Learning Neural Control (DF)

Excerpt from Practical Neural Piloting, 4th Fleet Edition
Chapter 2: Learning to Walk All Over Again

The first time you plug in, you’re going to feel like a toddler. Don’t take that as an insult — it’s exactly what’s happening. Your brain’s been driving the same two legs and two hands your whole life, and now we’re handing you a body with twenty control surfaces, eight sensor feeds, and mass measured in kilotons.

Phase One: You’ll be thinking about every single move. “Pitch forward” means focusing on your imaginary spine until the nose dips. It’s clumsy. You’ll overshoot. You’ll fight the ship and yourself.

Phase Two: The wobble. Like a kid finding their balance, you’ll start linking motions together. Pitch and yaw blend into a smooth bank. You’ll stop counting thruster percentages and start feeling where you want to be.

Phase Three: The ship’s part of you now. You won’t think about “turning left” — you’ll just turn. Sensor pings are gut feelings, hull temperature is skin, and acceleration feels like a shift in your own weight.

Phase Four: This is when you stop “flying the ship” and start being the ship. You’ll dodge incoming fire before you consciously register it, run weapons and engines in parallel without thinking, and pull maneuvers you’d swear were impossible in the simulator.

Don’t rush it. Every ace you’ve heard about — the ones who made their ships dance — started with the same shaky steps. The trick is sticking with it until walking feels like breathing.