Current as of 9/30/2019

Welcome to the Infinity: Battlescape Early Access release, this is an unofficial tutorial to help you get started in the game.

I-Novaes Video Tutorial Series!

Leaving the station

Click to Expand In the ready screen you can choose a station to spawn at using. Once you’ve picked a quiet (or loud) enough station for your taste, spacebar will spawn you in. The first thing you’ll need to do is close the help menu with esc or F9 Press either Esc or F9 to do this. Try not to crash! Next, you’ll want to exit the hangar your ship spawned in. To do this, hold w to move your ship forward. Because your throttle is set to zero by default, if you let go of w it will let go. You can turn with the mouse and you should be out into either the great darkness of space or a planetary surface in no time! Consider noting how the hangar you spawned in looks. You can return to it to repair and rearm your ship, note only pads that match your ship’s size can be used.

Controls

Click to Expand You’re ingame, take a moment to look over the controls:

You can always access this again in-game with F9 after you close it, and you can also edit your keybinds in the game settings (hit esc).



You have also have the option of using gamepads and joysticks, but you will need to bind them using the ingame menu as most joysticks will not have good default configurations. When binding your main needs are the 6 axes of freedom (pitch, yaw, roll, and long/vert/lat strafe), primary and secondary weapons fire, boost, warp, chaff, launch missile, and also consider adding the 4 overcharge states as well as binds for the controller friendly radial menus to your bind profile. There are many more controls but these will get you playing. Please read this thread if you want to heavily modify the bindings or get your own controller/joystick/HOTAS/etc. setup to work. It also includes vital gameplay related info you need to know in order to decrease misunderstandings:

Keybindings Configuration and Workarounds

Basic movement

Click to Expand While you can user the number keys (1-0, highlighted red on the controls image) to set a throttle speed, it is easier to use strafe controls initially. WASD+RF and QE make up your thrust and roll controls (highlighted in blue), these controls dont set a target speed, but are an instant thruster action movement in that direction and override the throttle. Press forward and you’ll be pushed forward until you let go. Similar to an FPS and other standard pc games, WASD will move you forward, backward left and right. Where things get tricky are [Q], [E], [R] and [F]. [R] and [F] are your up/down strafe controls similar to left and right, with WASD+RF you can move freely in any direction you want, and combine them to get in-between directions. Roll with [Q] and [E] will “spin your camera” and can be useful for leveling out your view and getting your guns in line. Simply move your mouse up down and left or right to tell your ship how fast to rotate in that direction. Most of these tools are not needed for a player just starting out, but eventually you’ll probably want to start mastering the “six degrees of freedom” to fully enjoy newtonian spaceflight.

HUD Information

Click to Expand (thanks argo) Ingame HUD description (from ESC menu)

With forward facing radar… Ship icons Interceptor and bomber:



Corvette and destroyer (a destroyer here):



Also used by haulers:



Cruiser an carrier (cruiser here):

Station/base icons Ammunition icons Missile icons (spinning):



Missiles are good against interceptors, bombers and corvettes, useless above. Torpedoes icons (spinning):



Torps are worth expanding against capitals (destroyer and above), but can be very effective against corvettes too. Mine icons:

Resupply/repair icons Corvettes can resupply and repair the hull of corvettes and below. The effect is triggered when below approx. 1km (sparks rotating around the ship). The corvette must not be taking damage for a few seconds to be able to resupply.



Nearest out of screen corvette:



Allied stations and some bases allow resupplying. A resupply spot glows blue when available, green when resupplying, red when not available (wrong spot for ship type, wrong faction, enemy interceptor clipping the volume). Destroyed hangars/docks have no glowing indicators. For interceptors and bombers (6 spots):



For corvettes (2 spots):



Hangar exterior. Notice the scaffolding difference.



For capitals:



Combat

Click to Expand There’s a good chance right outside the relative safety of your station is one or many enemies ready to murder you. Don’t panic! The first thing you will want to do is make sure you keep moving! A stationary target is an easy target to hit. Your second concern will be targeting a suitable opponent to shoot at, to do this press T to target an opponent you are looking at, or G to target the enemy closest to you. Note that the closest enemy to you might be behind you! In the interceptor, you have two types of projectile weapons and a guided missile rack. With an enemy targeted, you will see two reticles, one yellow and further away, and one white and closer. Your goal in combat is to fire your weapons at the enemy ship, and acceleration prediction reticles help show you where to fire to land hits on an often distant, fast moving target! On the interceptor, you have fixed weapons which fire in-line with the nose of your ship marked by an X with a dot in the middle in the center of the cross-hair. Your opponent probably still has his shields up, so you want to start with your blasters! Move your nose over the yellow reticle and Press your secondary fire button (right click/mouse 2) to fire your energy weapons at them! If you get their shields down, move to the white reticle and your cannons with your primary fire (left click/mouse1). Landing hits doesn’t just depend on your crosshair matching the target, it will depend on your positioning and relative velocity. Try to stay close and keep them “stationary” on your screen for an easy shot that’s likely to actually land, and don’t get frustrated if you miss at first. Use the “relative velocity” indicator under the target box, try to stick to 10% of the distance you’re trying to close to make sure you don’t overshoot. This means if you’re 10km from a target, try to have that number at -1km/s, and slow yourself down to a relative 100 -m/s as you approach 1km. This can be difficult, especially playing a Newtonian space combat game for the first time. For now, you have missiles. To lock a missile point your ship’s nose at the target’s reticles until the target lock sound ends, then press the fire missile button (Right ctrl by default, recommend rebinding this). Try to be within 5km when firing missiles, too far away can make the missiles very easy to evade. If someone fires missiles at you, you can launch countermeasures when the missile is at about 1km-500ms depending on the missiles relative speed to counter it. The default for cms is left alt (reccomend rebinding this, alt has trouble with reliability because of windows) Some players find using the “match speed” assist useful and some players prefer no assist at all! Feel free to experiment with these options in the radial menus. Repairing and rearming:

