiplied by the 0-100% slider Engineering sets on it, and systems are funded in a FIXED order — Engines, Sensors, Shields, Weapons, then the jump drive, with repairs last — ALL OR NOTHING. A system whose full draw doesn't fit in what's left gets nothing at all and reads NOT ENOUGH POWER; the reactor never quietly borrows from something else. The only fixes are to turn a slider down or overclock. Typical draws: life support 10, engines up to 20 at full throttle (x1.6 while Helm is flying evasive), sensors 5 idle / 15 while scanning, shields up to 40 (10 per arc at full allocation), weapons 30 (+12 more if the turrets aren't powered down), jump spool 30, active repair 15. Cutting engine power also unspools the throttle lever itself, so Helm has to push it back up when power returns.
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SYSTEM
Heat, overclock and venting
OVERCLOCK is Engineering's war footing: +20 reactor output, engines at double speed, phasers at double damage, shields knitting at double rate — while building 6 heat per second. Heat also comes from firing phasers (+6 core heat per shot), from shields absorbing damage (0.45 heat per point soaked) and from holding a fully-charged jump (+8/s); it bleeds off at only 2/s passively. Past 85 heat the core cooks itself at 2.5 health per second (up to double at 100). VENT is a deliberate 5-second procedure: it halves reactor output for the whole cycle while shedding 20 heat per second from the core and from the phasers and turrets. Two- and one-crew hulls vent automatically at 90 heat instead.
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SYSTEM
Shields, hull and damage
Four shield arcs — fore, aft, port, starboard — up to 200 charge each, regenerating 4.5/second scaled by both shield power and the share Engineering allocates to that arc (they start at 25% each). Incoming damage hits the arc that faces the attacker first; the overflow hits the hull, and there is no armour beyond that. A phaser shot is 24 damage (48 while overclocked) out to 720 units; a torpedo is 72; a mine is 75; an enemy railgun slug is 160 — a full 200-charge arc swallows one whole, but a softened arc lets the remainder into the hull, and a second slug onto the same arc hurts badly. Ramming hurts both parties, scaled by closing speed and by the relative size of the two objects — and planets and megastructures count as infinite mass.
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SYSTEM
Repair — it costs salvage, not just time
Engineering repairs ONE thing at a time: the reactor, engines, jump drive, sensors, or the HULL. Repair heals 9 points per second (hull patches at half that), draws 15 units of reactor power off the budget's tail end, and spends 0.25 salvage per point healed. Run out of salvage and the repair simply stops — so patching up mid-run is a real trade against upgrades and future repairs.
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SYSTEM
Forced outages and the reroute puzzle
Separately from damage, events (enemy intrusion, anomaly surges, storm impacts) can slam one system OFFLINE — only weapons, jump drive, shields or sensors are ever targeted, never life support or engines. A weapons lockout kills phaser fire, turrets and point defence (torpedo tubes and the helm railgun are mechanical and keep working); a jump lockout stalls the spool and refuses even a banked 100% charge; a sensor lockout stalls every scan. Engineering clears it with the REROUTE minigame — rotating conduit tiles on a 5x4 grid to make a connected path, held for 12 seconds of flow. Unfixed lockouts expire by themselves after 90 seconds. Keeping every shield arc above half strength blocks 80% of these events outright.
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SYSTEM
Life support is a breaker, and radiation shielding is the crew's health bar
Life support has no slider — it is simply on or off, and it draws a flat 10 units with first claim on the reactor. While it is on and fed it slowly regenerates the crew's RADIATION SHIELDING toward 100 at 0.8 per second. Switch it off (or let the reactor get too weak to feed it) and shielding drains at 4 per second. If radiation shielding ever reaches zero the crew is lost and the run ends — regardless of how much hull you have left. Turning life support off to free 10 units of power is a real option and a real gamble.
