There are a couple of practical tips, which can significantly improve performance of beginner players in their first matches.
Unfurtonately, some of these tips are rarely mentioned by other guides or veterans. I decided to fill in that gap.

I tried to keep it short and focus on practical stuff, avoiding unnecessary theory.
There are many other guides out there, explaining the latter very well. Be sure to check those as well.

Right-click menu displays your hotkeys for all commands.
This is a SUPER helpful cheat sheet. Anytime you can easily recall what your hotkeys are.

By the way, I marked the ones, which are most useful.
Take note, that these here are not the default hotkeys though.


There are a few other hotkeys, which are important.
Since you will not find them on the right-click menu, it is good to remember them.

Ships will automatically turn in response to the commands you give them.
They will rotate to be able to fire guns at the designated target, or point radar or EWAR modules in target direction.
They will also turn towards the direction they are flying, to make most of their engines and get to the destination ASAP.

Although it is in fact more nuanced than that and may depend on a specific ship build.
To do that, you must manually assign their heading.

Assigning roll angle is also important, especially when facing airstrikes or missiles. You want to roll your ships to make sure, that as many PD turrets are firing as possible.
One of the most common beginner mistakes is exposing your back or sides to enemy cannons,
or eating airstrikes from direction from which you are vulnerable. This will take down your ships very quickly.

Relevant hotkeys:
HDG - Heading - assigns bow direction.
ROL - Roll - assigns "up" direction.
CLR - Clear - clears assigned heading and roll.

Commands like attack, Lock, EWAR etc. will take priority over assigned heading and roll.
If your ship is not rotating as it should, it may have conflicting commands.


One more thing, which may be confusing for some ship types (e.g. OSP Liners or Moorline), is that they will roll on their own when moving. It's just their quirk. Once they stop, they should go back to the orientation, which you assigned them.

It is very important to lock enemy targets.
This SIGNIFICANTLY increases accuracy of your and allied attacks.

Locking requires a special radar (with limited range). Not every ship has it, but those that do, should use locking whevener possible.

It is even very common, that allied players will request locking nearby targets for one another.

Relevant hotkeys:
LCK - Lock - marks enemy ship, significantly increasing accuracy.

Flying in formations is super useful.
There is just one thing you should know about it.

By default, ships will fly in "relative" formation (REL).
It is an intuitive behavior, but it is TERRIBLE in practice. Your ships will be slowed down significantly.

It is best to avoid using relative formation at all.

It is possible to give commands to ALL ships in formation at the same time.
To do so, you need to hold "Formation Mode" hotkey (Shift by default) and open the right-click menu.

At the center of the menu you will see information, that multiple ships will be receiving the command.

This is super convenient, when you want multiple ships to fire at the same target. You don't need to order them individually, one-by-one.

Most orders can be given to ships in this way, most notably:
- all weapons, including fired missiles,
- EWAR module activation,
- radar locks,
- manual PD targetting
and more.

When holding "Formatiom Mode" hotkey, even UI buttons will apply to all your ships.
This means that you can easily change speed, activate radar or Battleshort for your entire formation all at once.

Movement commands, like heading, roll and orbit, etc. are not shared in this way.
However, ships in formation will automatically inherit them from the leading ship (unless they get their own overriding orders individually.).

It is also possible to use this feature for single ships, which are not part of the formation. But that is too situational for me to cover as part of this guide. Don't bother with it for now.
If you really want to know: it combines your weapon and EWAR groups into a single button.

These are two convenient buttons.

Cease fire is pretty self-explanatory. It cancels all your attack and EWAR commands.
It is convenient, when you want to stop attacking a dead ship, or if active orders are getting in the way of your desired ship rotation.

Emcon will instantly turn off all your radars.
You should use it when you see an enemy missile strike coming your way.
Some missiles will target your ship based on its radar emissions. Emcon is a one-button softkill method, to make them go blind.
When this is combined with chaff (which should be automatically fired by your ship) and/or other softkill modules, it will allow you to dodge a large portion of enemy salvo.

Once the threat is gone, REMEMBER to turn your radars back ON.

