Wiki / Keybinds
Keybinds
The full control reference, keyboard and gamepad side by side. Thrust is analog on the gamepad and on/off on the keyboard. The autopilot verbs each fly a whole maneuver and hand control back; any manual input disengages them immediately. New players should start with Your first flight, which teaches these one at a time. Every one of these is REBINDABLE in-game under Settings > Controls, reachable from both the main menu and the pause menu - one binding group at a time, keyboard and gamepad in their own columns. Pressing a key another action in the same live set already holds is refused by name, and Reset Defaults puts the whole table back.
A dash means the action has no binding on that device.
Flight
| Action | Keyboard & mouse | Gamepad |
|---|---|---|
| Main thruster burn | W / Space | |
| GOTO - fly to the current lock | G | |
| ORBIT - park into orbit around a gravity well | O | |
| STOP - face retrograde and burn to rest | X | |
| CANCEL autopilot (resume manual) | Z | |
| RCS fine translation (when a scenario grants it) | Shift (hold) + / | (hold) + |
RCS is a docking aid, not standard flight: it appears only when a scenario grants it (the RCS chip appears in the keybind dock only when it is available), and the mainline campaign flies without it. See Flight & autopilot.
Targeting and camera
| Action | Keyboard & mouse | Gamepad |
|---|---|---|
| Aim / look | ||
| Free look | Alt (hold) | (hold) |
| Raise weapons (combat stance) | (hold) | (hold) |
| Radar lock (hold to sweep) | Ctrl (hold) | (hold) |
| Clear lock (staged: combat, then nav) | Ctrl (tap) | (tap) |
| Cycle fine-lock component | / [ ] |
Weapons
| Action | Keyboard & mouse | Gamepad |
|---|---|---|
| Fire turrets | (default) | - |
| Launch torpedo | (default) | - |
Weapon sections are rebindable: in the editor, click a section to bind it to any key or mouse button, so a ship's turret and torpedo controls are whatever its build assigns. The shipped ship fires both turrets and torpedoes on the left mouse button; a torpedo only launches while you hold a raised (red) combat lock.
Interface
| Action | Keyboard & mouse | Gamepad |
|---|---|---|
| Cycle HUD (On / Cinematic) | ` (grave / tilde) | |
| NOVA OS ship-computer terminal (commands; pauses, frees the cursor) | Tab | |
| Pause menu | Esc | |
| Back to editor (Sandbox only) | F1 |
Editor
The editor is mouse-first and has no gamepad bindings. Every key below is also a row on the top bar - File, Edit, View, Add, Ship - with the key printed beside it, so this table is a shortcut list and not a second interface. The bottom-left legend shows the gestures that apply to whatever you are holding right now; View > Key Legend hides it.
Keys are verbs only while nothing else has the keyboard. With the parts gallery up, the arrow keys move its grid and Esc closes the gallery rather than backing out of the ship; with the caret in a text field, every key is a character; and while a rebind waits for a key, it takes all of them except Esc. Ctrl+S answers under all of that except a field and a pending rebind.
| Fly the stage camera | W A S D, Space / Shift for up and down, right-drag to look |
| Select a node; enter the ship you selected | left click; double click |
| Slide a ship or object on the ground plane (scenario node only) | drag its body |
| Move it along one axis; turn it about one | drag an arrow; drag a ring |
| Put the camera on the selection | F (or View > Frame Selection) |
| Delete the selection | Del (or Edit > Delete) |
| Save the document | Ctrl+S (or File > Save) |
| Open or close the parts gallery (inside a ship) | Tab (or Ship > Parts...) |
| Gallery: take the part under the cursor and go build it | Q |
| Gallery: select / page / open the focused part | arrow keys, PgUp PgDn, Enter |
| Gallery: search (typing needs the caret in the field) | /, then type; Enter opens the top hit |
| Gallery focus: turn and zoom the part | drag, wheel |
| Place the part you are holding | left click on the ship |
| Roll it about the mating axis | wheel or R |
| Cycle which of its sockets mates | Ctrl+wheel or F |
| Pick up the part under the cursor | Q |
| Bind a flight key to the selected part | Ship > Rebind Key... or the inspector's Key row, then press the key |
| Leave the ship you are inside | Bksp |
| Back out one rung | Esc |
Esc takes one rung per press, in this order: an open top-bar menu, the search field, the gallery, a pending rebind, the part in hand, the ship you are inside, and finally the pause menu. Bksp is the shortcut past all of that - it leaves the ship from wherever you are, unless a text field has the caret, where it deletes a character instead.
The inspector
The right-hand panel shows the selected node's own fields, read off the thing itself rather than from a list the editor keeps - so a part that grows a setting grows a row. It opens on the fields that matter for that kind; View > All Fields shows the rest. A field the editor cannot edit is still listed, greyed, rather than hidden.
A number's NAME is its grip. Drag the name left or right and the value
follows, one step per pixel, live - there is nothing to confirm. A vector row
has three of them, one per axis letter. Click into the box instead to type a
number. Lengths are in u, the authored world unit, and the unit is printed
beside the box; the HUD converts to metres for the player, but the editor is
content, and content is authored in u.
The two gestures are not the same rule. A drag ARRIVES at a field's floor and
stops there - dragging a radius past zero is asking for the smallest value there
is. A typed number below the floor is REFUSED, because typing -3 into a radius
is a mistake. A drag that runs out of screen wraps the pointer to the other
side, so a 0.05-per-pixel field is still reachable on a narrow window.
Ship Skin, in the left rail's Ship Settings block, dresses the build in the cladding the ship would fly with. Nothing places a plate: the skin is derived from the structure you have assembled, and it is re-derived as you build - including around the part you are still holding, so a hull is dragged about UNDER the skin and the plating closes over it before you click. A placement the editor refuses stays bare. The toggle carries through to Play, so the ship you built clad is the ship you fly clad.
Button glyphs from PromptFont by Yukari "Shinmera" Hafner (SIL Open Font License).