Wiki / Interface

Interface

Every ship carries a second seat of control: the interface. Press Tab in flight and a full-screen panel opens over the frozen world with three panes: Map, Ship and Inventory. Flight resumes the moment you close it.

Opening and closing

The map

The Map pane is a schematic 3D chart of local space: distance rings, a hub, and every contact as an icon - a chevron for a ship, a lump for an asteroid, a ringed disc for a planet, a diamond for an objective - tinted by what it is to you. Click one, or step through them with [ / ], and the contact panel beside the chart gives its code, name and kind, then its range and bearing. Under them, the panel names your live GOTO destination over a GOTO button. An unselected contact has a faint frame; the selected one has a bright frame and always shows its label. The footer under the chart holds the legend of the icons on the chart now and Reframe with the keys the pane answers to. The key hints follow your bindings.

The ship

The Ship pane is a schematic 3D viewer of your own hull: one block per section, a badge on each, and a section panel beside it. The footer under the view holds the section legend on the left, the pane's live key hints in the middle and Fit and Reset on the right. The section panel is where the selection is named. Sections carry short codes, stable for the whole session, and a family icon:

The footer legend shows all seven family icons: Weapon, Thruster, Controller, Hull, Docking, Mining and Cargo Intake. The Dock and Helm keys are in Settings > Controls > FLIGHT; their defaults are D and H. Each mining beam has its own key, which you rebind here like a weapon's.

Select a section by clicking its badge, with [ / ], or with Prev / Next in the panel. The panel shows its family icon, condition bar, status and a short description of the section's role. Fact rows show Integrity, Ammunition for a weapon and Control for a section with a key. A damaged section that repair can restore also shows the repair form below them; a section at full integrity, destroyed or with no integrity to restore shows no form.

Rebinding a section

Your weapon, thruster and mining beam sections answer rebindable keys, and the Ship pane is where you rebind them:

1. Select a thruster, turret, torpedo bay, railgun or mining beam and press B (or click Rebind). A section with no key offers no Rebind.
2. The panel arms: PRESS A KEY OR MOUSE BUTTON - ESC CANCELS.
3. The next key or mouse button you press takes over that section's keyboard-and-mouse trigger: Bound engine_port to K. A controller trigger on the same section is left alone, so rebinding at the desk never costs you the pad.

A reserved flight control is refused on the spot - Space is already bound to flight control: Main Drive - and the capture stays armed for another try. LMB is refused too, with Left Mouse stays the pointer: it is the button you click the blips with. Several sections may share one input (one key can fire every tube). Esc backs out with Rebind cancelled and leaves you on the pane. While a capture is armed, : does not open the command shell, Tab is refused as the interface toggle and does not close the interface, and M binds like any other key instead of switching the pane.

The inventory

The Inventory pane lists what your ship carries in the left column and, while you are docked, what the docked ship carries in the right column. Undocked, the right column is blank. A ship that carries nothing reads Inventory empty. A ship's hold takes 100 kg per hull section. Under your ship's name, Cargo shows your load against the hold and Credits your balance, for example Cargo 3520 kg / 13100 kg and Credits 2,000 cr. The docked ship's column shows its Credits too. In the open world your ship starts with 12 hull plates (10 kg each), 6,000 PDC rounds, 20 rail slugs, 12 torpedoes - 3,520 kg in all - and 2,000 cr. A generated ship, intact or a derelict wreck, starts with its own role-specific goods and a credit balance too (see Generated ships): stop with one of your docking collars beside one of its docking ports to dock, then Take what a neutralized or derelict one carries, or Take credits for its whole balance in one click. Other ships start as their scenario authors them; an AI raider or a tutorial drone carries no reserve of its own, so its magazines do not refill once spent. A repair spends hull plates, and a weapon's idle reload spends matching ammunition. Nothing is saved: spent and moved items and credits return to their starting values when the scenario loads again; a retired sector regenerates a generated ship's stock and credits. With cheats armed, item give adds items to a ship's hold.

