Ship Control

Your ship on the galactic plane can move about and nothing else. If it is damaged then it will be repaired by Nova shuttles, 1 per galactic turn. Move it onto an 'open' star system and it will jump into the system.

Once in system it can take part in combat - firing drones, manufacturing new units, repairing damage, allocating antibody nano and so on. This is done by selecting the ship - either on the list to the right of the screen, or by clicking on the ship on the system map. Once selected, you can view the ships activity last turn (hit space, or use the mode menu to toggle), or give it orders for this turn. As you give it orders the ship will allocate energy and so on to try to action the orders. If it is not possible a status message is displayed.

Jumping out

If your ship is badly damaged, and you fear it could be destroyed (all habitat are lost), then you can leave the system. This is done by selecting the ship, right clicking on it and selecting the jump option. You can do this again to cancel the jump. You can also make a ship jump out of the system using the orders menu. When back on the galactic map Nova shuttles from your homeworld will repair 1 system per turn.

Note that you can only jump out of a system if 20 hexes or more from the nearest planet.

Powering systems, allocating anti-body nano, repairing, manufacturing and reclaiming

The details of how to control your ship are given below:

As you can see, once selected a ships details are displayed. Clicking on the mass scoops towards the bottom of the ships details will power up the mass scoops. This is also true for spindizzies. Other than the mass scoops and spindizzies, all control is through the ship outline to the top of the panel. Experiment with right and left clicking upon units and it will be fairly obvious.

As you click to create anti-body nano, repair and so on the ship will automatically allocate energy and power up the swarm generators, factories etc. If there are not enough resources (mass/energy) then a status message is displayed.

Movement

Finally, movement and firing of drones is done by clicking on the map.

Select the ship to move, and then left click on the map and it will move towards that location. The maximum move distance is restricted by it's design and by the available energy. If the automatic route it has selected is not what you want, then left click on the ship again to cancel the order, and then use the cumulative move.

If you want to move using Spindizzies rather than normal engines then you must first activate them, by clicking on the Spindizzy units at the bottom of the ship panel. You can now move up to the Spindizzy limit.

Cumulative movement

Cumulative movement is done by pressing 'c' and left clicking on the map. This adds to the existing move path, allowing you to avoid mines and grav wells if you need to.

Firing Drones

Firing drones is done by holding down the 'f' key and left clicking on the map (for area effect and mines), or on a target ship for attack and repair drones. Alt-f will also enter fire mode, as will the orders menu fire item. You can only fire a single drone at a given target, to cancel a drone order simply hold f down again and click on the same place, then select cancel in the drone window. This will cancel your drone launch order.

You can also right click on a ship on the map and select cancel all drone orders from the pop up menu.

Map Zoom

Alt-Z will toggle from a zoomed and non zoomed view. In the zoomed view some details are lost, but you see almost the entire system (depending on your monitor/resolution) at once. This is very handy when planning coordinated attacks.

Toggle view

Press T to make the selected ship blink. It's a handy way to check which ship you have selected, and the orders that it has.

Self Destruct

If you hit D you can self destruct your ship. This is a good way to reduce your current fleet costs - removing rubbish designs. When the fleet cost is below your current fleet support value then you can build new ships.