PDF Acrobat Download Of this tutorial.
Mission 2 Walkthrough
I hope this is useful for some.
X3 Handling/Basic Key commands Tutorial:
Okay, to start with – this is going to go over the basic controls you’ll need to play the game. Others will come in time
The mouse: The new controller. It’s a point and click deal these days, anything with blue around it can be clicked to select it.
Left hand mouse button: Either fires the guns, or selects the target (toggles between the two due to RHMB functionality).
Right Hand Mouse Button: This is your “Free Flight Controller” – or, in more simple terms, your “Flight Lock”. Pressing the RHMB will alternate between the mouse controlling your free flight… and the mouse being a mouse (ie a device to click on items to select them).
When you are able to fly around nicely, you can move the mouse, and your ship will turn as per flight method for ships (so up is down and down is up…. Left and right remain the same
). You can also click the LHMB to fire your weapons.When you click the RHMB though – it “locks” the ships flight control so the ship won’t follow the mouse movements anymore. Now you will have a mouse cursor instead – which can be used to click and select items. You can select items such as anything surrounded by blue on the screen – or the little boxes at the edge of the screen (items behind you etc) by clicking your LHMB. It is also used to navigate the menu, which I will touch in one second.
To return the mouse function to being able to steer your ship – click the RHMB once more.
So – when flying around in space, if you see something –you can RHMB to stop your ship moving, and activate the cursor – and then click on the square around the item of interest to select it as your target, and then RHMB to return flight controls back to the mouse to steer.
You can also get the same effect by simply pointing your ship towards the item you want to target, and pressing T – which is the “Target” key. This will initiate a kind of “search” on your hud, for the item under the cross hairs.
Once an item is selected, the computer usually tells you what it is… if it’s a jumpgate, it will tell you where it goes to. If it’s a ship/station – it will give the name.
The Menu:
Menu = useful. You can do nearly anything here, search the maps, read messages etc. To access the menu – you press Enter. If you are in freeflight, then to navigate the menu you will need to press the RHMB to “lock” your steering, and activate the “point and click” cursor. Then you can use the mouse to navigate the menu/sub menus.
We’ll touch back onto the menu in due course – don’t worry. There is no point in me listing all the controls is there? The manual does that already – these are going to be linked to functionality.
Esc: The Esc button is a kind of “back” button. If you are in a menu, using Esc will take you back one screen. Keep hitting it to take you back to space etc.
Moving the ship:
Z, X - controls the engines. Hold X (if i remember) and you accelerate, hold Z and you de-accelerate. Once you hit 0, you can go slowly in reverse by continuing to hold Z down. So in effect, these are your throttle control.
Tab is like "instant X" - it is the booster (needs booster extension; installed by default on starting ship). Pressing this button accelerates the ship very quickly… in effect, you can get to max speed nearly immediately.
Backspace is like "instant Z" - its the immediate “slowdowner”. It actually sets throttle to 0 immediately, and you slow down to 0 in due course. It is a lot quicker than holding Z down, simply because throttle = 0, instead of decreasing through the numbers accordingly.
Okay, so those are the basic commands to move the ship. “Wha?” I hear you say, only forward/backwards? Well – for the moment, yes. You see – strafe is a great command, but at the start you may get confused hitting all these buttons – best to keep it simple right? For the first mission, we just have to get you moving – so with that in mind, a few shortcuts and a few menu items are next on the agenda.
Okay – moving quickly onwards:
Nav Map: For navigation!
My next two favourite buttons: the comma(,) and the full stop (.)
These open the nav maps respectively (shortcut keys). The fullstop does the sector map, the comma does the universe map, and I find using shortcuts a lot quicker than the menu (although I’ll cover that too). Click the full stop button, and up pops your present sector map (the one you are sat in). You can only see items like ships/stations in your radar range. Ships move, stations don’t… so therefore, if you see a station once, its position is “stored” on your nav map. It isn’t going to move, so even when no in radar range, you can still see the stations that are “stored” on the map.
