Start Here Star Citizen 3.9 Tutorial
Start Here Star Citizen – This is a New Player Guide as well as a quick Tutorial for returning players looking to Play the latest Star Citizen Alpha 3.9 Update.
What is Star Citizen?
Star Citizen is a hybrid FPS/ SpaceShip Universe Sim MMO that focuses on highly detailed environments, ships & characters. Currently the Game is in Alpha and Receives major updates every 3 months or so and players are encouraged to play, give feedback and bug hunt. It’s a project that the community help the studio develop.
What Do You Need to Play?
You need to make an Account, you can go to boredgamer.co.uk/enlist or use the link below to take you to the account creation page and give you a bonus 5000 aUEC, the in-game currency, feel free to change the referral code to a friends or use the one automatically input.
When creating your account a couple of things to note your Login ID isn’t seen by anyone else and just used to log onto the platform… treat it like another password.
Your Handle is your in Game Name, your community moniker is your name on the forums (your handle and moniker can be the same BUT neither should be the same as your login ID)
All you need to play Star Citizen is a $45 Game Package with Starter Ship… you can get almost everything else in game at the moment just by playing. I recommend a Mustang Alpha as your starting ship and if you want to spend a little extra upgrading it to a Avenger Titan AT A LATER TIME. Some people might want to purchase SQ42 the single player campaign of Star Citizen at this stage too.
Grab the Downloader & Install Star Citizen on an SSD if you can… that will dramatically reduce initial load times.
If you want to practice Ship Combat – Checkout Arena Commander, FPS Combat Star Marine… These are fast paced arcade modes, the tutorial here will focus on the PU.
From the main menu select UNIVERSE
Then create your Character (you can edit this later)
There is a Choice of 3 Locations under Space Ports for your starting Spawn – New Babbage (microTech), Area18 (ArcCorp), Lorville (Hurston). New Babbage is the New Zone… so let’s go there.
Interacting with the World & “Escaping the City – Signs are your friend”
You’ll spawn in a Hab Block
Get out of Bed by moving or Pressing Y – Y will get you out of any bed or chair.
Open the Door by holding F and left clicking this is how you interact with objects and panels
Interact with the Elevator in the same way, you can use the mouse wheel as well to move thru panels. When holding F you’ll notice objects that are nearby that can be interacted with will have an orange outline.
You can also find almost any action you want in the Personal Inner Thought menu by holding F and Right Clicking, this will bring up a radial menu that will give you access to any actions you want to do contextually be you in ship or on foot. Take off your helmet, quick switch weapon access your food/harvestables inventory it’s all there as is emotes… you can also set hotkeys or favorite actions from this menu by Right Clicking on the Action so you don’t need to faff around in the options menu. Now you know the basics of interaction let’s go get a ship, we are going to follow the signs to the Train Station & SpacePort NBIS [New Babbage Interstellar SpacePort]
You can use mouse wheel to change your movement speed and Shift to run.
Spawning Your Ship
Find and Use the ASOP Terminal (F and left click) Select your ship and Spawn it.
These terminals can be used to reclaim your ship too if you ever lose it or it’s destroyed.
It will show what pad/hangar your ship is on, Remember it! If you forget, look on the terminal again, it will say where your ship is.
Use the Lift to go to the hangar where you ship is supposed to be.
Boarding Your Ship & Interaction
Enter Your Ship by finding where it’s door or ladder is. On single seat fighters this is normally on the Port (left side of ship) by the cockpit, tho some ships have entry points and ramps you can lower. Again hold F and left click on the highlighted area. Once you are in the pilot seat you can Flight Ready your ship with [R] or by interacting and finding the appropriate button then you’ll want to Request Takeoff [REQUEST LANDING] F1 to open your mobiGlas, select comms & then the Friends Tab and then click the appropriate ATC in this case it’s the one for NBIS (wait a moment, then close your mobiGlas with F1 again) The door or roof will open then you’ll be able to leave.
