“Learn the board before you learn the pieces.”
— Fleet Admiral Selene Voss
The HUD
The main HUD shows your commander (level and XP), your resources and coins, your fleets and a minimap. Every screen opens from a HUD button:
| Button | What it opens |
|---|---|
| Sector View | The map of the whole sector |
| Planet View | A close view of your home planet and the objects around it |
| Base View | Your home base: build, upgrade, move and collect |
| Shipyard | Every ship you own, and the hull blueprints: build, research, repair, outfit and scrap |
| Research Laboratory | The module tech tree |
| Forge | Manufacture modules you have researched |
| Ship Outfitting | Fit modules to your ships |
| Bookmarks | Saved map locations |
| Battle Reports | Every battle your fleets have fought (the crossed swords at the bottom right, beside the view buttons). A number on it counts the reports you have not read |
| Sector Briefing | Fleet Admiral Voss's report on the day before (the comm button among the round buttons at the bottom right). A dot on it means there is a report you have not heard. See Levels and Progression |
| Weekly Bounties | The week's five Tide bounties (the reticle among the round buttons at the bottom right). Every commander has it; the bounties count and can be claimed from level 40. A number on it counts the bounties waiting to be claimed. At the foot of its panel RELIC FORGE opens the Relic Forge and TIDE THREAT the Tide Threat panel. See Weekly Tide bounties |
| Officers | Your officers, recruiting and the collection, from level 10. See Bridge Officers |
| Your portrait | Your commander profile: your medals, the title you wear and your career (the portrait on your commander card, top left). See Medals, titles and your profile |
| Training tracker | The Commander's Licence: the mission in hand and what it pays (the card under your commander card, top left). Click it for every chapter and mission. See Levels and Progression |
| Training button | Whenever the training tracker is not on the screen: the gold wings, the last of the round buttons at the bottom right (they stand in two rows, Battle Reports first). It brings training back if you put it away, and opens the Licence when no mission is waiting and in the Base View, where the tracker steps aside |
| Faction | The faction registry: read each power's dossier and choose yours |
| Home | Flies the camera to your home planet (sector view) |
Moving around the map
| Input | Action |
|---|---|
| W A S D, or drag with the middle mouse button | Pan the camera |
| Mouse wheel | Zoom (towards the cursor) |
| Q / E | Rotate the camera |
| Page Up / Page Down | Rotate in steps |
| O | Reset the rotation |
| Left click | Select a fleet, outpost, planet or system |
| Hold Left Shift and left-drag a box | Select several of your own fleets |
| Double-click an object | Centre the camera on it |
| Right click | Give the selected fleet an order (on the map). Also cancels a command that is waiting for a target, or a building you are placing |
| Double-click an empty tile (Base View) | Open the Change Tile Type menu |
| Hold the pointer on an armed building (Base View) | See where its guns can fire: one arc per gun |
| Hold Alt (Base View) | See the firing arcs of every armed building at once. In a battle, see In a battle below |
| H | Jump to your home planet (sector view) |
| F1 to F8 | Select your fleets |
| Esc | Close the open menu, or put down a building you are placing in the Base View. With nothing open: the Leave prompt, with Settings and Main Menu |
Clicking the same spot again cycles through overlapping icons. When several things overlap, a fleet is picked before an outpost, an outpost before a planet, and a planet before a solar system.
Box-select needs Left Shift held down while you drag, and it only ever picks up your own fleets that are deployed.
Esc never quits by itself. It closes the open menu first, then asks "Leave Massive Frontier?" with Cancel, Settings, Main Menu (back to the main menu, with the next incursion and what is waiting for you) and Quit Game. Settings has a DISPLAY tab (frame rate limit, resolution scale, VSync), a GRAPHICS tab and an AUDIO tab. On AUDIO, Battle sounds sets how loud a battle is, from 0 (silent) to 100%: weapons, hits, explosions and abilities. Move it and you hear a shot at that level.
The first time the game starts it picks the graphics quality for your graphics card: Low on built-in (integrated) graphics and on cards with under 3 GB of memory, Medium under 5 GB, High under 7 GB and Epic above. AUTO-DETECT on the GRAPHICS tab picks it again the same way. Change any of it by hand whenever you like.
Finding your way home
Your home planet is marked in sector view with a pulsing green ring and your base emblem. When it is off screen, a green arrow at the screen edge points to it: click the arrow, press H or use the HOME button to fly there.
The command bar
Select a fleet, a planet, one of your outposts or a solar system and a bar of commands appears along the bottom of the screen. It shows what you can do with that selection and nothing else, and each position has a number key. MOVE waits for you to click a destination; right-click or Esc cancels it without giving an order.
