The purpose of this guide is to get you familiar with Starfighter and help you earn your first 50,000 credits and your first 25 kills or so. After that, you're on your own but at least you'll have a very solid foundation for starting out.

Starting Screens, Buying a Ship

OK, first create an account, select Human, and get logged in. You'll see this screen to start:

Look closely at #1 and #2. You'll be using these options a lot, particularly to start. The mission selector is how you get missions. Missions are the easiest way to make money, so you'll be taking a lot of them. #2 is your shop. This is where you buy your ship, your weapons, and upgrades for your ship such as utilities and new engines. This is also where you buy new lives, as you lose them.

You're currently docked at a space station. #3 is how you leave. A lot of new players seem to miss this option for some reason. Don't feel bad. I missed it too, when I first started out. But don't leave the space station just yet. Let's buy your first new ship.

Select option #2 (Go to Shop). You'll see this screen:

#1 is where you buy new ships. #2 is where you buy new lives as you lose them. #3 is where you exit the shop. On this screen, select #1 (Change Ship). You'll see this screen:

These are the various ships you have access to. As you score kills (kill bad guys in the game), you will unlock additional ships. You can only have one ship at a time and once you buy a new ship, you lose your old ship and all its upgrades. So don't buy a new ship until you have the money to buy all the weapons and upgrades you want for it. However, when you buy a new ship, your lives reset back to 10, so sometimes this is a good way to get a fresh start.

The ship marked #1 is the Pegasus. Click on it and you'll see a close-up picture of the ship and all of its statistics, and at the bottom, the price (it should be 250 credits to upgrade to this ship). Don't worry about the stats yet. You can learn these later as you learn more about the game. Just trust me: this is the ship you want to learn the game in. Buy it (yellow "Buy") at the bottom. You can't afford any utilities or weapons yet, so don't worry about these for now. Let's just learn to fly our new ship a bit. Exit the shop, then Exit the Space Station.

Learning to Fly

Now you see this screen:

This is where you play most of the game. Use your arrow keys to fly around a bit. Get used to your ship. On the upper right is your shield display, and below it a report of hostiles and friendlies in the sector. Red arrows will point to any hostiles nearby, but ignore them. Your allies will blow them up for you, and you don't want to get into any fights yet. The radar display is right below that. Also, look for an orange arrow. This points at the closest asteroid. First, we're going to do some mining to get used to flying around and making a little money. Hit the forward arrow to start moving forward, then steer to the closest asteroid until the range by the orange arrow drops below 500. Wiggle a bit (use left-right arrow) and your ship will lock onto the asteroid. The asteroid will appear in the upper left, with an orange bar. Now hit the "Z" key several times. You'll notice the orange bar drop, and on the top of the screen, the "Mining" number will go up. Keep hitting Z until the orange bar drops to nothing. Now fly back to the space station (white arrow). You'll notice that your "Mining" number drops to 0 and your "Money" number will go up. Go to the next closest asteroid (orange arrow) and repeat the process.

You'll notice every time you hit Z to fire your mining laser, your energy will drop a bit. Most weapons use energy. If your energy drops to 0, then you have to wait -- it will slowly recharge. Mine all the asteroids in the sector, then hit Q to dock with the space station. Immediately exit the space station and go out mining again. Ignore any enemy ships (or run away from them). Your Pegasus is the fastest ship in the game, so they shouldn't be able to catch you. Every time you run out of energy or if you don't see an orange arrow, go back to the base and dock, then immediately exit again to continue. Keep mining until you have over 2000 money. This should take you about 10 minutes.

Your First Mission

Got your 2000? Good. Go back to the shop, and click the "Buy" next to your "Utilities". At the bottom will be a Utility called "Engine Overdrive." Buy it. It will cost 2000 credits. Your Pegasus will be outfitted with this massive engine utility, almost covering your whole ship.

Now that you have it, ready to make some serious money? OK, let's go on a mission. Exit the shop, then click "Go to Mission Selector". You'll see a screen that looks like this:

You're looking for a mission that looks like #1: a "Courier" mission that pays 750 credits. If you don't see one right away, click "More Missions" at the bottom until you do. There are an infinite number of missions, so don't worry about running out. When you find a Courier mission that pays 750, click "Accept", then Exit Space Station. Now you have a blue arrow. The blue arrow is pointing to where your Courier mission will end. Hit the "3" key to activate your Engine Overdrive, then hit the "P" key. This is your auto-pilot. It will fly you in the direction of your Courier mission. Now hit "Z" to activate your Engine Overdrive. ZOOOM. You'll rocket across the sector until you hit a green "edge of sector" line. You'll then cross into a new sector. Every time you enter a new sector, just hit "3", then "Z". Stay on auto-pilot, crossing sector after sector. Ignore any enemies. You don't have the weapons to fight with.