The nav map is actually useful though, not just a “who is where” type device, because you can select targets. To navigate the map you can either: Use the mouse (you know how, see mouse controls) or use the keys… which I do. The arrow keys – move the selector up and down over the items of the nav map. As you do so, the colour of the items will change when the cursor moves over them. To select an item, you simply use T – which means target of course. Once you select an item, a few cheverons will appear to one side. If you close the nav map at this point (Esc button) – you will see your target reticule (white box) highlighting what you have targeted.
When you target something, you will hear a voice inform you of what it is.
Docking:
Dock with jumpgates to get to other sectors, or stations.
Very useful, as when you enter stations – it autosaves your progress. Of course, you can enter stations to trade, get news, jobs etc as well – but early in the game, and for new players – autosaving is very useful
Last thing you want to do is fly through a load of sectors, die and have to start again eh?To dock, you select your target – either by your hud screen as in the mouse control section, or alternatively – by targeting the item in the nav map (press the full stop .)
Once you target the item, be it a jumpgate or a station, simply press Shift D. You will hear some message from the computer, and your autopilot will engage. You can manually dock, but lets get crawling before trying to kill ourselves eh?
So you can open nav map, scroll down to either the jumpgate or station name – press T to select said item, press Esc to close the nav map… and then press Shift D to dock with it. Sounds long winded right? Well, you can always just click on the item, and press shift D, but how do you know what your clicking on? Especially if the station/jumpgate is in the distance.
The last thing – J – for Seta.
Seta is like the “fast forward”, it compresses time. If you are flying across a sector (especially on autopilot) – pressing J engages seta, which will essentially “speed up” the game, so you don’t sit there fore 20 mins in real time. You can deactivate it by hitting J once more, or pressing nearly any key. You hear a sound effect to know when it is activated, and on your screen you will see it above your speed bar stating how much seta you’ve got going on. The words disappear when Seta is disengaged etc.
That’s it… “wha?” – well, yes – that is it. That is all you need… to move with purpose. Hey – do you want all the commands in one go – you will get confused!?
Those controls will get you moving, which is what you will want to do in order to achieve the first mission right?
For the game:Quickstart I recommend – you get cash and a free ship too.
X3 Mission 1 Tutorial/Walkthrough - includes the keys to press/learn how to do things.
Spoiler
Show
.
You will start with a view of your ship in space, wait for the storyline to start with the speech. Ban Danna gives you some commands, and then it’s followed by a screen showing graphics of the jumpgates etc whilst saying what to do.
The patrol instructions were “Patrol are at the north gate of Home of Light, then go through the west gate to Red light, and then the south gate to cloudbase south west”.
After this – you get an incoming message which will give the details. However, this is a good introduction to the menu – so lets use it.
Press enter to bring up the menu screen, now to be able to click on the icons you will need to press RHMB to “Lock” the ship (stop free flight) so the cursor appears and you can move the cursor and click on the menus.
You will notice that although there are many selections, one has yellow writing underneath it. This is because there is something new waiting for you… a message. Click on the pilot icon (it will highlight when you hover over it) and it will take you to the pilot sub menu. You will now see that the icon for “messages” also has yellow writing, it is that upon which you must click. The message will appear in your HUD, for you to read. Clicking okay will close the message.
To navigate back through the menu you have several options.
1.Press Esc to go back down a menu level, press it twice to return to space.
2.You can click on the little arrow button to the RHS of the screen (with an X next to it, which will close the menu completely) you can click this twice, or click the X
3.If you hover over any of the main icons towards the bottom of the icon, a little arrow appears. Click on this to go down level.
I just use Esc, its quick and easy…
So you read the message, but is it much help? Well, your ship should still be “locked” so the mouse can still move, we need to get to Home of Light. To do this, you need to fly through a jumpgate. So – how to find it… well, it selected it at the start, so it may already be your target – BUT never pass an opportunity to learn your controls. I would therefore use the full stop button to open the nav map for Argon Prime.
*TIP* - At this point, I thought the radar was a bit small, and awkward. So I took the opportunity to dock at the Argon Equipment Dock instead. In the nav map, use the arrow keys or mouse to highlight the Argon equipment dock (click on it with mouse) – and then press T to select target. Now close the nav map (Esc) and press Shift D. I then used Seta to speed up the process. Once docked (it does it for your automatically), The menu will appear for the station. For now, we are only concerned with the “Trade” button – as this is where you can buy/sell goods that you have (and that the station has/needs).
