CONTROLS

One ship, one set of physics, three ways to give it orders. They are all live at the same time and there is nothing to switch on — use whichever suits you, and switch whenever you like.

• 1. The mouse, inside the center circle (desktop). Point where you want to go. The ship turns toward the pointer and burns that way. Rest the cursor close to your ship and it stops thrusting and only turns, so you can sit still and shoot or mine. Click to fire a single shot; keep the button down to run the mining beam. This is what you get by default.
• 2. The flight joystick (phones, tablets, and desktop too). Drag it the way you want to go and the game works out the engine mix for you. A light push is a gentle cruise; a full push is full burn.
• 3. The four engine keys. Direct control of each engine, described in the rest of this page. The other two schemes are ways of asking the game to work these same engines for you.

One honest note that applies to all three: this is a heavy ship with momentum, not a cursor that snaps. A quarter turn takes around five seconds, and you keep drifting the way you were already going until you thrust against it. Learning to fly here is learning that, not learning a key layout.

There is also a full autopilot that can fly the ship for you while you think — see AI & Autopilot.

Asteroid Dominion uses a four-engine flight model, and this is the manual way to fly it — the mouse and the joystick both end up pressing these same engines for you. Your ship has two forward engines (front-left and front-right) and two reverse engines (rear-left and rear-right). Each engine is bound to one key. Press both engines on the same side and you thrust straight; press just one and you turn while you thrust. There is no separate "rotation" key — rotation is an emergent property of asymmetric thrust, the same way it works on a real spacecraft.

This sounds complicated. It isn't. After about thirty seconds your hands stop thinking about it and you just fly. Players who come from twin-stick shooters take a few minutes longer to adjust, but once you do, the four-engine system gives you much finer pitch-and-roll control in a fight than a simple "left/right/forward" scheme ever does.

Mobile and tablet players get the same flight model on a single touch joystick that flies and thrusts at once — same physics, same possibilities.

The four engine keys cluster around your left hand's natural resting position. Forward thrust is the top row (Q, E); reverse thrust is the home row (A, D).

• Q + E — Forward thrust. Both forward engines fire. You accelerate straight ahead, no rotation. This is your everyday flight key combo.
• Q alone — Left forward engine only. Pushes the ship forward AND rotates it to the right (because the left engine is offset from the center of mass).
• E alone — Right forward engine only. Pushes forward AND rotates to the left.
• A + D — Reverse thrust. Both rear engines fire. Slows you down or pushes you backward.
• A alone — Left rear engine. Pushes backward AND rotates left.
• D alone — Right rear engine. Pushes backward AND rotates right.

Combinations matter. Q+D together rotates you to the right faster than either key alone, because the front-left engine pushes you right while the rear-right engine pulls the back left — both rotations stack. Use this for hard turns when you need to come around quickly on a target.

Arrow keys (↑ ↓ ← →) work as shortcuts for the most common engine combos. Up = forward thrust (Q+E). Down = reverse thrust (A+D). Left = rotate left (E+A). Right = rotate right (Q+D). Use whichever feels natural; most players gradually drift toward the QWAD cluster because it leaves their fingers free for the weapon keys.

• Space — Fire current weapon. Holds for continuous fire on the mining laser; tap-tap-taps for bullets and harpoon.
• 1 2 3 — Pick a weapon directly. 1 Projectile, 2 Harpoon, 3 Mining Laser. Selecting does not fire, so you can switch and be ready before you pull the trigger.
• W — Cycle weapon. Rotates through Bullet → Harpoon → Mining Laser → back to Bullet. Still there if you prefer it to the number keys.

Pro tip: Most pilots leave the weapon on Bullet for general flight and only switch to Harpoon or Mining Laser for specific moments — harpoon when an enemy gets close, mining laser when an asteroid is in reach. The number keys make that switch a single press instead of a cycle.

Your ship can fly itself. One navigation function runs at a time, and Auto-Fire is an independent switch that works while you fly manually.

• S — STAY. Holds your position automatically — fights gravity, brakes drift. Useful for mining: line up on an asteroid, hit S, and your ship keeps the firing position while you concentrate on aim.
• C — ASTEROID. Circles a nearby rock and keeps station on it.
• V — HUNT. Long-range pursuit that hands off to close-quarters combat when it catches up.
• B — BUILD. Runs the full build program: gather what it needs, claim, construct.
• F — AUTO-FIRE. The gun picks its own targets while you keep flying. This is the one AI function that runs alongside your own hands.
• Esc — Cancel. Closes an open screen first; press again to hand the ship back from the AI.

The signals you need mid-fight have their own keys. Everything else lives in the comms grid.

• Z — Shield Burst. Detonates your shield outward. It costs the shield, most of your fuel and every rope attached to you, so it is a decision, not a reflex.
• 4 — Smoke. Drops a decoy that holds an attacker's aim for a moment.
• X — Recall. Cancels the orders you have given nearby friendly ships.
• R — Alert. Warns your faction that you have seen something.
• T — Follow me. Rallies nearby friendly ships to escort you.
• G — Comms grid. Tap to open the full signal grid, tap again to close; or hold it open and let go.

