Using Hotkeys

Table of Contents

Autonomy Hotkeys

These are accessed through your keyboard’s number pad.

Autonomy Level  Low Medium   High
Alert levels 7 8 9
Movement autonomy 4 5 6
Special weapon autonomy 1 2 3

Hotkeying Fleets

A player can hotkey both stations and vessels that belong to him or her. This is called hotkeying a fleet.

To hotkey a unit, select it, hold down control and press a number. To deselect a unit from a fleet, have the fleet selected, hold shift and click the desired unit. Now hold control and press the same number of the fleet. You can also remove a ship from a fleet by selecting it and pressing control and the minus key. Also, you can add a ship to a fleet by selecting the ship and then pressing shift plus control plus the fleet number.

When a shipyard of any type is hotkeyed, any vessel that it produces will inherit the same fleet hotkey as the shipyard. While the shipyard will keep its hotkey, it will not be selected at the same time as a vessel, as all vessels receive selection priority. This means that if you hotkey a shipyard, you can quickly switch produced vessels into another active combat fleet and use the original hotkey to refill the queue of the shipyard.

Waypoints

A waypoint is a way of issuing complicated paths for vessels, without giving an order in realtime for every segment of the path.

You can issue waypoints for ships by holding tab and clicking (giving move orders). The vessel will begin moving as soon as you release the tab key.

To create a waypoint where the ships follow the same path over and over again (instead of reaching the end and stopping) simply hit "P" (for Patrol) and hold tab and choose the vessel's path.

Note that waypoints ignore pathing costs of objects and thus waypoints are an excellent way to ensure going through nebulae of any kind.

Fleet Speed Control

Note that to ensure that all selected vessels travel at the same velocity, hold down control while selecting the warships in question and click their destination. All starships will travel at the speed of the slowest selected vessel.

Command Hotkeys

S Orders the ship to halt the current action (attack / guard / patrol / explore / ...). Note transport cannot be stopped in this manner.
A Orders unit(s) to attack
T Transport. Start transporting to a target (Note: the target's shields must be down). Also used to stop active transport commands.
P Set your selected vessels to patrol between their current location and the target location.
G Set your selected units to guard a friendly target. The selected units follow the ship that is set to be guarded and attack any hostiles which are threat to it.
E Set your units to “explore mode”, which essentially scatters your units.
K Sets units to search and destroy mode. The ships will scatter around the map and attack any enemy target they find.
R Repair. Send the ships for yard for repair and recrew. If the ship is missing crew and is recrewable, this hotkey will recrew the vessel first, instead of sending it to a yard for repair.
Ctrl+C Cloak or uncloak the selected unit(s).
Shift+R Priority repair is same as the repair, except that the ship will ignore other orders/enemy vessels until it is fully repaired.
Delete Decommission selected units.
Ctrl+S In Instant Action this saves the current game.
Home Centers camera directly on your start position (i.e. your beginning starbase, assuming it has not been destroyed).

Unit Selection Hotkeys

Double clicking a ships icon or a fleet number will center your camera directly on that ship/fleet. Alternatively, hitting Shift+fleet number will center the camera on that fleet.

Ctrl+A Select all vessels that are visible on your screen.
, Select the next idle non-combat ship (Constructor and Freighters).
. Select the next idle construction vessels.
[ Cycles through all vessels (non-combat and combat).
] Cycles through all combat vessels.

Station Hotkeys

R Recrew station. Stations cannot be recrewed when under attack.

Starbase

C Build constructor
S Build scout (will halt current command, if active - note transport will not be stopped).
F Build freighter
Shift+S Extend supply routes

Research Stations and Shipyards

P Set the rally point

Interface Hotkeys

Alt+G Show / hide the map grid.
Alt+Enter Switch between fullscreen and windowed mode.
Ctrl+I Hide user interface parts (cinematic window / unit list / minimap and menus).
PrintScreen / Alt + P Take screenshot with user interface visible.
Ctrl+Alt+P Take clean screenshots without user interface.
Alt+T Shows frames per second, connectivity between players, etc
Spacebar Centers the camera view to one of the last three recorded events (construction complete, base under attack, etc).
\ Centers the camera view to the currently selected unit: double clicking the single-unit mini-image does the same thing.
Enter+fps When typed into the chat box shows frames per seconds and other stuff, type again to disable.
Enter+cine
Disables your interface (including the cursor!). Makes it easier to take a FRAPS video. To get the interface back you have to activate the chat with the enter key and type "cine"  again (there will be a visible chat input).
Alt+V In Instant Action this turns on / off the shroud and fog of war.
Alt+F Turns on / off the visual layer of the shroud and fog of war when in cinematic view. Note this does not allow you to see unexplored / hidden objects, but is useful for screenshots.
Alt+Shift+A In Instant Action this activates the AI Debugging Display.
Alt+M Memory debugging tool (can show how many vessels are on the map, etc).
Alt+O Toggle the Objectives box on and off.
Ctrl+Shift+Alt+Z Toggles cursor locking cursor so that the cursor is only useable out of the game window.
Ctrl+V Only useable in Cinematic mode: resets zoom to default.