Click on the trade button, and a new screen opens up in your hud. Items in red you cannot buy yet (not friendly enough), or take a cargo space your ship cannot handle (fighters have max cargo sizes, like S for small, M for medium, L for large. Generally you can take medium in an M4 (which is the shipclass of the buster).
You can scroll through the list using either the arrow keys, or the mouse on the scroll bar. Find the duplex scanner, and click on it. You should now see an empty square appear below the list of items. If you have it installed, that square would be full and blue. It is grey because you do not have it, so click to the RIGHT of the square (as in inside the square, but at the far right) and it should turn blue. This means you’ve selected it. You now need to click “Okay” to buy it.
Once installed, your radar is a lot better. At this point I also bought trading extension- otherwise you cannot command your ships to deal with statiosn remotely, which we can do later!. Use Esc to go back a menu item. You may wish to save your game here, or learn how to at least (autosave is enabled, but it doesn’t hurt). To do this, click the options tab, then click the save tab. You will be given a slot to use, click on it to save. You cannot rename it afaik, although maybe I am wrong – but now you can use Esc to get back to main menu again. Here, click undock. You will find that your ship is in “Locked” flight – so you can use the mouse cursor. Click the RHMB to get freeflight, and then move the mouse UP so that your ship will point DOWN. This is to avoid flying into the station by mistake. Once facing “down” from the station, start moving by using the X button to build up speed, or the Tab button to boost away. You will now need to find that SOUTH jumpgate, so open the nav map (.).
Now you can navigate the nav map by scrolling down with the mouse, or using the arrow keys to scroll through the items. There are A LOT, but near the bottom will be the jumpgates. Find the south gate – and either click on it, or highlight it. Press T to select it as your target. Now close the nav map (use Esc).
Eh, why south gate? It said north… – No, they are waiting at the north gate of Home of Light… you are in argon prime, and Home of light is through the south gate.
*TIP* You will notice that you have two items that are green on your nav map. These are your ships, more specifically – the ship you are currently in, and your free argon mercury that you start with. All your objects appear green and will be at the top of the navmap. Anything dangerous to you will appear red, as well as red on your actual HUD. They will also appear at the top of the nav map too. We’ll give instructions to that ship shortly…
Okay, so you have selected the gate – now you need to fly towards it! Remember you will need “Free Flight” to turn your ship, so hit RHMB to toggle to free flight first – allowing your mouse to control your ships direction again.
You can either:
1.Press X to increase speed and turn towards it/fly to it.
2.Press Tab to speed you up suddenly and turn towards it/fly to it.
3.Press Shift D – which is “Dock with target”, and the autopilot will do it for you.
Okay, if you fly manually – you will have to fly into the ring when you get there. If you use autopilot – it will do it all for you.
Time for a new button though – J, which controls the SETA function. Space time compression is what this basically is, or in laymans terms – the fast forward button. Useful for using on autopilot, as when seta is engaged you can literally drop out of it by pressing buttons/moving the mouse about. If using autopilot you can cancel free flight and navigate menus though. I strongly suggest not using seta without autopilot, and locking your controls off (RHMB) because it takes time to react, and you may not have that much time if you are flying towards something. Autopilot will avoid obstacles, so you needn’t worry.
Much faster with seta eh?
Once you go through that jumpgate, the storyline starts again – as you are contacted by the patrol leader. He tells you that he is to the west of the gate, and afterwards your target is set as him. Fly towards them (remember you may need to toggle free flight if it was locked/you used autopilot, toggle is RHMB). You can check he is the target by using the nav map (.), and then seeing if he has chevrons next to his item in the nav map menu. His name is Gamma patrol leader, you can select him or any others using T, try it.
Okay – so you are flying towards them – so now its time to view that central cross hairs on the HUD. It gives information about your target, you may have noticed before. Anyway – on the RIGHT hand side of the hud is YOUR speed.. your current speed. Max (in quick start) is 175, so if you are not already doing this – you can increase to that speed if you wish. To the LEFT of the cross hair is another value, set at 0 right now. This is your targets speed, and you will notice when you follow the patrol that it takes the value of whomever you’ve targeted. They may fly around 145 or something like that, but right now they are sat waiting for you.
