The central reference for how to play: controls, game mechanics, the in-game editors, and the chat/admin commands. This is a living document.
Maintainers: keep this file current. Whenever a control changes, a feature is added, or a command is introduced, update the relevant section here in the same change. This manual is the single source of truth for player-facing operation. (Written in English per project doc policy; in-game text itself is bilingual DE/EN.)
Last updated: 2026-07-04.
- Launch the client. Windows:
BlocksBeyondTheStars.Launcher.exe(shows a loading splash then starts the game) orBlocksBeyondTheStars.exedirectly. Linux:./BlocksBeyondTheStars.Launcher.Console(prints "Loading..." to the terminal then starts the game) or./BlocksBeyondTheStars.x86_64directly. From the main menu: Singleplayer → pick an existing save or start a New world (name + seed), Host Game → host a world for friends, Join Server, or Official Worlds → online multiplayer on the official servers (see below). - Host Game (in-game multiplayer hosting): the same world picker as singleplayer — any saved world can be hosted ("open to LAN" style) or a new one created — plus a host bar with max players (2–16) and an optional join password. The game starts the bundled server locally and you join immediately; you are the world's admin (the very first player of a fresh world is its WorldAdmin; the host's name is additionally passed as a server admin). The address friends join is announced in chat and as a HUD toast ("Hosting — friends can join at ip:port"). The session ends (and the world saves) when the host quits. Friends outside your LAN need a port forward of that UDP port.
- Official Worlds (online multiplayer, beta): the in-game portal for hosted worlds on the official servers — also available in the browser at play.blocksbeyondthestars.de. Create a free account (no email needed), then create your own world. There are no open public servers — every world belongs to a player. To play with friends: set a join password, then list the world publicly (world's Manage dialog → "List publicly"; only password-protected worlds can be listed). Friends find it under Official Worlds → Public worlds and join with your password. Worlds are private by default and only visible to their owner until listed.
- Join Server: enter your player name, the server address, port and (if the server has one) the password. Name verification: the first join under a name claims it for your installation — later joins under that name from other machines are rejected ("name belongs to another player"), and a name that is currently online can't join twice. So pick your name once and keep it; it also keys your inventory/progress on each server.
- World options ("Weltoptionen") at world creation: pick a preset (Friedlich / Standard / Feindselig) or tune sliders — life & threats (creatures, planet enemies, enemy ships, UFOs), survival (oxygen, hunger, hazards, death penalty), generated world (flora, ore, settlements, wrecks, vaults, stations, exotic worlds, universe size), plus an advanced page with a frequency slider per planet type. The world owns its rules from then on; the world admin can live-edit the creature/enemy activity later in-game (Settings tab → "Weltregeln").
- The Editors submenu (main menu) holds the creation tools — see §6.
- Window mode (Settings tab): the "Window mode" / "Fenstermodus" option cycles Windowed → Borderless → Exclusive and applies immediately. The default is Windowed (a normal movable, maximizable window); Borderless fills whichever monitor the window currently sits on; Exclusive is classic full-screen.
- On a new world, the ship AI VEGA boots up and walks you through the first hour (see §5 → VEGA). Veteran saves get a one-line "systems online" instead.
| Key / input | Action |
|---|---|
| W / A / S / D | Move |
| Mouse | Look |
| Space | Jump — hold in the air to fire the jetpack (if equipped); in water: swim up / surface |
| Left-click | Mine the targeted block (or scan it when a scanner is selected) |
| Right-click | Place the selected hotbar block (or use the selected gadget, e.g. the terrain scanner) |
| Mouse wheel | Cycle hotbar slot |
| 1 – 9 | Select hotbar slot |
| F | Attack the nearest creature / swing the held tool |
| R | Repair the targeted wreck breach with the selected hotbar block (see §5 → Wrecks); with a shaped block selected: rotate its placement orientation (see §5 → Craftable block shapes) |
| L | Toggle the suit headlamp (requires a suit_lamp) |
| G | Loot the nearest container |
| E | Use a nearby ship/station tile (cockpit, workshop, cargo, medbay, …); trade with a vendor (opens the Market); board your hover speeder; beam from a teleporter pad you're standing on |
| X | Pack up (stow) a nearby deployed hover speeder back into its item |
| T | Send a trade request to a nearby player |
| K | Send a dock request to a nearby player |
| U | Undock from a player / leave a boarded space station |
| V | Toggle first / third-person camera |
| I | Toggle thermal vision while looking through the thermal binoculars (see §5 → Binoculars) |
| N | Advance the current VEGA dialogue line (also fast-completes the typewriter) |
| Tab | Open / close the gameplay menu (Inventory, Crafting, Tech, Ship, Map, Missions, Character); also closes full-screen menu screens such as the Codex |
| M | Toggle the world map (top-down planet view; click to set a waypoint) |
| Enter | Open the chat box (Esc cancels) |
| J | Hide / show the chat scrollback for this session (rebindable; see also Settings → Comfort → Chat display) |
| V (hold) | Push-to-talk voice (if the server enabled voice; needs a radio; key is configurable) |
| Esc | Close the current screen; if no game screen is open, show the leave-game confirmation |
Interaction reach is ~6 m (extended by reach equipment).
A connected controller works alongside keyboard + mouse — both stay live at once, so you can mix them freely and neither locks the other out. The HUD control hint swaps to controller labels while a pad is the device in hand. Mapping targets an Xbox / XInput pad on Windows (other pads may report different buttons — retuning is tracked in issue #195):
| Control | Action |
|---|---|
| Left stick | Move |
| Right stick | Look |
| RB | Mine / attack (hold to keep mining) |
| LB | Place the selected hotbar block / use the held gadget |
| D-pad ◄ ► | Cycle hotbar slot |
| (A) | Jump (hold in air = jetpack; in water = swim up) |
| (X) | Use / board / interact |
| (Y) | Toggle first / third-person camera |
| Start | Open / close the gameplay menu |
In menus, the left stick / d-pad navigates, (A) confirms and (B) goes back. The right stick also steers the ship in flight. Direct hotbar number-key picks remain keyboard-only.
