- Later on in the game when progressing through the story and meeting new factions, you won't see that many ships with rotating sections again... to be honest, right now I can't think of ANY other ship with rotating sections apart from the ones you'll meet or play with in the first few mission, so this isn't likely to bother you for long.
- You can double-click the fighter squadron in your ship list at the upper left of your screen to follow one of its fighters, although then you can't control the camera to zoom or rotate around your fighter. Double-clicking in empty space or on any other ship in the ship list will leave this "follow fighter" mode again.
- Like Mularac said: press and hold shift and use the mouse to move the marker to the position you want your selected ship(s) to go to - then release the shift key again. Also by holding the left mouse button you can move the marker further away from the camera (or back again). It's hard to describe, but works well enough once you get the hang of it after your first few tries.
And no, there is no cockpit view, command bridge or anything like that.
Regarding the mission editorYeah, there is one. I don't think Steam gives you a shortcut for it, but you'll find a "mod_tools.exe" in the "mod_tools" subfolder of your Nexus installation. This'll give you access to a bunch of tools:
- a solar system editor to create or modify star systems (create new planets, moons, etc.)
- a mission editor, which is only really useful for placing ships in your mission and - much more importantly - debugging your scripts... to actually create entertaining missions, you'll have to learn the scripting language and use any text editor of your choice to write those mission scripts... the editor only helps to playtest and debug those missions
- a model viewer which helps you test your newly created or modified 3d models before importing them into the game
- a model and texture converter which converts models and textures to a format Nexus is able to actually make use of
In the "docs" subfolder you'll find the modding documentation describing all these tools, all the hotkeys you'll need as well as the scripting language used to create missions. Additionally the game will also include three sample mods (one containing a custom mission, one changing everything from effects to ship classes to sounds, etc.) and one containing a multiplayer mission setup).
A simple way to create skirmish battles against the AI... would be the Skirmisher tool I created a few years ago:
Nexus Skirmisher v0.61 download. It's a simple utility to create fleet-vs-fleet battles while also supporting most if not all major mods out there (like BSG, Stargate, Star Trek, etc.).
Regarding mods... it'll be best to have a look at
Nexus' page on moddb.com. I believe all the big Nexus' mods are on that list - except maybe some really old ones.
PS: There is also a
Wiki with some modding tutorials around.