Controls

Old Light controls work with mouse, touch, and keyboard. Drag to pan the galaxy, scroll or pinch to zoom, and use keyboard shortcuts to jump between systems and open your reports, messages, ranks, and settings. On a phone it all works by touch, so no keyboard is needed.

Mouse and touch

The galaxy map is the same on desktop and mobile; only the input differs.

• Pan - drag the map with the left mouse button, or drag with one finger on a touch screen. The point under your cursor stays under your cursor as you move.

• Zoom - scroll the mouse wheel, or pinch with two fingers. Zoom keeps the point under the cursor fixed.

• Select a system - click (or tap) a star to select it and open its action menu. On one of your own systems, pick Set active to point the side panels at it (the active system); Q and E also switch the active system directly.

• Select several systems - alt-click or shift-click your own systems to add them to the selection or take them out again. One order then runs at all of them.

• Sector menu - right-click the map, for the marker shapes plus Select all my systems in this sector and Clear selection.

• Mobile navigation - on phones a bottom bar switches between the star view, movements, and the galaxy map. The rest of the interface is the same as desktop.

Markers

Right-click a star, and the menu opens with a row of eight coloured shapes. Click one to pin it to that star, and click the same shape again to take it off.

Markers are private. Nobody else ever sees yours, and no other player's markers are visible to you, so a marker is never a hint about anyone. The game attaches no meaning to any shape either: a triangle means whatever you have decided a triangle means. Mark staging posts, targets you have already probed, anything you want to find again.

A marker sits on the place, not on the empire holding it, so one you put on a rival's system stays put after you capture it. Any star can take one, yours or otherwise, and you can have 1000 out at a time. They cost nothing.

Keyboard shortcuts

On desktop, every common action has a key. The full list also lives in Settings in-game.

Moving around the galaxy

• Move the map - W A S D. Hold a key for continuous panning.

• Zoom in / out - + and -.

• Center the active system - C snaps the camera back to your active system.

• Previous / next system - Q and E (or [ and ]) step through your systems one at a time.

Opening panels

• System info - I opens details for the active system.

• Structures / Shipyard - F toggles the build panel between structures and the shipyard.

• Reports - R opens your reports inbox.

• Messages - M opens your conversations.

• Ranks - L opens the leaderboard.

• Guide - ? or F1 opens this guide.

• Settings - , opens settings.

General

• Hide interface - the backtick key ( ` ) toggles a map-only view with every panel hidden.

• Fullscreen - a toggle in the bottom-right corner of the galaxy view fills the screen with the game. It only appears on a desktop-sized viewport in a browser that supports fullscreen, so it is absent on phones and inside an embedded build of the game.

• Close / deselect - Esc closes an open panel or the system action menu. With nothing open, it deselects the highlighted system.

What to read next

• Active System - how the side panels focus on one system at a time.

• Selecting Systems - ordering builds, fleets and shipments at many systems at once.

• Quickstart - the first things to do when the map loads.

• Messaging - send private messages to other players.