In a battle
When you command one of your fleets in a battle, the mouse and the number keys belong to the battle. Left click picks, right click orders:
| Input | Action |
|---|---|
| Left click one of your ships | Pick it. Whatever was picked before is let go |
| Ctrl + left click, or Shift + left click, a ship | Add it to what is picked |
| Left click empty space | Let go of everything picked |
| Left-drag on the battlefield | Move the view: the ground under the pointer goes with it. What is picked stays picked. Somebody only watching can do this too |
| Mouse wheel | Zoom in and out, toward the pointer. The view pulls back far enough to see most of the battlefield at once. Somebody only watching can do this too |
| Hold Left Shift and left-drag a box | Pick every ship of yours inside the box |
| Double-click a ship | Put the camera on it. If it is yours it is picked as well |
| Right click empty space | Move: the picked ships go there, each keeping its place beside the others |
| Right click an enemy ship | Attack: the picked ships lock that target, hold their own range on it and keep firing |
| Alt + click empty space | Move there with the nose kept on the target the ship is locked on |
| Hold the pointer on a ship | See its firing arcs and how far its guns reach. Somebody only watching can do this too, for any ship of either fleet |
| Hold Alt, in a raid | See the arcs of every gun the base has left: for the raider, the defender and anyone watching |
| Hold Alt, only watching | See the firing arcs of every ship on the field, in a fleet battle or a raid |
| 1 to 9 | Pick that box of the roster bar: one of your ships, or a saved group. Pressed again on the one ship that is picked, it puts the camera on that ship |
| Shift + 1 to 9 | Add that box to what is picked |
| Ctrl + 1 to 9 | Save the picked ships as a group in that box (the boxes after your ships) |
| F1 | Pick your whole fleet |
| Click a box on the roster bar | The same as pressing its number. Ctrl + click saves a group there, Shift + click adds it |
| Click AUTO or MANUAL on a box | Hand that one ship to the autopilot, or take it back |
| Space, or click the OVERDRIVE dial | Overdrive, on every picked ship that has it full |
| Z, X, C, or click a tile | Switch on an active module: the first, second and third tile of the ability panel. Tiles after the third are clicked |
| FLEET AUTO | Hand every ship of yours back to the autopilot. It is lit while none is flown by hand |
| Click or drag on the mini map | Look at that part of the battle |
| FREE CAMERA | The camera follows the fight and lets go when you move or zoom the view yourself. The button is lit while the camera is yours; press it to hand the camera back, or to take it |
| LEAVE | Go back to where you were. Your ships return to the autopilot and the battle goes on |
Box-select is the same as on the map: hold Left Shift while you drag. A plain drag moves the view instead.
Somebody only watching a battle can drag the view, zoom with the wheel, hold the pointer on a ship to see its arcs or hold Alt to see every ship's arcs at once, and has the camera, the two ship lists and the mini map. They cannot give an order.
While you command your own ships in a fleet battle, Alt is for Alt + click and draws no arcs. In a raid, Alt shows every gun the base has left to everybody, the raider included.
Chat
Chat sits in a dock on the left edge of the screen, behind the Coms tab. Everything arrives in one feed. The channel button beside the text box chooses where you are talking:
| Channel | Who hears you |
|---|---|
| Planet | Everyone whose base is on your planet |
| Sector | Everyone whose base is in your sector |
| Alliance | Everyone in your alliance. Only there when you are in one |
| Faction | Everyone in your faction |
| Trade | The whole game. Opens when your base reaches level 3 |
| Whisper | One commander, privately. A whisper to someone offline waits for them |
Click a name in chat to open that commander's profile, whisper to them, block them or report them. FILTER hides channels you don't want to read, and what you switched off stays off the next time you play on that computer. Your chat rooms follow your base, not your camera. A commander in an alliance has its [TAG] before their name, and a commander who wears a title has it after their name.
What was said while you were away is kept. When you sign in, chat shows the last 50 lines each of your planet, your sector, your faction and your alliance, and the last 30 of Trade, from the last 30 days. A line from another day carries its date, for example Oct 11 21:41; a line said today shows the time alone.
Link puts the planet or fleet you have selected into your message as a chip others can click to go there. A battle report can be shared the same way, from the Battle Reports screen, and your profile with SHOW IN CHAT on it.
Bookmarks
A bookmark remembers a planet, a solar system or an outpost. Select one on the map first, then open Bookmarks and press Add, or use BOOKMARK on the command bar. Give it a name, and Go To takes you back to it later, even from another sector, with the object selected for you.
With nothing selected the Add button is greyed out and says what to select. You can keep up to 32 bookmarks, and the same object can't be bookmarked twice.