Flight and controls

There is no friction in space. Cut the engines and the ship will not stop; turn the nose and the ship keeps flying where it was going. The simulation runs at 60 steps per second regardless of the frame rate.

Flight modes

• Assisted (default). You set the desired speed with W/S, and the flight computer accelerates or brakes the ship and cancels sideways drift. It only uses the engines’ real thrust.
• Inertial. Direct engine control. Velocity is kept, and the hull can rotate independently of the motion. Toggle with Tab.

Autopilot

P engages the autopilot to the navigation target. It turns, brakes, matches speed and, if you have docking clearance (L), takes the ship into the dock by itself.

Time acceleration

[ and ] switch between 1x, 2x, 5x and 10x. The whole simulation speeds up, so contract deadlines pass faster too. Acceleration is disabled in combat.

Keys

Key	Action
W / S	Set speed; in inertial mode, forward/reverse thrust
A / D	Lateral thrust
R / F	Vertical thrust
Arrows	Pitch and yaw
Q / E	Roll
Shift	Brake to zero
Tab	Assisted/inertial mode
P	Autopilot
N	Next navigation target
L	Docking clearance
U	Undock
M	Galaxy map
J	Charge hyperdrive
Space	Fire lasers
C	Cockpit/external camera
G	Retro/sharp graphics
K	Controls guide

Keys are bound to physical positions and work with any keyboard layout.