BELOW the cross hair is the range to your target, keep close eyes on this – you don’t want to ram them (it may kill you), and in space – it takes time to stop!! You may want to moderate (lower) your speed as you get closer.
You may also note that the window in the top left hand corner is a camera view of your target. It also displays the distance to the target as well. You can close this if you wish, by pressing F5 I think.
Once you get within 2k of the target (gamma patrol leader), a cutscene will occur – or he will start talking. They will move out, and you will follow them. Gamma patrol leader will still be your target, but note the cross hairs display his speed, and yours. Try to match his speed by using z/x in order to follow slightly behind them.
At this point, it’s a good idea to introduce you to the targeting method. Your target has a box around them, which is white. This is for both good guys and bad, the only difference being that if bad – they have a red box instead of blue surrounding it. You may have no cursor over the target though, it may just be a box. If you press K it will cycle the targeting options. Looking to the left hand side, where the weapons are – you will be able to see a little icon change (near the bottom). It is either a - sign (no help), a little x – which displays a standard leading target crosshair, or a * – which is great. If you select this, you will notice that Gamma pilot leader has this thick blue cross hair infront of his movements (or over him). If you move your target over this, it will start to flash red. This is “target assisted” aiming for want of a better word, and is due to the fight command software installed on your ship. When that little icon is flashing away, you will hit your target.
I mention this now, because you should have this done for your first Khaak encounter – which is coming right up *gulp*.
They will mention checking your nav map, and sure enough – there are a load of lil blighters inbound. You can open your nav map if you wish, and then select a target, OR – you can note that at the side of the screen you can see a load of little red boxes. This is the enemy, and they are out of your field of view. Doesn’t mean you cannot click on one to select it (don’t forget, to do this you may need to RHMB click in order to “lock” your ship, then move the mouse cursor to the red squares and LHMB to select one, followed by a RHMB to toggle back to free flight). If you use the nav map, its easier ( use . to open nav map, arrow keys to scroll down to target, press T to select the target, and then press esc to close the window. Turn to face the enemy with your ship, or simply follow your patrol leader as they go in. The story MAY set your target for you (it did for me, because I was writing down what was going on instead
).
Fly towards them, and use your LHMB to open fire. Be warned, you do not have unlimited energy, and you will eat through the energy available very quickly – so fire in bursts. Only fire when your crosshair is flashing to indicate you will hit them. Once you blow a target up, I usually just turn towards the nearest target (red box) and press T. It may take a second or two to acquire the target – and check that the target you get IS red (an enemy). Alternatively, you can press E to get the nearest target, but that doesn’t necessarily mean the one you are facing of course (hence why I use the T method instead).
One the Khaak have been eliminated, you’ll hear some speech, and then a target of the gate will be selected. You can fly towards the gate, or you can follow Gamma patrol leader by using the nav map. OR – you could just try RHMB to lock view, and then LHMB click to select the guy (be careful, if view not locked off you will fire!). Whichever you do – start following him (or fly straight to the gate). Notice if you RHMB to toggle to locked screen, and hover the mouse over Gamma patrol leader, that some little icons appear? One is chat (speech bubble) and the other is “follow”. You can click on follow for the autopilot to take over and follow him for you, or click speech to hear some little comment etc. To break Autopilot, just RHMB and you will hear the autopilot switched off.
Anyway, however you do it – go through that gate into Red Light.
Gamma leader is autoselected for you, so follow him.
You’ll get in another fight in this sector too, but it’s nothing heavy – you know what to do right?
After the fight, the gate is autoselected for Cloudbase Southwest – you only have to fly through it to complete the mission (yay!). A good time to use your autodock – so use SHIFT D, and the autopilot will take over.
You will start with a view of your ship in space, wait for the storyline to start with the speech. Ban Danna gives you some commands, and then it’s followed by a screen showing graphics of the jumpgates etc whilst saying what to do.
The patrol instructions were “Patrol are at the north gate of Home of Light, then go through the west gate to Red light, and then the south gate to cloudbase south west”.
After this – you get an incoming message which will give the details. However, this is a good introduction to the menu – so lets use it.
