You are one of the four major Bridge Officers, the Helm Officer. Your job is to fly the ship, while the Weapons Officer is in charge of the ship's anti-ship battery, the Comm Officer is the one in charge of managing communications with command, other spacecraft, and planetary installations, and the Overwatch Officer is in charge of directing Marines on deployment. Unless you're cleared to do so by the other Bridge Officer or Command, or the other Bridge Officer is dead or missing, you should not interact with another Bridge Officer's console.
Bare minimum requirements: Fly the ship into and out of danger. Warn the crew when you go to jump.
As a Helms Officer, your duty is to fly the ship. Your seat is front and centre on the bridge, so you have the best view to parallel-park by an orbital platform. The Helms Console is fairly self-explanatory, so you can get the ship parked with a minimum of fuss.
Sometimes CorpComm will ask you to head to a specific planet. It's up to you as to how you plan to get the crew there. Before you go to make the initial jump, you should check with Engineering and make sure that the engines are in working order, and determine whether you need to stop by a gas giant to refuel. Generally speaking, it's also a good idea to make sure your first jump is into friendly territory to ensure if something isn't set up, it can be set up without being shot to pieces.
If you jump without warning and it causes the death of a crewmember (i.e. leaving a salvage team behind), you may face both IC and OOC consequences.
Although the Head of Personnel is technically your immediate supervisor, 99% of the time you'll be answering directly to the Captain, Commander, or Executive Officer - in other words, Command. It's important to keep Command informed and up-to-date on threat assessments. It's also generally a good idea to let them know when you enter or leave hostile space. If at any time there isn't a member of Command on the bridge, one should be notified so they can take up the slack. In the event that all three are dismissed or deceased, the Head of Personnel becomes Acting Captain unless they or CorpComm elect someone else to be Acting Captain. The Flight Control Console The operator of this console is responsible for flying the ship. It's fairly straightforward, but there are some keys you need to know. In general, avoid getting hit if possible, try to dodge torpedoes, and avoid boarding vessels while remaining within sight of the enemy for your gunner.
The C toggles whether the ship follows the mouse. When you first click the console, the ship will strive to point its nose towards your mouse. Hit space to toggle this behavior, which can be useful for not ruining your orientation just because you needed to click out of the window for a moment.
W and S control the throttle. Remember, the ship retains momentum once it starts moving; it will only stop itself if the inertial assistance system is turned on.
The Alt key is a sort of parking brake. Hitting it toggles the brake, which will make the ship come to a complete stop and stay there. Do not leave the parking break on while jumping into a hot zone. The chances that you remember to turn it off in those first few seconds of dodging torpedoes are very much not 100%. The deaths of so many innocent men weigh upon my soul.
The Shift Key activates a boost, which is primarily useful for dodging particularly nasty torpedoes or evading enemy boarding vessels.
Q and E activate a rotational drift, which is useful for pulling sick drifts turning very quickly, and in a short distance. This can also help to evade torpedos and less maneuverable ships.
The X key toggles inertial assistance. Disabling this allows you to strafe using A and D, and stops the ship from automatically braking when you stop holding W.
Point Defense Cannons, standard issue on NT vessels, fire numerous bullets in a short amount of time. This makes it great for taking out incoming torpedos or fighters. But be warned, you may only fire them in bursts. You can fire it by Left Clicking anywhere around the ship. The Tac console also has access to this weapon.
If your vessel is equipped with Superliminal Bluespace Artillery, you can use Left Click to fire a highpower plasma laser straight out of the nose of the ship. This can be very useful for finishing off large or medium-sized ships at close range. This weapon is hilariously powerful, but takes a lot of power and time to recharge.