If your ship is damaged or you run out of ammo, you can either find a friendly corvette which will be highlighted by a green aura, or return to a spawn pad to repair your ship. The corvette can repair you while it isn’t taking damage, you will see an effect like green fireflies while you are being resupplied. Note that the spawn pad must match the size class of your ship, either capital, corvette or bomber/interceptor

Travel and Warp

Click to Expand Moving between locations including moons, stations and other objects would take a very long time using conventional propulsion, so you will need to use warp. Before going to warp, it can be useful to set your destination target in the missions or map screen pressing TAB, but this is not mandatory because you can warp wherever you want. Going to warp is straightforward, make sure you are pointed in the direction you are moving (see the “direction indicator” on the HUD to line up with), and press either J, or hold V and select warp in the radial menu. Warp is fast! To help you control warp your ship will automatically slow down near objects, but even so it’s still fast. You will want to use the number keys and the mouse-wheel to set your warp throttle to something reasonable, don’t let yourself wait 10 minutes to arrive where you’re headed but also don’t try to get there in 10 seconds and overshoot. If you do overshoot, either slow way down or drop out of warp and attempt another approach. This can take some practice. When you’re ready to leave warp, either press J or use the V radial menu to disable warp. You will exit warp instantaneously and drop to the frame of reference velocity.

Finding Active Battles and Completing Objectives

Click to Expand The easiest way to find active battles is to use the Mission screen. Press TAB and press the mission button at the top of the screen, you will see this:



You should select any of the attack or defense battles and then click “select as target”. This will hightlight the destination on your hud and you’ll be able to navigate there in warp, do note your target might be behind a planet and if so it will be flashing to indicate the obstruction. You will need to warp around it.

As an interceptor the way you can be most useful to your team is to, between fighting other ships, find turrets on enemy bases and destroy them to clear the way for your team’s capital ships. Doing this also has the benefit of making you lots of credits to upgrade ships later. To destroy them, you will want to use your kinetic weapons (mouse 1) to shoot at them until they’re destroyed. You can also “dumbfire” your missiles at them though this is less effective lately. Be careful, when dumbfiring missiles, the missile inherits your speed so if you’re moving left, right, up or down your missile can go wide! To fire a missile dumbfire, press X and toggle the “safety lock” option off, this will make it so when you press “fire missile” your ship will fire a missile whether or not you have a target locked. This is useful for bombing runs on Base or Station turrets.

If you find yourself in a ship capable of doing more damage to structures like a bomber, destroyer or cruisers, try to make note of enemy spawn gantries, reactors, and other vital station components. The UI for this is a work in progress, but basically you want to bombard them until their texture changes to an obviously damaged state with explosions, this indicates you’ve destroyed that segment of the station. Destroying specific modules will have specific effects, and if you destroy enough the whole station will be destroyed.

Advanced Tutorial

Click to Expand Advanced movement Click to Expand Under the Systems Menu [V] there are 5 formation modes. The formation will be kept while having a target and having Flight Assist enabled. Use [Backspace] to clear target. The formations are: Free (Default) - Flight assist only maintains thrust based on the set throttle, other formations ignore the throttle

(Default) - Flight assist only maintains thrust based on the set throttle, other formations ignore the throttle Match Speed - Tries to match the velocity with the current target

- Tries to match the velocity with the current target Chase - Tries to get close to target while taking its velocity into account

- Tries to get close to target while taking its velocity into account Fixed - Maintains the distance at that point and time against the target with it as an anchor point*

- Maintains the distance at that point and time against the target with it as an anchor point* Orbit - Maintains the distance at that point and time against the target 0.5.3.0 Feedback Thread This is probably the case of nobody really understanding how the fixed mode works - we’ll probably have to cut it off, or rework it. Basically, it calculates your position relative to your target and tries to maintain it no matter what. Two really important things cause the confusion: It determines the relative “anchor point” based on the selected target at the moment you enable the fixed mode . Once fixed mode is active, it’ll try to keep to move your ship to the anchor point, even if you had selected fixed mode 10 minutes ago.