Rebinding: every control row in Settings has two buttons — the keyboard key and the pad button. Tap the pad button and press any controller button to rebind it (actions marked — have no pad button by default but can be given one). Reset controls restores both keyboard and pad defaults.
On a touch device (tablet, or a touch-capable browser) on-screen controls appear automatically. The buttons swap with what you're doing:
| On-screen control | Action |
|---|---|
| Left stick (bottom-left) | Move / thrust / steer |
| Drag anywhere on the right | Look / steer the ship |
| ◄ ► | Cycle hotbar slot (ship-systems bar in flight) |
| ≡ (top-right) | Open / close the gameplay menu |
| On foot: JUMP · MINE (hold) · PLACE · USE · DOWN · CHAT | Jump · mine · place · use/board · descend · open chat |
| Flying / EVA: FIRE (hold) · LAND · SHIP · AUTO · VIEW · USE · UP · DOWN | Fire · landing pads · walk the ship · autopilot · camera · dock/board · float up/down |
| Speeder: BOOST (hold) · JUMP · EXIT · FUEL | Boost · hop · dismount · refuel |
Menus are tapped directly. Text entry (your name, chat): on a native tablet the on-screen keyboard opens by itself; in a tablet browser a small input prompt opens instead. On a desktop or a desktop browser nothing changes — controls stay keyboard + mouse (or a gamepad).
Enter space by launching the ship; on foot you board/leave via the cockpit. While flying:
| Key / input | Action |
|---|---|
| W / A / S / D | Thrust forward / strafe / back |
| Mouse | Yaw + pitch (turn). Sensitivity scales with the ship's handling stat |
| V | Toggle cockpit / third-person camera |
| W/A/S/D | Fly through the system — every planet/moon is out there at its real position |
| L | Land — on the body you've flown up to (the HUD shows "land on ") or, if none is near, back where you launched. Opens a confirmation (Enter = yes, Esc = no) |
| E | Board a nearby space station (within range; a short dock-approach plays before you board) |
| P | Autopilot (needs an ai_core_mk2+ module): flies to your nav waypoint if one is set, else the nearest station / landable body; any manual input takes the helm back |
| M | System chart: a top-down map of the current system. Click a body/station to target it or empty space for a free nav waypoint — it shows on the radar with a distance readout, and the autopilot flies to it. The ship holds position while the chart is open |
| Tab → Map | Hyperspace jump to another system (needs a jump_generator module) — flying is within one system |
Ship classes differ in speed and handling (data/ships.json): e.g. the scout is fast and agile,
the hauler slow and heavy. Hull + shield are shown on the HUD; shields recharge, hull does not.
Hosted/default servers allow free manual space flight so players can fly through a system without needing a
separate unlock; admins can still disable it through server world rules.
- Tab menu — tabs for Inventory, Crafting, Tech (blueprints), Ship (modules/build), Map, Missions, Character (appearance), plus Story, Companions (tamed creatures, see §5) and Alliances (see §5), with Settings pinned far right. Crafting/Tech/Ship are location-bound (workshop / lab / ship console); the UI tells you when you must go to the right station.
- Codex and DataQubes screens — use the top-right Close button, Esc, or Tab to return to play. < Menu returns from the full-screen screen to the normal Tab menu.
- Tab availability dimming — tabs whose context isn't met are greyed out (but still clickable to peek): Map needs you aboard, Crafting a workshop, Tech a lab, Ship the ship console. While not aboard, the Map's travel buttons are also disabled (the world is shown but you can't quick-travel from on foot), and the Inventory's Cargo Hold transfer controls are hidden (the hold is only reachable from aboard the ship).
- World map (M) — top-down view of explored terrain (fog-of-war), with player/ship/station markers and click-to-set waypoints.
- HUD — health/oxygen/hunger/energy, hotbar, location, compass, scan readout (bottom-left), and the wreck panel (right) when near a repairable wreck.
- VEGA panel — the ship AI speaks through a typewriter speech panel with a persistent objective chip (live progress, e.g. "mine 1/3") during onboarding. Advance lines with N. Advisor hints can be muted (Settings → VEGA hints); the tutorial can be skipped or restarted from the Settings tab.
- Health (max 100): regenerates aboard ship / in breathable air; drained by suffocation (−5/s at 0 oxygen), lava (−15/s, reduced by armor), and starvation (−3/s at 0 hunger). At 0 → death (see below).
- Oxygen (max 100 + tank bonuses): refills aboard ship / on breathable worlds; drains outside on
toxic/airless worlds. An
oxygen_extractorcuts the drain on extractable atmospheres. - Hunger (max 100): drains off-ship; below ~15 the suit auto-eats stored/loose rations. Food sources: hunt creatures (meat), harvest berry flora (replantable via seeds), raid a settlement's greenhouse (see below), craft emergency rations — or build an algae tank (workshop, no blueprint) at a base: standing next to it grows 2 algae rations from 1 water (melt 2 snow or 2 ice into water by hand if there is no lake).
- Suit energy (max 100): powers the stealth-suit cloak, the jetpack (hold Space in the air to thrust up) — and the suit's climate control (below); consumers stop when it hits 0. Recharges aboard the ship and refills fully at a heal-tank.
- Temperature (Survival only): roughly −5…40 °C is free. Beyond that the suit's climate control drains suit energy — the further past the band (ice-world night, lava plain at noon, vacuum on an EVA), the faster — and once the energy is empty you slowly take exposure damage (≤ 3/s, the HUD says "Freezing"/"Overheating"). The HUD temperature readout turns blue/red as a warning, and the energy bar glows orange while climate control is running. Defenses: dig in (a couple of blocks below the surface every world settles near a mild ground temperature — unless lava or ice is right beside you), build a roof (shelter halves the stress), wait out midday/midnight, stay near the ship, and craft suit liners at the workshop (Thermo Liner 40% → Insulation Suite 65% → Climate Rig 85%; only the best carried liner counts — armor pieces also carry a little insulation). In vacuum the readout shows the sun-side/shadow hull temperature (about +120 °C to −150 °C). The world option Environmental hazards (world creation, or live in the in-game Settings tab as world admin) scales this from Off to Hard; Creative/Sandbox worlds are always exempt.
