Welcome to the guide!

In our Galaxy Guide, we will teach you the things a proper pilot must know. This guide was written during Early Access, so future patches may introduce some differences.


If you're a veteran pilot looking for ships instead, head over to this guide:
https://steamhost.cn/steamcommunity_com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=2205516130

This is a game about being a space pilot and doing space pilot things - mainly exploring, fighting, trading, crafting, mining and questing. As a space pilot, you need to understand the terminology used in the game.


The green bar is your Armor, equivalent to HP from other games. If it goes to 0, you're dead!

The dark blue bar below it is your Energy. The number on the left shows how much Energy per Second (EPS) you're generating from your ship's reactors. Add more reactors to increase EPS. Add more equipment pieces that consume energy to decrease EPS. The amount in the middle is your Energy Storage, your battery. The battery will drain when you fire your weapons or when an enemy hits you with Ion Weapons. If your battery goes to 0, you won't be able to fire your weapons, use Speed Boost, Tractor Beam and other equipment.

The light blue bar are your Shields. Shields are your secondary HP bar. The number on the left shows your Shield Regeneration. Shields will automatically regenerate even when taking hits, but once your shields reach 0, they will stop regenerating and you need to stop getting hit for a short amount of time before the Shield Regeneration is resumed.

The Energy Control section shows how much power you're feeding into your systems. For example, if you set your shields to 200% power, then you will get double the amount of bonuses from your Shield Generators, and it will also cost double the EPS to power them.

Finally, the Heat Levels section shows the amount of heat accumulated in every weapon mounting point of your ship. When firing weapons, the bar will fill up. It starts green, then yellow, then red, and when it reaches full, the mounting point will start flashing red. Flashing red means it overheated and your weapons will not work until the heat dissipates.


..or rather, the scanner window. Unlike your usual minimap, the scanner window changes depending on your Scanner Power. The more scanner power you have, the more zoomed out the minimap will be and the farther from your ship you can see. High scanner power allows you to spot other ships and floating loot from far away.


Press M to open it.

The big circle represents your Sensor Power. Each dot that is withing your Sensor Power range will display additional information about the sector.
Each dot on the Star Map is a new sector, a new game map you can explore.
Dot colors don't matter.
Dots connected by lines means there are warp gates connecting the sectors.
Dot without a circle means you haven't visited it yet.
Dot with circle means you have visited the sector, and additional info will be displayed when you mouseover it.
An exception to that is a barely visible empty circle, that indicates a "Pitch Black" sector - a sector without much light. Imagine the usual night level from other games. You'll crash into asteroids a lot here...
Finally, if the dot is surrounded by mist, it is a Nebula sector. Misty level. Nebulas lower your Scanner power for as long as you are in a Nebula sector.

Every space pilot loves flying! But aside from that, most pilots also love loot.


Poor (Gray), Common (White), Uncommon (Green), Rare (Blue), Epic (Purple), Legendary (Orange).

Poor quality items can only appear as drops.
All items you craft will be Common quality (unless you have a special skill which changes that).
Most White, Green, Blue and Epic loot can be bought in stores, dropped from enemies, looted from scavenging, mining or received as reward for completing quests.
Orange quality items can only drop from Bosses and Stations (and from scavenging if you have a special skill, but I have yet to see that happen).
Any item in the game can appear at any quality level.


For example, there's an Impulse Drive, Impulse Drive Mk.II, Impulse Drive Mk.III, Impulse Drive Mk.IV and Impulse Drive Mk.V.
Only Ship Drives, Gyroscopes, Lateral Thrusters, Speed Boosters, Shield Generators, Shield Chargers and Shield Absorbers have versions.
A higher number version usually has better bonuses, but that depends on quality. A Common (white) Shield Generator Mk.II is better than Common (white) Shield Generator. But an Epic (purple) Shield Generator is still better than Common (white) Shield Generator Mk.II.
Get used to comparing the bonuses of the two items!


For example, the Venghi Light Armor and Venghi Heavy Armor comes only from the Venghi aliens. Either become their friend and shop at their stations, or destroy their ships and hope for a drop.


For example, the Station Weapons. You have to drop them from high level Elite enemies, Bosses and Stations.

As you start upgrading your ship and weapons, it becomes increasingly important to plan ahead when buying ships, and then properly place your weapons and set up controls. With new ships, you will also encounter new Weapon mounts, so we will have a look at them in this section.


Ships have limited weapon space, meaning that you cannot install 9999 lasers and oneshot everything. When you decide to get a new ship, you have the chance to preview it's capabilities in the Trade window of the station. You can also see the weapon mounts if you press Shift.



The weapon space is important. Weapon space of 3 on the tutorial ship says that I can install up to three basic Mining Lasers (because they have space requirement of 1). Or I can install one weapon of size 3.


Weapon mount is the physical place on the ship where you can install weapons. From this exact place on your ship the weapons will be firing. You can see the weapon mounts of your current ship in the Hangar.

Weapon mounts have these types:


- Fixed weapon mount can only fire straight forward. If you want to shoot behind you, you need to turn your whole ship.
- Turning weapon mount can turn as much as is indicated by the red area around the Weapon mount. This differs from ship to ship. For example, Juggernaut's front Weapon mounts can only turn a very small amount, as shown on the screenshot.
- Turret weapon mounts can turn freely. If you want to shoot behind you, you don't need to turn your whole ship, the weapons will turn instead and can fire behind you. This is very useful when being chased. However, turret weapon mounts are usually limited by the amount of weapons you can install into them. As seen on the screenshot, side Turret Weapon mounts on Juggernaut can only hold weapons of size 2, and the middle one can hold Weapons of size 4.


Each Weapon mount corresponds to the icons in the HUD - Heat Levels section. All weapons placed in the same Weapon mount generate heat only for that Weapon mount.

Here's an example with the tutorial ship. Firing 3 mining lasers at once:


And now firing just one mining laser:


The more weapons you fire at once, the more heat is generated. Placing your weapons into different Weapon mounts spreads the heat generation between different mounts, so don't put all your weapons into a single Weapon mount.


Another way of controlling heat is to control which weapons fire. In the gif above, I still had 3 Mining Lasers installed on my ship, but I fired only one of them. You can set up controls in the menu - press I at any time (or go to the Hangar if docked), click your weapon, then click the Change key button. Then press the button you want to use for that weapon.

Apart from controlling heat generation, you can also use different bindings to alternate between attack weapons and mining lasers, or when using weapons that have different attack ranges.

That's all to the guide for now. Comment if you'd like something else explained.