Once you select your ship, you will be brought into the Tactical Interface of the game. It should look like this (with the exception of #6 and #8):

As mentioned before, #6 (Systems Display) and #8 (Target Display) will not appear on you main display once you start the game. These will be explained further.

1. Chat Display
The Chat Display appears in the upper left hand corner of the screen and will show you chat taking place during the game. The messages displayed will only appear for a short time, and then they will fade away. To send a message, simple hit Enter, your message, and Enter again.  When you hit enter for the first time to enter your message, a green box that runs the length of the screen will appear only at the top of the screen. This shows you what you are typing in. Different types of messages are denoted in different colors. Heres what they are:

The bar on the left is your velocity meter. It shows how fast your ship is currently going. The little triangle on the meter, will show you what you've set your velocity to. The two numbers above the meter show your current speed and your set speed. For different ships, the max speed will be different.

The heading meter indicates your direction and turn radius. The first number is your actual heading, based on a grid map of the entire system. This is indicated by the fullness of the meter. This is not really that important. The next number is your turn radius. This tells you how fast your ship is turning left or right. The position of the green triangle will indicate what you've set your turn radius too. Pressing "S" will stop the turn, and center the triangle.

3. Main Display
This is where all of the action of the game takes place. Your ship will always be centered in the screen. The green rings around the ship indicate the damage of your shields or armor, depending on if you control an ICC or UGTO ship. To the left of the screen, you will notice a small green triangle pointing to the left.  These little triangles will be shown on all four sides of the screen, depending on what your ship sensors detect. They also come in three colors: Green: Friendly, Yellow: Neutral, Red: Hostile.

Shield / Armor / Turn Status
You can view the shield / armor / turn status of a ship in more graphical manner by hitting backslash ( / ). When you spawn your ship for the first time in a game, only the shield / armor status will be automatically turned on. This will show a series of green rings around your ship. The number of rings depends on how much armor / shielding your ship has. When the color changes to red, with a number of colors in between, that means that part of your shields / armor has been damaged, and is no longer protecting your ship at 100%. When you have the shield / armor status on, it will also display the shield / armor status of any targeted ship. If you press backslash ( / ) again, this will turn on the turn status. This will display a green area in front of your ship when you turn, to indicate how much you are turning. To turn everything off, press backslash ( / ) again.

Targeting Objects
When you see these triangles on the edge of your screen, you can click on them to see the object.  This is called "targeting". For example, if you wanted to orbit a planet, you would "target" that planet, and click "O" for orbit. Once you target an object, your view will be centered on that object. If you do not wish your view to change when you target something, just hold down the "Shift" button while you click on that object.  This will keep your current view, but you will still be targeting that object.

4. Ship Status Bar

The Ship Status Bar will show you 3 things: The hull integrity of your ship, your ships energy, and the current duration of the scenario.

Here, you will see all the systems currently supplied in your ship. Currently, the systems for each ship are fixed, so you cannot add or remove ship systems. Right clicking on one of the systems will display that system in the Systems Display box. You will see that some of the systems have letters and number associated with them. These letters and numbers mean different things for different systems.

Hot-Keys
Hot keys just refers to setting a certain command to a specific keystroke, so it is easier and done more quickly. The small letters and numbers in the bottom corners of the systems boxes are the current key that is appointed to that system. If it is a weapons system, you can set different weapons to different number (1-9), so they fire when you hit that number. Setting a weapon to 0 will clear it of a hot key. Other systems, such as the jump drive, ECM, ECCM, and some weapons have letters, instead of numbers.  These, however, cannot be changed

To set hot-keys, right click on a system, and click on a number you wish to set that system to. Multiple systems can be set the the same hotkey.

6. Systems Display

If you right click on a systems box, the current system will be brought up in the Systems Display. From here, you can the systems of your ship. The systems display will tell you what the selected system is, where it is located, and the amount of damage it has taken (%). You will also notice a row of numbers at the top of the systems display. This is for setting hot-keys (see above).

For beam weapons, you will also notice a few buttons in the bottom right corner. These buttons allow you to choose auto defense, auto attack, and auto off.

This area of your interface will show what types of cargo you are carrying on your ship.  Currently, ships can carry only two types of cargo: infantry and resources. Each cargo spot can hold 1 infantry, or 250 resources. Depending on what type of ship you're commanding, the number of available cargo spots will vary. For example, transport ships have 10 cargo spots available, while scout class ships have none.

8. Target Display

As mentioned before, targeting objects can be done by clicking on the triangles that appear at the edge of your interface. This will bring up the Target Display. The target display will give you different information depending on what kind of object you've targeted.  All objects in the target display box will give you the name of the object and the distance away it is from you (in gu).

The master controls include 6 options: Help / Tactical / Engineering / Chat Log / Profile

Navigation
Complete list of Navigation Commands.

2. System Information

The System Information displays 3 things: The system name, the number of planets controlled by each faction, and the number of resources avaiable to each faction. You will notice two number next to each faction name. The first number indicates how many planets that faction controls in the system, and the second indicates the total resources available to each faction. So in this example, the UGTO has 10 planets, with a total of 35,269 resources.

3. Ships List

The Ships List displays all the friendly ships on the right, and all the enemy ships that are detectable to the left. You will detect enemy ships depending on your scanner power and their ships signature. On the bottom of each ship, there is a hull status bar. If the players ship is at 100% hull, then there will be no indication. However, as their ship starts losing its hull integrity, the bar will start from green at the right and go towards red to the left, until their ship is either being repaired or is destroyed.

4. Navigation Commands
The Navigation Commands allow you to manipulate what is shown in the Navigation Screen. Here's an explanation of what each command does.

5. Orders List

Orders can be given by any player, and can be given to any other friendly player. There are currently 5 orders available:

Orders can be useful when you are planning a strategic attack. When you send an order, the Navigation Display will show a line connecting the player with an order to the objective they recieved. For example, if you order a player to capture a planet, then a line will connect that player to the planet you want to be captured.