FAQ:Playing

I just started the game and want to jump to another system, how does this work?

Buy a jump drive (approx. 10000 creds), fly to a jump point, which are marked by your ship's computer as green wireframes, and press [j]

At the beginning of the game I only have 3500 creds of money. How am I supposed to buy a 10000 cred jump drive with that?

Make money, then go to the weapons screen -> upgrades -> misc -> jump drive, and press upgrade.

Okay, so how do I make money?

• You should read the Manual; and
• Follow the Tutorials; but you could try
• Starting at the Oceanic Planet, where they sell stuff like Natural Products at a low price. So go to the cargo computer and buy stuff listed under Natural Products (like foodstuffs, water, etc); then
  • Launch your ship; and
  • Press [t] until a Mining Base is targeted; and
  • Point your ship that way, and fly there (press [\] for full velocity then [a] to use the SPEC drive); then
  • When near the Mining Base, press [A] again to deactivate the drive; and
  • Aim for the docking clamps and dock by pressing [d]; so you can
  • Sell your cargo for a profit (hint: right click on the Buy/Sell button to sell all of each cargo type); then
  • Buy lots of Raw Materials (gems, metals etc); and
  • Repeat the Launch to Sale steps back at the Oceanic Planet.
  • Repeat until you can afford a jump drive.

How do I dock?

Another step by step (you really should read the Manual:

• See Docking in the manual; or
• Read the Tutorials; or
• Target a base/planet/etc; and
  • Optional (but polite): press [0] (zero) to request docking permission and to get the docking clamps displayed earlier; then
  • Docking clamps display as red or green squares - red means there's something between you and the clamp; so
  • Pilot your craft into the docking clamps area. For planet: just fly some time into the direction of the planet; and
  • When you're close enough that the green square is nearly filling your HUD, press [d] to dock.

How do I get the multiplayer part to work?

We're working on multiplayer the basic framework is almost done, but it needs to be debugged, made to work, then made to work fast :-)

It's about 45-55% complete, but it's not complete... so no multiplayer.

There is, on the other hand, a split screen multiplayer, that allows multiple amounts of people to play on one computer. In the multiplayer mission directory are some simple 2-player missions to try out with a friend. To modify 2-player configuration options, edit vegastrike.config.2player inside the base level of Vegastrike.

The key bindings are not perfect and are somewhat old.

So if you're really keen to have real multiplayer, learn to code well and help out :-)

Some items in the weapon shop don't have a description and some of the communication messages are odd. The same for some ships/etc... Shouldn't there be some descriptions/improvements?

Feel free to add new content to the game. For more info go to the VS forum or read the Howto Section: Howtos

How do I buy fuel?

Go to Upgrade Ship -> Miscellaneous -> Fuel.

Hint: Fuel is oftem more expensive than Basic Repair... If you have lost fuel (if your bar is not at max), then go to "Upgrade Ship" -> "Basic Repair". That will usually save you money... But if you are at full fuel and you want more, then the only way to get more is to go to Upgrade Ship -> Miscellaneous -> Fuel.

How do I make screenshots in Vegastrike?

Vegastrike 0.4.3 and up (all operating systems)

• There's now a built-in screenshot key to take a screenshot of only VegaStrike. Just press [i].
  • PC/Windows users will find a link to the screenshots in the start menu.
  • Linux users will find it in the home directory ~/.vegastrike043/textures/
  • Mac users do this:
    • open /Applications/Utilities/Terminal.app
    • type open /.vegastrike043/textures
    • Voila there are your screenshots.
    • If that for some odd reason doesn't work try open /.vegastrike/textures
    • Is this really the correct path /.vegastrike/textures without the tile '~' Pontiac 12:07, 27 Feb 2005 (PST)
• See also Manual:Keyboard layout#Camera-Control
• This works only 'Inflight', not while docked to a base/ship.

Screenshots of bases & Vegastrike older than 0.4.3

• Mac:
  • There's a great hotkey: [Apple]+[Shift]+[3]. To take a screenshot of a user-selected region of the screen, use the hotkey apple-shift-4.
• Windows:
  • Press the [Print]-button on your keyboard and select paste in your favourite image manipulation program (i.e in GIMP select [File]->[Acquire]->[From clipboard] For other programs see Links:Graphic Programs)
  • There's also a nice program called Hypersnap DX for taking photos in windows
• Linux:
  • Open up the GIMP, and go to [File]->[Acquire]->[Screen Shot/Window], then select Vega Strike.
  • This method does not work in fullscreen, but with the 0.4.3 screenshot key this shouldn't be a problem.

What to do with the screenshots

Please post your screenshots in the gallery.

When I am dogfighting the enemy ships nearly always try to ram me. How do I avoid that?

An answer from hellcatv

A good tactic I use that almost never gets me rammed is to afterburn to the right of them for a bit...then HOLD DOWN TILDE to slide to the right.

Then I glide right past them and can fire at them at the sametime they do things like that too..but if you plow right into them there's not much that can be done.

When I kill pirates which are not part of my mission objective, do I get rewarded for this or not?

Killing pirates makes confeds more friendly to you--which is a bonus. (Of course it makes pirates more hostile to you too ;-)

How do I scan stuff for a mission?

just fly near (~xxxxx) to the object, and look if the name on the right (in the mission-todo list) turns from red to green.

What's the tractor-weapon for?

• http://vegastrike.sourceforge.net/forums/viewtopic.php?t=871
• See Tractor Beam in the Wiki manual
• See Tractor Beam in the database

What's the number in the top-right of my screen?

The frame rate, the measure of how many times the display refreshes in a second. The higher the better. If you are using time compression, however, this won't give you an accurate reading.

I can only hear sound but not music or music but not sound in Linux?

This is commonly caused by lack of a sound daemon or a good sound card.

• Make sure that you have a sound daemon such as esd or arts running.
• Make a file called ".openalrc" in your home directory and put in it the line:
• (define devices '(arts esd native))