Basic Ship Movement for Keyboard
Take Off by gently pressing space to go up,
You can use control to go down, W to accelerate, S to reverse, A strafe Left, D Right. Mouse wheel will control your max speed.
Once you have left your hangar get clear of the area here as ramming people or being in their way can be crimes BUT then take a second to get to grips with your ship.
Shift is Afterburner, Q & E will Roll, X is space break AND VERY USEFUL.
N will toggle your landing gear.
C is cruise control and will attempt to get to and maintain the max set speed on the left of your ship HUD which you can control with mouse wheel.
Going into the red section of the gage means that you are above safe maneuvering speeds and you will have a harder time slowing down and you’ll be more sluggish… getting somewhere go fast, when you are near by make sure you slow down.
F4 will toggle 3rd person camera, holding F4 and arrow, page, plus minus keys will all perform functions to the 3rd person camera.
Selecting a Mission
You want to be appropriately equipped for a mission that you pick normally… but we will skip that step and choose something as a starter mission.
Missions are accessible from the mobiGlas Contracts Manager, the General tab has lawful missions that regularly get updates. Personal may have less legal missions or ones more personalized to your current situation. I recommend doing a mission from General, a Mercenary Mission like Illegal Monitors Detected which will have you finding and destroying drones and you have the option to engage other enemies too is probably best.
You could also choose an Investigation mission to find someone in a cave if you like the idea of exploring and spelunking. I also like Bounty Missions, tho you first contract for a bounty might be a long quantum journey BUT then you can get regular bounty missions. Avoid the delivery ones as you might not have appropriate cargo space and read the description, anything over 5k aUEC reward is probably not intended to be done in a starter ship as your first mission.
You can see any accepted missions and change the tracked one in Accepted.
Starmap & Quantum
To travel to your mission OR anywhere else open the Starmap on your mobiGlas
You can double left click to zoom in, double right out OR use mouse wheel.
Zoom out and find the mission marker, click and set destination. Close with F1.
You’ll need to be above a certain altitude before you can Quantum. So travel upwards out of the atmosphere.
Press B to Spool your quantum Drive then align to the location you wish to travel to, you can do this without a destination on the star map to be given a load of different choices.
The drive will calibrate once spool and calibrate are completed you HOLD B to Quantum Travel… it will charge up, accelerate then jump.
You may have to make several Quantum Jumps based on where the location you are travelling is.
Basic Ship Combat
If you need to fight you can Press 3 to target cycle enemies, or 1 to target what is under your cursor.
You can cycle fire modes with R Fixed, Manual Gimbal or Auto Gimbal this is dependant on the loadout of your ship… I do recommend that you try to outfit ships with gimballed weapons and use auto-gimballed mode IF you want easy mode. This shows 2 dotted lines that will converge when aimed at the enemy ship.
Left click fires weapon group 1, Right Weapon Group 2. The targeted enemy ship will draw a pip that you need to aim at to hit the ship…
I recommend engaging below the Red Speeds (SCM) and firing within 1000-1500m to start with, different weapons do have different ranges BUT smaller weapons are typically meant to be used at dogfighting range.
You can interact with your ships Systems with the innerthought system, hotkeys or interaction, from putting more power to shields, overclocking, & turning off systems.
In larger ships you can have other players manning your guns or managing systems.
If you have missile middle mouse locks, hold it to fire.
H cycles counter measures, G Fires them.
Try to keep moving while in combat and changing speeds, but remember when going into the red bar of speed you’ll be more sluggish agility wise… asteroids do not discriminate who crashes into them.
You can also scan for ships and signatures – Toggle scanning on by pressing tab, hovering over an object and holding left click will scan it for more info, holding right click will charge up a ping then release it… this will show a cube of where a signature has been detected, if you are looking for mineables, ships OR data probes then this will help greatly.
If you need to leave your Ship press Y to leave your chair OR interact and find the exit.
The FPS Combat in game plays pretty much like most others.
You can interact with and modify your weapon if you have a scope or mod.
1-3 will switch weapons (you’ll just have a pistol to start with) tho you can pick up enemies weapons.