Battleshort is a very useful feature.
It affects your EWAR modules, beam cannons and Aurora PD turret.
These systems will be able to remain active without cooldowns, at the risk of gradually loosing their health.
It sounds reckless, but it is in fact super useful in some emergency situations, like:

• using jammers to protect yourself from enemy heavy fire,
  
• keeping softkill modules active until missile threat is gone,
  
• in case of Auroras it is just like the above, except Battleshort makes them WAY more effective (otherwise, they would go into cooldown quickly),
  
• in case of beam turrets, sometimes killing enemy ship ASAP is a life-or-dead situation.

You can easily check active attack and EWAR commands at this UI panel.

You can also right-click the icons, to cancel them.

You can check status of your modules by looking up their tooltips in the UI.

If your guns are not firing, or any other module is not doing what you'd expect, this is the easiest way to look for its cause.

There is a "Signal" menu, which serves to mark locations ("ping") for your team. It is very helpful to coordinate and communicate.

It's useful if you know how to use them, as well as are able to recognize signals given by your allies.

The game does NOT automatically mark when an enemy has been killed.
It is up to players to deduce that.

1. escape capsules are leaving it,
   
2. if you zoom in very close, you hear an alarm siren,
   
3. it exploded.

In every other case, there is a chance that the enemy ship may still repair itself.

When an enemy is greyed out, it means that someone on your team has manually marked it as such. Usually it was a veteran player who is 100% sure, that the enemy is dead.

Marking enemy as dead is done by right-clicking enemy ship and using Kill command, from Signal menu.
Feel free to use it, but be sure to NOT mark anything, unless you are 100% sure it's dead.

Relevant hotkeys:
KIL - Mark as killed - greys/ungreyes out an enemy track.

Every enemy track has a 4-digit identification number assigned to it.
Those can be used to conveniently identify it when communicating with your allies.

You can type that number in chat. It will be highlighted in orange color.

You can also use "Hook Track" hotkey.
It allows you to type in the enemy code. Doing so will center your camera on location of that target. Use this if you want to find out where is the enemy that your allies are speaking of.

Relevant hotkeys:
Hook Track - allows centering camera on enemy of given ID

If your ships are fighting out in the open, they are vulnerable and may get killed quickly.
Asteroids are your friends. Hide behind them.
Try to avoid exposing yourself as much as possible.

Rock cover is especially helpful to defend yourself from missiles. The so called "rock PD".

There are times when you need to hide and defend
and times when you need to aggressively venture out.
Recognizing those situations takes experience, so you will be best off relying on leaderhip of more experienced teammates to show you the way to victory.

There is a technique called "orbit dodge".
It is very simple and can significantly increase survival of your ships. Especially small ships, or when fighting over long distances.

To use it, use orbit command, select a nearby point in space and orient the purple gizmo perpendicular to the enemy.

Relevant hotkeys:
ORB - Orbit - makes your ship orbit a target ship or position.

Orbiting can also be useful to fly around enemy ships, confusing their guns and preventing them from attacking.
This is especially useful when engaging enemy capital ship with smaller ones.
To do this, be sure to right-click enemy ship before you give the orbit command.

Multiplayer games are all about holding map control points, to accumulate victory points.
You need to send your ships to seize them.

A very common mistake happens, when beginners are fighting enemy ships near control points.
Distracted by the ongoing battle, they very often accidentally leave the control point area.
Getting outside, even for a brief moment, is usually enough to give that point away to the enemy.
This has dramatic consequences. You are no longer scoring points here, and you are not taking control back, until the enemy ships are defeated - a complete 180 turn in enemy's favor.

This whole list might seem like a lot,
but the most important points are #2-6 and #13-15. I advise you to remember at least those.
The other points, you should merely be aware of.

Let me advise you to learn the following mantra, which holds all the key points of this guide:

Heading, Roll. Lock.
Rocks, Orbit, Missiles Emcon!
Contest in point!~

As I mentioned at the very beginning, this is by no means a complete guide to Nebulous.
There is still a lot of knowledge and skills you will need to master on your way to improve and those are well covered in other excellent guides. Be sure to look and ask around for any other knowledge you may need.