Ah the good old days when the manual was used, time to dig in and find out those controls its not fun getting shot and not able to fire back.

press g, it'll help :)

thanks ill try

Yup, I figured out how to travel from system to system (at least I think they are systems), and how to get info about the ship you are targeting, and how to fire, but I still don't really know how to play this game.

Reading the manual is mandatory, but that's not really a good thing, imo. Good thing the game seems fun, so it should be worth the effort spent to read through all the instructions.