Basic information.

Core exiles is a complex game, and there are a lot of pages with a lot of information on them. Luckily, the page layout is extremely logical and free from adds, flash panes, popups and other nasties that make web navigation with screen readers difficult. nevertheless the shear amount of information and different screens to get used to can be overwhelming at first, so this guide is provided as a general explanation of some of the more commonly used screens and their layout, so that you can start straight in exploring the six galaxies rather than spent time exploring the games' interface.

i will try and make this as non program specific as I can, and thus of general use to any screen reader user, though if it becomes supernova specific in parts I appologize. i would recommend that you familiarize yourself with your screen readers ability to navigate around standard internet pages, and interact with features such as dropdowns, links, tables, buttons, headings and edit areas, sinse quickly knowing how to move around such things will vastly increase your speed and ease at playing the game.

Also, although once you understand the game and it's layout you can perform activities such as mining, salvaging and combat extremely quickly, Core exiles is a game where there is no need to rush. Taking the time to read pages thoroughly is usually a much better idea than clicking away like a demon and hitting the wrong thing by mistake (indeed, you'll conserve more ship fuel that way).
Note that this is just intended as a guide to the games' display and not how to play it, for that see the various topics in the help and guides section.

Top and bottom.

Like many games and indeed not a few other programs, at the top and bottom of the Ce screen are a number of stats, lables and controls that remain visible most of the time, which display vital information and give you access to some important game functions. Though not available everywhere in the game, most of the screens have these, so explaining what they are and roughly what they do is a good place to begin.

At the top of the screen is your current location ie, what planet, starbase etc your ship is at. under this is the name of the star system your in, it's faction and law level and whether you are currently docked or undocked.
benieth this is the news ticker, which displays some lines about what is happening around the six galaxies generally as well as within your local area, both in terms of what your fellow captains are up to as well as events that happen in the Ce world, (this is where headlines written in the monthly headlines competition appear).

Under this are two dropdown list boxes, one left and one right which will be the first things you come to in the game if you hit tab. these let you access various useful screens for specific aspects of the game, some handy tools and options.

The first, or left hand box contains options for viewing general information about the game and your account. possibly the single most useful item in this dropdown is the top one "refresh data"

In ce, using your brouser's refresh function (say by hitting F5 in Internet Explorer), is disabled to prevent people exploiting the game, and will lead to an error if you try it. therefore, the "refresh data" option exists instead.
This is an incredibly helpfull option for quick navigation with a screen reader, sinse it will instantly get you back to the travel or promenade screen, and is often quicker and easier to find than looking for the "exit" option of whatever screen your on because it is the first item in the first dropdown you get to when tabbing through the page. I myself use it a lot when buying items, reparing my ship or refining ore, and indeed often find myself hitting ctrl home and then tab when I want to refresh pages outside Ce out of reflex!

Other note worthy options in that first dropdown include the ce data repository (cedr), where you can view information about most items and equipment found in the game, and the galaxy locator for looking up the locations of planets, starbases and settlements.

the second, or right hand dropdown lets you get to a lot of screens about your current activities in the game. these include viewing details about current types of missions you might be on such as combat, federation of mining (fom), or npc missions, also have access to various types of ongoing activities like viewing your extractors, mechs, pet, and drones, this is also where you can activate profession booster packs or put a contract on the general buyers markit.

at the bottom of the top pannel, under those dropdowns is your player name and various stats such as experience, shield, armor, hull, cargo credits on hand and fuel. The names of these are graphics, but are labeled, however knowing that they're graphics can also be a quick navigation method (I find hitting g to get straight to my players' stats very fast on several occasions). Being under the dropdowns and just above the main game content makes it easy to find and look at these stats, which is good, sinse you will want to keep
careful track of these throughout the game.

that is it for the top pannel, accept if you have "tips" turned on in the profile options they will also appear here at the very top above the news.

On the bottom of most, ---- though not all pages are a set of links to handy things and some extra information arranged in a small group, these are also labeled graphics, but work quite fine as links to tab  through.

At the top of this group is your mailbox where your in game mail appears. just under the box is the number of unread messages in it. If this reads as "zero" you know you've got no new mail, so this is an easy way to track when someone (including the game system), has contacted you.

Benieth this displayed in text is the game time and month, just above several more links.
Several of these links are particularly note worthy, and you'll find yourself using them a lot. The "help" link displays a new window with context sensative help on wherever you are, while the "location bio" offers a text description of whatever planet or starbase your docked at.

The links you will be using most down here however are the ship loadout, personal loadout, ship store, pods, specials and skills links (the notepad can come in handy too). One particular advantage of such well used links as the "ship loadout" link being at the bottom, is that they are very quick and easy to find, sinse in most screen readers going straight to the bottom can be done very quickly, (in supernova this can be done with ctrl end), and shift tabbing back is a very quick process.

