¶ Overview
The Sigma Draconis Expanse server is themed after The Expanse TV and book series. It is a PvP server, with plenty of PvE NPCs to fight as well. PvP is possible but is not catered to like previous iterations of Draconis servers. It has a few quirks; if you have questions, there’s a Discord channel for new players called #new-belter-help. Players may also be available to answer questions in game chat (#dx-gamechat) on Discord.
Sigma Draconis uses Nexus instancing, so the game world is spread across multiple server instances (check the map), often called Dx around here. There will be loading screens when you traverse instances unless you use the Seamless plugin.
There are quite a few things seperating SDX from vanilla gameplay:
- Nexus Instancing, SDX is basically a baker's dozen of servers all tacked together.
- Mega-alliances called Nations that offer cross-faction allies and cooperation
- Modded thrusters and thruster mechanics based on the show's theme
- Quantum hangar server plugin to store your grids and keep them safe while you're not using them
- Lucrative trade routes with risk/reward based progression
- Tiered block weapons and block tools, gated behind hard to get tech components
- Extensive PvE gameplay (NPC hunting) to fund your PvP endeavours
Please read the rules before joining the server!
We're using several gigabytes of mods. There's an unofficial creative world available on Discord — you can use it to preload the mods or build ships and stations and blueprint them. Make sure to do the config updates to get the speed mod and the drive signature mod working correctly, and keep in mind that creative mode has access to blocks that are disabled on the server. Blueprints created by other players can be found by including SDX in your search on the steam workshop and in the discord channels se-ship-show as well as the archived ship-show-deprecated.
¶ Important Tips
This guide contains a lot of links to different sections of this page, as well as to other sites in this wiki and the greater Internet. Please, read it front to back at least twice instead of jumping from section to section, you might miss something important.
Speaking of 'missing': If you think this guide is lacking in some parts, let us know on discord! Keep in mind that we do want to keep this guide short.
Hangar your grids when not in use
Epsteins off for maneuvering, Dampeners off for travel.
Do
!supportusand vote, then do!rewardevery day to get some random goodies*!You'll lose your ship at some point, but you can always go back to a Rockhopper.
Never point directly at your target, except for the last 100 m of docking.
Minimize travel time in slow zones.
Don't try to keep your clone alive while offline — using the hangar and respawning is much safer!
Try to build with 'category blocks'; always use the block with the little + and scroll.
* Goodies may or may not contain fuel cans which can save your butt when running on fumes.
¶ Getting Started
¶ Respawning
All your grids should have at least one survival kit or medbay to respawn at after unhangaring.
If you’re using upgraded hand tools, make a habit of putting them away before ‘fast traveling’ to another respawn. Never turn off your respawns, and never set them to share with all!
You can put players’ Steam64IDs or in-game faction tags in the custom data of survival kits or medbays to let others spawn at them.
¶ Station Placement
The best place for your station is your nation’s space (Earth, Mars and Ceres) because you're protected by NPCs and (likely) players there.
You can go to the fast zones (Dx1 and Dx5), and settling in a fast zone may be convenient, but it's bad for overall server performance for various reasons. When settling in a fast zone, make sure to stay out of trade lanes and at least 1000 km away from any slow zone.
Slow zones outside your nation's jurisdiction are a very poor choice for establishing permanent bases because there’s a high chance of discovery. However, it can be necessary to do so when first starting out. A loaded Rockhopper is slow. If you have a station in a slow zone, ensure you follow the above guidance regarding hangaring them when offline.
¶ Maneuvering
Mimicking the show's theme, Epstein drives have been added to the game as a modified thruster type block. They serve as main drives, and all drives on a grid must face the same direction. The reasoning for this is that ships in The Expanse all use a primary drive for thrust—resulting in "flip and burn" being how ships move around the system. This means accelerating for the first half of the journey, then flipping the ship 180° and decelerating for the second half under constant thrust.
Make a habit of using thrust override on your epsteins because, in anything bigger than a Rockhopper, you’ll have to keep your drive signature in check (see next section). Once you place an Epstein drive on your grid, additional drives must be placed in the exact same orientation. You cannot place an Epstein drive on your grid in a different orientation until all drives have been ground down. Connected, maglocked and subgridded grids with existing drives will prevent placement of more drives.