- Heal tank (workshop, blueprint-gated): the life-support unit for your own base or station. Everyone within a few blocks of a placed tank is slowly healed and fed and the suit recharges — the only off-ship suit recharge. Press E on the tank to make it your home spawn: on death you then choose between waking at your ship's medbay or at that home (ship is always the fallback if the home is gone).
- Armor: each piece (chest/legs/helmet) adds resistance, summed and capped (~75%).
- Water is not solid: you sink in with gentle buoyancy and dive; hold Space to swim up and surface. Water breaks falls. Deep, swimmable water (lakes, ponds, seas) is common on wet worlds; oxygen keeps draining while submerged on non-breathable worlds.
- Tools have a kind (drill/scanner/…) and tier (1–5). A block has a hardness and may require a minimum tool tier; mining accumulates the tool's power until it exceeds the hardness, then the block breaks and yields its drops. Powerful drills can clear a small radius.
- Ship hull, station, settlement and other players' protected landing zones cannot be mined — except plants: you may always pick flora, wherever it grows (that is what makes a settlement greenhouse worth visiting), you just cannot take the building apart.
- Your ship is a real parked object on its landing pad (pads are naturally flat). You can furnish the interior: place blocks in free cabin space (and mine those again) — they stay with the ship across launches, landings and the walk-in interior. The hull cannot be damaged and ship modules (medbay, cockpit, …) cannot be removed. Step or hop up through the hatch to enter.
- Your inventory is your personal backpack (24 slots) — it travels with you everywhere, and its first nine slots are the quick-bar (the on-screen hotbar).
- Your ship's cargo hold is bulk storage that belongs to the ship (48 slots, growing with cargo-hold modules) and is shared by everyone aboard that ship.
- What goes where: mined and crafted items fill your inventory first and only spill into the cargo hold once it's full (and only while you're aboard). Salvage you scoop up while flying in space goes straight into the cargo hold. While you're aboard the ship, crafting draws from both at once.
- Moving things by hand: open the Tab menu → Inventory. The Inventory tab has a "Stow all materials in cargo" button (loose materials/components only — your tools, weapons and quick-bar items stay put), and selecting any item offers "Move to cargo hold". The Cargo Hold tab shows the hold's used/total capacity, a "Take all out" button, and per-item "Move to inventory". These only work while you're aboard (in flight or standing in the landed cabin); on foot the cargo tab says so.
- Auto-stow (optional): turn on Settings → Comfort → "Auto-stow into cargo on boarding" to have loose materials moved into the hold automatically each time you board. Off by default.
- Throwing things away: select an item in the Inventory or Cargo Hold tab and press "Throw away" — it asks once ("Really throw away?"), and the second click destroys every stack of that item. This cannot be undone and gives nothing back. Your starting equipment (drill, scanner, suit lamp, machete, sidearm) has no such button, so you can never leave yourself without a way to dig or a way to see.
- When everything is full: if your backpack and your hold are full, whatever you mine or craft next is simply gone — the game warns you when that happens, so throw something away or empty the hold first.
- Recipes are made at stations: hand (free), workshop, refinery, detoxifier, transmuter, market (barter). Inputs are consumed, outputs produced (free in Creative).
- The workshop is your everyday bench: it smelts the common ores (iron, copper, gold, silver, …) into ingots and fabricates parts, tools, weapons and building blocks.
- The refinery (the forge block on a base, or the refinery ship module — both unlocked via Tech) is the high-heat metallurgy station. It alone smelts the rare Tier-2 metals (titanium, cobalt, tungsten, platinum, uranium, neodymium) and refines diamond, carbide and reactor fuel. It also offers higher-yield smelts of the common ores (e.g. iron and copper) than the workshop — handy for bulk metalwork. You can never need it before you can build it: its metals are also the ones that need a titanium-tier drill to mine.
- The transmuter (the matter forge block or ship module, unlocked via Tech) compacts spare terrain (sand, dirt, stone, …) into matter dust and synthesises it back into ore — a sink for surplus digging.
- Blueprints gate advanced recipes — unlock them with knowledge points (earned by scanning) plus research materials; some require prerequisite blueprints.
- Disassemble (at a workshop): break a crafted item back into ~50 % of its recipe inputs. In the Inventory detail pane, select the item and press Disassemble (shows what it recovers). Raw resources and refinery/transmuter-synthesised ore can't be disassembled.
- A ship is a set of fitted modules (cockpit, reactor, life support, workshop, medbay, cargo holds, lab, refinery, …). Modules enable on-board stations and cargo capacity. Build/expand from the Ship tab. Each cargo-hold module adds slots to the shared cargo hold (see Inventory & cargo hold above); the Cargo tab shows the current used/total capacity.
- Combat dents your ship's hull (it never regenerates on its own), and EVA-carved hull cells stay missing until you refill them. Use the cockpit to fix both in one action: press E at the cockpit and a "Repair ship" / "Schiff reparieren" panel appears on the HUD (a hull bar plus the materials still needed).
- Hull is bought with
iron_plate(10 hull per plate); each missing cell costs the item that originally placed it (oriron_platefor structural blocks like lights/engine, so they never block a repair). The repair is greedy/partial — it fixes the hull first, then as many cells as your materials stretch to, and never hard-blocks when you're short. Only the ship's owner can repair it. There is no passive hull regen. - Lost ships (if "Keep ship on death" is off): a destroyed ship becomes a downed wreck on your landing pad. Repair it through this same flow — restore the hull and refill every missing cell and it can fly again.
- Onboarding (new worlds): VEGA guides you through an 8-stage chain (mine → craft → scan → unlock a blueprint → launch → dock a station → trade/take a mission → land elsewhere), each stage tracked on the objective chip. Skippable and restartable from the Settings tab; veteran saves skip automatically.
- Advisor: one-time contextual hints (low oxygen/energy/hunger, full inventory, first nightfall, "ruins detected", world-type flavour). Mute via Settings → VEGA hints.
