Starting Off on a Crowded Earth

Hi! It's me, Voraz the Pirate. I have that recognizable diamond ship build you may see from time to time engaged in space battle over the earth. That little green continent is MY LZ!

....anyway

I decided to start contributing wiki advice, and where better to start than the beginning!

One of the frustrations of the early game that can be frustrating is getting off of the earth. For starters, you only have the tiny little maneuvering thrusters on your command module to work with, and for another thing, there are constantly other players moving around colliding with you and often sending you crashing back to earth. I am genuinely worried that this frustration might be turning away new players. So this is basically gonna be a list of tips for early starting, and I can confidently say that it is easily possible to escape earth with four cargo modules. Here's a tl;dr version of the below list for you.

1) Get to 46.5 away from earth

2) Don't directly thrust away from earth. Orbit the earth, then go faster to escape earth's gravity.

3) Someone hits you? Use that to your advantage!

4) Symmetry! SYMMETRY!!!

5) Enter and exit edit menu to teleport up!

6) Lighten your load by removing heavy modules.

7) If ships are crashing near you, grab thrusters, then solar panels, then hubs.

8) Once you do escape earth, know where to go! Check the wiki!

9) Save your ship!!!!

1) First, keep in mind the magic number you have to get to. Earth's (and all the celestial objects in the game, excluding the trade planet) gravity has a unique range: it will pull on any module within 46.5 units of it. When you start lifting off, you'll see a node with earth's symbol (a circle with an x) indicating distance from earth. To escape earth's gravity and enter deep space, none of your ship's modules can be within 46.5 units of earth. If you are piloting a standard startup ship with only four cargo modules, this means you will reach zero gravity when your distance indicator to earth reads about 47. If you're at 46.8, for example, earth will pull on one of your cargo modules until you fall within 46.5, and then-well you get the picture now.

2) Going directly away from the earth is often not possible. There's simply not enough thrust from your pewee command module thrusters to defeat earth's gravity directly. A better way to send your ship into orbit is...to send your ship...into orbit. By firing your thrusters to the side, you can start to pick up speed. Pick up enough speed, and you will lift off. Once you're flying, keep in mind that there is some weird space friction that is still trying to slow you down, so keep firing your thrusters to stay up. Going further with this approach requires a basic understanding of orbital physics: basically, instead of firing your thrusters while facing away from the earth, you can more easily escape by firing your thrusters while facing the direction of your motion (in orbital mechanics, this is called a "prograde" thruster burn, but we don't need vocab; this isn't rocket science after all). Aiming for the moon (your beginning destination) will take practice, but basically burning in prograde on the opposite side of the earth from the moon will be the best way to escape gravity on the moon's side of the earth. Once you have the moon thruster, you can still save some energy by taking off this way, but it is no longer necessary.

3) If someone hits you while you're trying to take off, try and use the momentum they give you to your advantage. If they hit you straight towards earth, try and use the bounciness of your cargo modules to best effect by landing on two of them at the same time (land at a 45o angle). If they hit you to the side, use that speed to escape earth. If they hit you "up" (ie away from earth), either directly escape gravity, or thrust sideways to establish an earth orbit. If they're just in the way and not moving, try and use your bouncy cargos again.

4) When building your ship in the first place, it is IMPERATIVE that you make it symmetrical. Otherwise, trying to forward thrust will result in turning, and that ain't good. In your ship edit screen, imagine a vertical line of symmetry passing through the center of your command module. It will be easier at the start if your ship also has a horizontal line, but this isn't always necessary.

5) If you're having an excessively difficult time, try entering your edit menu (the tools icon on top right) then exiting it again. You will spawn facing the top of the screen at about 28 units away from earth, and you can use this height to your advantage to get some horizontal speed going

6) If none of this is working, try removing a few cargo modules. All you really need is one (two if you're staying with symmetry). Having two cargo modules allows you to defeat gravity directly with your thrusters (BARELY, still get orbit). Once you get to space, zoom out by pressing p to see if you can grab some cargo modules from the earth. If you have the normal pc screen, hang around to the left or right of the earth to get maximum grabbing range.

7) If ships are fighting, or if some rammer troll is hitting people around the earth, watch for the collisions! Zoom out by pressing p! The debris could be very useful to you! Just about any thruster will make your life immensely easier (try for the thick ones with a white band around the end, this is the super thruster, and it is the most powerful thruster, but burns the most fuel). After you grab a thruster, your next priority is a solar panel. If you have sharp eyes, you can distinguish between the normal solar panel (single blue straight line) and the TWICE as powerful super solar panel (two lines crossing eachother). After that, hubs are the most important, but a larger ship usually has a lot of these, so you can usually get one or even two if you're quick enough. Once the destroyed player(s) reloads their page so they can get back their saved ship, ALL modules disappear (except cargo modules), so it's a bit of a gold rush, especially if there are a few other ships trying to grab stuff

8) Know your planets and modules! Check some other pages of the wiki for info.

9) Save your ship! If it gets destroyed, you can reload your browser's webpage and get it back!

Now you have some tips for starting out. I hope they are useful. Glap is a very great game, in my opinion one of the better io games out there. Once you get past the difficult early game, the sandbox nature of the late game makes for infinitely many opportunities for a creative player to make something that literally NO other player has ever made before. Have fun with it! And Beware the Great Space Pirate!!