Eventually, you'll reach your target sector, you'll see "autopilot disengaged" at the bottom of the screen, and there will be a new blue arrow. Follow it to a new space station. You can't auto-pilot inside a sector. If you happen to pass an asteroid, go ahead and mine it. To do so, hit "0" to switch to your mining laser, then "Z" to mine, just like before. If you're attacked in this new sector, hit "3", then "Z", then hold down the forward arrow to run away. When you reach the space station, hit "Q" to dock, and boom. You just made a fast 750 credits. This should take you about 5 minutes.

Your First Weapon, Your First Kills

Now that you're back to base, let's buy a weapon. Go to the shop, and click "Buy" next to your first weapon slot. You'll see this screen:

There are lots of weapons, and you can learn how they all work later. For now, just buy the weapon I've marked with the #1, the "Type 3 Stinger Torpedo". This will cost you 500 credits. You'll now see your ship has a little blue missile under the left wing. You can now defend yourself. Exit from the Shop, and go back to the mission selector. Now that you've completed your first mission, there should be more profitable Courier missions available. In particular, you should find one that pays 1750 credits. This is a Courier mission where you will probably get ambushed on the way. Don't worry. You have a good weapon to defend yourself with. Go ahead and Accept a 1750 credit Courier mission, then exit the space station.

Every ship has a basic laser cannon. You fire it with the space bar. It's a decent weapon, but very short range. Your new type 3 stingers have a range of 10000. This is the longest range weapon in the game. We'll learn how to fire it in a second. For now, let's get going. Hit "P" to go on auto-pilot, then hit "3", then "Z" to get on your way. Ignore any sector that has both friendlies and hostiles, or any sector with friendlies only. Just rocket through, staying on auto-pilot.

Wait until you reach a sector with no friendlies, but a lots of hostiles. (If on your first 1750 credit Courier mission, this never happens, great! Accept the money, accept a new Courier mission worth a lot of money, and come back to this tutorial.) When you get ambushed, it will look like this:

Notice right above the radar: 7 hostiles, 0 friendlies. This is an ambush. You'll get ambushed a lot. Initially, the bad guys will be drones, the weakest alien enemy. Hit "P" to turn off your auto-pilot, then hit back arrow to slow to a stop. Now hit "1" to activate your stinger torpedoes. The red arrow will point the way to the closest enemy. When the number next to it drops to 10000, wiggle your wings a little bit, and the missile will lock. It will look like this:

Hit the "Z" key twice and you'll see two stingers race away from your ship. Wait about five or six seconds, and the drone will explode. You won't see it, but your Kills score on the bottom right will go up by 1, and you'll see "Destroyed an enemy Drone" on your status window on bottom. Your missiles will lock onto a new drone. Hit the "Z" key twice again, wait five seconds for the missiles to hit and kill the drone, and repeat until they're all dead. You might have to back up slowly (back arrow key) to keep from getting swarmed. Mid-battle, it will look like this:

You make 10-20 credits for each drone you kill at this level. This is called Bounty, and is displayed at the top of the screen. Bounty is paid when you return to base. Fire only two stingers at each drone! That's all that's needed to kill them. You should end the battle with 1 stinger left. Hit "P" to turn auto-pilot back on, then "3", then "Z" to activate Engine Overdrive, and get out of this sector. Your missiles reset to full ammo (15, for type 3 stingers) when you enter a new sector. If you're ambushed again, just repeat what's above to kill the new ambush. When you reach the sector as your base, you'll see the auto-pilot disengage. Hit "3" and "Z" and steer yourself back to base (blue arrow), and hit "Q" to dock. Congratulations! You just got your first kills.

Gimme That Laser Beam!

Repeat these Courier missions a few times until you have 3000 credits. Then go to the shop, click on the "Buy" next to your weapon #2, and buy a Laser Beam (it's right above the type 3 stingers you bought earlier). This is a very powerful starting weapon. Your ship should now look like this:

The red dot under your right wing is your laser beam emitter. This weapon has a range of 500, and is for close-up dog-fighting. It uses a lot of energy (30% per shot), but will kill a drone in one shot. Your energy will then slowly regenerate. Take it out for a spin! Take another Courier mission, wait to be ambushed, then use your type 3 stingers to kill every drone except one. Let that drone come in close, run toward it, let it pass you (you'll probably be shot at a couple of times -- try to dodge!), then turn around and get behind it. Now hit "2" to activate your Laser Beam. Get within 500, wiggle your wings a bit, and the laser will lock. Now it should look like this:

Hit "Z" and kill it! It will explode quite satisfactorily. It will also leave behind a little bonus. That might look like this:

The bonuses that are dropped do various things. A red cross refills your shields to max. A blue lightning bolt refills your energy to max. A box with both refills both. A small green "A" reloads one random weapon or utility. A small brown "AA" refills them all. And a little black euro symbol gives extra Bounty. If you don't need the bonus, you won't pick it up. For instance, if you're already at 100% energy, nothing will happen when you pass over a blue lightning bolt bonus.

