Start - Navigation
You logged into the server, selected a ship and hit the "play" button, then suddenly there is a ship in the center of the screen and a planet near it. The ship is yours! You can zoom in and out of it with your scroll button or z and x as alternative.
Look around by holding the left or right mouse button. Try flying a circle around the planet near you by using either w,a,s,d or the arrow keys. The arrows give you direct control of your heading at all times, w,a,s,d is more relaxed, just test it. Chances are ýou'll crash on the planet and you are back in the hangar again. No worries, just select your ship and hit "play" again to go back to space and retry flying a circle around the planet. You can use the TAB button to adjust camera mode to something that feels comfortable for you.
Now that you know how to look around, and fly around, you can travel a bit further.
To travel a bit further and to see what's going on in the metaverse, we use the navigation menu. Open it with the f2 button. hitting spacebar once will center the screen to whatever you have selected at that time. If you havent selected anything, the navigation screen will center on you.
On the bottom left of the navigation menu, there are 3 columns: 1 for the planets and gates in the system, 1 for enemy ships (the red ones) and 1 for friendly ships (the green ones).
Try selecting a friendly (green) planet in the bottom left of the navigation menu. Now that you have selected it, you can hit spacebar to center your screen on it. You will notice a white line between yourself and the planet that is selected. This is your jump-alignment. If the line between you and the planet is red, or flashing white/red, then the route to the planet is obstructed by another planet, a sun, or a gate. Try selecting a planet where the jump-alignment is safe (white line).
Now exit the navigation menu by pressing f2 again, and hit the "j" button to make your jump to the planet. You will see a counter that tells you how long it takes to align your ship directly to the planet, then when you start to jump, a counter tells you how long it takes until you arrive. Once your jump is done, you are near the planet you have selected in f2. Try orbitting it, by selecting the planet (click left mouse button on the green diamond in center of planet) and pressing "o". After a jump your jumpdrive needs to recharge, depending on ship size this can take a minute.
The next step would be, to find a planet with a shipyard and orbit it. A shipyard allows u to change ships. Press ctrl + y, and go to the navigation screen again. With ctrl + y u have selected a shipyard, but not the planet itself. In some occaisions if you jump to the shipyard, not the planet holding the shipyard, you will fly into the planet. Therefore, after ctrl + y, we go to f2 and hit spacebar to center the screen on the shipyard. Now that we know what planet we need to go to. Select the planet, make sure your jump line is white, and hit "j" to jump near it, or "o" to jump near it and orbit the planet. After orbitting the shipyard, you can use the shipyard by pressing ctrl + y (select shipyard), then ctrl + u (use selected item) twice.
Sometimes there is a big sun in the way of you and your planet. Flying around it would take hours. In these occaision setting a manual point somewhere in the middle of space, but around the sun, will help u a lot. You can set a manual point in-game, or in the navigation screen, by holding the left ctrl button and then click on a place in space. The manual point is yellow and will go away after u left click somewhere else. By jumping to the manual point, you should now have a clear jump path to the planet you want to travel towards. If not, try another point in space. Using manual points is a skill that will become very very usefull once mastered. Not only in navigation.
Did you notice the gates? Go to the navigation menu, check the bottom left of your screen (where the planets are listed also) for any gates, and jump to it. Now, try to fly into it. You will be transported superfast to a whole new starsystem, with a lot of planets to play around with. Gates are used in Darkspace to travel around from point A to B faster. If you zoom out as far as you can in the navigation menu, you will see all the starsystems with their names. The starsystem with most other players(as of august 2012) are tetra, r33, dres-kona and kaus borealis. If you use a shipyard planet near you, you will go back to your hangar and you will have the option to spawn at another shipyard. Try selecting a shipyard 1 or 2 systems near kaus borealis and say hi to the people :).
Since it is important not to make a starters guide to complicated, i'll end here. Its enough to let you fly around and know your position and I hope it answered some of the questions you may have had.
