You are shaken awake by one of your wingmen. The watch on your wrist tells you it hasn’t even been an hour since your flight was stood down from QRF and you were given sack time. You're dragged out of bed by the pilot before he goes to the next bunk, bellowing orders with a panicked edge in his voice. Only now do you hear the klaxonic blaring of the general alarm.

Over the clamor you hear the words “All wings, scramble for intercept.”

You join the rush of personnel to the launch deck to board your craft. Not a single plane is left unmanned. The ground crews are even fixing gun pods under the wings of the strike bombers. You’re briefed in the air. The weight of the situation presses you into your seat more than the G’s you're pulling as you swing into formation ever could.

Until now, Sevastopol and her fleet had been able to evade the Strike Groups of the Gathering, but not anymore. As the fleet approaches their final objective of Khiva after a long and bitter campaign, the Gathering is throwing everything into one final attempt to sink Sevastopol, and put an end to Imperial authority in Gerat.

Everything.

The enemy’s first-strike fighters are closing in on the fleet, and your objective is simple: hold them.

The voice of another pilot crackles over your headset. You are nearing the limits of your operational range, and the safety of the fleet is getting farther and farther away as they go full throttle to secure Khiva. How are you to make a return flight to rearm and refuel? Static fuzzes over the radio as the Flight Leader contemplates his response. Finally, he says:

“There is no return from this.”

No one raises an objection, or a complaint. It may have been because everyone already understood this the moment their canopies were sealed. Saying it aloud now only makes it seem strange, like you’re living a dream.

This can’t be real. You haven’t left your bunk. You’re still asleep.

You’re given no more time to dwell on it as the first radar contact pings. Then ten. Twenty. One hundred. You hear the voice of your Flight Leader one last time before you meet the speeding fighters head-on.

“Knives out, kids. Here they come.”

You are the last pilots of the Empire, and you are determined to acquit yourselves well before your oaths of service are brought to an end in a fiery ball of shrapnel. The Gathering will pay in blood for challenging the might of the Imperial Navy. Steady radar tone wails in your ears as you break formation and pick your first target.

This is it. You will die fighting.

Now that the LARP is set, here are a few easy steps for you to live out this very specific HighFleet fantasy in Project: Wingman,

Step 1: Turn off in game music. As much as it hurts to press the mute button on Jose Pavili’s amazing Showdown, it is too triumphant, and doesn’t fit well with what we are trying to achieve. Use this link instead. HighFleet fans will already know the deal. Adjust volume in accordance with how stressed you want to be.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FWfWVK4guHc
You may also optionally turn off the speech volume and subtitles, since the radio chatter may distract from immersion. Replace it with fitting radio chatter in an additional browser tab, the Russian radio chatter recorded during the battle of Grozny is quite fitting. If you don’t speak Russian it adds immersion, and if you do, it won’t make sense. It will inevitably run out before the music does, but you can just imagine that it's your wingmen being picked off one by one until only you remain.

Step 2: Turn off cockpit radar, or even the whole hud if you want to, depending on how IMMERSED you want to be.

Step 3: Select Free Flight, Mission 11, Cold War. Select Mercenary for the difficulty if possible, Hard if you haven’t finished the game yet.

Step 4: Pick one of the sh*tter Cold-War soviet planes. MiG 21 or 31, whichever suits you more.

Step 5: Launch, turn on the music, and sh*t your pants as the missile alert begins the moment you enter the furball, and does not stop until either you die, or they do.

This completes the guide on how to LARP as one of the random pilots in HighFleet in one very specific mission, in a completely different game, in a situation that doesn’t happen even in the game it's inspired by. Have yourself a time.