Shortcuts

Shortcuts, also referenced to as shortcuts and hotkeys, are the most important mechanic of any video game. They allow you to customize your your game play, which increases your performance and makes your life easier.

One thing I have noticed in my years of playing EVE Online about this group of players is that we suck at personalizing our interface. I’m not quite sure why so many people are comfortable with default settings or out-of-the-box overviews, but nearly every fleet I run I typically have to tell at least one person how to set up their broadcast hotkeys.

By taking an hour or two to set up your hotkeys to something you like, you’ll increase your fleet performance and feel much more comfortable with using tools like directional scanner, the probe scanner, and basic flying mechanics.

Getting Started

First, we need to get to our hotkeys. Log in, press escape, and go to shortcuts.

To make things easier, we’re going to go through this in steps.

• Clearing all of the horribly set defaults
• Setting up the crucial hotkeys
• Going over some suggestions and tips

Let’s get started!

Taking out the Trash

Under combat, let’s nuke the following settings. To do this, you’ll want to use the clear shortcut button on the bottom.

Combat

1. Activate Defense Mode
2. Activate Propulsion Mode
3. Activate Sharpshooter Mode
4. Dock/Jump/Activate Gate
5. Refresh Probe Scan
6. Select
7. Show info
8. Tag items (unless you FC)
9. Toggle Auto Tracking
10. Toggle lock target
11. Untag Item
12. Warp To

Navigation

1. Accelerate
2. Autopilot
3. All broadcasts
4. Decelerate
5. First Person Camera
6. Orbit Camera
7. Pitch Down
8. Pitch Up
9. Sensor Overlay
10. Set Full Speed
11. Tactical Camera
12. Everything below it

Now, let’s go rebind the important stuff.

Building our Interface

Now, let’s reset the following stuff. Choose things that’s comfortable and makes sense to you. Usually the first thing that pops into your head works the best.

Combat

1. Align To
2. Approach
3. Decrease Probe Scan Range (page down is a good one)
4. Directional Scan (d or shift-d is a good one)
5. Increase Probe Scan Range (page up is a good one)
6. Keep at Range
7. Lock Target
8. Look at
9. Orbit
10. Tag item 1-9 (this is for tagging npcs or targets)
11. Track
12. Unlock Target

Navigation

1. Broadcast: Align To
2. Broadcast: Need Armor
3. Broadcast: Need Capacitor
4. Broadcast: Need Shield
5. Broadcast: Target
6. Broadcast: Warp To
7. Save Location
8. Select next target
9. Select previous target
10. Stop Ship

Suggestions

• Keep it simple, stupid. Don’t get complicated, these are ease of use buttons.
• If you don’t use it, unset it. Seriously, it’ll just end up making your life a pain when your cat ends up warping you.
• Explore the shortcut menu, this is a small investment in to permanently improve your gameplay.

Good luck!