Press enter to bring up the menu screen, now to be able to click on the icons you will need to press RHMB to “Lock” the ship (stop free flight) so the cursor appears and you can move the cursor and click on the menus.
You will notice that although there are many selections, one has yellow writing underneath it. This is because there is something new waiting for you… a message. Click on the pilot icon (it will highlight when you hover over it) and it will take you to the pilot sub menu. You will now see that the icon for “messages” also has yellow writing, it is that upon which you must click. The message will appear in your HUD, for you to read. Clicking okay will close the message.
To navigate back through the menu you have several options.
1.Press Esc to go back down a menu level, press it twice to return to space.
2.You can click on the little arrow button to the RHS of the screen (with an X next to it, which will close the menu completely) you can click this twice, or click the X
3.If you hover over any of the main icons towards the bottom of the icon, a little arrow appears. Click on this to go down level.
I just use Esc, its quick and easy…
So you read the message, but is it much help? Well, your ship should still be “locked” so the mouse can still move, we need to get to Home of Light. To do this, you need to fly through a jumpgate. So – how to find it… well, it selected it at the start, so it may already be your target – BUT never pass an opportunity to learn your controls. I would therefore use the full stop button to open the nav map for Argon Prime.
*TIP* - At this point, I thought the radar was a bit small, and awkward. So I took the opportunity to dock at the Argon Equipment Dock instead. In the nav map, use the arrow keys or mouse to highlight the Argon equipment dock (click on it with mouse) – and then press T to select target. Now close the nav map (Esc) and press Shift D. I then used Seta to speed up the process. Once docked (it does it for your automatically), The menu will appear for the station. For now, we are only concerned with the “Trade” button – as this is where you can buy/sell goods that you have (and that the station has/needs).
Click on the trade button, and a new screen opens up in your hud. Items in red you cannot buy yet (not friendly enough), or take a cargo space your ship cannot handle (fighters have max cargo sizes, like S for small, M for medium, L for large. Generally you can take medium in an M4 (which is the shipclass of the buster).
You can scroll through the list using either the arrow keys, or the mouse on the scroll bar. Find the duplex scanner, and click on it. You should now see an empty square appear below the list of items. If you have it installed, that square would be full and blue. It is grey because you do not have it, so click to the RIGHT of the square (as in inside the square, but at the far right) and it should turn blue. This means you’ve selected it. You now need to click “Okay” to buy it.
Once installed, your radar is a lot better. At this point I also bought trading extension- otherwise you cannot command your ships to deal with statiosn remotely, which we can do later!. Use Esc to go back a menu item. You may wish to save your game here, or learn how to at least (autosave is enabled, but it doesn’t hurt). To do this, click the options tab, then click the save tab. You will be given a slot to use, click on it to save. You cannot rename it afaik, although maybe I am wrong – but now you can use Esc to get back to main menu again. Here, click undock. You will find that your ship is in “Locked” flight – so you can use the mouse cursor. Click the RHMB to get freeflight, and then move the mouse UP so that your ship will point DOWN. This is to avoid flying into the station by mistake. Once facing “down” from the station, start moving by using the X button to build up speed, or the Tab button to boost away. You will now need to find that SOUTH jumpgate, so open the nav map (.).
Now you can navigate the nav map by scrolling down with the mouse, or using the arrow keys to scroll through the items. There are A LOT, but near the bottom will be the jumpgates. Find the south gate – and either click on it, or highlight it. Press T to select it as your target. Now close the nav map (use Esc).
Eh, why south gate? It said north… – No, they are waiting at the north gate of Home of Light… you are in argon prime, and Home of light is through the south gate.
*TIP* You will notice that you have two items that are green on your nav map. These are your ships, more specifically – the ship you are currently in, and your free argon mercury that you start with. All your objects appear green and will be at the top of the navmap. Anything dangerous to you will appear red, as well as red on your actual HUD. They will also appear at the top of the nav map too. We’ll give instructions to that ship shortly…
Okay, so you have selected the gate – now you need to fly towards it! Remember you will need “Free Flight” to turn your ship, so hit RHMB to toggle to free flight first – allowing your mouse to control your ships direction again.
You can either:
1.Press X to increase speed and turn towards it/fly to it.
