YOU0.0%
WILD100%
RIVAL0.0%
DRAWING0
TIME90
CRASHES0
LOOP
Light cycles that don't fight for survival. They fight for enclosed area.
Ride, and you leave a trail. Bring that trail back to ground you already own and everything it fences off becomes yours — the trail itself included. Your territory is the only anchor there is, so the loops you can draw are shaped by the ground you already hold.
Enclosing steals. A loop converts every cell inside it, wild or held by your rival. Taking 80 of their cells swings the bar twice as far as taking 80 wild ones, and it erases any rival trail caught inside — which can cut a loop they were halfway through drawing.
You are fast at home and slow on their ground. Your own territory is a road; the wild is ordinary going; rival territory drags you to a crawl. So the richest loop in the game is also the slowest one to draw, and the longer you are out there the longer your trail is exposed.
Touch any trail and you crash — theirs or your own — and so does the arena wall. You lose two seconds and every cell of the loop you had not closed yet. Territory you already banked is safe. Crashing is a setback, never the end.
Ninety seconds. Most ground held when the clock stops. The wild runs out long before the clock does, and after that the only way to gain is to take.