Pod Squadron

Fly your own pod in Decentraland, and what changes when you take the controls.

Pod Squadron is a flying game inside Decentraland where you pilot your own pod on a run to a planet, a moon or an asteroid belt. You find it at podsquadron.dcl.eth. A run you fly yourself pays better than one you leave to chance, and it is the only way to take a hand in whether the pod comes home.

Getting there

• From the sector map: open Pod Operations, flip the POD CONTROL switch at the top right from AUTONOMOUS to MANUAL, then click a planet, moon or belt while you have an idle pod of the right type. Mining pods fly to belts and lifeless planets. Exploration pods fly to planets and moons with life. Barren and lifeless moons can't take a pod.
• From the hologram: press DEPLOY on a planet, moon or belt and choose FLY IT YOURSELF or SEND IT AUTONOMOUSLY. Tick "Don't ask" to make your choice the POD CONTROL setting from then on. Turn ASK ON DEPLOY back on in Pod Operations to be asked again.
• Directly: visit Pod Squadron in Decentraland and choose a destination there.
• New captains: if you don't have a ship yet, Pod Squadron offers to commission one. You can also take a practice flight, where nothing is sent or saved.

Autonomous and Manual

Autonomous runs work as described in Expeditions, with the usual odds of losing the pod. In Manual, your shields are the odds: if they reach zero, or you abandon the run, the pod is lost and brings back nothing.

Taking over a pod that is already out

If one of your pods is already on site at a planet, moon or belt, its row in Pod Operations shows TAKE CONTROL. Press it to fly the rest of that expedition yourself. The button only appears while the expedition is on site and has enough time left for a run. A pod you take over needs no refit: if it survives, it flies home on its normal return trip, carrying what you collected.

What you collect

• Planets and moons with life: fly through a flower's ring to collect it. Flora go into your catalog as usual.
• Lifeless planets and asteroid belts: shoot the ore. Planets yield what their type holds, and belts yield belt loot. See What each planet yields for the numbers.
• Ore runs pay half again as much as the same trip sent autonomously.

A run lasts the same time whatever you do. Boosting brings the next thing to you sooner, but it does not end the run early. The run ends at the exit gate.

Controls

Keyboard and mouse

Touch

• The left joystick steers. Dragging elsewhere on the screen doesn't move the pod.
• Tap the right side of the screen to fire at the reticle. Hold to rapid fire.
• Tap an ore or a piece of debris on the right side to shoot straight at it.
• E boosts and F brakes. Flick the joystick twice, fast, to barrel roll.
• Fly through a flower's ring to collect it.

What is out there

Every kind of world flies differently, and the danger grows with the risk tier.

• Asteroid belts: drifting rock and boulders to go over, under or around.
• Barren: meteor showers over a cratered moonscape.
• Volcanic: volcanoes throw magma bombs.
• Gas giant: lightning strikes, and a glowing column warns you first.
• Ice: ice pillars, falling ice, geysers and a blizzard.
• Desert: sandstone arches to thread, towers to dodge, dust devils and a sandstorm.
• Oceanic: giant kelp lunging from the water, and storms at higher risk.
• Terrestrial: drifting spore pods.
• Moons: a rocky moon flies like a barren world, an ice moon like an ice world and a volcanic moon like a volcanic one, with the planet it orbits hanging huge in the sky.

Shoot debris or steer around it. Shields are all that stand between you and losing the pod.