T is Flashlight, X is crawl, control is crouch
0 pulls out your fists for melee
Tapping R will reload (if you have a mag), Holding R will holster
C Will use a medipen which will also stop bleeding, you’ll need to re-equip a medipen after using one (buy lots from a FPS gear store)
You’ll want to buy a few magazines for any weapons and equip them once you have been to a store and take on more involved missions.
You can fly around in EVA when not in gravity but you may want to orientate yourself before entering an area with gravity or you’ll be collapsed on the floor for a while or even take damage/die.
Dying & Respawning – If you die for any reason you will respawn in the last major location you visited or an ICU (or prison if you were naughty).
You can set you ICU spawn point on certain ships medi-beds… that being the Cutlass Red, 890 Jump and Carrack.
If you ship is lost or destroyed OR you just want to move it to your current location you will need to reclaim if from an ASOP terminal, this can take a few mins and you can choose to pay an expedited fee to have it quicker. Good practice is to reclaim your ships just before you log off for the night.
When you log back in you will spawn at the last major location you were at OR in a bed on a ship if you used the LOGOUT function after laying down in one.
At any time if you are stuck you & on foot can Hold Backspace to Respawn or use PIT to do that, if you are in the main seat of a ship you will set a self destruct instead.
Rearm Refuel & Repair – Landing
Like when you requested take off open the mobi, go friends and select the ATC… this should default to one of the top results. This will assign you a landing pad, marked with a circle and spanner.
N will toggle your landing gear down and you can manually land OR when you are extremely close to and over the pad you can hold N again at it should autoland you.
When landed you can make use of a stations or LZs Services to maintain and rearm your ship open the mobiGlas and click the Vehicle Services (upside down spanner).
Quantum Fuel is limited… make sure you refuel from time to time.
Buying Items
Shops at Landing Zones and Stations will be able to outfit your character and ships.
Once Bought.
You’ll then need to Customize your Ship before spawning it on an ASOP terminal, this is done via the vehicle loadout manager on the mobiGlas. You can also see the system sizes and mounts a ship has here on the left to work out what you want to buy.
With your mustang Alpha you can fit a weapon on each of it’s wings, I recommend grabbing 2 S1 VariPuck Gimbals and then attaching a size 1 weapon to each, this will let you fire all the weapons with manual or auto gimbals.
You can Rent or Buy Ships from various locations in the Verse.
Ship Rentals can be found near starports on planets they are more affordable limited time ships that can’t be modified.
Ships can be bought in game from:
New Deal at Lorville Hurston, AstroAmada at Area 18 ArcCorp & Teaches at Levski Delamar.
Progress may be carried over to major patches in the future as well, so we might see 3.9’s items and aUEC that you make in 4.0
Character Loadouts
You can change what your character is equipped with by purchasing gear from various vendors around the Verse then using the mobiGlas Equipment Manager to select what you want. A Flight Suit and Helmet are recommended wearing as without them you might suffocate quickly in space or areas with no oxygen.
There are Survival Mechanics
Temp, Nutrition, Hydration are all important. You can buy or find food and drink and store it if you have inventory room (based on your armor). Armor is rated to different thermals, this will be mainly applicable on the Icy Surfaces of microTech, it’s moons, the extremely hot Daymar and a few other places. Your ship & structures are refuges refilling your oxygen and protecting you from the elements.
Eat and Drink every couple of hours when you return to landing zones and stations, food is mega cheap. You will need to take off your helmet… put it back on afterwards.
There are buffs and debuffs associated with these, you can see your status by pressing F & Right Click and in the bottom left you can see Hydration, Nutrition, Heart Rate, Oxygen etc…
Also if you are in danger of dying a hud warning will show life expectancy.
You can just Pick Up Stuff & Harvestables (if you have space) some of which can be sold, equipped and used OR eaten. Grab food items from your Personal Inventory in the Interaction Menu.
There is a lot of Exploration to be done – Caves, Planets, Moons, Outposts, Space Stations, there are easter eggs and cool bits to find.