- AI-core modules:
ai_core_mk2adds +6 terrain-scanner radius, hostile-contact callouts in space and the autopilot (press P in flight);ai_core_mk3adds a 12 % evasive-manoeuvre damage negation. - Memory fragments: data terminals in wrecks and vaults drop
ai_memory_fragments — VEGA redeems them aboard (+3 knowledge each) and tells her backstory over 10 beats; the final beat teaches the Mk3 blueprint.
- A server can enable an optional AI text service that makes some flavour text dynamic: NPC greeting
speech bubbles (vendors and mission-board givers greet you personally, in your language, aware of
your past visits), mission-board flavour text (title/description written around the fixed job),
occasional extra VEGA banter, and admin-generated missions (
/ai <prompt>, see §7). - It is off by default, and the game is fully playable without it — every AI line has a localized scripted fallback (DE+EN), so you simply see the standard text instead. AI text is flavour only; it never decides gameplay (the server validates everything).
- Enabling it is a server-side setup: run the
ai-backend/service and setaiLevelin the server config — see SELF_HOSTING.md §8.
- Fly within local space instances; asteroids + NPC drones can damage hull/shield. Whether you can lose your ship is set by the world's "Keep ship on death" rule (see Repairing your own ship above).
- Space and busy systems feel alive with civilian trader traffic: merchant ships warp in at the system edge, cruise to a station to dock, or head into the inner system and land on a planet/moon if a pad is free, then later depart. They are peaceful scenery — a trader can't be locked, shot or damaged.
- A trader that docks at a station becomes a visiting merchant: board that station and you'll find its pilot as an extra vendor beside the trade post — barter with them like any other vendor (press E).
- A trader that lands on a world parks its ship on a pad with the pilot standing in front as a merchant you can trade with. One landed trader per body at a time; they re-appear when you return to that world.
- Space stations: approach in space and press E to board. A station is its own place in orbit — you arrive inside it, floating in space (black sky, no planet/weather, life support), and can walk the interior (vendors, mission board, heal tank, quarters) and talk to its crew NPCs. Press U to leave and travel back down to your ship on the planet.
- Build your own: deploy a Station Core on a spacewalk (press B), build a hull + an airlock door around it, and it commissions into a boardable station on the star map.
- Name it: rename a station you built from Tab → Map (select it → Rename), or by pressing E on the station core while standing inside your own station. Only the owner can rename it.
- Player docking: press K near another player to request docking; U to undock. Docking is
modal and gated by server rules + a
docking_module.
- Craft a Base Core at a workshop (
stone×6 +iron_plate×2 — available from the start) and place it on a planet, moon or asteroid to found a base. It's the surface counterpart to a space station: the stone is the base's position marker on the planet map (key M), shown as a teal ⌂ with its name. - One base per world per player. Mining the base core removes the base. Walk up and press E on the stone to name or rename it (only the owner can).
- On Tab → Map, a world where you have a base (or a station orbiting it) is marked and its details note "You have a base/station here"; you can also rename the base from there.
- Two players can form an alliance from the Alliances menu tab. It has three views: Allies (accept/decline incoming requests, end an alliance), Find players (propose an alliance to any online player), and Radio / Funk (a live chat scrollback with a transmit box).
- Allies gain access to each other's built space stations and planet bases (boarding and building inside the base's protection zone), and cannot harm one another even with PvP enabled. Player-built stations are private — only the owner and their allies can board them.
- The base core / station core itself stays owner-only (an ally can't dissolve your base or rename your station). Alliances are pairwise (no named groups or roles).
- Family-friendly play: this is a game for all ages, so keep radio chat and the names you give players, bases, stations, beacons and creatures friendly. You can mute any player you don't want to hear, and the host can turn voice chat off entirely. See the in-game Codex chapter House Rules for the full list.
- Craft a beam block (
beam_block, blueprint-gated workshop recipe: titanium + cable + energy cell + crystal), place it, and name it. Step onto one of your pads and press E to open a transporter panel listing every beam block you can reach — your own and any allied player's — on the same world, with each pad's name, coordinates and distance; pick one to beam there. - Beaming costs 6 suit energy with a 6 s cooldown. Each pad shows its name on the planet map (key M) and as a floating label in the world. Only the owner can rename a pad; mining it removes it.
- A crashed wreck shows a wreck panel (right HUD) with a hull-repair progress bar. Aim at a breach (missing hull cell) and press R while holding the matching block — the panel lists which blocks are still needed. When fully repaired, Claim ship adds it to your fleet.
- Factories are rare industrial halls found on some breathable worlds — metal walls and windows with one or more machine bays whose presses, rotors and conveyors run continuously, plus a factory terminal by the door. No two are alike (size, machine count and layout are world-specific).
- Stand near the factory terminal to craft from it (Tab → Crafting → Factory category). Factory recipes turn cheaper, less-rare raw materials into the same output as the workshop, but in bulk — more input per step, fewer refining stages. The catch: each factory only makes the 1–4 items on its own roster, so a recipe the menu lists may say "Use a factory terminal that makes this" — you'll need a different factory. Factory crafts cannot be disassembled back into their inputs.
- Operating a terminal is public — you don't need to own a factory to craft there. But a spawned factory is read-only (you can't mine or rebuild it) until you claim it: stand at the terminal with an SPS access code (see below) and press E. Claiming spends one code, makes the factory your base (you and your allies can rebuild it freely), and persists across reloads. One code claims one factory.
- Every village and city keeps a greenhouse — a glass house full of berry bushes you can walk into and harvest. A village grows them in soil beds under a timber-and-glass gable behind a hinged door; a city runs a two-tier hydroponics bay with grow lights and a sliding door, which is easy to spot at night. Space stations of any size above the smallest carry the same bay aboard.
- The berries are a crop, not wild flora: they are safe to eat on every world, and each picked bush grows back on its bed after a short while — so a greenhouse is a food source you can come back to.
- Want your own? Craft berry seeds by hand from 3 berries and plant them on soil — or on a crafted hydroponic tray (workshop), which lets crops root with no soil at all.
