Tips and tricks

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Tips for new players

General

• Press [ to accept requests and ] to decline them. If you’re playing on a different keyboard layout, use the keys in the same position.
• Set your respawn point to the station above your starting location. That speeds up your takeoffs and landings enormously.
• When you’re operating a screen, you can focus on it with the middle mouse button. Then you can scroll without zooming!
• F12 turns off the chat.
• Use the helpful community tools.
• Star Citizen has a guide system that pairs you with an experienced player. Find a suitable guide in the Spectrum guide section.

Food and drink

• Buy a few bottles of Cruz Lux, they fix your thirst and hunger at the same time.
• When you’re holding a bottle, hold Left click to drink the whole bottle in one go.
• Drink past 100 % hydration. Then you won’t be thirsty for a longer time.
• Can’t eat or drink? The solution is in the FAQ.

FPS

• Mercenary missions help you gear up at the start.
• Press L-Alt + X to wipe your helmet when your visor fogs up.
• Press L-Alt + 1 to refill your magazines.
• Buy an Anvil C8R Pisces Rescue from Astro Armada in Area18 for 555,660 aUEC. You can use the medical bed on board for respawns when you’re doing FPS contracts.
• Use weapon attachments, they improve your weapon considerably. Buy them in weapon shops, but you’ll find the best ones in the Contested Zones.
• Use MedPens even if you have a MedGun. They heal you much faster when you’re in combat.

Zero-g

• To move through the vacuum quickly and easily, use a tractor beam. With Right click it latches onto heavy objects and pulls you there quickly.
  • Short pushes off different objects let you steer your trajectory and your speed.
• Hold X to stop in the vacuum.

Your ship

• Use Arena Commander if you want to start right in your spaceship and work on your flying skills a bit.
• Hold N in the hangar to land automatically.
• Hold F in the cockpit to interact with the displays (MFDs).
  • Click the arrows on the right and left to cycle through the available screens.
  • You can also change settings for the ship HUD via an MFD.
  • Advanced HUD gives you more information about your ship.
• Ship weapons with high projectile velocity hit your target much more reliably.
• If you’ve swapped your ship components on the go, insure your current loadout at the ASOP terminal with Insure Loadout. Only then do you get your ship back with the new components when you claim it.
• If you fly alone in a ship with turrets, remove the turret weapons. That gives you more power for the weapons you can actually control yourself.
• Your ship accelerates best forwards. So if you want to stop quickly, turn 180° and hold X.
  • Some ships have a VTOL mode, activated with K. The engines rotate downwards to help with takeoff and landing. That improves your vertical acceleration straight up.
• Press L-Alt + C to automatically hold the set speed. That’s shown by a C in the speed display.
  • Use W and S to set the speed to hold.
  • If cruise control won’t turn on, the FAQ will help you out.

Stealth mechanics

In the Power Management MFD you can see your own signature. On the left is the heat signature IR, in the middle the electromagnetic signature EM and on the right your cross-section signature CS. The lower these emission values, the closer another ship has to be to detect you.

• Stealth components have lower performance, but also give off far fewer emissions.
• You can turn off individual components you don’t need in the MFD to reduce your detection radius.
  • For example, turn off your shields and weapons while mining or doing salvage, that lowers your emissions considerably.
• If you don’t want to turn a component off completely, you can also just lower its power. That helps too.
• Below the signatures you can see the ambient noise. This value is subtracted from your signature.
• The cross-section signature depends on the size of your ship, but also on the side you’re showing the enemy. You can lower it, for example, by turning your nose towards the enemy.
• If you have to cover a long distance, switch to decoupled mode. As soon as you let off the throttle, your IR emissions drop, but your speed stays the same.

Making money at the start

To make good money right from the start, hauling missions from the station to the planet are a good fit. For example like this:

1. 1

   Choose a freighter

   Take a medium freighter like the Freelancer, the Cutlass or the Golem Ox.
2. 2

   Fly to Baijini Point

   Fly to Baijini Point station above Area18, ArcCorp.
3. 3

   Accept missions

   Start all the jobs in the Hauling-Planetary category there that go from Baijini Point to Riker Memorial Spaceport and pay about 50,000 aUEC. You can accept six of these missions at the same time.
4. 4

   Load everything at once

   Load all the goods in one go.
5. 5

   Fly to the spaceport

   Fly the cargo to Riker Memorial Spaceport. That’s a quick 300,000 aUEC.

Careers

Hauling

• Land your hauling ship with its cargo area next to the freight elevator. That saves you time loading and unloading.
• If you’re carrying valuable cargo, avoid OM points, since pirates often wait there.
• If you want to fly a heavily used route, first jump to any destination off to the side. Cancel the jump after a short while with Left click and jump to your final destination. That way you avoid an ambush.
• If you lose some cargo during a hauling mission, for example because of a bug, you can still complete the mission in your mobiGlas.

You can read everything else about this career in the hauling guide.

Mining

• If you have a Prospector, buy four Mole bags to increase its ore capacity. Swap them in your hangar with a tractor beam.
• If you arrive at a refinery station with Quantanium ore on board, store your ship. That extends the time until your cargo blows up.
• A patch deletes your running refinery jobs. Pick them up beforehand.

You can read everything else about this career in the ship mining guide.

Salvage

• Scan the ship before you start. In the MFD you can see the cargo and components, as well as the status of the shields.
• Take a close look at the components and weapons. Maybe it’s worth removing them and selling them or using them yourself. To do that, sit in the pilot seat and press R-Alt + K. Now you can pull everything off with the tractor beam.
• If you want to strip a ship’s hull, first deactivate its shield with O.
• If you want to salvage the ship completely, power it down entirely with U.

You can read everything else about this career in the salvage guide.