The market commodities don't do anything just something to trade between other sectors to earn money.
Really? All the market commodities had names that made them sound like useful equipment. It's a bit disappointing that they're useless, but I guess all commodity-trading games have that sort of thing. I'm just used to them being obviously unusable like "Scrap Metal" or "Hydrogen".
And the "0u / 10r" if you still had the starting ship, it mean 0 used cargo spaces and 10 spaces remaining.
Ah, so it was at least partially an issue with the font. I really thought it said "1or". Anyway, it's probably clearer if you leave out the "u" and "r" and just leave it at something like "Cargo: 0/10".
The "warning" means an enemy ship is in your proximity. Clicking it will start an engagement.
I tried clicking it to no effect. The only two encounters I had occurred on their own.
And the combat screen is all detailed in the manual, maneuvering the ship is done by holding down the mouse on it, dragging out and then "drawing" a circle until the turn indicator is orientated correctly.
It seems a bit strange that it's so different from the normal movement. I expected it to just move toward wherever I clicked.
You mention the manual a lot. I guess I'm used to games being fairly intuitive. I used to read game manuals because they were interesting, but I haven't played many games where it was actually necessary. When it comes to modern games, it might be hard to sell people on something that doesn't teach things within the game itself. Then again, I'm sure there are people looking for that sort of experience.
As for the unlock code, I don't know if I have the time or motivation to really get into a game like this. Hopefully someone around here is more of a fan of this sort of game and will be able to give you good feedback.
My specs: Quad-core i7 (early model), NVIDIA GTX 285 (1GB VRAM), 6GB RAM, Windows 7 64-bit