As you fly around doing Courier missions, you'll start running into new enemies. Instead of ambushes, these will be one or two hostiles in a sector, usually larger alien ships. Type 3 stingers do about 10-12 shield damage, so you can try the stingers out on them, or get close and use your laser beam, which does about 45-50 damage. Try killing aliens that don't look too hard (100 or so shield), to start. Your Pegasus only has a 50 shield, so don't try anything bigger than this yet!

You might get killed once or twice along the way. Don't worry about this too much, but don't let your lives drop below 5 or so! If they do, buy lives at the shop. Also, some sectors have black holes in them. If you get destroyed by an "undefined", that's what you found. Sector 11-6 is one such sector that the game might want you to pass through while doing Courier missions. It's got a black hole in it. You can steer around it if you're careful. Keep running Courier missions, killing ambushes (practice your dog-fighting and manuevering each time!), and mining the occasional rock that runs across your path. As you get more confident, try dog-fighting for real. Get in behind a drone and try to kill it with the space bar laser beam. It takes two shots in a row to kill a drone; the space bar laser beam does about 8 damage per hit, but the drone's shield will regenerate, just like yours. This is good practice, because all the best weapons in Starfighter are unguided. Keep doing Courier missions until you make 10,000 credits.

Buy a Hyperdrive

Now let's enter the big-time! It's time to skip this traveling through sectors. Why travel real-time when you can instantly jump where you want to go? Go to the shop, and click the "Buy" next to your main engine, near the bottom of the screen right above your Lives count. You'll get a new screen and it will look like this:

Buy the engine that costs 10,000, exit from the Shop, and find a good Courier mission. Accept it, then exit the space station. Now we're gonna have some fun. Click "W" to bring up the hyperspace map. It will look like this:

Your current sector will be a slowly flashing white square. The target sector for your Courier mission is a solid light blue square. Click on Hyperspace on the upper right, then click on the sector with the light blue square. Your ship will turn, accelerate to impressive speeds, then boom! You will be instantly transported to your target sector. Drive to the base (blue arrow) and claim your Courier mission bounty. Elapsed time, about 30 seconds. Cool, huh? Dock with the base, take another Courier mission, then repeat this process to make LOADS of cash. Your hyperspace engine requires 60 seconds to recharge after you use it once. Many Courier missions will start requiring you to make two stops, one stop to pick up cargo, another to drop it off. Use hyperspace, pass over the station to pick up the cargo, wait 60 seconds, then hyperspace to the destination. You can do some mining while you wait, or attack any enemies that come near.

Pegasus plus a hyperspace engnine is one of the fastest ways to make money in Starfighter. Now that you have it, you can make 25,000 credits in under 15 minutes.

Your Second Ship, Your Second 25,000 Credits

After you have 25,000 credits or so, consider buying a second ship. A good second ship is the Chariot. It's the first ship in the second row. It's as fast as the Pegasus, but carries four main weapons instead of two. This will let you experiment with some of the other weapons. The downside: it has a terrible turn radius and is not for dog-fighting! If you like dog-fighting, then try the Astro Fighter or the Argonaut Bomber instead. The Astro is the most maneuverable ship in the game, but is very slow. The Argonaut is faster (though not as fast as the Chariot or the Pegasus) and will let you experiment with mines, which are weapons that drop from the back of your ship.

Something to keep in mind: as your ship gets more expensive, the Engines required for that ship also get more expensive, as do the cost of buying new Lives. In fact, everything you add to a ship increases the cost of Lives for that ship, including upgraded Mining Lasers and the like.

Once you buy a new ship, you lose all of your engine upgrades, weapons, and utilities, and have to start again. However, you are reset back to 10 lives, so this is sometimes a good, cheap way to get your lives back up to 10. You can switch back to your old ship, but you have to buy it again. Sorry, but those are the breaks...

End of Tutorial

You're now past the basics of Starfighter. You can try out other ships, other weapons, and other tactics, but the basics provided to you in this guide will give you a firm foundation for the rest of your career. If you've enjoyed this tutorial, feel free to join my gang, Good v. Evil, which is based in sector S-11-9 (color: dark red). Good luck and good hunting!