Gameplay rules

This page is a work-in-progress.

Closed Alpha special rule clarifications

Note about PvP during Closed Alpha
Starbase is a game meant for a wide audience, including those who want to play "on their own" or in relative safety, and those who want all-out war whether in small groups or in big faction-wide wars. We expect most Starbase players to fall somewhere in-between these groups.

Our PvP (/piracy) plan is straightforward: First we focus on reasonable safety mechanics for the general playerbase, and then we add incentives for players to take controlled risks to increase PvP encounters.

Vouchers during Closed Alpha

• See forum post

Player station safe zone rules

As we wait for more granularity in player station safe zone gameplay options:

• Owner of a station is allowed to push unwanted guests out of the safe zone (of the station).
• Owner (and their friends) inside a player station safe zone are to be left alone/in peace (i.e. not to be harassed or griefed). See previous point for owners' options at getting rid of unwanted (remnant) guests.
• Outside of the player station safe zone is "fair game", however camping just outside of the safe zone and then attacking the moment the victim gets out of the safe zone is not ok. These cases will be handled case-by-case by moderators. You're too close to the safezone if you see the message "Approaching Safe Zone Border".
• Non-owners are not allowed to e.g. leave ships with transponders in the safe zone (essentially revealing the location of the station to other players)

Tip to station owners: If you find non-active unwanted guests in your safe zone, and pushing is unfeasible, you can consider unclaiming your station (removing the safe zone), destroying the ship, and reclaiming your station. Be careful though, as enemy ships may be lurking in the shadows...

Future features: In the near future new features will be added that enable more controls over a station's safe zone, allowing owners to set the safezone to disallow non-friendly ships from entering the safezone. Essentially this means that "defenders" (station owner + friends) can retreat to safezone, whereas the attackers cannot. This should flip the balance in favor of the defenders.

Despawning ships in Origin

• Please do NOT despawn ships in or around Origin
• New despawning zones have been added near Marketplace with 30 minute timers (it may not be a perfect solution but instead of despawning please let us know if there are any performance issues or particular eyesores)
• The only exception is for despawning ships blocking the Ship Designer entrances and Ship Designer areas if they are directly affecting your ability to use the Ship Designer and test drive your own ship out of Ship Designer

We will issue temp bans for despawning actions not following these rules. The purpose of this rule is to prevent excessive despawning of e.g. "billboard" ships. They will be despawned by the game automatically after a time.

Blueprint sharing

Starbase ships and stations use blueprints. Blueprints are valuable as they tell how a ship has been designed and can be used to manufacture said ship. These rules are meant to govern blueprints and sharing of ship designs.

We cannot cover all possible outcomes with rules so please do report or get in touch with CMs if your case doesn't fall into these.

Closed Alpha note

These rules are bound to change towards Early Access and during Early Access.

Technical explanation of blueprint sharing

Blueprint sharing technical explanation (Closed Alpha):

• Blueprints cannot be shared ingame (yet)
• Blueprints can be obtained in two ways:

1. From the ship design author who joins your Ship Designer session in Group Editing and spawns the ship, allowing you to save the blueprint similarly to the author itself
2. Outside of the game by sharing the .fbe files (in %APPDATA%\Starbase\ssc\autosave\ship_blueprints folder)

Current workaround for sharing ships

If you don't want to share the actual blueprint, it's possible to share ships by "decommissioning" them. This allows somebody else (e.g. company member) to claim the ship without getting access to the blueprint.

Blueprint sharing rules

General blueprint sharing rules:

• A) Only authors can share blueprints publicly (or anybody with an explicit permission from the author, proof of which is on the person sharing the blueprint; so by default do not share blueprints even if you got it from "somewhere" unless the author has personally said it's ok for YOU to share it)

Faction blueprint sharing rules:

• A) General rules apply
• B) Factions are responsible for their own blueprints (using whatever ownership/distribution gateways they need until the game has support for proper sharing)

Public sharing means the main Starbase Discord AND any private servers. Do not share a blueprint anywhere unless you're the author or have explicit permission!

Public sharing also means any form of sharing, be it the ship blueprint file itself as a direct link or a link to a service that hosts the file. Any sharing is prohibited and any circumvention of this rule will be considered a direct violation.

Tips for factions

In the future factions will get blueprint sharing features. Right now, for factions who do major ship development (new designs), we recommend the following:

1. Keep ship designs limited to only the highest-ranking members
2. Don't share in Discord or at least in channels that aren't limited to a carefully selected group

Download and using blueprints

Receiving/downloading (illegally shared) blueprints is not a punishable offense, but re-distributing them is.

Reporting unauthorized sharing

Users who receive offers to download blueprints and suspect foul play (unauthorized distribution) are encouraged (but not required) to get in touch with the Community Managers. Please provide screenshots/other evidence if possible.

Future features

• "Protected" blueprint chip (coming soon)
  • Chip can save and use a copy of a blueprint but cannot open it (great for sharing a ship to company/faction members "securely" so it cannot be edited but can be used/spawned in-world)
• Company features (coming soon)
  • Companies can set their rules for ship ownership
  • Sharing ships without sharing the blueprint