As a rookie Valkyrie pilot, you need to realize your ship is not just your hot set of space wheels… it’s your second skin. Take the time to study it in detail and properly prepare for what lies ahead, or else you are going to burn. And in the case of EVE: Valkyrie you’ll probably burn, then freeze, then die. Then all three again… repeatedly. Not the best outcome. The more you know about your ship's instrumentation and the data it constantly feeds you, the more likely you are to survive.

The Cockpit

This is your life support unit and all that separates you from the cold, unforgiving void of deep space. It contains all the instruments and widgets you need to do your job as a Valkyrie pilot, so let’s take a look around.

Basic Instruments

Health

It's the vertical bar top left. This shows the integrity of your hull, or armor. It’s your last line of defense so if this gauge gets low, it’s time to hot-foot it out of there and hide out, or call in some healing from a support craft.

Shields

And the vertical bar top right is your shield status. Your shields are your first line of defense. As you unlock new ships and ship classes, you will notice how much they differ in terms of shields and armor. Heavy class ships, for example, are well armored so you can take the risk of sitting there and soaking up enemy firepower. Keep your eye on your gauges.

Radar

This handy little hologram gives you a quick visual idea of what is around you. Blue markers are friendlies, orange markers are enemies, yellow markers are missiles and so on.

Following a recent update the radar is now more informative than ever.

Bad Guys

Objects and, crucially, enemies on the radar appear as arrowheads indicating the direction of that object. Also if an enemy has targeted you or is in the cone area behind you, they will become more prominent on the radar.

Missiles At any one time, the battlezone will be criss-crossed with scores of missiles. Only the missiles targeting you will be shown on the HUD, bringing clarity to the chaos.

Friendlies Friendlies now appear on the radar under certain conditions. If they send a com alert to heal assist or group up, you’ll see them (seen here in blue). If you’re flying a ship with healing capabilities, all friendlies will be visible at all times.

The radar is a great tool, but don’t become too reliant on it. After all, this is VR - by all means glance down at your radar once in a while to see how busy it’s getting out there, but you'll want to focus on the battle raging outside your cockpit for the most part.

Capacitor and Velocity

Take a look at the yellow incremental bars on the bottom left and the right of your cockpit. These two indicators are inextricably linked. The capacitor on the left shows you how much stored energy you have, while the velocity indicator on the right shows how fast you’re going.

The more you boost around, the more you deplete the capacitor. In light of this, it’s best to use your boost in short bursts rather than constantly thrusting around. In fact, this is exactly the advice you’ll get from experienced pilots because using short bursts of boost coupled with random changes of direction is the most effective way of staying safe when pursued.

Multi-purpose Display

This panel display to your left won’t always look exactly like it does in this picture, as the information it contains will change according to your circumstances. Here it shows the status of three control points, the number of clones remaining for each team, and the time remaining in the match.

Control Points
In control matches, this panel also shows you the status of the control points that your team has to capture. If the points are white in color, then no one has control. When drones are deployed, you will see the circle around the indicator gradually fill in color to indicate that the control point is in the process of being captured. The color of the control point indicator will change completely when that point is captured, plus a little icon will appear to show which team has captured it.

If you look outside the window, you can see that there are floating control point indicators so if you see a particular target under attack, you can race over there to take out the enemy drone and recapture it.

Carrier Assault Map During Carrier assault mode, once the control points have been secured and the shields are down, the control point icons will disappear to be replaced by a virtual image of the carrier. You’ll notice that it is marked with white dots. These are the remaining cooling nodes - this is incredibly useful as it marks their exact location, meaning you don’t have to keep scouting around to find them.

Clone Vats The blue bar shows you the current status of your clone vat or, put another way, the amount of lives your team has left. The orange bar is the opposing team’s remaining clones. Just below that is an indicator of the time remaining. In team deathmatch, if the battle ends and you have fewer remaining clones than your enemy, you’ll lose. So if these indicators are showing you at a disadvantage, it’s time to up your game a little.

Carrier Health Exclusive to the multi-player Carrier Assault mode, this indicator has multiple functions, one of which is showing the carrier’s remaining health as seen here.

Com Alerts

Com Alerts enable you to send quick messages to the rest of your team. Push down on the D-pad to bring up the alerts menu, use the right stick to select the desired message, then release the D-pad to send the message. As well as hearing the alert, a list of recent alerts also appears as text on the right of the cockpit.

Now you are more familiar with your surroundings all that remains is for you to buckle up, get your game face on and show the galaxy who’s boss!

Fly confident!