Initializing NVIR systemsGuides // Getting Started
The cockpit, pips, docking, and your first missions — everything you learn without leaving the starter district.
After training you load into the Pilots' Federation District, docked, in a loaned Sidewinder. This is the practice ground. Stay here until flying and docking feel ordinary.
The district is permit-locked on purpose. Payouts are gentler, stations are close, and the district exists so you can learn the loop here — undock, jump, dock, get paid — without the rest of the galaxy in the way. Start systems include places like LHS 3447. You are not late. You are not trapped.
After your first Combat, Trade, or Exploration rank, the board offers a mission that pays you to leave and revokes the starter permit on the way out. Ignore it for now. Leaving comes later, after you can fly, dock, and bank a credit buffer. Do not take the first well-paid job that points out of the district.
Try one of each while you are here: a courier run, a bounty or two at a Low-Intensity Resource Extraction Site (Resource Extraction Site: A spot in a planetary ring where miners work and pirates hunt them. Comes in four intensities.), and one system scanned end to end. You are not picking a career. You are finding out whether you hate cargo, combat, or long jumps, so the first real hull has a reason.
You are docked, the ship is fuelled, and nothing is chasing you. The first hour is not about credits — it is about making the loop boring, so that later, when something is chasing you, none of it takes any thought.
Undock, clear the mailslot (Station Mailslot: The letterbox slit in the face of a starport, and the only way in or out. Mind the speed limit.), turn around, request docking, and land again. Do it three or four times. Launching and docking are the two things you will repeat forever, and the pad is free.
Pick another starport from the Navigation panel and go there in supercruise. This is where the 7-second approach becomes muscle memory, and the trip costs nothing but time.
Every ship carries a Discovery Scanner (Discovery Scanner: Fitted to every hull and cannot be removed. One honk on arrival counts the bodies in a system and draws their orbits — the FSS identifies them, the DSS maps them.). Put it in a fire group, hold the trigger for a few seconds, and the honk (Discovery Scanner Honk: Holding the Discovery Scanner on arrival. Reveals how many bodies a system holds and where they sit.) every commander recognises maps what is in the system and drops the bodies onto your Navigation panel. It works in supercruise or normal space, costs nothing, and is worth doing in every new system for the rest of your career.
Plot a single hop to a neighbouring system in the Galaxy Map (The between-systems map. Plots routes, filters stars by class, and is where every trip starts.), jump, throttle down out of the arrival, and dock somewhere on the far side. That is the whole travel loop, start to finish.
Now the mission board is worth opening. A courier run between two starports you have already flown between is the ideal first contract — you know the route, so the only new thing is the paperwork.
Every service lives behind one menu. Dock, open Starport Services, and the whole station is these few entries — most of which you will not need for hours yet.
The first thing to do on every landing. Fuel is cheap on a small hull, repairs fix the hull you scraped on the way in, and restock refills limpets and ammunition. Doing all three on arrival is a habit worth building now.
The contract board. Offers depend on your standing with each faction and on your ship, so a board that looks empty today is worth checking again tomorrow.
The Contacts (The left-panel tab for the people at a port: docking requests, mission givers, and the desks that pay out vouchers.) tab is the people rather than the services — mission givers, the local authority for handing in bounty vouchers, and later the Interstellar Factors (Interstellar Factors Contact: A contact in low-security systems that clears fines and bounties from other jurisdictions, for a cut.) who clean up fines.
Buy and sell cargo. Prices differ from one starport to the next, and that difference is the whole of trading.
Outfitting (The starport service that sells and swaps modules. Stock varies by port — a large orbital carries more than an outpost.) sells modules for the ship you are flying. This is where a better Frame Shift Drive (Frame Shift Drive: The drive that does both jobs: hyperspace jumps between systems, and supercruise inside them.) or a fuel scoop goes on, and where most of your early credits will end up.
Buy and store hulls. Ships are stored per starport, so a ship left behind stays where you parked it until you pay to transfer it.
Sell exploration data. Everything you scan is worth nothing until you hand it in here, and it is only paid out once.
Four things in the starter district teach a skill you will otherwise learn the expensive way. None of them need a contract and none of them need a better ship.
Every populated system has one. Drop in, point at it, and hold the scan — it hands you the system data and puts every starport on your map. It is also the safest place to watch traffic behave, because security sits on top of it.
The Navigation panel marks which bodies you can land on. Pick an airless one with no settlement, follow the approach down through the glide, and set the ship on flat ground. It is a separate skill from docking, and out here the only cost of getting it wrong is a repair bill.
Drop into a Low-Intensity Resource Extraction Site (Resource Extraction Site: A spot in a planetary ring where miners work and pirates hunt them. Comes in four intensities.) in a ring and do not shoot anything. Watch how security ships and pirates arrive, scan a few contacts, and learn what a Wanted target looks like before you ever pull a trigger.
In open space, away from anything solid, switch Flight Assist (Flight Assist: The computer that kills drift and holds your attitude. Switching it off gives you raw Newtonian flight.) off and get a feel for drifting. Five minutes now is worth an hour of panic the first time you hit the bind by accident.
The station mission board is where the real work starts. Take the short jobs. Skip anything that looks like a war.
Open Starport Services, then Missions. Early on the board includes a short chain from the Pilots' Federation: leave the pad, jump to a nearby system, dock, hand the job in. Take those. They pay little and they teach the only loop that matters: accept work, travel, do the thing, get paid.
After that, stick to data courier and small legal deliveries inside the district. Courier work puts nothing in the hold — if you die, you lose the mission, not a cargo hold. Deliveries are fine when the destination is one or two jumps and the cargo is legal. Read the fine print. Illegal goods, assassination, massacre, and "wanted" passengers are how a Sidewinder becomes a wreck.
If the mission is more than two jumps in a Sidewinder, skip it. Check the reward against the distance. A 20k courier next door beats a 80k delivery six jumps out with a pirate faction in the way.
Galaxy Map plots the route. Target the next system from the left panel, charge the Frame Shift Drive (Frame Shift Drive: The drive that does both jobs: hyperspace jumps between systems, and supercruise inside them.), jump. At the destination, request docking from Contacts when you are within 7.5 km. Complete the mission from the board or Contacts once you are on the pad. Do not fly into the mailslot (Station Mailslot: The letterbox slit in the face of a starport, and the only way in or out. Mind the speed limit.) without a pad assigned — the station will fire.
You have nothing worth dying for. Submit to the interdiction (Being pulled out of supercruise by another ship. Escape by keeping the marker centred, or submit.), then boost away and high-wake (Leaving by hyperspace jump to another system. Nothing can follow you through it.) to another system if you have to. Fighting in a stock Sidewinder is how the first rebuy happens. Stay in High Security systems so System Authority ships show up if pirates do.