Galactic Outlands

Overview

Galactic Outlands is an online space adventure about traveling, exploring, piloting ships, meeting other players, and discovering what exists beyond known sectors.

You create a character, enter a persistent universe, visit maps and stations, cross sectors, buy ships, form crews, take part in missions, collect resources, and face threats in space.

What You Can Do

• Explore maps, zones, planets, stations, and space sectors.
• Buy, board, pilot, launch, and land ships.
• Choose a delivery point when a ship store has more than one dock.
• Use radar to locate objects, resources, ships, and important points.
• Take part in Stargate missions.
• Fight enemy ships and earn credits for victories.
• Mine asteroids, salvage debris, and collect stellar energy.
• Upgrade ships with mining, salvaging, and stellar-energy charging improvements.
• Communicate through text chat, local voice, and ship radio.
• Authorize players on your ship and control the airlock.
• Review recent messages through buffers.
• Send bug reports directly from the game.

Getting Started

From the main menu, choose the connection option. If you do not have a character yet, create one and then log in with it.

After entering the world, use the arrow keys to move and Enter to interact with your current location. Depending on where you are, that interaction may open a door, use a travel point, board a ship, or trigger a special action.

Basic Controls

• Arrow keys: move your character or navigate menus.
• Enter: confirm, interact, or select.
• Esc: go back, close the current menu, or return to the main menu.
• Home: jump to the first menu option.
• End: jump to the last menu option.
• Home, in game: increase the master volume.
• End, in game: decrease the master volume.
• F1: list online players or repeat menu guidance, depending on context.
• F3: check ping.
• F4: hear the message of the day.
• G: check your credit balance.
• Alt+B: open the bug report form.

Exploration and Location

• B: check where you are.
• P: see who is nearby.
• O: check the distance to your tracked target.
• Shift+P: follow a nearby player.
• Shift+Z: track a zone on the current map.
• Shift+T: track a nearby ship.
• Shift+B, on the bridge in flight: check how many light-years you are from the origin sector.
• Shift+C, on the bridge in flight: check special coordinates.
• Shift+D, on the bridge in flight: open the sector radar.

Ships

Ships are one of the main parts of Galactic Outlands. They can have interiors, bridges, airlocks, power systems, shields, hull, battery, cargo, cloaking, and access controls.

• On the bridge, Enter opens the quick interaction.
• On the bridge, Shift+Enter opens the full bridge menu.
• Ctrl+P powers the ship on or off when that action is available.
• The airlock can be locked or unlocked.
• Players can be authorized or removed from the access list.
• Shields and cloaking can be enabled or disabled when conditions allow.
• Ship cargo can hold minerals, debris, and stellar energy.
• When buying a ship, if the store has multiple docks, you can choose where the ship will be delivered.

Piloting

With pilot mode active, the ship becomes your vehicle through space instead of just a place you are standing in.

• Arrow keys: move the ship.
• Page Up and Page Down: change altitude.
• Ctrl or Alt with the arrow keys: may also change altitude while moving.

The ship must be powered on to move. Some situations block piloting, such as landing, launch, mining, collection, or other risky states.

If an interceptor is present in the sector, it can prevent the ship from crossing the sector borders.

Sectors and Radar

Space is divided into sectors. While traveling, radar helps you find what is nearby and navigate toward a target.

At the moment, radar can detect:

• asteroids
• space debris
• stars
• planets
• stations
• Stargates
• player ships
• enemy ships

In radar, Space shows details for the selected item and Enter confirms navigation.

Resources and Cargo

Space is also a source of resources. At the moment, there are activities for mining, debris salvaging, and stellar energy collection.

• Asteroids can provide minerals.
• Debris can provide recovered material.
• Stars can provide stellar energy when the ship is in the right condition.

These activities depend on the ship's position, the nearby object, and the current state of its systems.

Ship Upgrades

Stations with an upgrade store allow you to improve your own ships that are docked at that station.

• Mining and salvaging upgrades increase the amount collected and reduce cycle time.
• Each ship can receive up to 6 mining levels and 6 salvaging levels.
• The stellar-energy charging upgrade lets the ship use collected stellar energy to recharge its battery.
• Costs start at 20,000 credits and double with each level.

Combat

Galactic Outlands includes space combat against enemy ships. In combat mode, you select a weapon and fire when there is a valid target.

On the ship bridge, Backspace switches between normal mode and combat mode. While combat mode is active, Space fires the selected weapon, and keys 1 through 6 select weapons in the order shown below. The ship only fires while on red alert.

Each ship can define a maximum weapon power, and each weapon uses a percentage of that power. Pressing number keys speaks only the weapon name; pressing Shift with a number reports that weapon's damage.

At the moment, the available weapons are:

• Laser
• Cannon
• Torpedoes
• Piercing shells
• Missiles
• Long-range laser

Enemy ships can have different shields, hull, battery, and behavior. Some also react differently to shields, cloaking, or ship energy.

Player ships explode when their hull reaches zero.

Missions and Stargates

When the requirements are met, players can lead missions from the ship bridge and use Stargates to enter private instances.

At the moment, there are three mission types:

• Light Patrol
• Coordinated Attack
• Total Invasion

During a mission, the crew fights enemy ships and may receive individual rewards. After completing the mission, follow the instructions to return through the Stargate.

Communication

• /: open text chat.
• F5: choose a language channel or disable chat.
• F6: open the online player menu.
• V: transmit local voice while the key is held.
• Shift+V: turn local continuous transmission on or off.
• R, on the bridge when available: transmit over the radio while the key is held.
• Ctrl+R, on the bridge when available: turn the ship radio on or off.
• Shift+R, on the bridge when available: turn continuous radio transmission on or off.
• Alt+R, on the bridge when available: choose the radio channel.

The bridge radio allows communication between ships, and reception may vary depending on sector distance. The V key is reserved for local voice outside the radio.

Text messages on regular maps use local chat; inside ships, text is treated as the ship PA.

Messages and Buffers

Recent messages are organized into buffers, useful for reviewing chat, alerts, and important events.

• , and .: switch between buffers.
• [ and ]: move through messages in the current buffer.
• Shift with those shortcuts: jump directly to the beginning or the end.
• Local chat and PA have separate buffers.

Reports

If you find a problem, use Alt+B to open the report form. Say what happened, where it happened, and what you were trying to do.