To turn the Epstein drives on, you must be sitting in a cockpit aligned with its thrust direction. Quite a few ships have two cockpits in different orientations for docking and cruising, make sure you're looking in the direction the drive would push you.
RCS Thrusters are the light maneuvering thrusters to use; they still consume a lot of fuel for low thrust power but work much better than chemical thrusters. Useful for small maneuvers and docking, but Epstein drives should be used for getting to and from locations. RCS also have very low drive signature outputs, so they’re very useful for staying undetected beyond weapons range.
It's advised to turn dampeners off for long-distance travel. When going fast, even the smallest deviation from your prograde will make your RCS work overtime and waste a lot of fuel if dampeners are left on.
Hydrogen thrusters exist in the form of chemical thrusters. These blocks produce a large amount of thrust but are very fuel-inefficient. They are useful for escaping from a gravity well with a heavy grid/cargo, as they work well in the atmosphere but lose thrust in space.
Vanilla atmospheric thrusters are available; ion thrusters are not.
¶ Drive Signatures
This server uses a mechanic known as Drive Signatures. This is very important! Based on the amount of thrust currently active, your ship will output a signal that can be seen by all players nearby, up to 500 km. We call this blasting a sig. If you exceed 500 km of drive signature, your ship will shut down temporarily.
Don't worry for now; the stock Rockhopper has a maximum drive signature of 13 km. There's no danger of 'blasting a sig'.
A basic strategy to avoid broadcasting a large signal at all times is to assign your Epstein Drives to the hotbar and enable thrust override up and down. This way, you can control how large your signal is at all times. Your signature will be visible at all times on your HUD and can be moved using the mod menu.
To hide the location of a base, a rough rule of thumb is to limit your signature to 25% of the distance to your base. Bringing the signature below 24 km no longer helps with hiding. At this distance, grids can be detected in other ways, see the next section.
¶ Lidar Detection
In order to detect other grids automatically, you’ll need a weapon block to use the Weapon Core radar detection/lock. All turrets and torpedo launchers available on the server use this. There's no way to hide from WC radar aside from leaving detection range.
The Lidar block is commonly used because of its 24 km detection range, but it’s hard to get a hold of those in the beginning. For cheap long range detection on the expanse server, the Tycho Torpedo Mount can be placed, which detects out to 16 km. For small grids, Lidar or fireworks launchers can be used.
¶ Fuel and Power
All thrusters use H2 (Hydrogen) on the server, but refueling from ice is not meant to be an on-the-go activity. H2/O2 Generators are modified to be larger (5x5x5) and heavier to incentivize players to build static production outposts.
Commonly, players refuel their ships at their station from tanks, but if you're in a pinch (or in a combat ship), there is another way to refuel: The extractor fits into a 2x1x1 volume, converting Fuel Cans into H2 for large grids, and a small grid version turns Jerry Cans into H2 on small grids. These fuel items can’t be crafted but can be bought at Trade Stations or aquired by voting.
Reactors no longer use straight uranium ingots as we are long past fission. We use clean fusion energy, which means you need to assemble Fusion Fuel Cells, requiring Ice, Lead, Cobalt and Uranium.
¶ Hunting
Hunting refers to disabling NPC ships and grinding them down for loot. It is the primary way of aquiring tech, but it yields plenty of other stuff too if you grind down the whole grid. The loot you'll get depends on the faction and grid type of the NPC. Some of it is located in cargo containers, while most of the tech scrap and the valuable black box item are gathered by grinding the weapons, tools and the lidar block(s). Fitting 1 to 6 Ramshackle Grinder Blocks to your hunting ship is highly recommended for quick cleanup.
A black box can be sold for 200,000,000 SC at every trade station's security office.
¶ Tech
Tech refers to special components that are non-craftable and are used to build better weapons and upgraded blocks. Tech can be bought from other players or looted as 'scrap' from NPCs, with higher tier tech scrap coming from increasingly difficult enemies. You can refine the scrap to proper tech at specific stations (Tycho for UBC), check out the NPC hunting tips for an overview.
