How to fly: Basics
This guide will cover the absoloute basics, assuming you’re just getting boots off the ground and jumping into space.
You’ll need a ship, lucky for you the quest to start your path to Ace Pilot will grant you a free ship based on the faction you’ve chosen.
Now take note, each and every ship is a little bit different. The stats of the ship, its hardpoints and more are all dependant on the chassis. I’d recommend first checking on the wiki to find out what ship you have and what it can do. The wiki will be a fantastic resource going forward when looking at ships, how they fly and what combat role they will fill.
Lets assume you’ve picked the Rebel alliance for you’re first ship, though how to read the wiki info will apply across the board.
First to note is the ships Mass, this will limit the amount of parts the ship fits, more mass means bigger and stronger parts but we can worry about that later.
Next up we have weapon mounts, this tells us how many and what type of weapons we can slot into a ship. For the starter ships they will all allow 1 gun and 1 missile weapon.
Under that you’ll see what kind of Flight control droid the ship will use, either a flight computer or Astromech Droid. We’ll worry about droid commands in a later guide. For now just know this is where you’ll find the type you need for later.
Below that You find Acceleration and Deceleration, this is how responsive your throttle is to change, both increases and decreased in speed are altered by this number.
Next the Pitch, Yaw and Roll stats (normally referenced as PYRs) These stats control how fast a ship can turn in flight and are modifications to the base speed. Here, higher number means after response, slower means the ship will feel less responsive. You might hear people talking about a ship feeling “Boaty” normally this happens when a ship has very low PYRs and takes a long time to speed up into and slow down out of a turn.
Next the Throttle Profile, this is of critical importance for you to keep in mind while learning to fly a new ship. The profile of the ship determines how fast it needs to be to turn at its best. The example here is a ship with 70% throttle being 100% turning. This means the ship will need to slow from flight speed down to 70% of its max speed to turn as tight as it can. Generally speaking anything green in the throttle range is considered to be good and ships with large Green throttle zones will be referred to as having an “Open Throttle” meaning you’re free to speed up or slow down as needed while keeping a tight turn.
Last of importance is the hit box size. A bigger number means you’re easier to hit in space, smaller means the opponent needs a much more accurate shot to hit you.
And thats it, everything you need to know about you’re first ship and how to read the wiki to work out what ships you might like going forward.
We will talk later about different ship set ups and parts for other things, but for now check out you’re new ship, get some kills up in the Black and earn some EXP.
As always if you wish to level up quickly you can jump into our Discord and ask someone. If we’re online we’re more than happy to take new players up for some quick exp farming to get you through the early levels!
