How to play guide for Rebel Galaxy Outlaw

Choosing a playstyle
Playstyles are similar to difficulty modes, but they don't affect player, ally, or enemy strength in any way. Instead, they determine the availability of certain features and starting resources:
 * Normal: basic components already installed on the ship
 * A colour radar is provided instead of the monochrome starting radar players start with in the other playstyles. The colour radar identifies foes in red and allies in blue, while they are the same grey color on the monochrome radar.
 * Players start with a Combat Laser instead of a Utility Laser.
 * Players start with an HS Launcher and an Afterburner.
 * Veteran: toggling between first and third person view is enabled; starter ship is missing all significant components.
 * Sim: Third person view and Aim Assist are also disabled.
 * Old School: Third person view, Aim Assist, and Autopursuit are disabled.

Note that the starting armour and shield generator are the same in all playstyles.

Gamepad vs. Keyboard+Mouse vs. Joystick (HOTAS)
The game supports all types of controllers and you are always able to remap keys to your liking. A gamepad is suggested by the developer and optimized for the game, while keyboard+mouse are selected by default and you can use a joystick (and/or a HOTAS configuration - "hands on throttle and stick") as well too.

See the below pages for default key assignments for the given controller/combination.


 * Gamepad
 * Keyboard + Mouse
 * Joystick (HOTAS)

Basic gameplay
As you start the game you have to build a business activity while looking for revenge in a galaxy full of outlaws. Lucrative activities from the mission board found on space stations and from subscribed Guild boards (merchants' and mercenaries' representatives in many stations), will allow you to improve your ship, equipment and to build relations with important characters that will help you providing missions, equipment, info and assistance in battle.

You are able to choose to support citizens, police or various pirate groups, changing in this way how they react to you (and also preventing you from docking in specific stations if your standing with that Faction is bad).

By progressing in the game you will unlock several buddies. Each of them can be activated one at the time from their home station to assist you in your missions (if they are not busy waiting for a connected side quest to be completed).

Docking at any Space station will allow you to save your progress in game, repair your ship, refill ordnance and fuel. Also stations can provide different services (indicated with specific icons in system map), like equipment bay (to setup your ship and improve its equipment), ship dealer (to exchange ships paying the difference), commodities market (to sell your collected goods), black market (to sell your illegal goods), mission board (to provide activities for your business), bar (to find characters for the story progression, to play some minigames and to chat with the bartender for valuable rumors), merchants' and mercenaries' guilds (with the local representatives to provide you specialized missions for your business)

Progressing with your business, you will be even able to acquire your own station and improving its services for regular income. There is a very useful tip for that.

Travelling around the galaxy will make you encounter numerous ships in need of assistance or groups of pirates assaulting you, so get a good offensive/defensive equipment for your ship ASAP! In particular look for best guns and lasers (these last ones drain energy so try to have a good balance of the two, like 1:1), because you can reuse them all on every ship in the game. Improve the powerplant before the shield generator, because the second drains a lot of energy recharging while damaged. Shield generator level 4 is the best, but you need expensive ships to install it. Also get the best ECM level 3 component (that can be installed in every ship), because it will save your ship a couple of times almost every battle.

Energy consumption is important for your ship and you can monitor it through the Power-meter [P]. Once depleted, it takes time to recharge and in meantime your shields won't recharge quickly or your boosters/lasers won't work. The game let you balance the distribution of the energy produced real-time among them from the command interface (bars on the left side); this feature can help your ship in battle a lot, in particular increasing the shields distribution to recover from intense incoming fire, while moving on the side of the fighting field or escaping (then don't forget to re-balance them).

There is also a Fuel-meter [F] for your ship that is refueled docking on any space station. Once depleted you can't use the jump drive among systems and you have to dock. In case there are free fuel distributors in every system (special stations without docking possibility), so at the moment you can't really get stuck anywhere (some outlaw systems don't have neutral stations and you could be attacked in the others depending on your alignment law/outlaw). Some systems are interconnected with a red path in the galaxy map and their gate markers are not normally shown in the space requiring a manual selection from the system map; they are dangerous jump gates that still work but can damage your ship (so you save time, but normally you have to spend money to repair your ship).

You will get scanned by police from time to time (in particular if you get an outlaw alignment); in this case better don't have any illegal goods with you (you have time to eject them in case if you act quickly!). Illegal items can be sold in the station with black markets in the outlaw systems (without police patrol).