For now, you'll only really need to know about Belter Components, gathered from TTU and CIVL NPCs, and Upgaded Belter Components (UBC), hunted from TIH pirates. Gathering more advanced tech requires quite a bit of preparation - or deep pockets. For info on the NPC factions, visit NPC ships.
The scrap that converts into UBC is named High Tech Scrap for legacy reasons.
¶ Starting out
After you read this guide, follow the signs in the Lobby to the PvP Starter Spawns to get a Rockhopper in the Sol system. Once you spawn, make sure to rename the Rockhopper and do !fixrespawn to avoid respawn ship cleanup. Read all the signs. You get 1 Rockhopper per spawn pad every 72 hours. Don't abuse it, but feel free to get a new one if you've wrecked yours. Please hangar the wreck and either !h remove it or grind it down later.
Alternatively, you can choose to go to Jannah to learn the ropes of our mod pack in a non-hostile environment. No weapons, no NPCs, no Rockhopper. It's basically a vanilla survival start, but with mods. Most things said in this guide still apply.
- This is how the hotbars of the Rockhopper Mk5.4 are set up from the factory. Note the Toolbar Info at the top:
Add at least Munroe Epstein / main thrust on/off to your hotbar for maneuvering. If your main drive is ready to burn anytime, you're just a short press of W away from wrecking your ship.
Check NavOS for a guide on the autopilot script and Ore Detector for information about ‘active scanning’ in asteroid fields.
For a complete walkthrough on your start in a Rockhopper, watch this YouTube tutorial by AlphaMatte:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9JiUZzmzSZE
¶ Grid Building
¶ Cleanup
Grids must comply with these rules to avoid automatic clean up:
25+ blocks
Have a beacon placed (unwelded is fine, off is fine)
Must not have ‘grid’ or 'static' in the name
All blocks must be owned by a player
Respawn ship clean up is run occasionally. Rename your Rockhopper and do !fixrespawn to be safe!
Grids are not susceptible to clean up if they are hangared.
If a part is split from a grid and is less than 3 blocks, it will be cleaned up instead of splitting the grid. Read the SE Cleanup Policies on the Wiki for more detailed information.
It is strongly recommended to start a new build off of an existing grid and separate the two once the new grid fulfills the cleanup rules.
¶ Personal Hangar
Save ships and/or stations to your personal hangar prior to going offline. Grids will be despawned from the game world when hangared, making them 100% safe. Static stations may be hangared without converting them to a ship first. Docking your ship to the station allows you to hangar them both while connected into a single hangar slot. Production blocks do not work while hangared.
Public spawns are available to unhangar your grids from. Most of these don't have an exit, just do Backspace to respawn on your own grid. Make a habit of unhangaring only when you're in the same DX you hangared the grid in. Unhangaring across DX works, but no collision checks are performed.
The hangar slot PCU limit for connected grids is 150,000.
Access your hangar with these commands:
!h save— hangar the grid you’re looking at!h list— outputs a numbered list of your hangared grids!h load #— unhangar grid number #!h remove #— delete grid number #
The load, save, and remove commands share a 1-minute cooldown. Be very careful with remove; there is no 'Are you sure?' prompt, and only Sigma Draconis Support can restore an accidentally removed grid. Grinding it down is a much more efficient way to get rid of a grid.
Please keep in mind that the support is done by volunteers in their free time, and resolving a ticket might take a few hours or even days. Consider joining the support team yourself if you think wait times are too long.
¶ Small Grids
There are no small grid weapons available on the server, so small grids are used nearly exclusively as fast tech-haulers, mobile respawns or as scouts.
¶ Blocks and Limits
The rules have the last word on block limits. These limits are per DX, and hangared grids do not count against any limits.
The PCU limit is 50,000 per grid.
The hangar slot PCU limit for connected grids is 150,000.
There is an overall limit of 100 functional blocks per type, per grid (e.g. max 100 Gyroscopes, max 100 Batteries). If you can see it in the control panel, it's a functional block.
