Quickstart.txt

Getting started with Pioneer
----------------------------

The principles of the game are largely the same as those of Frontier: Elite 2.

You can buy and sell on the commodities market, take missions or interact with
people on the bulletin board, buy new ships in the ship market, install or
remove equipment on the equipment market, repair your ship or contact local
law enforcement when docked. Do all of this with the mouse.

F1: Change view mode (cockpit/external/sidereal)
F2: Use the map system.
F3: Look at your own information.
F4: Switch to station screen. (when docked)

The view direction can be controlled, with keys:
KP 8: Front Camera / Rotate External/Sidereal Up
KP 2: Rear Camera / Rotate External/Sidereal Down
KP 4: Left Camera / Rotate External/Sidereal Left
KP 6: Right Camera / Rotate External/Sidereal Right
KP 9: Top Camera
KP 3: Bottom Camera / Roll External/Sidereal Right
KP 7: Cockpit view forward
KP 1: Cockpit view rearward / Roll External/Sidereal Left
+: Zoom in (external/sidereal view only)
-: Zoom out (external/sidereal view only)
Home: Reset zoom (sidereal view only)

(NOTE: If you do not have a numeric keypad, please rebind the view direction
controls from the View tab in the Settings screen)

You can hold your mouse over various buttons for tooltips to appear, in order
to see what they do.

F5 turns off the autopilot, and changes between manual flight and set speed
flight.

Flight controls are:
Q: Roll left
W: Pitch forward
E: Roll right
A: Yaw left
S: Pitch up
D: Yaw right
U: Ventral thruster (slide up)
I: Aft thruster (go forwards)
O: Dorsal thruster (slide down)
J: Starboard thruster (slide left)
K: Forward thruster (go backwards)
L: Port thruster (slide right)

In manual flight mode, the thrusters only fire when you tell them to.
In "set speed" mode, the autopilot tries to keep your velocity vector
in the direction that your vehicle is facing, with a constant speed.
Thruster controls still work in "set speed" mode, and override the
autopilot while you hold the thrust key down.

"Set speed" controls:
Enter: Set speed faster
RightShift: Set speed slower

You can also steer the ship with your mouse while holding the right mouse
button.

Use the cursor keys to move the camera in external and sidereal view. In
sidereal view, use ',' (comma) and '.' (period) to roll the camera in place.

To jump to another system, use the map (F2) and click on another system. The
map will provide you with info about the system, such as population, faction
and economy. You need enough hydrogen to get there, so it must be close enough 
for your ship and hyperdrive. To jump, you need to add the system to the 
hyperjump planner on the bottom right of the sector map, by clicking on the + 
button while the system is selected. F7 will start the jump sequence. You can
press F7 again to abort the jump while the countdown is running.

To use the autopilot to reach a station, expand the overview window on top right 
corner of the flight view. Right click on your destination to see the radial 
menu,  from which you can instruct your autopilot to "fly to vicinity" or "dock 
with target". 

If you wish to fly manually, you should see the following wiki page: 
https://pioneerwiki.com/wiki/How_to_fly_without_autopilot

Press Escape while in-game (not the main menu) to open the settings screen.
Here you can change screen res/fullscreen mode, language, controls and other
things. Many options require you to restart Pioneer before they will take
effect.

Pioneer is continuously under development. Saved games are not guaranteed to load 
in different versions of Pioneer.  The universe might not be the same in the next
version of Pioneer. Anything can change. The game is never finished, and we would
like feedback. See README.txt to find out how to do that.