2.Press Tab to speed you up suddenly and turn towards it/fly to it.
3.Press Shift D – which is “Dock with target”, and the autopilot will do it for you.
Okay, if you fly manually – you will have to fly into the ring when you get there. If you use autopilot – it will do it all for you.
Time for a new button though – J, which controls the SETA function. Space time compression is what this basically is, or in laymans terms – the fast forward button. Useful for using on autopilot, as when seta is engaged you can literally drop out of it by pressing buttons/moving the mouse about. If using autopilot you can cancel free flight and navigate menus though. I strongly suggest not using seta without autopilot, and locking your controls off (RHMB) because it takes time to react, and you may not have that much time if you are flying towards something. Autopilot will avoid obstacles, so you needn’t worry.
Much faster with seta eh?
Once you go through that jumpgate, the storyline starts again – as you are contacted by the patrol leader. He tells you that he is to the west of the gate, and afterwards your target is set as him. Fly towards them (remember you may need to toggle free flight if it was locked/you used autopilot, toggle is RHMB). You can check he is the target by using the nav map (.), and then seeing if he has chevrons next to his item in the nav map menu. His name is Gamma patrol leader, you can select him or any others using T, try it.
Okay – so you are flying towards them – so now its time to view that central cross hairs on the HUD. It gives information about your target, you may have noticed before. Anyway – on the RIGHT hand side of the hud is YOUR speed.. your current speed. Max (in quick start) is 175, so if you are not already doing this – you can increase to that speed if you wish. To the LEFT of the cross hair is another value, set at 0 right now. This is your targets speed, and you will notice when you follow the patrol that it takes the value of whomever you’ve targeted. They may fly around 145 or something like that, but right now they are sat waiting for you.
BELOW the cross hair is the range to your target, keep close eyes on this – you don’t want to ram them (it may kill you), and in space – it takes time to stop!! You may want to moderate (lower) your speed as you get closer.
You may also note that the window in the top left hand corner is a camera view of your target. It also displays the distance to the target as well. You can close this if you wish, by pressing F5 I think.
Once you get within 2k of the target (gamma patrol leader), a cutscene will occur – or he will start talking. They will move out, and you will follow them. Gamma patrol leader will still be your target, but note the cross hairs display his speed, and yours. Try to match his speed by using z/x in order to follow slightly behind them.
At this point, it’s a good idea to introduce you to the targeting method. Your target has a box around them, which is white. This is for both good guys and bad, the only difference being that if bad – they have a red box instead of blue surrounding it. You may have no cursor over the target though, it may just be a box. If you press K it will cycle the targeting options. Looking to the left hand side, where the weapons are – you will be able to see a little icon change (near the bottom). It is either a - sign (no help), a little x – which displays a standard leading target crosshair, or a * – which is great. If you select this, you will notice that Gamma pilot leader has this thick blue cross hair infront of his movements (or over him). If you move your target over this, it will start to flash red. This is “target assisted” aiming for want of a better word, and is due to the fight command software installed on your ship. When that little icon is flashing away, you will hit your target.
I mention this now, because you should have this done for your first Khaak encounter – which is coming right up *gulp*.
They will mention checking your nav map, and sure enough – there are a load of lil blighters inbound. You can open your nav map if you wish, and then select a target, OR – you can note that at the side of the screen you can see a load of little red boxes. This is the enemy, and they are out of your field of view. Doesn’t mean you cannot click on one to select it (don’t forget, to do this you may need to RHMB click in order to “lock” your ship, then move the mouse cursor to the red squares and LHMB to select one, followed by a RHMB to toggle back to free flight). If you use the nav map, its easier ( use . to open nav map, arrow keys to scroll down to target, press T to select the target, and then press esc to close the window. Turn to face the enemy with your ship, or simply follow your patrol leader as they go in. The story MAY set your target for you (it did for me, because I was writing down what was going on instead
). Fly towards them, and use your LHMB to open fire. Be warned, you do not have unlimited energy, and you will eat through the energy available very quickly – so fire in bursts. Only fire when your crosshair is flashing to indicate you will hit them. Once you blow a target up, I usually just turn towards the nearest target (red box) and press T. It may take a second or two to acquire the target – and check that the target you get IS red (an enemy). Alternatively, you can press E to get the nearest target, but that doesn’t necessarily mean the one you are facing of course (hence why I use the T method instead).