Another interesting point about those bottom links, is that they form a paragraph, meaning that one quick way to navigate to anything at the bottom of another screen is to go to the bottom and hit paragraph up (in supernova this is done with page up).

These elements appear at the top and bottom of most screens in the game, so being familiar with them is extremely helpfull.

The navigation screen.

Along with the promenade screen, this is the one you will be seeing most often as it is the screen you will use in traveling from place to place, as well as initiating activities like mining, combat, salvage etc and learning about the system you are in.

The first thing on the screen under your stats is "navigation
S.i.s"  and a number. This tells you how many ships are in the current star system. Of course, in Ce your not going to get attack by other captains or similar, (ce is much too friendly for that), but it's still ood to good know other folks are around. Under this are several graphics for certain very important actions. N.E.I, activates a NE.I. long distance travel system if you have one, (buy these in the Ce store). "derelict scan" used for scanning for derelict ships to explore. "combat scan" used for scanning for ships to fight, "repare options" takes you to a screen where you can use your ebk armor, shield and hull repare kits for fixing damage. "homing beacon" takes you to a screen which asks you to set the current system as your home system, (meaning you can instantly get back there at a fuel cost). And lastly "wreck salvage" used for scanning for wrecks to chop up for resources.

In addition, occasionally other graphical icons will appear hear depending upon what your currently in orbit around. So if your at an asteroid field, options to "mine" or "deploy drones" will appear hear, while if your at a jump gate nexus the option for "jdn" (jump drive navigator), will be the only icon.

Beneith this, in the main part of the screen you will find a collection of buttons. Some of these that are labeled with names such as "eden" or "starbase 51" are the various objects in the system such as planets, jump gate nexus points and asteroid fields that you can travel to. The unlabeled ones are simply graphics of stars, and though you can click them this does serves no purpose. Since each system is different in layout the order these objects come up in is slightly different, but just remember to look for the labels. To travel to any object in the system, just click it.

To one side of these (though depending upon your screen readers columnization they may appear benieth), are a set of numbers of the names of the system objects with their law and tech levels. At the bottom of this, (just above the "mail box), a link will appear to dock with whatever object your currently in orbit around assuming it is something that can be docked with. Alternatively, you can just click it a second time, so if you've traveled to Eden, just click the Eden button again to dock.

On the subject of docking, you will always be asked if you want! to dock with a given thing by a text box in the middle of the screen that will replace the normal navigation view,, which will also come up with other alerts from the game, (for example when a special event happens while travelling). This always has a button to confirm and sometimes a cancel, it's often quick to find, (I usually just hit B in supernova to get to the next button).

The promenade screen.

At the top of the promenade screen is the name of whatever world your on and it's tech level, then underneith are a few graphical links to important features. Secure store", for storing items from your ship. "collection point" where you pickup anything someone has sent to you at that particular world, (including when you buy items from the player market), "view docked players" and "ship hanger" for when you own multiple ships. this is also where icons for the "Passenger office" for taking passenger missions, "bank", "manufacturing facility" or "engineering station" both needed in crafting show up.

Beneith this, is a list of the various shops and services of that promenade arranged as a table. The promenade lists the name, type of store, stock market value and lastly a view button. So you might see "Commercial store transport", "csts", and "800" and a button labeled "view" which will take you to where you into the Commercial transport office and let you send your resources across the galaxies. These tables have propper formatting, so it's quite possible to use table navigation methods on them, though equally you can just go through the buttons.

it's also worth noting that the promenade menue is pretty much the standard for a massive number of menues in the game, with a few extra allowences for different buttons, from examining the results of scanning for wrecks, to looking at missions, so checking out how to navigate it quickly and efficiently is definitely to your advantage.

    Ship loadout screen.

This is found through the "Ship loadout" link on the bottom panel. Because in Ce it always pays to keep swapping out equipment sets, this is a screen which you will be seeing a lot. Each equipment slot for your ship, it's two weapon slotts, three system slots, cargo expander slot, two energy slots, shield slot and energy type shows up as a button. The lables for these buttons will initially display that the slot is empty, for example "Weapon slot 1 empty" however once you have something installed in there it's name will be displayed, eg "mining laser mk1" if your screen reader can read mouseover text, or has a way of positioning the mouse pointer without clicking, you can also get the stats of the item such as it's skill requirements and damage or output. For example in Supernova if I hit right ctrl delete when on a button to hover the mouse pointer over it, I can then go down to the bottom of the screen to read the information. Of course however, since clicking on any equipped item wil tell you it's stats anyway, this isn't a necessity.

