Outfitter (O)
Many starship captains have an almost obsessive impulse to fine-tune their ships, trying to find the perfect combinations of engines, generators, and weapons. As with ships, some outfits may only be available in certain parts of the galaxy, and some particularly valuable, exotic, or illegal outfits are available only in a handful of systems. Ship outfits are described in much more detail later on in this document. As with the trading panel, in the Outfitter you can buy multiple copies of an outfit, such as ammunition, by holding down the shift key (5x), the control key (20x), or both (100x).
Outfits can affect your ship in a myriad of ways. You can hover the mouse over any attribute of an outfit or a ship to view a tooltip explaining how it works.
If you have multiple ships, you can select the icons of more than one of them at once by clicking them while holding down the shift or control modifier keys. That allows you to buy or sell outfits for multiple ships simultaneously. Selling an outfit will put that outfit in stock until you buy it back or take off. Pressing ‘u’ will place an outfit into storage instead of selling it, letting that outfit permanently stay on that planet. Deselecting all your ships will cause outfits to be placed into cargo when bought or installed. In addition, the checkboxes in the bottom left corner control what outfits are shown: all outfits stored on the selected ships are listed, as well as outfits on sale, in cargo, and in storage. Toggling “Show outfits in cargo” also deselects all your ships.
Hire Crew (H)
Extra crew serve no purpose, aside from drawing money from your bank account every day, unless you are attempting to capture another ship. When you board an enemy ship, your odds of capturing it depend on how many crew members you have. And, if you succeed in capturing the other ship, you must have enough extra crew members to pilot both ships. If a ship has fewer than the minimum number of crew, it will experience random control failures until you land on an inhabited planet (where you will automatically hire new crew to replace the ones you lost).
As with the trading panel, you can hire or fire multiple extra crew members at once by holding down the shift key (5x), the control key (20x), or both (100x).
Depart (D)
Many first-time pilots describe it in terms usually reserved for religious experiences: that moment when the thrum of the engines and the rush of atmosphere dies away, and you find yourself looking down at the world that, until that moment, you had called home. Everything you ever cared about, everything that ever made you cry, every scrap of beauty you’ve ever seen up until now is down there, and it’s so small you could pick it up and hold it in the palm of your hand...
Flying Your Ship
When you leave the planet, you will find yourself surrounded by asteroids, planets, and maybe some other ships as well. Don’t panic: your ship cannot collide with any of these objects, and instead it will pass safely above or below them. Asteroids do have an effect in combat, however: projectiles that collide with them are destroyed. A skilled pilot can often maneuver incoming missiles into crashing into asteroids, or can simply hide behind a large asteroid and use it as a shield. (Merchant crews operating near the fringes of human space call asteroids “the poor man’s anti-missile system,” and feel much safer in systems where there are plenty of asteroids to provide cover.)
In space there is no atmosphere, no friction to slow you down. Once your ship is moving, it keeps moving until you apply thrust in a different direction. Every ship for sale on human worlds has two engine systems: steering, to change what direction the ship is facing, and thrusters, to accelerate in a new direction. That means that to slow down, you must turn in the opposite direction that your ship is headed in, and then activate thrusters.
Fortunately, modern starships come with navigational computers that simplify the work of flying them. To land on the nearest habitable planet, just press the landing key (‘L’ by default), and your ship will approach the planet and slow down enough to land on it. (In a ship with multiple planets you can land on, press the landing key repeatedly to toggle between them.) If you press any other movement keys, the autopilot immediately disengages. Your ship’s autopilot can also help with hyperspace travel and with boarding other ships, as described later.
The radar display shows all objects in the current star system. Planets, space stations, and stars are hollow circles; ships are filled circles. The size of the circle reflects the size of the object. Missiles show up as small white dots; smaller projectiles and energy beams are not displayed. Aside from missiles, each object is colored according to its attitude toward you:
- green: owned by you (e.g. your own ship and its escorts)
- blue: friendly (planets that will let you land, ships that are not hostile toward you)
- yellow: unfriendly (ships that are hostile but currently busy attacking a different target)
- red: ships that are attacking you, or planets that will not let you land.
- grey: disabled ships, and planets you cannot land on.
The other displays next to the radar show your current navigational target (which might be either a planet to land on, or another system to jump to via hyperspace) and the currently targeted ship. By default, the ‘N’ key toggles between all targets in system, and the ‘R’ key targets the nearest hostile ship (if any). Hold down the shift key while pressing the ‘N’ key to toggle through your escorts, or while pressing the ‘R’ key to select the nearest non-hostile ship.
The only way to fire on a non-hostile ship is to choose it as your target before firing; otherwise, your shots will pass harmlessly below or above it. In general, your weapons only harm hostile ships, which is useful in close combat where friendly fire would otherwise be a concern.
On the right side of the screen is the status of your own ship, including shield (blue) and armor (gold) shown in rings around the outline of your ship. Below that are three bars showing your current levels of hyperspace fuel, energy, and heat, and below that are ammunition indicators for your secondary weapons, if you have any.
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