Admin Screen

The Admin Screen used to be called Space Master. You open the Admin Screen by pressing ALT key+F10 key while a game is running. As a mnemonic, think A as in Admin uses AltKey.

This screen is very useful if you are the admin of a multiplayer server and you need "god mode" or "dungeon master" powers. Admins often combine its use with Spectator Mode. Of course, you can also use these powers in your single-player games, in which you are the admin by default.

The settings and changes only apply to the current game. Remember that you need to click Submit Changes for automatic settings to become active.

Many of these settings are advanced and can delete content, use it at your own risk.

Admin Tools

This menu changes properties and permissions for the current player. It is useful if you are the admin of a server and need to help other players by cutting and pasting their stuck grids back in, and to fix performance intensive block settings for them.

• Enable creative mode tools -- Enables you to place blocks for free without welding them, to destroy blocks without grinding them, weld up blocks without components, and to spawn anything in.
• Make yourself invulnerable.
• Make yourself untargetable by automatic weapons.
• Show all players on the HUD so nobody can hide from you.
• Can use all terminals lets you interact with all functional blocks, even if they are not owned by you or your allies.
• Keep original ownership on paste. If you are helping other players by cutting and pasting their stuck grids, enable this.
• Ignore safe zones means you cannot be stopped by player-built force fields.
• Ignore pcu limits enables you to paste any grid, no matter the size and PCU limits.
• Time of day offset lets you manually move the sun along its path on the skybox, so you can change whether it’s day or night.

Cycle objects

This screen lets an Admin quickly find any extreme in the game by cycling through all objects sorted by specific criteria. This is useful when looking for the source of performance degradation on multiplayer servers.

A secondary function is the ability to teleport yourself to the identified GPS/planet/grid/player etc.

• First, sort objects by type:
  • Biggest grids, fastest, most wheels, biggest distance, most active drills/reactors/production/sensors/thrusters;
  • static objects, floating objects;
  • characters, GPS markers (distance), planets, owner login time.
• If applicable, filter the sorted objects to focus only on small grid, or only large grids, or both.
• Then click the first, next, or previous buttons to cycle through the list.
  You can see the entity name (and, if applicable, the current value).

When you've found your target, you can remove, stop, or depower it.

Tip: When you are in Spectator Mode, you can also teleport the spectator to the target's location, and then click "player control" to have your character travel there.

Trash removal

If you notice wrecks and half-welded grids “disappearing”, check whether your automatic Trash Removal settings are too aggressive.

Tip: If your game runs well in Singleplayer, simply suspend automatic Trash Removal, and clean up any debris yourself manually!

After crashes or space battles, multiplayer servers end up with a lot of floating debris that has an impact on performance if it is not ground down or collected. Trash removal means here that such laggy debris is automatically deleted from the game. But the catch is, how do we define what "trash" is, while at the same time preventing the game from automatically removing, say, a half welded drone that you are still working on?

Make backups before changing these settings.

General:

Use this panel to define auto trash detection in game terms. For example, you may decide to allow garbage collection of any grid "that is either stationary or linearly moving or accelerating, but not powered and not being controlled by a player, and has fewer blocks than 20", and so on.

You can choose from the following criteria for which items and grids are "trash":

• fixed planetary or space stations (default: off), stationary floating grids (default: on), linearly moving grids (default: on), accelerating grids (default: on)
• powered grids (default: off), player- controlled grids (default: off),
• grids with production (default: off), grids with respawn point (default: off),
• grids with fewer than x blocks (default: 20 blocks), grids with over x metres distance from players (default 500?), time since logout of owner in hours (default 0 = rule inactive).

To ignore all these criteria and to forbid the game any automatic garbage collection, click Suspend.

To accept the new definition of trash, click Submit Changes. Or click Cancel Changes to discard any changes to "Trash Removal: General".

Voxels:

Voxel modifications can be automatically cleaned up as well, this means, holes are filled in and the terrain resets to how it was when the game was started.