Some side missions requires you to acquire a great number of a specific material for a character; in this case the game allows you to deliver them in smaller size without changing the ship (ex. you can deliver 10 robots at once or two times 5 robots). That's because some ships can't have enough capacity even with extenders.

Last thing to remember: dock on stations, often! Game saves your progress automatically when docking, also you can repair, refilling missiles and empty your cargo (it gets full fast) selling safely everything you have collected on the battlefields or exploring. It's very easy to lose the ship in battle at the beginning (and in some hard missions even later!).

Controls
There are two interfaces you need to know quite well: the menu screen and the command screen.

The command screen allows you to call your buddy for help, to look the tactical map (it shows you all positions of friendly/enemy ships around you) and to select your target; there you can balance the energy distribution (in particular to pump up the shields quickly) in case you need. Also you can change the radio station :-)

The menu screen allows you in particular to check your accepted missions and select the active one; also you can check your cargo and throw away low value items (or illegal ones).

There is then the map screen, where you can set markers to simplify the navigation in the system or in the galaxy (it adds a white square to your navigation point, very useful).

An important button is the radar: it shows you many information (depending on the model equipped): friendly ships in range, enemy ships and resources for mining activities.

The last fundamental button is the one for ECM (missiles counter measures in the game), you'll use it a lot!

Easy and fast money (at the beginning)

 * local delivery missions in your current system: they don't require improvements in your ship equipment (that is quite weak for fast skirmishes, so avoid travel deviations at this moment)
 * probe explorations: quite safe and fast, but you can find enemies and it could take time dealing with them better spent with local deliveries
 * avoid cleaning mines missions (they are too slow compared with the others above)
 * a good routine: get all local deliveries from the mission board and the merchant guild that you can (your cargo capacity is the limit) then move to the station where you can delivery most of your cargo
 * Note: improving your ship class or offensive/defensive equipment or installing the jump drive, will update your missions pool, finally removing all local deliveries. So stack enough money until it's enough for your needs.

Easy and fast money (middle and end game income)

 * mining activities in the belts (green circles in the map screen): they requires 1 mining scanner, 1 mining laser and possibly cargo extender lvl 3 (with Durston ship). That's because the asteroids are quite distant in a belt from the starting point, so the biggest cargo makes you able to clean everything with just one trip (even if the ship is slower than the others) because just one belt can fill up a lvl 3 cargo. The Durston is the perfect ship for the job, still enough maneuverable with a shield generator lvl 4 and 4 weapons for skirmish in the first easy sectors of the galaxy (just remember that if you die before docking you'll lose 30k-50k coins in your cargo, so play safe)

A very good starter setup

 * Sonora: good maneuverability, 3 weapons, 12 hold size, middle hull (your body points)
 * 2 Auto-cannon and 1 photon cannon: good range, great damage, minimum energy drain. Also they are reusable with superior ships.
 * powerplant lvl 2 and shield generator lvl 2
 * ECM lvl 3: the best 75% chance of success and the fastest reload time, much better than the cheaper ones; reusable too.
 * you can also add a cargo extender lvl 2 if you want the second most wide hold size in the game.

Ship progression
Sonora is a wonderful ship early game; after that you can opt directly for an end game ship saving money; in this case you have one important decision to make: merchant business (Durston) or fighting performance (Coyote). Both can equip almost the same number of guns/launchers with the maximum shield generators lvl 4, so you'll kick in all cases!

Bargain over the price
You could have great benefits trying to bargain over some prices, in particular docking in Bountiful Vista in the Eureka system ;-)

Free equipment for mini-players
Some minigames you can find in specific space stations have quite useful equipment to be won... if you can beat the guy!

Fly safe
There are a lot of events in the game calling for you to join the fight, so evaluate the risk of losing your ship and the cargo. Sometimes after a long trip among systems or with a valuable cargo it's better to dock before to jump in a possible fight. The game saves your progress automatically when you dock.

Your defensive setup is as important as the offensive one: get the best shields your ship can install and the best ECM lvl 3 on the market (against enemy missiles) before to save the galaxy!

Remember you can always call a buddy to help you in your mission (if the mission doesn't give you one already or he/she is not busy waiting for you for a side mission). Once called the buddy flies with you for 10 minutes (or less if you dock), before having 10 minutes recovery. So don't be shy and call a friend every time the situation seems dangerous!