Flight

Flight owns two things: where the ship is, and where it is pointing. Almost everything else on the bridge depends on one of them. Weapons need a firing solution, scans need range, docking needs an approach — all of that is your console.

Flying

You have attitude control in three axes — yaw, pitch and roll — plus a throttle. Larger vessels also have strafe and maneuvering thrusters for the sideways, up and down movement you need when you are trying to hold station or line up on a bay door.

The throttle is latched. It stays where you put it; it is a setting, not a pedal. Ships hold their commanded speed and take time to reach it, so plan your deceleration in advance. There is no handbrake.

Attitude, by contrast, ramps and settles. A big hull turns slowly and keeps turning after you stop asking, which is why new pilots overshoot every target they aim at. Start your turn early and stop it early.

FTL spins up before it jumps. Toggling FTL, or pushing the FTL throttle off zero, starts the drive spooling: you hear it build and the view out charges, and the jump comes when the spool runs out (three seconds on a stock drive). Toggle FTL again during the spin‑up, or pull the FTL throttle back to zero, to call it off. A drive that is offline or short of charge refuses to start, and one that drops out partway aborts. The autopilot spools the same way before an FTL leg. Once in FTL the ship has left normal space: nothing can detect it or hit it, which makes a jump a genuine escape — if the spool finishes first.

Keyboard defaults

These are defaults, not laws — rebind them in Settings, under Keyboard, and your bindings are remembered. A gamepad or joystick is worth having for this role specifically: yaw, pitch, roll, both strafe axes, throttle and FTL throttle are all available as analog axes, and holding an axis is better than tapping a key. Map your controller once in Settings, under Controllers, where each axis can also be reversed and tuned and the controller given a dead zone.

Actions worth binding

Beyond the basics, Flight can bind: speed burst, cruise mode, orbit mode, peek aft, the horn, toggle docking, toggle FTL, next waypoint, autopilot on / off / toggle, and a full set of target‑selection actions — nearest and next object, enemy, station or planet, plus intercept target, clear target and clear flight target. Every axis can also be driven from a pair of keys; strafe and the FTL throttle have none by default.

Intercept target earns its key. It sets a course to whatever you have selected, which saves a great deal of manual pointing when the Captain says "get us to that freighter".

Waypoints and autopilot

Your waypoint list has several sources, on separate tabs:

• Stored — where the mission wants you to go. Start here.
• Active — the queue you are actually flying.
• Nearby — destinations within reach.
• Nearby POI — points of interest within reach, which is how you find the station nobody told you about.
• History — where you have been. Useful for going back.

Engage the autopilot and it flies the active queue. The engage control is only available when there is something to fly to, and turning it on hands over your attitude and throttle until you turn it off.

You can also plot from the radar. Click a star system on the galaxy map, or a planet on the system map, and its card offers Set Course, which replaces the queue (and takes the autopilot off until you engage it), or a button that adds it as one more waypoint. A course to a planet or station in the system you are already in is flown there at sublight; one in another system jumps to that system first and then brings you to the body you named.

Autopilot is for transit, not for combat. It flies the route, not the fight, and it will happily hold a straight predictable line through somebody's firing arc.

Docking

Clearance comes from Operations, over comms. Once you have it, there are two ways in. Come to a full stop at the docking condition (Blue, on a standard ship) and the station takes the helm: it lays an approach into your active waypoints and flies it on autopilot. Or fly in yourself: the station takes hold of you once you are inside the berth and moving slowly enough. Docked, the ship is repaired and its batteries are topped up.

Toggle docking asks to leave. The station slides you out through the opening you are facing, and the ship drops back to its standard condition. On a craft that lives in another ship's bay, the same action, within 5 km of the carrier, stows you back aboard.

Your displays

• Radar — the full 3D picture. It has map modes and a zoom, and learning to move between a close view and a wide one is most of situational awareness. Above the zoom slider, Labels names the contacts in the local view (the nearest few dozen to the center), and Search finds anything by name — a contact, a planet or a star system — and takes the view to it. A search highlights what it finds; it does not change your target.
• Forward and rear relative radar — two small displays showing what is ahead and behind. The rear one is the reason you notice you are being chased.
• Viewport — the actual view out. Switch between it and the radar depending on what you are doing.
• Heading, speed and target information — the numbers you read out loud.
• Steering — an on‑screen stick, or direct buttons for pitch, yaw and roll, for flying without a controller. The running lights sit on a tab beside the heading.
• Drones — if your vessel carries them.
• Jump drive — on a ship fitted with one. Dial a distance, up to what the drive can reach right now, and activate it to jump straight ahead.

Being good at it

• Ask what the maneuver is for. Closing for a scan, closing for a shot and closing to dock are three different approaches. Knowing which one you are flying is the difference between arriving and arriving usefully.
• Range is your gift to Sciences. Scans complete faster the closer you are — substantially so. If Sciences is waiting on a scan, closing the distance is the fastest thing anyone on the ship can do about it.
• Keep the damaged shield away from the enemy. Shields are per facing. When Tactical says the forward segment is collapsed, turning is a defensive weapon and it is yours.
• Call your speed and heading unprompted. Nobody else has these numbers, and half the bridge wants them.
• Flight and Tactical hold separate targets. Yours steers, theirs shoots. They are not the same selection and they diverge constantly — say which one you are on.
• Do not fight on autopilot. It is predictable, and predictable is what a gunner wants.