Multiplayer server admins revert voxels to improve performance on their servers if, say, the aftermath of a ground battle or meteor storm has degraded the sim speed. If players have built underground bases, don’t set the protection distance too low or it will fill in their tunnels.

Voxel reset is switched off by default. Here multiplayer server admins can define the criteria for when and where voxel resets will happen. Typically you don’t reset voxel while players, their grids, or wrecks are in a certain radius around the craters, because they may intend to return.

• Choose whether to revert asteroids, voxel terrain, and/or boulders. For boulders reverting, the minimum player distance is 2000m.
• Revert with floating objects or NPC grids present (default: off)
• The distance from players at which voxels are protected from being cleaned up: default 5000metres
• The distance from grids at which voxels are protected from being cleaned up: default 5000metres
• This much time has to pass before changes to voxels are cleaned up in minutes: default 24

Click Enable to reset voxels that fulfil these criteria. If you made any edits, click Submit Changes, or click Cancel Changes to discard any changes to "Trash Removal: Voxels".

Other:

Here are some more criteria for automatic deletion and garbage collection. Most of them are only relevant to Multiplayer.

• Enforce a radical Optimal grid count: Prevents players from building an excessive amount of grids. Warning, enabling this criterion ignores the "powered" and "fixed" flags, ignores "block count" limits, and lowers the protection distance from players. Set to zero to disable, zero is also the recommended default.
• Delete offline character after m minutes: When a player disconnects, the character is removed after this many minutes. They can come back any time. Set to zero to disable, default 15 mins.
• AFK timeout: When a player is inactive / idle / away from keyboard, the character is kicked after this many minutes. They can come back any time. Set to zero to disable (default).
• Stop grid period (minutes): If grids move too far from any players, their drifting will be stopped after this many minutes. Set to zero to disable. Default is 15 minutes.
• Remove old identities (hours): Inactive player identities who do not own any grids are removed after that many hours. Set to zero to disable, this is also the default. Note that if you allow players to join without participating, they can sell their PCU allowance to other players, so switch this option on if you have this issue.

Click "Stop all entities" if items/wrecks are drifting right now to have a chance to catch them. Or, click "Remove floating objects" to draconically get rid of all debris — at the risk of also deleting players’ grids that might still be in use!

If you made any edits, click Submit Changes, or click Cancel Changes to discard any changes to "Trash Removal: Other".

Entity List

Here an admin can view the list of all entities on this server, such as grids or players, and teleport to them, control them, or select and delete them.

1. Select the type of entity to view: Grids (any, small, large), characters, floating objects (items), planets, asteroids, replicated, not replicated.
2. Sort entities by: Display name, block count, mass, owner name, distance from center, speed, distance from players, owner last logout, PCU
3. Then view the list of entities and
   • Either click to select one
   • Or select a range of entities using SHIFT key- click
   • Or select multiple entities using CONTROL key- click (add without deselecting the current selection).

• Choose an action that you want to apply to the entity, as applicable:
  • player control
  • teleport here
  • stop
  • depower
  • remove
  • refresh
  • remove inactive owner and his grids

Safe Zones

This menu manages admin-owned safe zones, which are useful, for example, to protect a spawn point on a multiplayer server. In contrast to player-built Safe Zones, admin-owned safe zones don't need an in-world safe zone block, use no power, and do not use up zone chips.

If there is no admin controlled safe zone yet, first click "New Safe Zone" to create a safe zone at your current position.

Then select a Safe Zone from the list and configure it:

• Define its shape (cube or sphere) and size (cuboid axes lengths or radius) in metres.
• Choose what you want to allow players to do inside the zone. By default, the following actions are all disallowed in the zone:
  • Damage, shooting
  • Drilling, welding, grinding
  • Building, building projections, voxel hands
  • Landing gear lock, conversion to station
• Choose a texture and color for the force field around the zone.

