On the battlefield, your Ultranought is located at the far left, and the enemy base at the far right. You can scroll across the battlefield by moving your mouse near the left or right edges of the screen, by using the left and right arrow keys or by clicking somewhere in the mini-map.

This is a screenshot of the combat screen, showing the player's Ultranought, with several player ships fighting some Xyloxi ships :

In the top-left corner, the HP of the Ultranought is displayed at all times, in the top-right corner, the HP of the enemy base is shown. You can mouse over both HP bars to get some more info about both bases.
Inbetween the two HP bars, you'll find the mini-map. Clicking in this minimap will quickly scroll the view to the location you clicked.

The bottom interface has two parts. There is a panel to the left with 16 buttons and larger panel, taking up the rest of the interface.

The small panel has 16 buttons arranged in 4 rows. The top row allows you to build the shipbays or open the shipbuilder. The next row contains 4 buttons to upgrade the 4 factories that produce ship parts (ship frames, armor plates, weapons and engines). Then there are 4 buttons to upgrade various parts of your Ultranought : energy core, HP, turret and superweapon. The last row contains 4 buttons to activate the special actions of your Ultranought : Regenerate, Charge, Barrage and Retask.
You can mouse over these buttons to read more info about them.

The large panel shows 5 displays with the current amount of ship frames, armor plates, weapons, engines and energy you have currently available. Mouse over these displays for more info.

If you have clicked an existing shipbay, this large panel will show the shipbuilder interface. Have a look at the image below :

When you open the shipbuilder for a specific ship size, you'll be shown what the ship looks like. By default a ship has no upgrades. You can add extra ship parts by means of the three sets of '+' and '-' buttons. You can also click the 'max' button to maximize the amount of ship parts in a 3 fields. The 'reset' button removes all ship parts again.
Changing the amount of ship parts will affect the stats of the ship, you'll see the change as you add or remove ship parts. The more parts a ship has, the more time it will take to build it and the more energy it will cost.
The maximum number of ship parts depends on the size of the ship. Small ships, or fighters can only have 1 of each upgrade. Frigates can have 2 and Cruisers 3. Destroyers, the largest ships you can build, can have 4 of each.

When you're happy with the look and stats of the ship, press the build button or the space bar to start building the ship. Once it's ready it will start travelling across the battlefield towards the enemy base, attacking anything that comes in range.

Pages on the NULLL forum :
Ultranought forum.

Wiki pages:
Main page
Game manual
Overview map
Skills
Screenshots & more