- Ruins are the collapsed remains of fallen settlements — mostly surviving ground walls, one half-standing tower, and rubble overgrown by flora. Unlike bases and stations they are not protected: every block is freely mineable, and what you clear stays cleared. VEGA may hint at "structural echoes nearby — ruins or wreckage"; bring a scanner, there's often something worth digging out.
- Treasure chests are standalone lootable caches scattered away from settlements. Each is looted once and holds richer salvage than ordinary drops — and they are the main world source of a rare SPS access code.
- SPS access codes (
access_code) are the rare item used to claim a factory as your base. You get them two ways, both uncommon: as loot from a treasure chest, or by buying one from a trader's Market (a steep barter recipe). Keep one if you find it — it's your key to turning a factory into a home.
- Somebody was here long before you. Monuments are the relics they left: a half-collapsed arcade of arches, a free-standing gate that leads nowhere, a ring of standing stones (stone circle), a weathered obelisk, or a rune altar. Each world carries up to three, and never two of the same kind.
- They are the only structure that also stands on airless moons and dead worlds — nobody needed air to raise them, and nothing has weathered them since.
- Every monument is carved with glowing runes. Scan one where it stands and you read the inscriptions themselves: that is worth far more knowledge than identifying the stone, and it goes into your Codex under Discoveries → Monuments. Each kind of monument pays once per planet, so the stone circle on the next world is worth walking to as well.
- Scanning a rune block you mined and carried home only identifies the material — the writing needs its monument.
- Monuments are freely mineable like ruins (the masonry,
Ancient BrickandRune Stone, is yours to build with), and what you clear stays cleared. Roughly one in three hides a small relic cache nearby.
- Bandits are people, not machines: you can tell one by the cloth mask over the nose and mouth and the scruffy jacket — not by glowing eyes, which belong to the Guardian robots.
- Lone robbers roam some survival worlds. One may walk straight up to you and demand roughly a third of your two biggest stacks (never your tools). You have ~25 seconds and a real choice: [1] Hand it over — the robber keeps its word, leaves, and won't bother you again for a long while — or [2] Refuse (attacking or just ignoring it counts as refusing) and it fights. Players with empty pockets are simply left alone. Kill a bandit and its loot is yours — including anything you paid it earlier.
- Bandit camps are small raider outposts (huts, palisade, campfire) whose guards attack on sight but never chase far from home. Their stash holds better loot than ruins. The camp is freely mineable; a razed camp stays razed, and once all guards are down the camp is cleared forever — no respawns.
- Pirate space: about a quarter of star systems have a bandit reputation — VEGA warns you on entry, before anything happens. There, a raider ship may warp in and hail you with a cargo demand (drawn from inventory and hold) while you keep flying: pay and it warps away for good, refuse or open fire and it fights. Raiders only appear where the rules let you shoot back.
- The "Bandits" world option (world options / at creation) scales all three — Off disables them entirely (peaceful/family presets default to Off).
- Player ↔ player: press T near a player to open a modal trade. Each side stages an offer (+/−) and confirms; the swap executes atomically once both confirm.
- Vendors / market: press E next to a settlement or space-station vendor to open the Market (the gameplay menu's Crafting tab on the Market category). Barter recipes there trade your raw resources for goods. The market is also available aboard your ship (Tab → Crafting → Market), via the ship's trade console — so you can trade without a vendor too.
- With a scanner selected, left-click a creature or block to scan it. Scans award knowledge points used to unlock blueprints; the readout shows subject/info/threat/knowledge (first-time scans highlight the "new discovery" bonus).
- Plants and trees scan as named species. A scanned plant (flora) or tree reads as this world's coined species name with an edible/toxic classification, not just a block. A tree's trunk and its leaves are the same species, so scanning either one counts as a single discovery.
- Terrain scanner (
terrain_scanner, workshop recipe + blueprint): a right-click gadget that pulses once (10 suit energy, 10 s cooldown) and reveals ores, crystal and data caches within 20 blocks as through-wall glow markers for 8 s, tinted by ore type. Anai_core_mk2extends the radius.
- Craft Binoculars (
binoculars, workshop recipe + a cheap blueprint). Select them and right-click to raise the optic; each further right-click steps the magnification (2× · 3.3× · 6×) and one more lowers them again. Left-click also lowers them. They cost no suit energy. - While raised, the mouse gets proportionally finer and the head-bob is damped, so a 6× view stays steady. The scope draws its own reticle and a magnification readout; the optic drops automatically when you open a menu, mount a speeder, switch hotbar slot or go third-person.
- They do not extend the render distance — the world only exists as far as your view-distance setting streams it, so magnification enlarges what is already there. Seeing past the haze is what thermal mode is for.
- Thermal Binoculars (
thermal_binoculars) are the upgrade: research the blueprint (needs thebinocularsblueprint first) and craft them at the workshop — the recipe consumes a plain pair. Press I while looking through them to switch infrared on and off. - In thermal mode the world reads cold and every energy signature glows through terrain and haze: hostiles hot red-orange, wild animals amber (dimmer when asleep, icy while held in stasis), tamed companions green, villagers and traders cyan-white, other players white, lava deep orange, and settlements, factories, ruins, your bases and your ship as tall magenta columns. Each contact is labelled with its name and distance. Contacts further than 220 m are shown at that distance along their true bearing — the label still gives you the real range.
- Craft a Camera (
camera, workshop recipe + the cheapcamerablueprint). Select it and right-click to take a photo of exactly what you see — the HUD is left out of the shot. It costs no energy (just a short cooldown), plays a shutter sound and a quick flash. - Photos are saved to disk as JPGs, in a per-world folder under your local app data
(
…/LocalLow/<company>/Blocks Beyond The Stars/Photos/world_<seed>/). - Browse them in Tab → Photos: pick a photo to see it full-size, add or edit a note (saved with the photo) and delete ones you don't want. The list shows the newest first with the capture time and your note.
