Ah young pilot, so you come in here looking for a drink? No? Oh... new underwear? Right...

...You obviously have just found out how massive this place really is! EH BARKEEP, A COUPLE OF WHISKEYS! Lemme tell ya, if you think its gonna be easy creds out there... You've got learning to do.

Lemme tell ya this, don't go looking for a goal. Goals are things you make in life, you're not handed them on a plate. Don't expect someone to tell you what to do - that is your job.

Also start small - its ok to have a long term goal, but expecting to be able to fly a Destroyer - let alone own one - within days of your first entry from Planetside is rather foolish to put it at best.

You've got to make a name for yourself for that luxury, and even then you need the money to afford it! No, start small. Your path is something you decide.

Pirates are something you should avoid unless your confident enough to start a fight, or at least smart enough to run from one.

If you must start a fight, make it on small groups. Don't go and attack one of those stolen Nova's unless you know what you are doing, and keep your wits about you.

Needless to say its easier to stay safe. From here in Argon Prime, you can make it to Boron and Paranid space in relative safety - beware of the Paranid, they are a cocky race that should be taken down a peg or two.

If you stay legit, Argon and Boron space gives enough opputunities to give a young pilot such as you a good start in life. Remeber, the Argon hate the Paranid, and the Boron hate the Split, so attacking Split ships in boron space is a sure fire way of increasing your rep amongst the Fish, same with taking out those Paranid git's here in the Argon Federation.

I know what you thought when you first left that shipyard - "Christ I'm lost... now where?"

Problem solved, go and explore the Argon sectors, get a bearing on your surroundings - don't go any further east than Elena's Fortune, and even when your there its best to turn back west and head north via the Graveyard (Presidents End if you don't know).

This avoids Pirate space and several problems.

Dont go any further south than Cloudbase South West to begin with either, Paranid space is lying past the south gate there and you will miss the hospitality the Argon and the Goner Temple that is there supply you...

...Boron space, at least that north of here, is safe for trade.

Ah, money, you can't get anywhere in the Universe without it! Best way to earn money legit is to capture pirate ships and sell them off. Of course, your just starting out, so I'd practice on a paranid freighter or two until you get the idea - you can even keep one for your personal trades.

That would be a good plan.

If you turn to more, shall we say... shady routes, there is a Distillery in Herrons Nebula (just one gate north of here!) that sells to the local Trading Station. You can make a good bit of money doing that trade run, but avoid being scanned by the Argon Police, else you will either loose your profit... or your life. They are not picky.

Whatever you do, to begin with making money is a pain in the bastu. But the best way I find to start making it big comes when you can afford your first Frieghter. If you don't want to wait... Demeters are lovely ships... 


Once you have your TS class frieghter, start doing trade routes - sillicon always sells well in Argon space, as does BoGas, which also sells extremely well with the Fish. Ok, the Boron look more like squids but Fish does them justice.

Once you have enough money in the bank, try entering the world of Mining to begin with, word is there are some mighty fine 'roids in orebelt that are well worth using. Of course these take money to set up, but set it to buy energy high, sell sillicon low with a small profit margin and it'll produce long enough for you to get some more ships to buy and sell for it.

Also don't forget to transfer funds, else it'll be nothing except a 200 megaton Paperweight.

Now, I'm out of whiskey, and I aint buying seconds, I've got an Empire to run.

Apricotslice

If your under fire do NOT fire missles! Pretty much everything but Mosquito has a blast radius.

Bigger is not always better with guns... A Nova with 8xAIRE's can keep going, and going, and going. If you have ever been cought in a dogfight with 6+ you will appreciate this. Also tends to cause a LOT deaths if they launch missles since they are under a continious rain of fire, see above... Better them then you.

No one seems to mention it but you can swap out guns in combat, not just groups but type, i.e. swap out those cap-matic AIRE's for AHEPT's when you discover that falcon has the dreaded PSG. Unless, of course, your using a joystick...

And just what does that have to do with the price of spacefuel in Getsu Fune? I use keyboard, mouse AND joystick, all for different tasks. Besides, you can't manuever your ship with your mouse while in cursor mode anyway. But I can move my joystick with the left hand while clicking with the mouse with my right. So don't be giving those poor newbies false impressions. They have enough to worry about as it is.