Screens open straight from the keyboard too: M galaxy map, L highscores, P your ship, O settings, I info log. Your ship keeps flying while a screen is open, so nothing catches you standing still.

Press ? in game for the whole list on one card, any time.

Every control on this page is a default, not a rule. Open Settings → Controls, click any control, and press the key you want. If that key is already doing something else, the game tells you which action holds it and lets you take it with a second press. Reset to Defaults puts everything back exactly as described here, so there is no way to get stuck.

Bindings are stored on the device you set them on, so each machine you play from keeps its own layout.

One thing worth knowing about keyboards rather than about this game: many everyday keyboards can only register a few keys at once, and flying with a turn plus thrust plus the trigger is three or four at a time. If firing while turning ever feels like it drops an input, switch to the arrow keys for flight — they cover the same combinations with fewer simultaneous presses.

Inside the center circle the cursor steers, and that is the part new players miss. The ship turns to face your pointer, and once the pointer is far enough out from your ship it burns that way as well. Keep the cursor in close and the ship holds its speed and only turns — that is how you hover and shoot.

Shots leave the nose. Bullets and the harpoon both fire in the direction the ship is facing, so aiming and steering are one action: point the nose with the mouse, then fire. Players who arrive from twin-stick shooters expect the two to be separate; here they are the same thing, which is why steering with the mouse is worth the first minute it takes to get used to.

The mining laser wants the same thing, a little more precisely: the beam locks on when the asteroid is roughly inside the cone in front of your ship. A click fires one shot; holding the button about a quarter of a second starts the beam instead. Practice on a small asteroid first — they are forgiving.

The keyboard and the throttle take priority over the cursor. While you are holding an engine key or working the throttle, the mouse stops steering and waits, so the two schemes never fight each other.

There is no cursor sensitivity setting because cursor sensitivity is controlled by your operating system, not the game. If aiming feels off, adjust your OS mouse settings.

Phones and tablets see a touch UI built around one flight joystick plus the weapon controls. Touch is full-fidelity — there is nothing the keyboard can do that touch can't, and you can compete at the top of the leaderboard from a phone.

• Flight joystick (left thumb). Drag it the way you want to go and the game works out the engine mix for you: push forward to thrust ahead, ease back toward center to slow and reverse, angle it to turn while you move. One thumb flies the whole ship.
• Partial drags give partial thrust. A light push is a gentle cruise; a full push is full burn — the same fine throttle control the keyboard's four engines give.
• Weapon buttons (right side). Tap to switch between bullets, harpoon, and the mining laser, and to open the Build screen when you're harpooned to a rock.
• Fire. Tap or hold to fire the current weapon — hold for the continuous mining beam.

On touch, bullets and the harpoon fire in the direction your ship is facing, so aiming is a matter of pointing the nose. New players keep a thumb on the joystick and let that carry them; the four-engine subtlety is all there under the hood once you want it.

Important: Mobile play requires landscape orientation and fullscreen. The game's mobile-fullscreen gate enforces this before sign-in — tap FULLSCREEN to begin. iOS Safari and Android Chrome both work; iOS-installed-to-homescreen mode gives the best experience.

The camera zooms out automatically when you thrust forward, giving you a wider view of incoming threats. The faster you fly, the further it pulls back. When you stop thrusting, it smoothly returns to a tighter combat view.

This is a deliberate design choice rather than a setting you can override. Forward thrust is when you most need to see what's ahead; combat hover is when you need fine detail on the targets immediately around you. The auto-zoom adapts to both situations without giving you a control to forget about.

Some players find the zoom-out disorienting at first. It typically takes a single play session to adjust.

Once the basic flight model clicks, you'll discover a handful of advanced movement techniques that experienced pilots use:

• The drift turn. Stop forward thrust, then pulse a single rear engine. You keep your forward momentum while rotating to face a new direction. Useful for shooting backward at a pursuer without giving up speed.
• The gravity slingshot. Enter the outer ring of a wormhole or massive rock at a tangent angle. Let the gravity pull you around the curve. You exit with more speed than you entered, in a new direction, with no fuel cost. Concordium patrols use this constantly to cover ground.
• The braking turn. Hit reverse thrust (A+D) at the apex of a maneuver. You stop almost immediately, rotation continues. By the time forward thrust resumes, you're facing the threat from a defensive position.
• The Stay-mode mining stance. Lock your position with the S key while pointed at a tier-7+ asteroid. The autopilot fights gravity for you while you concentrate on aim and on listening for incoming threats. Hit any movement key to drop Stay and immediately maneuver.

None of these are required to play well. They're what experienced pilots reach for when the situation calls.

• Combat & Weapons — what each weapon does and when to use it
• Mining & Economy — how the mining laser interacts with asteroid tiers
• AI & Autopilot — what each of the four AI functions actually does with your ship
• Getting Started — your first session, end to end