Rudimental do you use mouse and Keyboard or controller? I tried the mouse and keyboard and battled a bit, but with the controller its easier to control the ship but alot of the controls still sit on the keyboard.
.QQ. i havent been in any fights yet, i think Rudi will be better qualified to answer that question.
Neither. I have a Logitech 3D Pro Joystick. You should be able to pick it up for <R400 at Kalahari/Raru/Loot. Needed to adjust the deadzone a little and invert the throttle, but otherwise it has worked great. Haven't used a joystick since I had a Saitek one for X-wing/Tie Fighter, though. You will need the keyboard for some stuff still, though, unless you get a throttle with loads of buttons.
As for the online, I do not know exactly how it works. I play Solo Online and I haven't experienced any lag with NPCs, or docking or anything like that. I do not know about playing with other people, though, sorry. I'm on an unshaped IS capped account.
As for what to do, well it is really a sandbox game that doesn't guide you too much. Here a rough description of some of the stuff. There are 3 main endeavors: Combat, Trading and Scouting. You get ranks in all of these, from things like Harmless to Elite for combat. So if you want, you can pick one and try to max out your rank. For combat, you can be a bounty hunter by attacking wanted ships and taking some missions to kill pirates to get credits and influence. You can also be a pirate and attack 'clean' NPCs and players, with some missions to kill clean traders or bounty hunters, though you will get a bounty and if you die you will have to pay it off. You can also go to some of the war zones and fight for a faction (more on the factions below) by participating in large battles.
For trading, you can just haul stuff from one station to another, the classic 'buy low sell high', though it can be hard to tell where things are in demand (someone has made a nice program for this on the official forums). You also get missions to haul stuff from one station to another or to bring needed goods to that station. Some stations also have a black market where you can sell stolen or illegal goods, but for larger stations you will have to smuggle them past the security ships, which is hard and there are massive penalties for being caught with stolen or illegal goods. Luckily, some smaller stations without security ships have black markets, so you can go there to hawk your stolen goods (anything you pick up in space that isn't yours is considered stolen, even if you just find it floating there).
For exploration, you find systems that need to be explored. They are usually the ones that have weird names that look more like categorisations than real names like Alrai BV-2 ML3 (I cannot remember them exactly). You have a basic scanner that you can use as you fly around that will detect objects within a fairly small radius, with more expensive ones scanning a larger area. Once you use that and spot planets, moons, asteroid belts and stars, you then focus on them to scan and identify them. If you want a better scan, then you need a Detailed Surface Scanner. Depending on what you scan, you make more or less money by selling the data to Universal Cartographics (but you have to travel a certain distance away from the system to sell the data). The most money is for metal-rich planets, afaik. This is probably the least fleshed-out of the 3. There are no exploration missions and you can spend a lot of time scanning a system and not get much return if it only has ice planets, for example.
There is also a reputation system and 3 main factions: Federation, Alliance and Empire with an ongoing story that people can influence depending on how they act, but I'm not sure exactly how it works. There are also loads of smaller factions, and changing influence in a system can lead to civil war, independence, and so on. At the moment, there is some political turmoil in the Empire, which has lead to a warzone in one of the systems where you can fight for a slave rebellion or the people putting it down, I think since I haven't been there. Not exactly sure how that will play out, though. There are also some players trying to trigger a civil war for independence in a few systems by supporting an independent faction and doing missions for it.
There is a lot to do, but the game really does not hold your hand or guide you at all, so it can be frustrating if you do not know why you are not making money exploring or cannot find the pirates you need to kill or cannot find the Non-lethal Weapons that a station is asking for. Some of the penalties for doing things wrong are very harsh. If you loiter too long in a station (there is a timer) then the station will open fire and destroy you. If you like sandbox games that let you do lots of different things and like having to read up and delve into things to find out just how they work, then you should enjoy this game, but if you just want space dog-fighting, it might be a little frustrating. There is also a bunch of stuff I haven't talked about, like ship modules and what combat it like, and supercruise and hyperspace jumps, plus flight-assist off mode for more accurate light physics, etc... Best thing to do if you are interested is to check out videos and articles.
