Lesson 1: Basics of Travel and Trade


 Managing yourself in the universe of StarFight VI is the first thing you need to know in order to enjoy playing the game.

Before reading how to navigate your ship, you might want to get acquainted with
Faster-Than-Light spacetravel - the theory

 Travel

 Navigating your ship in StarFight VI is very straightforward and easy once you familiarize yourself with ship's autopilot. Moving within a star system is easy: just bring up autopilot display using game's menu in the bottom of the screen (or shortcut key A), select your destination and let the autopilot do the rest. For longer distances you might want to accelerate the time to avoid unnecessary waiting, keys 1 trough 4 control time acceleration.

 For interstellar navigation things aren't as simple. You can only travel between star systems connected via a hyperspace jump point. You will often have to resort to multiple jumps in order to get from one system to another, since usually you only have a couple of jump points in one system. You can access map of the network formed by jump points from autopilot menu. To make a hyperspace jump, press key H or select HYPERSPACE from bottom menu when located near a jump point.

 Trade - basics

 Trading is an essential part of survival in StarFight VI universe. You need to maintain your ship. As well as repairing battle damage, proper maintenance means making sure that there's always sufficient amount of two types of fuel, dilithium and hydrogen, onboard.

 Hydrogen fuel powers your traditional, sublight speed thrusters used to manually maneuver your ship. Hydrogen fuel is cheap, and it's consumption is rather high, especially in battles where rapid manouvering is crucial. Also, using afterburner (TAB key) for short bursts of acceleration quickly depletes even sizable hydrogen fuel reserves.

 Dilithium fuel, on the other hand, is needed for all faster-than-light travel. It's consumption per time unit is less than one hundredth what traditional thruster gobbles hydrogen when traveling interplanetary distances. Hyperspace travel consumes constant amount of three tons per jump.

 There are also many upgrades and other items available on platform shipyard, which'll effect on your ship's performance and durability.


Next: Trade - Items & Upgrades
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