The map and maneuver nodes

The map is where you read your ship's whole future at a glance, and where you write a new one, one planned burn at a time.

Reading the map

Tap MAP in the flight screen. It reads FLIGHT while the map is open, so the same button always gets you back. Every world is drawn where it really is at this moment, on rings that trace its own path around whatever it orbits; pinch, scroll or drag to zoom and pan. Zoomed all the way out, the whole solar system fits on one screen, worlds and moons alike, each carrying its own name.

The map zoomed out to the whole solar system: the star at the centre with several worlds' rings around it, each labelled by name. — Zoomed out, every world in the system sits on its own ring.

Tapping a world or a ship follows it: the camera keeps it centred every frame instead of letting it drift off as it moves. Panning away only unlocks the camera: the selection and its card stay put. Tapping the followed thing again either locks the camera back onto it or lets it go, depending on whether it was already locked.

Selecting a point and its info card

Tap your ship, a world, or any other vessel of yours and its card opens at the top of the screen, collapsed to a title and a subtitle; the ▸ in its corner opens the rest: altitude, speed, apoapsis and periapsis, fuel, and more depending on what you picked. A vessel that is not the one you are flying gets the same card, whether it is a dropped stage still going around on its own or a ship you left here on an earlier flight.

A dropped stage named Dropper Debris followed on the map, its own card open at the top reading 2 PARTS · EARTH, on its own orbit around Earth. — A dropped stage keeps its own card and its own orbit, exactly like any other ship.

Underneath the card sits a row of square chips for whatever it can do: ▶ CONTROL hands you the controls of a dormant ship of yours in place of the one you are flying, ✎ RENAME renames it, and ✦ SHIPS hides every other vessel on the map when traffic gets busy. Switch to a dropped stage covers taking control of one in full.

Planning a burn: maneuver nodes

Hold your finger down on your own orbit line and a ring fills in around it; let go once it is full and a node appears where you were pressing, in the colour its planned path will take. You can slide it along the line before releasing, or drag it afterward to place it more roughly before dialling it in.

A finger held on the vessel's orbit line with a violet ring partway filled in around the press point, the cue that a node is about to be planted. — Hold still on the line and the ring fills; let go once it closes.

Selecting a node opens a panel with two directions to push in: PROGRADE, along your current direction of travel, and RADIAL, straight out from or in toward the world. Each has its own + and − buttons, and a STEP chip set to 1, 10 or 100 decides how big every tap is. A TIME row with its own ◀ / ▶ nudges exactly when the burn happens. As you dial it in, the game draws the whole path that burn would leave you on: a new curve with its own apoapsis and periapsis, and, if it carries you far enough, a marker for whatever world it meets next.

The maneuver panel reading MANEUVER 1, Δv 842 m/s, EARTH › MOON, with the planned violet path curving out to a Moon encounter marker. — A big enough push bends the planned path all the way out to another world.

The panel's own BURN row says how long your current stage needs to hold the throttle open to deliver that much Δv. That is the figure you need before you decide whether this ship can make the trip at all.

Flying it

Once a node exists, the round instrument at the bottom of the screen carries a marker of its own to steer onto, with a countdown beside it. Execute a maneuver node covers pointing the ship, timing the light-up and knowing when to stop. A node whose moment has already passed does not vanish: it waits, reading that the burn is owed now, until you fly it or delete it.

REMIND ME

The map is the one place that knows exactly when an apoapsis, a sphere crossing or a burn happens, so it is where you ask to be told about one ahead of time: tap 🔔 REMIND ME under a selected point's card, or the same button inside a node's panel for the burn itself. Set a reminder covers the choices that follow.

TARGET

Following a dormant ship of yours and tapping ◎ TARGET under its card marks it as the thing you are steering toward. Your ship's forecast grows a marker at the closest point it comes to it, and the navball gains a TARGET speed mode showing the range and the closing speed once you are near: the numbers a rendezvous is actually flown on.