Inertia is a physical principle that dictates that an object that is in motion stays in motion unless acted on by an outside force. This can be gravity, it can be friction, it can be a push in the opposite direction, it can be the brakes on your car, etc...

In the context of space, there is very little friction/gravity to affect your movement, and Everspace 2 allows you to play with that. This requires turning off your inertia dampeners, which we will cover later. Inertia dampeners are little thrusters along your ship that stabilize it, and prevent it from drifting, but drifting might be desirable, and is a very powerful space combat tactic I learned on freelancer 20 years ago.

Using inertia allows you to do things like maintain cruise speed/boost speed without actually using cruise/boost, what it also allows you to do is maintain your heading and turn around to shoot at enemies following you.

In the everspace pause menu, settings -> input -> customize controls, you can bind the inertia dampeners toggle, which will be unbound by default.
I set it on Z myself. It's important to understand that you likely won't spend an entire fight with the dampeners off, and you will toggle them on and off as needed. Drifting is great, but sometimes you do want some control/stability too. ;p

To know whether your dampeners are on/off at a quick glance, you can look at your status bar, the yellow icon with the arrows at the bottom right tell you that my dampeners are currently off:

Keep in mind that while dampeners are off, you can still use WASD to steer your ship, just that the behavior will be different. If dampeners are on, and you press W, ship will move forward as long as you press W, and will stop when you release button. If dampeners are off and you press W, your thrusters will give a push forward to your ship, but your ship won't stop once you release W. Your ship will maintain momentum in the direction it was pushed.

This means you can also use boost to steer yourself. Having a high output boost will definitely help with this. Just one thing to consider, steering is awkward with dampeners off. If you've slingshot yourself in a direction, and try to boost in another, you need to remember that the inertia of the push you gave in the initial direction will always affect your heading.



A few scenario this might be useful:

-You are cruising along into a new zone, you want to keep your cruise speed, but you need to come out of cruise to shoot at something. Toggle the dampeners while you are still in cruise, turn off cruise (F) by default, and you'll notice that you get slingshotted at cruise speed in the direction you were cruising in and you can turn your ship without your heading/speed being affected.


-You are a sniper with very long range weapons, and you want to maintain safe distance with your enemies.


-You are in a pinch, and you need to get out of the fight to let your shields regen.


Hope this helps you all play a little better. ♥