Table of Contents

Custom Systems

Clean-Up-Rules

To avoid your grid being cleaned up as soon as you get offline or too far from it, make sure it has one of the following conditions:

Be mindful of captured PvE ships - they are also cleaned up from time to time and could remove your own grids if they are attached to it using a connector, magplate or landing gear.

Player grids are purged in you haven't been connected since 15 to 20 days. If you cannot get online before then, please create a ⁠staff-contact ticket to let us know.

Quadrants and Claims

Since season 3, we introduced the GURP map.

The GURP map displays:

A station will appear on the map if:

All locations on the map use game information, updated every 60 seconds from the server.

All objects that appear on the map can be located by any player - simply click on the object and the GPS for that object will be added to your system clipboard, and can be pasted directly into game.

Quadrants are 500x500x500km cubes. These cubes can be claimed on the map by building a station in that quadrant of 3000 blocks+ that contains a Claim beacon. If no other faction has done the same, the map will update to reflect that your faction has claimed that quadrant. If another faction also has a claim beacon in that quadrant, the map will show that quadrant as “contested”. When only one claim station remains, the quadrant will be shown as claimed by the remaining claim station's owner.

Perks of having a claimed quadrant:

These quadrants and the method of claiming them on the map are entirely optional. This map (along with its mechanics) was discovered in ATK-07 (Season 3) - it is reasonable RP to reject the information that it displays. At the end of the day, a claim is just that - a claim - though obviously we hope that people will choose to engage with it.

FOB system

Forward Operating Bases are now a thing. As a faction, you can opt to build a station and mark it as a 'FOB' by adding a FOB Beacon to it. If a warring faction has an active FOB, that FOB must be destroyed before their enemies may attack any other static assets. Bear in mind that if you build a FOB, the location of that FOB will be made public and shown on the Gurp star map. Contrary to classic stations, a FOB can have up to 700 weapon points.

FOB can only be built in 0G.

Max speed

To aid in the utility of smaller ships and help alleviate some of the standard Space Engineers 'Bigger is Better' factor, the smaller the ship, the higher its top speed. There is not a huge difference, but enough to have an impact on combat. The current limits for different sizes of ship are:

Small grid: 135m/s

T1: 130m/s

T2: 125m/s

T3: 110m/s

T4: 105m/s

Auto-stationing

Remembering things is hard. Forgot to pick up your child from school? Understandable. Forgot to feed your pets for 2 weeks? A shame, and now they're dead, but we get it. Forgot to station your T5 after moving it? UNACCEPTABLE. But there is a solution! On GURP, each restart grids get stationed as long as they follow these conditions:

  1. Has not moved in 12-15 minutes
  2. Is not in gravity
  3. Is the largest grid of the group (i.e. no subgrids)
  4. Is not in close proximity of asteroids

We understand that this may have a certain annoyance factor, but it is a huge factor in keeping the simspeed as close as possible to 1.00. For those unsure, you can convert any ship owned by you or a faction member that is currently in station mode to a ship by looking at it and using the command !convert

All large grids not in gravity or close proximity to an asteroid are also stopped and stationed at each server restart.

Reflective Nanobots (pings)

We are experimenting ways to prevent as much as possible having too many assets hidden in deep space, mainly with the intent of stopping endless wars. Called RIN for Reflective Intelligent Nanobots, this system will from time to time show to all online players a signal for a few seconds, potentially revealing hidden assets. The only way to be certain it will not happen is to be less than 350km from the center of any gravity fields (moons and planets) or to be within 150km of any claim station owned by your faction.

With season 5, lawless sectors now also shield from pings. These look like this on the map:

Upkeep and economy

Large grid T3s, T4s, T5s, stations over 3000 blocks, and FOBs are charged an upkeep cost in credits every 5 minutes. This cost is automatically deducted from the faction bank account as long as someone from the faction is online. If you cannot pay, all major blocks on the grid will be disabled until upkeep can be charged. Upkeep cost is halved for hangared grids. If a ship is turned off by the upkeep, the faction must turn them on manually after adding money into the faction bank. The upkeep is only charged if someone from the faction is online.

To balance this, players can trade with other players, use the PvE contracts at the very numerous economy stations or claim quadrants to benefit from the passive income.

Upkeep cost table (every 5 minutes):

To balance the economy, the stations acquisition contracts were nerfed to avoid gaining millions in one single contract. Specifically acquisition contracts involving rarer components.

Hacking blocks and firewalls

To use a hacking block, simply build one on the grid that you wish to claim control of and click “Begin Hacking” in the K menu of the hacking block. Hacking starts a timer, at the conclusion of which, the grid in question will be transferred to the hacking block owner. Hacking is considered a hostile action, so all rules around combat apply to use of these blocks and any rulebreaks will be treated the same as if you had destroyed the grid. Both Firewall and Hacking blocks must also be accessible on foot without needing to grind any blocks other than doors.

The hack procedure will broadcast the position of the hacking block within 300m, as well as alert the faction you are hacking with the grid name of the grid being hacked. Destroying or interrupting the hacking block will stop the hack, and the timer will be reset, and stopped.

Specifics:

There are no restrictions on which grids you can hack beyond what is stated in the rules - they can be used on your own or your faction mate's grids for easier transfer of grids. Admins & Mods will no longer be accepting requests to transfer grids on players behalf outside of rare situations involving bugs.

Other Features