Assuming you're not physically in the freighter, here's what you do from inside a station. Choose the 'Station' option from the main icon bar at the bottom. Then choose ships. Both your ships should be listed if they're both docked at the same station. Choose the freighter, then cursor down the menu that pops up to 'Command Console'. There, you'll have all the options to control that ship remotely, depending on the software installed. Even the basic Navigation menu should have sufficient commands for what you need.

You do something similar if the freighter is docked at another station. You just need to access that station's menu system first, and choose 'landed ships' to gain access to yours. If in space, then access your freighter through the sector map list. One final way to access all your ships is to use the Property Menu with the 'r' key.

Just remember, to control your remote ships, you always need to access that ship's 'Command Console'. Good Luck.

Or, if you are in space, hit "R" for owned ships and stations. Then select the line with that ship and hit enter, then select Command menu. You can give commands, from anywhere, to any of your ships or stations.

Note that, if you are in a ship and you give it a command and then jump out to go to one of your other ships, the command in the first ship is cancelled and it stops. Transfer first, and then give the command remotely to the first ship.

The flashing lights at the gates; Ya, they are traffic control.
Not that pilots follow the rules. But if you wish to ,at least lower your chances of running into a very large ship when you exit a gate.
Follow the traffic sig's.

Finding that an "Orca" is entering a gate your exiting,
Kind-a lookes like this >  <
Evan more fun entering into a nebula sector.

Your useually looking down,checking the >What to do next list < when this happens.

if you have a glazed look i say lay off the spacefuel and start killing stuff

Dont start killing stuff til you know how to stay alive yourself. Nothing worse than seeing a newbie blown to dust because they bit off more than they could chew somewhere they shouldnta gone in a ship they should have done some upgrading to before getting all gungho and triggerhappy.

Btw, if you cant find a gate, follow the ships, they will lead you to it. If you have a jump drive, set a goto point near where you think the gate should be, will pop your ship out of the very gate you are trying to find.

How do I set a homebase ? Damn computer wont take one.

You have to own a station or carrier to set a homebase. For a fighter, either an M1 or a TL. For a freighter, only a station. There is no point in setting a homebase on your personal ship anyway, so dont bother. The homebase is only used by your freighters for station supply and selling, and by fighters for protecting their base.

I was looking at new ships, but could not find out any details about them.

Huh, yeah, confusing that is. You highlight which ship your looking at, and then press the I key. All its specs then pop up.

I also noticed at the equipment dock that no cargo extensions were available. Surely they keep plenty of stocks of those on hand ?

Also confusing. They do have stocks on hand. But if your ship is fully maxed out with cargo space, the sales screen shows that there are no more available instead of telling you your an idiot for not knowing the specs of your own ship !

Is the lottery worth entering ? I never seem to win.

Haha, thats a joke that one. Never heard of anyone winning the BBS lotteries. I think they are scams myself, but never been able to prove it. I have heard there are other lotteries offered by the Modding Community that do pay out however.

I saw a UFO on the way over here. Are they worth following ?

Did you now ? No-one knows who they are or where they go, but following them can be beneficial, as they seem to fly all over, so if you ahvent been all over yet, its one way of getting there. If you have the time to dawdle along doing nothing that is. It'll give you frequent flyer miles I guess. hahaha. Just dont kill one. The Goners do not like it. But no-one knows why.

Someone said something about video feeds from satelites. Didnt make any sense at the time.

Here's how it works. Deploy an advanced satellite. Then bring up the sector map. Now hit 'k'. This brings up the video feed. It will be at the same scale as the sector map. Using the Home/End keys, you can zoom in and out. And using the numberpad keys, you can move the cursor around, which changes the center of the zoomed video feed. The insert key works to show the vertical as well. This can actually be quite handy when placing factories, because it will show up close and personal how they're oriented before you actually deploy them.

There are two ways of triggering the jumpdrive. By hotkey, or by the command console. Hotkey activation will jump only your ship. Command console activation will jump your ship and any ship that is protecting it or following it, assuming they have sufficient ecells on board themselves to make the jump.

Are you alright ? You dont look so good.

Was it something we said ?