You can check your current limits by doing !blocklimit mylimit in chat.
| Block Type | Limit per Player |
Included Blocks | Block Type | Limit per Grid |
Included Blocks | ||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Welders (excl. Station Welders) | 12 | Click to expandLargeShipWelder, SmallShipWelder, RamshackleWelder, LargeRamshackleWelder, Large_MCRN_Welder, Small_MCRN_Welder, Large_UNN_Welder, Small_UNN_Welder, Large_MCRN_Welder_ToolCore, Large_UNN_Welder_ToolCore, LargeRamshackleWelder_ToolCore, LargeShipWelder_ToolCore |
Hydrogen Tanks | 30 | Click to expandLargeHydrogenTank, LargeHydrogenTankSmall, SmallHydrogenTank, SmallHydrogenTankSmall, LargeHydrogenTankIndustrial, StationHydrogenTank, TychoCompressedHydroTank |
||
| Oxygen Generator | 10 | Click to expandOxygenGenerator |
Production Blocks | 30 | Click to expandRefinery, Assembler, OxygenGenerator |
||
| Refineries | 10 | Click to expandLargeRefinery, LargeRefineryIndustrial, Blast Furnace |
All Tools combined | 12 | Click to expandSmallBlockDrill, LargeBlockDrill, RamshackleDrill, SmallRamshackleDrill, LargeShipWelder, SmallShipWelder, RamshackleWelder, LargeRamshackleWelder, LargeShipGrinder, SmallShipGrinder, RamshackleGrinder, LargeRamshackleGrinder, Large_MCRN_Welder_ToolCore, Large_UNN_Welder_ToolCore, LargeRamshackleWelder_ToolCore, LargeShipWelder_ToolCore, Large_MCRN_Welder, Small_MCRN_Welder, Large_UNN_Welder, Small_UNN_Welder, Small_UNN_Drill_Base, Large_UNN_Drill_Base |
||
| Assembler | 10 | Click to expandLargeAssembler, BasicAssembler, LargeAssemblerIndustrial |
Welders (excl. Station Welders) | 6 | Click to expandLargeShipWelder, SmallShipWelder, RamshackleWelder, LargeRamshackleWelder, Large_MCRN_Welder, Small_MCRN_Welder, Large_UNN_Welder, Small_UNN_Welder, Large_MCRN_Welder_ToolCore, Large_UNN_Welder_ToolCore, LargeRamshackleWelder_ToolCore, LargeShipWelder_ToolCore |
||
| Drills | 6 | Click to expandSmallBlockDrill, LargeBlockDrill, RamshackleDrill, SmallRamshackleDrill, Small_UNN_Drill_Base, Large_UNN_Drill_Base |
Gravity Generators | 3 | Click to expandGravityGenerator |
||
| Grinders | 6 | Click to expandLargeShipGrinder, SmallShipGrinder, RamshackleGrinder, LargeRamshackleGrinder |
Extractor | 1 | Click to expandExtractor |
||
| Station Welders | 6 | Click to expandLarge_MCRN_Welder_ToolCore_Station, Large_UNN_Welder_ToolCore_Station, LargeRamshackleWelder_ToolCore_Station |
|||||
| Static Drills | 5 | Click to expandAdvancedStaticDrill, BasicStaticDrill, StaticDrill |
Some blocks listed above may not be available on the server.
Advanced production type blocks are very high in mass due to the Structural Reinforcement component. The intent is to encourage players to build static stations rather than mobile refinery ships. Find a quiet place (not near an asteroid) to place a station and run missions from that location.
Production blocks won't run if the grid is hangared.
-
Use subgrids as little as possible. Pistons and rotors are expensive to build for a reason.
-
Due to the way the game computes connections between blocks through conveyors,
every single face of every single Junction is being checked on every possible path, every single tick.
This means building cubes or bad conveyor networks can have a big impact on sim speed. Please use modded conveyors with just the right number of faces; we have multiple variants for every occasion. -
Some Vanilla blocks are disabled on the server due to either possible exploits, performance impact, or balance reasons. These include Ion Thrusters, Event Controllers, and all automaton AI blocks. A few of these blocks have been reused as skins for antennas and programmable blocks.