- Open Tab → Map. The system list is grouped: Current system at the top (its reachable worlds, plus the Launch into space / Leave space button), then Hyperspace for the other systems. Selecting a system you've visited shows its worlds and an animated mini star map on the right.
- Quick-travel ("Travel" / "Hyperjump" on a world) is gated by the Instant Travel world option
(Settings, world admin):
- Off (default): you can only quick-travel to worlds you've already landed on manually. To reach a new world, launch into space and fly there, then land (pick a pad). A never-visited star system shows only as a single "Hyperjump to this system" entry — jumping there drops you into its flight space, and you fly to its worlds and land. Once you've been somewhere, quick-travel to it works from then on.
- On: quick-travel works for any world/system immediately, visited or not.
- Jumping to another star system always requires a fitted
jump_generatormodule. - Space stations appear in the world list too (yours show their owner; others show "Station of …"). Selecting one offers Board — but only if you've docked there at least once before (just like landing gates worlds); a never-visited station shows "visit it once to unlock". Boarding takes you straight inside.
- The world wraps east–west — the X axis is a longitude, so walking continuously east (or west) brings you back to where you started, as if the planet were round. The seam is invisible (terrain, biomes, caves and structures line up exactly). North/south (latitude) does not wrap.
- Day/night is by location — because X is a longitude, a planet has a real day/night terminator: one player can be in daylight while another, far away, is in night, and one lap around the world is one day. The clock still advances.
- Weather is per biome — a stormy biome can rain while a neighbouring clear biome stays sunny; some biomes are reliably wetter than others. Weather is hidden + silent in caves/underground. Admins can override time/weather (see §7).
- Multiplayer: players can be on different planets / star systems at once, each with their own ship and start point. The star map (Tab → Map) shows where everyone is ("◈ Alice, Bob").
- Fauna spawn near players (habitat-gated), with temperaments; hostile creatures show visible attacks. Flora regrows when its host block survives.
- Individuals of a kind vary in size. Within any one species/type, each plant, tree or animal gets its own size (most near the normal size, the occasional runt or giant) — a wood is a mix of saplings and tall trees with varying crown widths, a herd has small and large animals. The variation is cosmetic (a creature's size doesn't change its health, damage or loot).
- Craft a Creature Translator (
creature_translator, workshop recipe + blueprint) and some bait (forage_bait/meat_bait/nectar_lure, hand-crafted). Select the translator and right-click a wild creature to start a taming ritual. - A HUD panel shows the creature's mood and what it wants now — offer the bait it craves, calm it, approach slowly, or give it space. Each correct response builds trust; reach the threshold and it becomes your companion and is named. A first tame of a species also grants research knowledge.
- Harder creatures are harder to tame: skittish animals bolt at the first wrong move, territorial and aggressive ones turn on you; placid grazers forgive mistakes. Exotic (cave/lava/flying), glowing and oversized creatures need more steps — and two animals of the same kind can behave differently.
- A companion lives on the world you tamed it on: it follows you there (friendly green-cyan tint + a floating name), re-appears whenever you return, and is hidden elsewhere. Manage them in the Companions menu tab (rename, release). Companions are peaceful and can't be hurt.
- Energy fence pens: craft energy fence pylons (
energy_fence, workshop, no blueprint — 2 metal panels + 2 cable → 4) and ring in a pen: no creature — wild, tamed or hostile machine — can cross the humming pylons, so animals stay home and fiends stay out. Add an energy gate (energy_gate, workshop — 2 metal panels + 1 energy cell + 1 circuit board) as the entrance: you and settlement folk walk straight through its membrane while fauna bounce off; there is nothing to open or close. Only flying creatures glide over a normal-height fence.
- Craft a hover speeder (
speeder, blueprint-gated workshop recipe: titanium_plate ×8, cable ×10, energy_cell_1 ×4, circuit_board ×2, crystal ×2). It's a single-seat ground vehicle for crossing a planet fast. - Deploy it from its hotbar slot (right-click), then board with E. While driving: W/A/S/D to
steer (arcade hover handling), the camera follows in a chase view, R refuels it from an
energy_cell_1, and F dismounts. Press X near a parked speeder you own to pack it back up into the item. - The speeder has its own energy tank (driving drains it) and a voxel hull that takes collision damage — hard impacts dent it and enough damage destroys it. It persists with you across reloads (like a companion).
- Any held building material can be re-formed into a non-cube shape — slab, pyramid, dome (half-sphere), sphere, ramp, stairs, cone, cylinder, panel (thin plate), post (slim pillar), beam (horizontal bar), low ramp (gentle half-height wedge), quarter cube (small corner block) — that still places, mines and stacks like a block (form and dye colour combine freely). Shaped forms are player-craft only: world-gen, settlements, stations and ships stay plain cubes.
- Do it in the Crafting menu under the "Formen" / "Shape" category: pick a building block, choose a form button (it's a free 1:1 reshape that keeps the block's colour), and cube reverts to a plain block.
- Orientation: by default a shape auto-orients — it follows the way you're facing, and building against a wall or ceiling tilts it onto that surface. Press R while the shaped block is selected to override this: it cycles Auto → each of the six up-faces → Auto (a HUD message shows the current pick), giving the full set of 24 placements. Symmetric forms (sphere, dome, cylinder, …) ignore orientation. Mining returns the shaped item; orientation is re-derived each time you place it again.
- The Character menu tab shows your avatar (colours/gear preview). It also hosts a pixel-face editor: open it to draw a 16×16 pixel face on a paint canvas (a 16-colour palette plus an eraser), then Apply.
- Your drawn face appears on your figure, in the live Character-tab preview, and on your avatar for every other player (it's server-persistent, so the face follows you). The same editor is also available before you start, in the main-menu Avatar Designer (a Pixel face button there).
- At 0 health you respawn at the ship's Medbay heal-tank (vitals restored); a salvage capsule may drop at the death site to recover cargo, per the active rules.