An admin can configure filters which players, factions, grids, and floating objects are allowed into the safe zone (whitelist), or are blocked from entering (blacklist).

Tip: In the filter settings, click Add Contained to quickly add all players/grids/etc that are currently present in the zone to either a black- or whitelist. Be careful, adding containd players/grid to a blacklist will eject them quite forcefully.

How to manage your existing Safe Zones:

• Select a Safe Zone and click the "Move To Safe Zone" button to teleport yourself into its center.
• Select a Safe Zone and click "Change Position" to move the center of the selected Safe Zone to where you are standing right now.
• Select a Safe Zone to rename it, or to remove it.

Remember to enable the zone to make it work, or disable it if no longer needed.

Note: If players have created their own safe zones (using safe zone blocks), these do not appear in the list here and are not meant to be controlled from here.

Global Permissions

Choose what you want to allow players to do in this game in general. The following is allowed by default in Survival games:

• Damage, shooting,
• drilling, welding, grinding,
• building, building projections, voxel hands,
• landing gear lock, conversion to station.

For example, for a race track you could deactivate "damage" if too many cars get disqualified due to lag-related crashes.

Replay Tool

A cinematographic tool that's typically used in Creative Mode. See Replay Tool.

Weather

See Weather for general info how it appears in game. Weather must be enabled in the world settings for this world for the following Admin commands to work:

• Force Random Weather
• Create Lightning
• Modify weather:
  1. Select a weather type: Alien fog, Alien rain, Alien thunderstorm, Dust, Electric Storm, Fog, Mars Snow, Mars Storm, Rain, SandStorm, Snow, Thunderstorm. — With exception of Dust, Mars Snow, and Electric Storm, they all exist in heavy and light variants.
  2. Then choose an action: Either Create weather, Replace current weather with selected weather, or Remove this weather.

This window also shows you the current weather at the location, and its intensity and temperature.

The last line is the weather forecast and it shows incoming weather.

Spectator Tool

An administrative or cinematographic tool. See Spectator Tool. Admins can use it to "leave their bodies" and move freely through the world, even through voxels and grids.

Economy

If Economy is enabled in the world settings, an admin can control how many space credits each player owns and what their reputation among NPC traders is.

• To change the account balance how much "money" another player possesses, an admin can select a player name; you will see their current balance. Enter an amount of space credits to add, and click "Change". A positive number will be added and a negative number will be subtracted. You can preview what the final balance will be as well.

• To change a player's reputation, first select a player name, then a faction. You will see the current standing that this player has with that faction. Enter an amount of reputation to add, and click "Change". A positive number will be added and a negative number will be subtracted. You can check what the final reputation will be. The worst is -1500 and the best is 1500.

• You can choose to propagate the reputation to friends and enemies of the faction. Warning: Propagation of positive and negative reputation is not symmetric. Propagating +1000 and then -1000 won't have a zero sum for friends and foes of the faction, so don't expect cascading changes to be undone easily.

Match

This menu can be used to track rounds in timed races. The display is in Hours:Minutes:Seconds and it counts down. Every time the admin changes the state (pushes a button) a chat message informs other players, e.g. whether the match was (re)started.

TODO: Usage example

• Start -- This button starts or restarts a match's timer.
• Pause/Unpause -- Pauses the timer, and when you click this button again, the counting continues.
• Advance -- Advanced to the next stage. (?)
• Set -- Enter a positive number in minutes into the input field, and click Set to set the maximum time of the match.
• Add -- Enter a postive or negative number in minutes into the input, field and click Add to add or subtract time from the maximum time of the match.

Stages:

• The inital state is PreMatch.
• The intermediate stages are Running or Not Running (paused).
• The final state ist Finished.

Cheaters

This menu only exists on servers. It's supposed to list players who run malicious scripts but it also flags false positives. Mouse over the player name to see more details about the suspicious event. If the player has really done something that is disallowed, you can select them and then kick or ban them from here.