One the Khaak have been eliminated, you’ll hear some speech, and then a target of the gate will be selected. You can fly towards the gate, or you can follow Gamma patrol leader by using the nav map. OR – you could just try RHMB to lock view, and then LHMB click to select the guy (be careful, if view not locked off you will fire!). Whichever you do – start following him (or fly straight to the gate). Notice if you RHMB to toggle to locked screen, and hover the mouse over Gamma patrol leader, that some little icons appear? One is chat (speech bubble) and the other is “follow”. You can click on follow for the autopilot to take over and follow him for you, or click speech to hear some little comment etc. To break Autopilot, just RHMB and you will hear the autopilot switched off.
Anyway, however you do it – go through that gate into Red Light.
Gamma leader is autoselected for you, so follow him.
You’ll get in another fight in this sector too, but it’s nothing heavy – you know what to do right?
After the fight, the gate is autoselected for Cloudbase Southwest – you only have to fly through it to complete the mission (yay!). A good time to use your autodock – so use SHIFT D, and the autopilot will take over.
For this, RHMB to toggle onto LOCKED ship, and brings up the mouse cursor. Press ENTER to open your menu, and then click on PROPERTY. You will see two green boxes – signifying that you have two ships (there names are in them). One is asterixed with player control, the other is still sat in space. We are going to remotely order it to dock at the equipment dock (for when you return). Either click on it, or use the arrow keys to highlight it – and a sub window will open. This window has several shortcut keys to open other sub menus to control the ship – we want command (C is the shortcut key for this, so you can press it, or click the option, or use the arrow keys and enter) - then we want the navigation (not fight). Click on that, and then you should see the commands available for it. The second one (number 2) is “Dock at…” – if you select this one, it will open the UNIVERSE map up, with the current sector you are resting on flashing white. Use the arrow keys, or the mouse – and click on Argon Prime. You will now see the System Nav map open. From here, you can select where to dock it at. Which ever station you click on, or use the Arrow keys to highlight and then press enter, will be the place it will dock at (no need to use T here).
Once done, the ship will accept the command, and you can press Esc to cycle back through all the menus to space.
There is another way to do this, from space, you can use the , to open the universe map, and then once more either click on Argon Prime, or move the flashing box over it and press enter. You will now see the system map, with your ship as well. Highligh/click your ship (press enter if using arrow keys) to get to the command screens again. Select command (C), navigation and dock at – you can tell it where to dock at (it opens universe map again, click the system of choice (argon prime) and then the station of choice),
That is your mercury, it will be safely docked at the equipment dock in a few minutes. These are the two methods you can control ships remotely. If the ship is already docked, then you can select the station it is docked at via the universe/system map (click the station or highlight and press enter using arrow keys), and then press L (or click on the landed ships option). You should now see the ships landed, which includes your ship too – and you can select him and use the commands once more). You can still access it via the menu method as well.
Once docked, if you did buy yourself the trading system extension, you can select the ship to "trade with station" and buy equipment. If he were docked at an SPP factory, then he could buy produce (Ecells), and you could command him to sell things he may have bought elsewhere (like crystals). If you didn't buy this extension earlier, you will need to do so in order to control the purchase of items without actually being there.
If you have money to spare, its always good to buy navigation and trading software for ships like freighters.
This is just a quick introduction to controls and how to fly around. Right now you can fly to any sector by selecting the jumpgates via your nav map, can turn on/off the autopilot, Can fight, dock with stations, trade items simply etc.
See this tutorial by Pixel in order to configure your weapons here
I may add more if this is found useful, and refine/improve it if people have suggestions. Later I may write about the missiles, the weapon system and more information about trading with stations - as well as further commands for your ships, what upgrades will do what etc etc.
Mission 3 tip
Spoiler
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Buy E-Cells before going to Farnhams Legend, you will need them to fuel your jumpdrive if you don't have any/enough
The new controls are great and since I never played X2 it would be no benefit going back to the old interface. Plus the above tutorial uses the new interface. Stick with yer old stuff if you like but I like the new interface 