All editors are menu tools that export a JSON bundle; a developer folds it into the game data with the matching Python merge tool (review the diff, translate locale placeholders, commit). Shared build-room controls (Ship/Station/Town/Material 3D editors): hold Right-mouse to look, WASD to fly, Q/E (or Space/Ctrl) up/down, Shift faster, Left-click place, Middle-click remove, Esc to exit.
| Editor | Designs | Export → merge tool |
|---|---|---|
| Ship Editor | Custom ship types (hull, viewports, lights, engine, hatch, station tiles) | ship.json + layout.json → tools/merge_ship.py |
| Station Editor | Space stations (hull/glass/light + hangar/vendor/mission/heal/quarters/console markers) | structure.json + layout.json → tools/merge_structure.py |
| Town Editor | Settlements/villages (walls, windows, ladders/stairs, lamps + vendor/mission/NPC markers) | structure.json + layout.json → tools/merge_structure.py |
| Avatar Editor | Player skin (per-part colours + gear preview) | skin.json → tools/merge_avatar.py (Apply also saves locally) |
| Item & Recipe Editor | Items (stats, tool/weapon properties, worn + eaten effects) + recipes (station, inputs, market vendor theme) + optional blueprint gating | content.json → tools/merge_recipe.py |
| Material Editor | Block materials: paint a 64×64 tile, set mining (hardness/tool/drops), palette section, dyeable/shapeable, look (gloss/metal/glow/colour), world spawn (frequency/depth/world-type) | material.json + texture.bytes → tools/merge_material.py |
Material Editor painting: Left-click paints with the selected swatch, Right-click erases to the base colour; Fill/Flat/Clear and an RGB base-colour picker are in the side panel. "World type" targets which planets get the ore: any / airless / with-atmosphere / single-biome / multi-biome. Under the frequency stepper the editor shows what the generator will actually do with that number — it scales and caps the raw value, and a vein that starts within 8 blocks of the surface is deliberately twice as dense.
Item & Recipe Editor keys: recipe inputs, unlock costs and "places block" are checked against the
loaded game content when you save — an unknown key is reported instead of being written into a bundle
that would later stop the game from starting. A new item that does not place a block also needs an icon
(client/Assets/Resources/icons/item_<key>.png, see tools/ai-assets/gen_icons.py); the merge tool
reminds you.
- Press Enter, type, Enter to send (scrollback in the chat panel). Normal chat requires a comm radio in your inventory; messages are rate-limited and length-capped.
- The scrollback fades out on its own a few seconds after the last line (opening the chat box always brings the recent lines back). Prefer it always visible — or never? Settings → Comfort → Chat display offers Fade out / Always on / Off, and J hides/shows it on the spot for the session.
Your radio determines how far your comms carry — text chat and voice both follow the same reach:
- Comm Radio — players on the same planet/world.
- System Radio (upgrade) — everyone in the same star system.
- Galaxy Radio (upgrade) — everyone, anywhere in the galaxy.
Craft the upgrades at the workshop (each tier builds on the previous one and unlocks via the tech tree). The widest radio you carry sets your reach. Without any radio you can't transmit (you'll get a "need a comm radio" notice).
- Hold the push-to-talk key (default V, configurable in Settings → Voice chat) to talk to your radio audience; a "● Talking…" indicator shows while you transmit. Release to stop.
- Voice is on by default. When you host a world for friends it works out of the box; it needs the same radio as text chat and carries to the same tiered reach (planet / system / galaxy).
- Settings → Voice chat: a master on/off switch, Voice volume, Transmit mic (turn your own mic off while still hearing others), and the push-to-talk key.
- Audio is relayed live through the server and never recorded. Use a headset to avoid echo.
- On a standalone dedicated server, the admin must enable voice (
voiceChatEnabled/--voice true/BBS_VOICE=true); local hosting enables it automatically.
- Syntax:
/bump Description of the problem - Writes a detailed JSON snapshot of your current situation (player state and inventory, environment, nearby blocks/creatures/players + a wider block/flora census, ship status, and a 30-second history) plus a screenshot of the moment (the chat box is hidden for the shot; the HUD stays). It adapts to your context: on a surface it captures the terrain around you; while flying in space it instead records your ship's position in the system and the nearby asteroids/hostiles. The server replies with the saved filename. Use it to capture a bug in the moment.
- Where it's saved: when the game runs from inside the project source tree (a developer build under
client/Build/Windows/…or the Unity Editor), reports go to the repository'sbugreports/server/folder so they sit next to the code. In a normal installed build they go to the world'sbumps/folder (under your save data) as before. Each report is abump_<world>_<timestamp>_<n>.jsonwith a matching.jpgscreenshot beside it.
- Syntax:
/report Player [what happened] - Files a player report with the worlds portal, exactly like the report button in the ship UI's Alliance tab — one command, no menu digging. The report automatically attaches the reported player's last 10 chat lines as evidence and the world id, so the operators know what was said and where. The outcome shows as a local-only chat line.
- Only works while you are on an official hosted world (joined via the Official Worlds menu); everywhere else the command explains that reporting is unavailable. Reports are reviewed by humans — nobody is punished automatically.
Type these in the chat box (Enter to open). They are server-authoritative and gated twice: the
player must be an admin (IsAdmin — the world creator, or a name in the server's admin list) and
the server's CheatsAllowed rule must be on; otherwise the command is rejected with a message. Every use
is logged ([CHEAT] …). Type /help admin in chat to see the list in-game — plain /help is the
short player help (/report, /bump) so a normal player is not buried under commands they cannot run.
