Ships are the most important vehicles inStar Citizen, and in most cases, they are the reason why you can make progress in the game and earn money. So, this is essential for you to know the basics of ships, especially how you can fly with them.
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This is almost the first task you need to learn in Star Citizen once you manage to get your ship ready for take-off in a hangar. Flying with a ship does feature multiple phases, but here we will only go over the normal, short-travel flying using Hydrogen fuel.
How To Fly With A Ship
Each ship in Star Citizen has two sources of energy, Hydrogen fuel, and Quantum fuel. The former is the fuel that you use for flying with your ship around planets, landing, taking off, or simply exploring locations that are not too far away.
How To Get Into Your Ship
This is highly dependent on the ship model you own. Generally, when you get closer to your ship, you will spot afew dots on the UI screenshowing you theinteractable parts of the ship. Usually, these dots show you the way you may get into your ship. Fighter ships mostly have an entry point next to their nose, while cargo ships have a ramp in the back that allows you to enter the cockpit through the cargo section. Bigger ships feature elevators on the bottom side that you can call to ascend to the cargo area and then the cockpit.
If your ship is a small fighter, you will be directly moved to the pilot seat, but if it has a small or big hub area, make your way to the cockpit and then interact with the pilot seat to get ready for the take-off.
How To Turn On The Ship
Once you are in the pilot seat,press “U” to engage all systems and turn on the engines. Although you’re able to use the interaction menu by holding “F” to find the switches for turning on the engines in the cockpit, “U” is just a shortcut for you to get going fast. You can alsopress “i” to turn on/off engines only, andpress “P” to turn on/off the weapons system, but in the end, you still need to press “U” to engage all systems required for flight.
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How To Take Off From A Hangar
In order to communicate with the hangar control roomto request a take-off, you need to press “F3"on your keyboard. This might take around 5 to 10 seconds for the control room to respond to you, but after that, you will notice that the hangar doors are opening. Keep in mind that we havetwo types of hangars: one type featuresvertical doors, which means the doors are simply in front of you, and you will notice when they are opening. However, the second type of hangar featureshorizontal doors. In this case, the doors are above your head on the ceiling. So, you will hear them opening, but you won’t be able to see them from the cockpit. Usually, it takes the doors around 20 seconds to fully open.
Now,hold “Space” just a little bit to raisethe ship and detach it from the ground. Once you stop holding “Space”, the ship will stay floating in the air. Ships always maintain their position and overcome gravity automatically. If you raised too much,hold “Left Ctrl” to descend.
UsingWASD keysyou canmove forward, backward, left, or right. If you want to change the direction of your forward path, you need to use your mouse.By moving your mouse, the main cursor quits the small circle in the middle, and thenyou can turn the nose of the shipup, down, left, or right. The further your cursor goes away from the middle circle, the faster you turn. So, always make sure to move the mouse gently to avoid any troubles inside the hangar.
to get outside the hangar, you don’t really need to turn the nose of the ship. If the door is vertical, just get a bit of altitude and then move forward. And if the door is horizontal, just hold “Space” until you get out of the hangar.
If you need a3rd-person view on your ship, press “F4”. Keep in mind that in this view all UI information will be turned off. If youhold “Z"you canfreely move your mouse to see your surroundings without moving the ship’s nose. You canpress “F4” twice to get back to the cockpit view. Inside the cockpit, you can also hold “Z” or press it once to activate the free lookout mode. Press “Z” again to deactivate it.
More Control Options
Now that you are out, make a safe distance from the hangar’s entrance to test a few other controls. First,press “N” to raise the landing gear. If youpress Q or E, you will startrolling. If youroll the middle wheel of your mouse, you canmodify the maximum speedof the ship. This can be observed with a two-color vertical bar on the left side of the middle circle. As you’re able to see, there is a red bar and a green/blue bar on the Velocity-meter. The green/blue line is the maximum safe speed for the time when you want to land or move to a hangar or get out. While the red bar shows the speed you can aim for outside the planet. There are no rules or punishments here for moving with maximum speed around a city or planet, but it is quite unsafe.
If you turn the nose of the ship to the sky and start moving with maximum speed you will get out of the atmosphere and enter the space. However, exiting or entering the atmosphere does feature a resistance that reduces speed. In this case, you canhold “Left Shift”, whichapplies more thrust to enginesto speed up faster. This is quite useful when you are escaping a fight.
If youpress “Tab"you will run ascan aroundyourself with a range of 10 to 15 kilometers. This is useful when you want to find ores or gemstones for mining. If youpress left or right click, your ship will startshooting bullets. However, this will not work while you are inside a hangar or in the restriction zone of a city. If youpress the mouse wheel button, your combat mode willswitch to the missiles. Of course, this is only possible for ships that carry missiles. Now, if youperform a right clickwith your mouse, you canchange the type of missileif your ship carries more than one model.
While you are exploring, make sure to keep an eye on your Hydrogen fuel as well. It is shown by a thick bar in the bottom right corner of the pilot screen with the letters “HYD”. Next to it, you can see the amount of Quantum fuel as well.
In case you want your ship to move forward automatically, you canpress “C”. Thisactivates a cruise-control mode, where your ship moves at the maximum allowed speed, and you can just look around. If for any reason you want toget off the ship, justhold “Y"until your character leaves the pilot seat and gets out.