¶ Crossing Sectors with Multiple Grids
Due to desync and nexus loading issues, transiting instances while another grid is attached to your primary grid using any subgrid, landing gear or connector type connection is highly prone to mishaps.
If feasible, merging all grids into one single grid for transfer is much safer.
Sometimes merging is not an option; for example when towing an enemy wreck to safe space. Follow the points below to ensure the greatest level of success when transiting with an attached grid (failure to do so is not seen as a server-side issue):
- Use a connector and a mag lock type block for added safety
- Cut all thrust and do not rotate before transit or shortly after.
- Ensure speed is at or below cruise speed to prevent gyro drift.
- After transit, keep your course momentarily to give all grids the chance to stream in.
- Ensure clamp location is NOT in line with main drives. This reduces the chance of catastrophic damage in the event that clamps desync and lose their lock.
- Try to have the towing ship transfer first.
- Consider disabling thrust and gyros on the second grid, so dampeners won't fight the towing grid after transit.
¶ Merging Grids Safely
When merging two grids, ALWAYS convert one of them (typically the target grid) into a station first. Attempting a merge without this step may result in crashing an entire instance for all players in that area.
Note that both grids become a single one, taking on the name of the bigger grid. Their PCU will add up, and if you exceed the server limit of 50,000 PCU, they simply won’t merge.
¶ Location and speed
¶ Slow Zones and Fast Zones
There are no jump drives here; we only travel at sub-light speeds. To keep travel time low, the slow zones with their asteroid fields, trade stations, and planets are embedded into the fast zones, which boast a very high speed limit. Besides player grids hidden in the depths of space, fast zones are empty and no NPCs will spawn. Dx1 and Dx5 are the two fast zones; all other instances are slow zones.
Sometimes, due to server 'hiccups', a grid might get duplicated. If you notice that happened, just hangar the dupe and
!h remove #it (be careful with the # here).SDX staff will find you if you're keeping a dupe, that's exploiting a bug.
For info on the several NPC trade stations, check out the corresponding wiki article. Beware of pirates or enemies outside the trade zone (20+ km), and potential stowaways trying to sneak on your ship inside the safe zone.
A variation of this map can be displayed on any LCD by setting it to image mode and selecting 'NewMapExpanse'. Note the circle of stones around Earth and Mars, that's the Asteroid Belt Cluster. Despite being shown here as a full circle, the asteroids do not extend into the fast zone.
The fastest way out of a slow zone is always to point straight away from the center and go. To minimize overall travel time, you should aim to move through the fast zones as much as possible. Avoid unrelated slow zones by planning your route around them. Each time you transit from one zone to another, you effectively change servers within the cluster.
Grind down the basic refinery in your Rockhopper to save on weight and work towards upgrading it's main drives.
When crossing instances with multiple grids, read this and this again.
¶ Speed Limits
| Slow Zone | Fast Zone | |||
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Cruise | Boost | Cruise | Boost | |
| Large Grid | 350 m/s | 500 m/s | 2000 m/s | 15000 m/s |
| Small Grid | 350 m/s | 750 m/s | 3000 m/s | 15000 m/s |
| Space Suit | 350 m/s | 800 m/s | 3000 m/s | 15090 m/s |
You can boost past cruise speed with large amounts of thrust, and the top boost speed is dependent on ship mass, up to the limit listed above. A loaded freighter is much slower than an empty one. To achieve the max boost speed, a grid will need to be capable of accelerating at roughly 7.5g or ~75 m/s². The Rockhopper can’t reach those values with its small Epstein drive.
- A script or tools can show you the acceleration of your ship.
- You can just eyeball it based on the increase in velocity (+75 m/s per second).
- You can calculate it using
a = F / m, whereFis the net force acting on the body (all Epstein's thrust combined),mis the mass of the body (your ship), andais the center-of-mass acceleration (all acceleration is applied at the center of mass in SE).