Click an item to inspect it, or step through the shown items with [ / ], your column first; a step opens the same form a click does. The inspector shows its category, what it is, how many the selected ship carries and the weight of one item. A PDC round weighs 0.2 kg. While a Take, Give, Buy, Sell or Jettison is open, Total weight shows the weight of the quantity you chose: 2 hull plates read 20 kg however many you carry. The description keeps four lines, so the rows under it stay in place as you change items. A longer one is cut off with an I Full text cue: point at it, or press I, to read all of it. I again, or another item, closes it. You can rebind I as Item Details in Settings > Controls > INVENTORY.

Take and give

Docked, a click on an item opens a transfer form in the inspector at a quantity of 1:

Set the quantity with the mouse wheel over the quantity row, the slider, the number field, or All for the whole stack. The slider hides when the stack holds one item. Confirm moves the items at once and the note line reads Took 3 Hull plate from <ship> or Gave 3 Hull plate to <ship>, where <ship> is the docked ship's name. A refused move changes nothing and keeps the form open so you can fix the quantity: Refused: enter a quantity, Refused: quantity is zero, Refused: only 2 Hull plate in <ship>, Refused: <ship> has room for 30 kg more, Refused: <ship> is not neutralized or lootable, or Refused: not docked. A move never splits to fit: with room for 30 kg, a move of 5 hull plates is refused whole. Take and Give have no price. Items given to a ship that the open world streams away are gone with it, and a wreck you emptied has its generated stock again when its sector streams back in.

The partner column's header also carries a Take credits button, shown only while the partner is neutralized or lootable and holds a credit above zero. One click moves its whole balance into your ship and leaves the partner at zero, and the note line reads Took 500 cr from <ship>. Repeating it against the now-empty balance refuses with Refused: <ship> holds no credits, an intact, non-neutralized partner refuses with Refused: <ship> is not neutralized or lootable, and a take that would overflow your own balance refuses with Refused: your ship cannot hold more credits - every refusal changes nothing. Take credits has no form and no quantity: it always moves the whole balance in one click.

Buy and sell

Every live ship trades: any docked ship that is neither neutralized nor lootable. It sells only what its hold carries and pays only from its own credits. Nothing restocks. A living generated ship trades its own seeded goods and credits; a generated wreck is lootable, not a trader.

Prices are fixed per item and the same on every ship. A Buy pays the ask and a Sell earns the bid, so selling back what you bought loses credits. While the form is open it shows the price and your balance after, for example Price 20 cr, you after: 1,980 cr. Confirm moves the items and the credits at once, and the note line reads Bought 5 Stone ore from Frame Tender for 20 cr or Sold 10 Stone ore to Frame Tender for 30 cr. A refused trade changes nothing and keeps the form open: Refused: enter a quantity, Refused: quantity is zero, Refused: only 2 Stone ore in Frame Tender, Refused: Line Warship has room for 30 kg more, Refused: Frame Tender has only 20 cr, Refused: Frame Tender cannot hold more credits, Refused: Frame Tender does not trade, or Refused: not docked. A trade never splits to fit the hold or the credits.

Jettison and pickup

Undocked, with a working cargo intake, a click on an item in your column opens a Jettison form. Confirm takes the whole quantity out of your hold at once and packs it into canisters queued on the intake, and the note line reads Jettisoned 4 Hull plate: 1 canister queued with the number of canisters now waiting. A canister holds at most 200 kg across all its stacks, so a larger quantity fills several: one 150 kg torpedo, 10 rail slugs of 20 kg, 20 hull plates of 10 kg or 1000 PDC rounds of 0.2 kg each. A confirmed stack first tops up the last waiting canister where whole items still fit, even in the same frame. A refused jettison changes nothing: Refused: undock to jettison, Refused: no working cargo intake, Refused: enter a quantity, Refused: quantity is zero, or Refused: only 2 Hull plate in Line Warship.

Once you close the interface, the intake's door folds open and the canisters leave through it one at a time. To take a canister back in, or one a mining beam cut loose, fly the intake's door onto it. Cargo intake has the door, the pickup sight, the drop and the canister rules.

The command shell

Press : for NOVA COMMANDS: a text prompt on the ship's CRT monitor, over the interface, flight, the menus and the editor. It reads the run, changes your settings and prints the flight log. The Commands page has the whole catalog, and the monitor's own knobs and sounds.