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SYSTEM
The infinite world and the radiation fence
Space has no walls. What keeps the fight in one place is a soft fence: beyond 3400 units from the centre of the sector you enter the HIGH RADIATION ZONE, which burns crew shielding at 4 per second at the line and another 4 per second for every 1,000 units deeper. The regeneration rate can never keep up, so running away from a fight into deep space is a slow suicide — and the enemy AI knows it: fleeing ships steer along the fence rather than cross it. The TV and consoles both warn on the edge.
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SYSTEM
Scanning, designators and the Science-to-Tactical handoff
Nothing on the plot is identified until Science scans it, and scanning only works inside 900 units at full sensor power (a starved or offline sensor dish shortens or stops it entirely) — so the ship has to actually fly to a hulk or a minefield. A scan fills at about 0.4 per second (x1.3 with the Deep Scanner unlock): at 35% the target's class is identified, then its subsystems are located one at a time at 55%, 78% and 100% — engines (kill them and it's adrift), shield generator (no more regeneration), weapons (silenced), jump drive (it can't escape). Every contact and every located subsystem gets a randomised NATO designator like '14 Bravo' or '7 Golf'. Those labels are display-only: they exist purely so Science has to read them out loud and Tactical has to type in what they heard. Derelicts scan at half rate, planets at about a third, mines in about a second.
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SYSTEM
Signature, torpedoes with no IFF, and point defence
How loud your ship is to a torpedo's seeker is dynamic: 40 base, +70 at full throttle, +35 while overclocked, +20 while flying evasive. Torpedoes travel at 95 units/second with a 900-unit seeker radius, 32 seconds of fuel and 72 damage — and they have NO friend-or-foe check: they chase whatever is loudest nearby, including you. Countermeasures are layered: noisemakers scream at 400 and reliably steal a lock, flares radiate 200 and buy a few seconds, ECM scrambles hostile seekers (but makes you louder), and simply cutting throttle to run dark drops you to 40. Gun turrets are fully automatic point defence now — nobody fires them by hand — and they shoot down incoming missiles and rockets only; torpedoes cannot be shot down and railgun slugs can only be dodged.
▶ HOW IT ENDS
LOSING THE RUN
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FAILURE
Hull to zero is the run's ending: phase goes to GAME OVER, the TV shows SHIP LOST with sector / kills / colonies saved / salvage, the run's salvage is banked into the host profile, and the between-sector checkpoint is deleted — a lost run can never be continued.
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FAILURE
Radiation shielding to zero kills the crew and ends the run exactly the same way, even at full hull. It happens two ways: leaving the life-support breaker off (or letting the reactor get too weak to feed it), which drains 4 per second, and lingering outside the radiation fence, which drains at least 4 per second on top and worsens with depth.
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FAILURE
The slow spiral: cooking the reactor past 85 heat damages the core, and reactor output scales with core health — a badly damaged reactor eventually can't fund life support, at which point the shielding drain starts and the crew death clock runs even though nothing is shooting at you.
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FAILURE
Your own ordnance. Torpedoes have no friend-or-foe check and re-pick the loudest signature every tick, so a fish launched too close, or launched while you then throttle up, will happily come home. The game warns when an activation delay is short enough to be dangerous.
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FAILURE
Being outclassed in a specific way rather than generally: an enemy railgun slug does 160 at impact and can only be dodged; hunting mines wake within 160 units and chase at 58 units/second, faster than any hull's base speed of 50, so shooting them is the answer, not running; ramming at speed hurts you as much as the thing you rammed, and a planet or megastructure is effectively a wall.
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FAILURE
Losing an objective is NOT losing the run. You can jump out of anything the moment the drive reads 100% — the log records 'objective abandoned' and you forfeit that sector's reward. Failing a distress escort, letting a colony transport die, or a trader turning out to be a Q-ship all cost salvage and reputation, not the run.
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FAILURE
There is no victory condition. The run only escalates: enemy packs grow with depth, a hunter-killer arrives every fifth sector, bosses can appear from sector 6, and the Unmaking pressure dial climbs with every jump and never falls, eventually adding corrupted enemies, faster reinforcements and timed survival sectors. Every run ends in a loss; the question is how deep you got and how much salvage you banked for the next crew.