You can use the 3D tool https://maxpowa.github.io/sdx-map/ to visualize the Expanse map. It also allows pasting and editing waypoints to determine your location and assist in navigation planning. It can plot out GPS paths for NavOS’s Journey feature. This one might be a bit hard on your system.
¶ Nations
There are three pre-defined "mega-factions" labelled Hence forth as "Nations" that exist on the server:
- The United Nations (UNN)
- The Martian Congressional Republic (MCR)
- The Outer Planets Alliance (OPA)
New players are encouraged to join these Nations because of the safety and community they offer. Joining a nation allies your faction with all other factions belonging to that same nation. Players can join and leave these Nations at their convenience (with a 7-day cooldown in between), and these Nations offer many special perks to their members, including safer planets to live on and friendly NPCs defending the area around these planets.
The nations also control their homeworlds: UN with Earth, MCR with Mars, and OPA with Ceres. If you are planning on going to one of these planets, you should join the nation that owns it. Nations has more information.
¶ Mining
You can mine ores on asteroids the usual way (voxel deformation with drills), while advanced players may choose to mine on a planet or moon using static drills, as voxel deformation is disabled down there (Jannah is an exception).
If you’ve spawned on the starter trade stations, finding asteroids will require you to travel to within 50 km of the Z = 0 axis of the belt asteroid cluster. You can quickly identify and reach the Z = 0 plane using GPS editing: make a coordinate from your current position, then set the Z value to 0, then travel to that GPS.
The Belt asteroid area is a huge ring composed of multiple spherical instances containing asteroids. See the map
If you spawn in Greek or Trojan clusters, the asteroids are located within a 250 km radius of the center of the cluster. Type !nexus getsectors true to get the center of the cluster.
Slow zones containing a planet do not contain asteroids, except for the rings around Saturn, Jupiter, and Uranus. Do not go there to mine, you will get destroyed quickly.
The Ore Detector now has an active scanning mode in addition to just being on. The active scanning mode has a range of 20 km. To use active scanning, put the following Ore Detector actions on your hotbar:
Active scanningwill scan asteroids in the radius for resources while active.Data review modestops the active scan but summarizes all the ores visible in the rectangle that appears.Mark GPSdrops a GPS at the asteroid you’re currently looking at.Re-Scanresets the scan data for the asteroid you’re currently looking at, so you can rescan it.
The Rockhopper has these already set up.
Draconis Expanse has a number of unique modded ores. You can get some of these modded ores in small amounts from stone — copper, tungsten, and lead — in addition to standard vanilla resources.
Advanced ores like Titanium and Platinum require a full-sized refinery to process. Tungsten, Lead, and Titanium are all denser than vanilla ores, so be careful mining large amounts because ship handling will suffer.
Diamond and Dense Ice are special node spawns that don’t show up on an ore detector. Dense Ice will give you more Ice per voxel than regular ice, and Diamond is a special trade commodity that can be sold to Vesta or Pallas without the need for extra production.
Tip: Most asteroids contain two types of ore. If you see an asteroid containing no ores, it’s probably dense ice. If it has only one ore listed, there may be diamonds.
¶ Additional Tools
Please keep in mind these are community recommendations. Sigma Draconis Support will not be able to help you with anything that is not part of the official modpack provided by the server.
Check the Steam Workshop page of the plugin, mod, or script you're using for a guide.
Tip: Ships with SDX in the name are usually built for this server.
¶ GV Inventory
Included in the modpack, GV Inventory provides a scriptless solution for sorting inventories and crafting to quota. You write a list of items into the custom data of a block, and ‘/sort’ does the rest.
[WSN] MrTacoDoesGames and [LUF] DunkleUrax made Taco's GV Tool for putting that list of items together. It's still WIP, some blocks are missing.
¶ NavMarkers
NavMarkers is included in the modpack. Some additional setup is required, but once done, navigating the sol system becomes a lot easier:
- Do
!nexus getsectors true, this will show you temporary GPS markers of all instances (they disappear after a minute or so) - (Optional) Got to 'GPS' tab, click all those temp GPS markers to make them permanent
- Go to 'control' tab, any 'cockpit'. Look for the 'available GPS' list and add all those markers to the list below that one
-
You can disable the spheres at any time via 'control panel' -> 'cockpit' or by putting a cockpit with the 'toggle navmarker' action on any hotbar.