That’s the basics BUT there is a lot more you can do
There are Lots of other Different Missions and types… Delivery, Assassination, Assault, Scan & Clear, Patrol, Disposial, Smuggling some require you to team up, board ships, do some investigation. You may meet some Mission Givers, typically they will send you invites to your Personal Missions.
Missions will lead to different variations and new potentially more difficult missions and chains.
You may need specific types of ships to do certain missions like cargo space for delivery ones BUT it’s worth equipping yourself with armor and weapons as well as upgrading your ships weapons.
There are a load of Outlaw Missions and missions that get generated when players do certain actions or take missions.
You will get a Criminal Rating or get fines for anything you do that is illegal, you can pay fines off at the appropriate kiosks around LZs. You can see what is illegal or prohibited in the journal tab of your mobiGlass.
Crimes need to be detected (by Comm Arrays) to count as crimes and these Comm Arrays can be turned off by going to them on the Star Map and inputting a Crypto Key (which you can purchase at various stores)
If you do commit certain crimes and then are killed you may end up in Prison, where you can see your sentence time left in the central kiosk, you just go to prisoner processing when your time is up, you can speed this up by mining OR you can try to escape.
Crypto-Keys can be used at Security Depots like SPK to hack down your criminal rating and remove crimes from your record… These areas are often protected by guards and turrets.
There is PvP very much so in Star Citizen, players will get criminal ratings if they are detected doing this tho… if the ship is red on the HuD then typically that means they are a criminal and you can engage them without worry OR should worry and disengage. Green means non-hostile… probably.
Bounty Hunting Missions can be for NPCs but also players & there are escaped prisoners too.
Trading – IF your ship has some cargo space you can buy and sell commodities. A lot of players just do this BUT you need an appropriate ship.
Mining – You can mine by hand if you purchase a Mining/multi Tool and Ore Attachment, You’ll also want a armor or undersuit with a backpack (which you can purchase in various shops along with the multitool) you can then bring this out after equipping it in the loadout menu with 4 and mine rocks, right click to scan them, left click to start mining then adjust the power of your beam with mouse wheel, you want to keep it in the green zone and then you’ll be able to pick up the gems that are dropped. If you go into the redzone for too long the rock will explode. Sell your mineables at refinery kiosks that you can find at some stations and LZs.
On Larger Scale ships can mine, the Prospector and Mole… it’s the same technique as hand mining just with a couple of changes, you can scan for rocks (Tab), mine them, then extract them… explosions of larger rocks can be VERY DANGEROUS… Quantanium is a new valuable but volatile mineable that needs to be taken to refineries quickly and safely.
There is various mining equipment to allow you to more easily fracture different rocks.
Getting More Involved
Star Citizen is best played in a group. You can form a party in game or in the menu and when your party leader joins an instance you can choose to load in with them, you can also join friends straight from the main menu. Tho you may have to travel to them when in game.
You can invite players to group straight from in-game to by interacting with them and inviting / adding as friends OR even from the comms panel.
Adding a Friend can be done in game or on the RSI website too or main menu, just put in the player handle in and then add. You can share missions with groups by going to the mission in accepted and clicking share.
Reporting Bugs Star Citizen is very much Alpha … If you find or experience a bug and you will… you can start OR more commonly add to an existing bug report on the RSI websites Issue Council.
Getting Involved with the Community & Feedback – There are lots of opportunities to have your say on the Spectrum Forums, asking questions, participating in AMAs
Joining an Organization is something you should really consider, these are player guilds or groups that will suit a variety of players needs… but give you people to play with and organize things to do in game! Star Citizen is best experienced with others at least sometimes… You can browse orgs and contact them on the RSI website too.
If you don’t know something ask in chat in game OR look up a video on youtube.
General Tips
If in doubt Hold F and Right Click and use the Inner Thought System.
R Flight Readys Ships.
Y Gets out of a Chair / Station / Bed.
Holding Backspace Respawns you… I use this a lot.
Don’t be afraid to ask another player how to do something, look at a ship OR to form a party.