Bear in mind that as the pilot, it's your duty to minimize losses by evading incoming fire and assisting the flyboys where needed. If the ATC reports that a pilot has ran out of fuel, you can help out by flying over the stranded fighter's flight path so it can dock. FTL Computer.gif The FTL Console This console controls the ship's long-range movement. It will provide you a map of various star systems that the ship can navigate to, as well as the ship's current location and how charged the FTL drive is. In order to make a jump, the drive must be 100% spooled up, which takes about a minute. If it isn't spooling at all, yell at engineering. As one might expect, this console doesn't need a dedicated crewmember; the pilot usually takes care of the job. However, in combat scenarios where the ship is fleeing, it might be necessary for another member of the bridge crew to operate the FTL console while the pilot runs evasive maneuvers.
This console is how you move the ship to various locations. You can click on different circles on the map. Each circle represents a solar system, each with multiple celestial bodies. Different colors correspond to different factions. When you click on them it opens a menu where you can jump to the system and see more info. At the top you can click the “Show Map” tab to view the map of the current solar system. Clicking on planets lets you see if there are any points of interest. In combat you should stay near the computer in case you need to make a retreat or tactical withdrawal. Here are some of the tabs you'll be seeing on the console.
This is the most basic tab, and shows the FTL charge and what planet the ship is positioned at. If you're in FTL then this tab will tell you where you were and where you're going to.
This tab shows the type of planet, a picture of it, whether it has satellites or not, and allows you to orbit, dock with a station if it has one, and land on the planet if it isn't a gas giant. Orbiting a planet with rings will bring you close to the belt and allow miners to mine the rings. The option to Land is replaced by the option to Scoop if the planet is a gas giant and your ship has a functional Gas Scoop.
Important: Undocking from a station is done by hitting Orbit.
See Also: Guide to Planets
This tab shows the system you're in, and will display all planets in orbit around the star. Clicking a planet will bring up a variant of the Planet Info tab for you to jump to. It should be noted that you can jump between planets without the FTL being at max charge. Planets here are named after their star with a number as their designation (i.e. you're in a system called Zulu with three planets, the planets are named Zulu 1, Zulu 2, etc.).
This tab brings up a bunch of colored dots which represent stars that you can jump to. You may notice you're in the center of a very large green circle, which represents the range of your FTL. Obviously you cannot reach stars that are outside the circle, but you can jump to them if you move in closer.
The systems in the star map are color-coded according to who controls them:
Blue systems are friendly systems, controlled by NovusCorp.
Orange systems are neutral systems, and are controlled by SolGov.
Red systems are enemy systems, and are Syndicate-controlled.
White systems are not controlled by any one “faction”, but tend to be infested with pirates.
You may also notice that some dots have the word “CAPITAL” under them, which basically just means it's the capital of the faction if you hadn't already guessed. You can expect to see a lot of the faction's bigger ships there. “RELAY” is another word you might see, which represents the miners who have been dropped off at a planet and turned on their telecoms relay, and for you to retrieve them if they don't have Quantum Pads.
Remember: Inform the crew before you jump so they can get back on the ship or get busy things done such as moving prisoners or handling a supermatter shard delamination incident. If you make an unannounced jump and it causes someone's death (such as leaving a salvage team behind), you may face consequences both in-character (manslaughter charges) or out-of-character (job-bans).
Remember This Too: Undock from stations that you're connected to. The ship is sometimes docked at Corpcomm at round start, and going into FTL while docked will tear the docking clamps and create a nightmare for both parties.
“They told me I'd be flying one of the best ships in the fleet. They didn't tell me I'd be working for one of the worst crews.”
The Helm Officer is in the unique position of being almost always necessary when the ship is traveling and almost entirely useless otherwise. If you find yourself with a Traitor objective or two, the best time to accomplish them is when the ship is otherwise stationary or in orbit, so you can excuse yourself and attend to business without being under the watchful eyes of the Captain or Commander.
Unfortunately, your presence in non-recreational areas of the ship is unusual, and you may need to be a disguise expert to pull it off convincingly. You do have Maintenance access, and the multiple Custodial Closets on the ship can provide a convenient disguise for your dirtier dealings. Just don't get caught.