-
Color of the spheres is based on GPS color at time of creation.
-
Create your own markers by adding
(R-XXX)or[R-XXX]to a GPS name. XXX is the sphere's radius in km.
¶ Plugin Launcher
You should install SpaceEngineersLauncher. Follow the instructions there, then add SpaceEngineersLauncher.exe as a non-Steam game for convenience. We have listed some (unofficially) recommended plugins and mods below. Bold ones are very strongly recommended.
- Nexus Seamless Switcher
- Timeout Fix
- Automatic stone removal
- GPS Folders and more
- Faster Load Game Screen
- No Forced Camera Zoom
- Respawn Screen Improvements
- Respawn Screen Performance
- No Armor Edges
- Image to LCD
- Open links in default browser
- MultiplayerPredictionSwitcher
- Hudlcd
- Projector Profiles
- Leak Finder
¶ Scripts
Scripting on Sigma Draconis is a privilege. To access and utilize scripts, open a misc ticket on our Discord server and ask for scripting access; provide your Steam64ID if possible. Each player is allocated 0.5 ms/f for scripts; if they use more than that, the programmable blocks will overheat, causing damage until they become non-functional. Check the Steam Workshop page of the script you are using; there's usually a guide linked there. Most scripts provide settings in the custom data field of the PB.
Raycasting is disabled on cameras for performance and balance reasons, and using bugs/exploits as outlined in the wiki rules sections is forbidden.
Make sure work-heavy scripts are slowed down if possible.
Here's the script and instructions for the Draconis Expanse Map Overlay. It's the map marker script preinstalled on the Rockhopper.
This script adds the dynamic map marker of your ship to an LCD. The map background can be easily displayed on any LCD. It's an image named 'NewMapExpanse'.
NavOS 2 comes preinstalled on your Rockhopper. The wiki has a short guide on the autopilot script.
When traveling to the Trade Stations, there is a loading screen if you don’t have Seamless installed, DO NOT PUT THEIR GPS INTO NavOS2, and DO NOT HEAD DIRECTLY TO THEM DURING INSTANCE TRANSFER; there are planetoids you can hit if you enter the trade instance without accounting for the loading screen. Trade stations have safe zones; PvP is not allowed, and weapons are disabled there. Regardless, grids can still take damage from collisions, and ramming inside trade zones is forbidden by the rules.
¶ Common Commands
!nexus lobby - returns you back into the lobby
!longhelp - lists most of the available commands
!npg - leads you to this very article
!sigma nr - shows time until the next restart for the current instance (Dx).
!fixrespawn - use this on a rockhopper so it’s no longer marked as respawn ship for cleanup
!nexus getsectors true - shows all zones, compatible with NavMarkers (Mod)
!gps - shows all POI in the current zone
/gps - creates a GPS at your current position (more options available via arguments)
!radar toggle - toggles the radar blips (Nation space and Ariel) on/off
!supportus - once per day, vote for the server on space-engineers.com
!reward - get some goodies as a thank you for voting
!econ check PLAYERNAME - check your SC balance (sometimes the value shown in your inventory is wrong)
!econ deposit - deposit SC items into your ‘bank account’
!blocklimit mylimit - shows your block limits
!blocklimit update mylimit - updates your block limit
The basic commands for using the Quantum Hangar are listed in the hangar section above.
Check out the command reference, too.
¶ Goals
So, you got a small station and a Rockhopper, what now?
- Expand your station, get a reactor and some production blocks going!
- Mine more and sell ingots to trade stations or to other players
- Help out the Ice Haulers, they provide early game loot
- Get some Ramshackle Drills on your Rockhopper
- Buy a new ship at a trade station
- Build your own ship
- Hunt some TTU and grind them down for parts and tech
- Consider joining a nation, they offer protection and companionship at a large scale
- Consider joining a faction, they can help getting you started and showing you the ropes