Singleplayer & hosting from the game: cheats are enabled out of the box (--admin-cheats true is
passed by the bundled host) — as the world creator you can use all of these immediately. Friends who
join your hosted world still cannot: they are not admins. On a dedicated server the rule stays off
unless the operator starts it with --admin-cheats true. Command replies (target lists, results,
rejections) appear in the chat scrollback, not just the brief HUD toast.
| Command | Effect |
|---|---|
/give Item [Count] [Player] |
Give an item to yourself or a target player |
/tp X Y Z |
Teleport to coordinates |
/tp Target |
Teleport to a landmark on the body you are standing on — see Named teleport targets below |
/tp |
List every named target here, with the exact word to type and its distance |
/tpp Player |
Teleport to a player |
/settime day|night|… |
Set the world time of day |
/setweather clear|storm|… |
Set the world weather |
/fly |
Toggle creative flight (no gravity) |
/god |
Toggle invulnerability |
/instant |
Toggle free/instant crafting |
/ai Prompt |
Generate an AI mission (content tool, not a cheat; needs the optional AI backend — see §5 → Dynamic AI text and SELF_HOSTING.md §8) |
/help admin |
List the admin commands in chat (/admin does the same) |
Typing coordinates to get to the village you can see on the map is silly, so /tp also takes a target
word. Targets are addressed by kind + number — never by name, because settlement names are generated
and easy to mistype. The numbering is stable for a world: village2 is the same village tomorrow.
| Word | Where it takes you |
|---|---|
ship |
Your own parked ship (the medbay heal tank — same spot the suit teleporter recalls to) |
pad |
A landing pad |
village / ruin |
An inhabited settlement / a ruined one (settlement also works) |
vault |
A buried vault's surface pillar ring |
wreck |
The crashed ship — even before an NPC has pointed you at it |
factory |
A factory's production terminal |
camp |
A bandit camp (bandit also works) |
monument |
A rune monument |
treasure |
A hidden loot chest |
base / beacon / beam / station |
Something a player built here |
Write the number straight after the word or separated by a space — /tp village2 and /tp village 2 are
the same thing, and leaving it off means the first one. /tp on its own lists everything on this body
with the exact word to type and how far away it is, so you never have to guess a number.
Two limits worth knowing: this only ever resolves on the body you are currently standing on (the
cross-body jump is /goto, fleet admin only), and it does not work while you are flying in space — land
first.
Unlike the cheats above, these are not gated by the "admin cheats" world option: they are moderation tools, and that option is off by default on hosted worlds.
| Command | Effect |
|---|---|
/players |
Every player this world knows — role, body, position and when they were last seen. Offline players come from the save |
/builds [Player] |
Named structures (bases, beacons, beam pads, stations) with owner, body and a ready-to-use /goto line; optionally for one player |
/where Player |
One player's body, position and last-seen time — works while they are offline |
/kick Player |
Ends that player's session right now. Momentary — they can come back; to keep someone out for good, block them in Manage world → Manage players (below) |
Your world, your rules: open the Official Worlds menu (or the worlds page on the portal), pick Manage world → Manage players. You get everyone who has ever played on that world, and for each of them two buttons: kick (out now, may return) and block (cannot join again). An optional reason is shown to the player when they try to come back. Blocking follows the account, so changing the in-game name does not get around it — and it only ever affects this world; the rest of the game stays open to them. Unblocking is one click in the same list.
Reserved for the operator of the installation (BBS_FLEET_ADMINS, see
SELF_HOSTING.md). The owner of an individual world does not get it.
To reach a world: sign in on the Official Worlds screen with a developer account (registered with the
secret claim code) — an extra "All worlds (operator)" section then lists every world on the fleet,
private and password-protected ones included, each with a Play button. Joining as the fleet-admin player name
skips the world password (child-safety oversight, issue #495); once in, /spectate on observes invisibly.
| Command | Effect |
|---|---|
/spectate on|off |
Enter/leave observer mode: invisible to players, creatures and NPCs, invulnerable, free flight through walls, no ship, no landing pad, no player slot |
/goto Player |
Travel to that player's body and jump to their position (works for offline players via their last position) |
/goto base|beacon|beam|station Name |
Jump to a named structure anywhere in the save |
/goto BodyId X Y Z |
Jump to raw coordinates on any body — this is the cross-body teleport /tp is not (/tp names landmarks, but only on the body you are already on) |
/say Text |
Speak while observing. Chat is muted by default in observer mode, so a stray line can't give you away |
While observing you fly with WASD (in the direction you look), Space/Ctrl for up/down, Shift for a burst of speed, and the mouse wheel to set the cruise speed. You may still mine blocks — removing an offensive build is the one in-world moderation lever there is, and every removal is written to the server log.
The fleet admin panel's per-world page lists the same players and structures plus build hotspots (clusters
of changed blocks — how you find a house built without a base core), each with a /goto line to paste here.
These fast-track the story so you can read the full arc and reach the Guardian finale (the dialogue-duel
boss) without grinding the whole playthrough. Same admin + CheatsAllowed gating as above.
| Command | Effect |
|---|---|
/story |
Print the story status (fragments, kills, milestones, beats revealed, finale revealed/defeated) |
/advance [n] |
Advance the shared arc by n milestones (default 1), revealing any beats you cross |
/revealfinale |
Drive the arc to completion: reveal all narrator beats and place the Guardian finale system on the star map |
/lore |
Reveal every story fragment and personal memory to you (fills the Story tab); also completes the readable beats |
/jumpdrive |
Fit a jump generator (jump_generator) to your active ship so you can hyperjump between star systems |
/gotocore |
Reveal the finale (if needed) and drop you straight into the Guardian core chamber — skips the flight and the orbital gauntlet |
Two ways to test the finale:
- Full run:
/revealfinale→/jumpdrive→ (optionally/god) → open the star map and hyperjump to Guardian Core → survive the orbital gauntlet → land → descend the aperture shaft → hold to hack the core → win the argument duel. - Shortcut:
/lore(to read everything) →/gotocore→ hack the core and win the duel.
The duel cannot be lost — wrong rebuttals are dismissed and you stay on the node — so just keep trying each option until the core concedes and shuts down.
The client parses these slash-commands and sends an AdminCommandIntent; /bump is special — the client
captures a screenshot and sends it as a BumpReport (falling back to a plain chat message the server
intercepts if the screenshot fails). Non-admins typing a command just get a rejection toast.
When you change a keybind, add a feature, or add a command/cheat, update the matching section above in the
same commit. Keep the tables accurate against the code (controls live in PlayerController.cs,
PlayerInteractions.cs, SpaceView.cs, GameMenu.cs, WorldMap.cs, ChatUi.cs; commands in
GameServer.HandleChat / HandleAdminCommand).