When the targetted ship rotates, the anchor point rotates as well ( hence the relative ). As ships turn around, the anchor point moves all the time and your own ship moves as well. Imagine that when you enable fixed mode you were 25 meters behind an interceptor’s back thrusters. Now the target rotates 90° to the right; the new location is still 25 meters behind the target’s back thrusters, except it has moved by a quarter circle in world space, despite the interceptor not really moving ( just turning ). Also note that target speed has no effect while a formation mode is active. Atmospheres Click to Expand Approaching a planetary atmosphere at warp can be difficult, and it can be annoying to be forced out of warp before you’re closer to your destination. Atmospheres impose a speed limit on both warp and conventional travel, going faster can damage and destroy your ship. To prevent being kicked out of warp by safety systems you need to keep an eye on the atmospheric speed limit on your speed bar, pictured here.

The position of the yellow line will shift with altitude, with the speed limit high in the thin outer limits of the atmosphere and low in the dense atmosphere close to the ground. When approaching a planet ensure your current throttle level is lower than the yellow line in order to navigate atmospheres with warp. Ship types See this post:

Tutorial for Beginners Weapons Click to Expand I:B has different types of weapons. There are primarily two types. Kinetic and energy weapons. Energy only damage shields and with prolonged fire have a chance to disable ship systems.

Kinetics damage ship hull. They have a chance to penetrate trough ship shields depending how low the shields are. There are also multiple types of weapon mounts. As these sometimes have different modes of operation they are listed here. Use the corresponding fire key to fire each weapon. Some weapons have conditions to fire which may have to be met before. Gimballed weapons (Kinetcis and Energy) / Used by the interceptor and Bomber

These aim towards the lead indicator of your current target. To make them shoot straight: Deselect.

These aim towards the lead indicator of your current target. To make them shoot straight: Deselect. Converging weapons (Shotgun) / Used by Bomber

These automatically converge at the distance of your currently selected target.

These automatically converge at the distance of your currently selected target. Missiles / Used by All ships

These lock on when you aim towards the lead indicator of your target. A “locked” sound will appear on the top left where your weapon status is shown as well as coresponding “locking now” and singular “lock complete” tone. Switch off “Safety Lock” to fire them without a lock.

These lock on when you aim towards the lead indicator of your target. A “locked” sound will appear on the top left where your weapon status is shown as well as coresponding “locking now” and singular “lock complete” tone. Switch off “Safety Lock” to fire them without a lock. Torpedoes / Used by Bombers and Cruisers

Act the same as Missiles. Also have proximity fuse if they miss their target.

Act the same as Missiles. Also have proximity fuse if they miss their target. Mines / Used by Destroyers

Can be dropped and will try to fly towards and detonate near enemies. Will slow to a stop once released. Switch off “Safety Lock” to disable their targeting systems, also stops them from slowing themselves down.

Can be dropped and will try to fly towards and detonate near enemies. Will slow to a stop once released. Switch off “Safety Lock” to disable their targeting systems, also stops them from slowing themselves down. Autoaiming Turrets / Used only by the Corvette

These turrets automatically track a selected target. Firing the turrets is manual.

These turrets automatically track a selected target. Firing the turrets is manual. Automatic Turrets / Used by Capital Ships

These turrets automatically choose and select , track and fire on targets. Usually very low range.

These turrets automatically choose and select , track and fire on targets. Usually very low range. Turrets / Used by Capital Ships

These turrets are controlled by the player looking around. Fired manually. Can have long traversal times. They will try to aim at whatever the player is looking at. Scanning objectives (at match start) See this post:

Tutorial for Beginners Some tactical advice See this post:

Tutorial for Beginners

Frequently Asked Questions

Click to Expand And there were many, especially in the early access steam launch. My pitch and yaw doesn’t work but everything else.

Press F4 until you are in “Direct” flight mode. My ship doesn’t respond when I set the speed and moves weirdly.

Check your “Systems Menu” (Default “v”) and set your formation mode to “Free”.

Video Tutorials

Click to Expand Low Tech Gaming Tutorial Series:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tyFoV8fPQH4&t=89s

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wYMT4DgN_Ns&t=4s

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6XS9AZ5KfQM

Playbennis “How To Win a Match”:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vK246r_sa2U

Additional Tutorial Resources

@Runekn’s Steam: Beginner’s Guide to Infinity: Battlescape

Also see the following posts in this thread.

Non essential Information

Click to Expand The Launcher Click to Expand

The launcher does not show up by default anymore.

It now serves as a backup window in cases where you set the wrong resolution or such.

You can bring it up by adding “-launcher” to the executable of the game or in the steams game specific launcher options.

This post is set to a wiki so additions can be made to it by other community members as needed. (my initial write up i know is missing images and graphics that would be handy in the movement, station, combat and warp sections)

TLDNR