Navigation and Flying

Navigation
The Galactic Co-operative is only one - although the largest - of several planetary federations, and maintains trade and diplomatic links with over 2000 planets spread throughout 8 galaxies. The political profile of a planet is an important navigational consideration as many are in a state of anarchy and are unsafe to visit in poorly equipped ships. Important too is its economic profile, as will be discussed in the section about trading.

Navigational strategy depends of course upon your aims in life. If you think you have what it takes to become élite, you will need to chart your path through the galaxies with care and great precision. You will wish to equip your ship as fully and as early as possible. You will, therefore, need to study the trading section of this manual so that you can work out a profitable trading route in order to be able to afford the weaponry you will require. You will have to make decisions about how dangerous a life you wish to lead; in general, the more risks you take (traveling to dangerous planets or trading in contraband goods) the faster you may equip your ship but the quicker you will be killed. You will discover that life in the 8 galaxies is a question of fine balance. Although it may seem, at first, that indiscriminate carnage is a soft option (kills improve your rating, after all), as your skills and experience of living in space mature, you will quickly discover that piracy is a short-lived career.

Success in this context is a mosaic of talents: combative, certainly, but thinking and decision-making talents too.

Here you are introduced to all the controls which will eventually be useful to you in developing a route through the 8 galaxies.

Navigational Controls
It is important that you do not press the f0 key for the moment.

f4 Galactic chart. This chart shows all registered worlds within the galaxy, and indicates your own coordinate position. The star cursor may be used to scan the shown worlds for potentially favorable trade sites.

Use the joystick or the cursor control keys to move the small cross over to one of the dots, and hit f6.

f6 Worldata link. The Orbit Space Authority takes no responsibility for the accuracy of the information registered here, but the traders may gain some idea of the relative wisdom of trading with the world whose data is displayed. The information shown is distance, type of main life form, degree of agricultural or industrial development, with industrial and technology level displayed on a scale of 1-12. The government type, ranging from Corporate State to Anarchy, will be a strong indication of the danger of trading with the system.

f6 invokes a planetary status card. Whether you choose to amass kills by bounty hunting or take the less dangerous course of the traditional trader and defensive combater, the political and economic infrastructure of planets should influence the route you take through a galaxy (see Interplanetary Travel and Trade).

Use f4 again to return to the chart and acquire information about some more planets.

The largest of the crosses on the chart shows where your ship is and the circle shows how far it can jump with its current hyperspace fuel.

O O returns the small cross to the larger one.

f5 Local navigational chart. This is a high power chart of all planets in the immediate vicinity of your docking world. Since the Cobra ship has a maximum single H-jump range of 7 light years, the target world must be chosen carefully. The target cursor, used in conjunction with the Worldata link, will indicate dangerous or likely worlds for trade.