Hitchhiker's Guide to the Starbase Galaxy

Introduction

Welcome to this guide; this is essentially a beginners' guide to Starbase, although it might have some points of interest for more advanced players as well.

I originally made this guide to make the early game progression easy for new players, because I got a lot of questions about a lot of things in the game, both from fellow alpha players and non-alpha players. The scope of it was later expanded to incorporate more advanced information, too, mainly just because I felt like it...

The guide is split into multiple sections, filled with information about each and every aspect of the game. The start of the guide also contains a good indication of what you can do in your first hours in the game, to get the best start possible!

Whether you're a new player or a veteran; I hope this guide is able to give you a hand in your Starbase gameplay!

~Senk

First Hours

So, you've just booted up Starbase for the first time, set your IGN (In-Game Name), and loaded into the universe... Now what?

The first thing I'd recommend doing, is getting familiar with the Controls, because Starbase has some interesting mechanics!

Controls

As said, starbase has some interesting mechanics. I'll get to those later. Let's start with the basics, shall we?

Movement

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Rotating the camera is done by moving the mouse (duh, but I thought I'd add it anyway).

Walking around is easy; it uses WASD to walk in any direction, and the spacebar to jump. Crouching is done with Ctrl, and you can take on a prone position by pressing C.

Then we get into some more interesting mechanics Starbase has; flying around, and alignment

In Starbase, you can align yourself to virtually any surface, meaning your magboots will see that surface as the "down" direction. Aligning yourself is done by pressing Q. You can hold Q to show what I call the "alignment indicator"; a set of boots, representing your magboots. You can move the camera around, and see a preview of how they will align when you let go of Q. Pressing Q to align yourself works whether you're attached to the ground or not; more on this later.

Flying in Starbase can be done in two ways;

1. You can keep spacebar pressed after jumping, or
2. You can press G to turn off (or back on, if they are already off) the magboots.

In the "air", you can still move around in the same way as you would while attached to a surface: WASD still controls your movement, while moving your mouse still turns the camera. Spacebar becomes "go up", and Ctrl becomes "go down".

While you're not attached to a surface, you can move around semi-freely; by default your character will stay aligned to the surface you were last aligned to. This means you can't keep moving the camera up and do a backflip, but when you try to land back down, you'll still be nicely aligned with the same surface.

If you'd prefer to have a more "Space-Engineers-like" movement system, so being able to do backflips as much as you want, you turn on the "Free zero gravity movement" option in the game settings; go to Settings > Gameplay > General, it will be the top option there.

You are, of course, not permanently locked to your axis while flying out in space; this is where the X key comes into play! You can press and hold this key to enable rotation of the camera, by moving the mouse left and right. This allows you to turn yourself upside down, even if there is no surface to align to nearby.

Menus

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Equipment

The Equipment menu is opened by pressing the I key. The layout of the equipment menu can vary a bit, depending on your "loadout". The left section contains your character, and the items you have equipped. More on the various slots later.

Next to the character screen is your equipped backpack, if any. (If you have no backpack equipped, this area will be empty.) Depending on the type of backpack you use, this screen can have some different layouts:

1. Large backpack: If you have a large backpack equipped, the screen will contain the slots of this backpack. The large backpack has one slot for a large item at the top; this item will be displayed on your character, too. Below that is a slot for a medium item, like most guns. Then, even lower, are slots for small items. This is where most of your stuff will go, since most things at the moment are considered "small" items. The large slot is essentially 2 medium slots above eachother, and the medium slot is 2 small slots side-by-side.
2. Mining backpack: The mining backpack only has two slots on it's own; a medium slot, meant to hold a pickaxe, and a small slot, normally used for another (smaller) tool, like the bolt tool. The mining backpack is normally not used without Cargo Crates; more on those later. If you're connected to the cargo crates through a device hardpoint, you'll be able to access the inventory of all connected crates from your mining backpack! The most important feature for mining that the mining backpack has is the "collect automatically" checkbox; if you're connected to one or more cargo crates, it allows you to automatically suck ore into the crates.