The buttons are arranged in two small tables, with the weapon and system slots first and then all the others, however since all the tables do is give a heading of which slot is which they're not particularly worth worrying about and it's far quicker just to navigate through the buttons. At the bottom (just above your mail box), is the "Exit load out screen button"

If you click on any of the buttons for an equipped item, you'll be ttaken to a screen giving the full information for the item, including it's description, stats, skille requirements, captain level etc, (the same you'd get when viewing the item in a shop or the Cedr), with two buttons at the bottom to return to loadout or to unequip the item. After you've unequipped the item you'll be taken to a quick confirmation box with a button and then returned to your ship loadout.

To equip an item, click on an empty slot. You'll then be taken to a list of all the types of items of that sort you have arranged in one of those tables with buttons ala the promenade showing item name, the quantity you own (qty), it's type, skill and amount required, damage (or energy output or whatever stat), whether it needs a certificate, and finally an equip button.

So you might for example see "mining laser mk 1, mining 10, 5, 5, no, and the equip button"

As with many other screens in ce, it's also possible to go through quickly by just following the equip buttons.

Since the ship loadout screen is the same layout as is used for your personal loadout (where you equip spacesuits and oxygen to go exploring), and the specials and pods screens too, it's a good one to be able to navigate quickly, especially since if you want to become a veteran player you'll be doing lots of swapping in and out different peaces of equipment and thanks to accessible labeling on the buttons (a great access fix made to the game in 2010), that is very easy.
Mining and loot screen.

Mining is one of the easiest activities in Ce, even according to it's screens. When you hit the mine link when in orbit around an asteroid field, a screen will appear headed "mining interface screen" This will tell you your current scan wrating, then give you a button for each weapon equipped in your two weapons slots (though likely most of the time you'll just have the one). Unusually for Ce the button (now labeled "click me" thanks to a recent fix), to activate your mining laser is above rather than below it's label. So you'll see "click me), then just below something like "mining laser mk1 scan bonus %10). There is also an "exit mining interface" button at the bottom as well.

Really however the only button you'll need on this screen is the one with that handy "click me" label, indeed as with most of Ce navigating to the first button on the page is likely your friend when mining.

Aftering hitting "Click me" and activating your mining laser, you'll then be presented with the mining results screen which is highly similar to the combat results screen and shows you what three things your laser grabbed from the asteroid. At the top is a heading of your current location, then across the screen (though depending upon your screen reader columnization they may appear in a list form), you'll see the three lables for the three results, first their quantity something like "qty 5", "Qty 10", and "qty 4" Then underneith the names of the three resources eg "ore", "Gravimit", "biogenic Ore" and then finally three buttons labeled "Tractor" under that you'll see a message telling you how much free cargo space you have, and finally an "Exit collection" button.

One very interesting thing about collecting your mining results, is that once you've hit the "tractor" button for the thing you want, the quantity will be set to zero, the comodity to "n/a" and the "tractor" button will be disabled, (this will also happen if you've only managed to get two positive results with your laser and scanners). This means that once again as in most of Ce, going to the first button on the page is your friend if your just out for vacuming resources and not caring what you get, since it'll take you straight to "tractor" then when you've grabbed all three resources the first button will be "exit collection", then on the main mining laser screen it'll be that "click me" which brings up the results again. Though bare in mind there is a problem with this stratogy.

If you should come across rare loot, such as a crystal, it'll always show up in the third column and usually with a cquantity of one. Thus, if your just hitting the first button on the page and tractoring straight through your lyable to miss those sorts of rare finds, since if you fill your hold before picking up rare loot, you'll be instantly kicked to the "you have 0 space left in your cargo hold" message, so it's good to keep track of how full your hold is getting even if your just trying to cram in as much ore as possible. On the plus side, you'll instantly know when your out of space because the first button on the "Zero space" screen is labeled "exit mining"

Also however, when clicking through buttons, take care not to miss events, and if you run across a button labeled "continue" read the screne to see what happend or otherwise you might miss some amusing aventures of your captain, or even miss that you've just levelled up in the heat of your rock hunting.

Another thing to note is that if your doing a fom mission, the text note from your Ai saying that you've located a unit of the mission ore your looking for appears right at the bottom, under the "exit collection" button and the "you have x cargo space" So, it's usually best to occasionally just check the "active fom missions" item in the second dropdown menue which will tell you how many loads of mission ore you have and how many you still need to find.

Even if your not planning on being a miner, the combat loot screen is almost identical to the mining results screen, accept obviously with different resources. The only major differences are that at the top of the combat results screen are links to go to ship repare or combat scan, so be careful to make sure you've clicked all the buttons first. Also, while if your just collecting cargo comodities from your defeated foe, the buttons will read "Collect All", On the combat screen however, if there's a special loot item of some sort the button is just labeled "collect" making it quicker and easier to find if your just hitting buttons fast, rather than on the mining screen where the "tractor" lable is the same whether your pulling in a load of common ore or a rare grey crystal.