Operations Manual

This is the whole terminal in one schematic — and it is a map of this manual too: click any region or numbered entry to jump straight into its lesson.

Applications run through Discord; approval issues your role view and its password. Credentials belong to protected faction or Gamemaster areas and must not be shared outside the authorized team. Every role sees only what its faction is allowed to receive.

Your working panels, top to bottom: identity first (Current Ship, Ship Registry), then navigation (Selected Object), sensing (Radar), signalling (Distress, Status, Tactical Reports) and logistics (Map Marker, Jump Terminal). Each panel folds independently via its own control and remembers its state; the F key folds every open panel at once. The rail is your left hand.

The shared picture in the middle: sectors, transponders, signals, markers and the campaign circle. It refreshes on a short fixed cycle — always seconds old, never live-frame — and steers by keyboard first.

What the war is doing right now: the Campaign Map panel with its windows at the top, the transponder heartbeat, the written TextCom record, your display Legend and the orders addressed to your ship.

The pre-flight bench across the bottom: Origin, Target and the Route Computer turn a selected coordinate into a flight plan with distances and ETAs.

Officers — and the Gamemaster oversight role — see additional blue-framed panels for orders, registries, strike groups and jump dispatch. The blue frame is a role cue, not extra rights — captains keep their ship context while Fleet Command coordinates the wider operation.

Everything on the Star Map starts here: who you are (Callsign) and what you fly (Current Ship). Try the dropdowns — the trainer reacts.

Pick your name from your faction's list. It is a typing aid for reports and signals — not a login and not an authorization. Spelling always matches the server.

Select the grid you are flying. Panels like Radar Control, Status Reports and the Route Computer all act on this ship — no Current Ship, no radar.

"Use Ship Position" copies your ship's spot into the Selected Object. "Center Lock" keeps the map glued to your ship — engaged, the button reads "Center Locked". "Follow Callsign" auto-selects the one ACTIVE ship whose cockpit crew matches your full Callsign — and switches off the moment you pick a ship manually.

Name, class, transponder status and ship ID in one line. ACTIVE means the transponder reports live; the trainer withholds real IDs.

Cockpit Crew lists who really sits in a flight cockpit of this grid. Operators shows who has declared this ship with their Callsign — a courtesy note that expires after about a minute, not an identity check.

The registry turns anonymous grids into a readable fleet picture. Try switching the Category — the Class list follows it, exactly like on the bridge.

The entry always belongs to your Current Ship — select one first. The raw server name stays visible so engineers can match the grid; players read the display name.

Up to 64 characters. This is the name everyone sees on transponders, orders and reports — pick something your wingmates can say out loud.

Unknown, Military or Support. The category decides which classes are available and how the fleet reads your icon at a glance.

Support runs from Miner to Support Wreck; Military from Missile to Carrier and beyond. "Other" opens a custom class of up to 16 characters. Classes are labels for coordination — capture eligibility never depends on them.

Captains propose entries; Fleet Command can override and lock them. A locked entry shows "Registry locked by Fleet Command" — talk to your command line, not the panel.

Whatever you click, import or edit becomes the Selected Object — and every other system (routes, markers, reports) reads it from here. Press "Use Training Beacon" to load a practice coordinate.

The header names the source: a plain map click, a transponder, a signal. A bare map click has no altitude — Z is borrowed from your current ship, and without one it simply defaults to 0.

Coordinates are metres in the Space Engineers world grid. You can type corrections directly and press Apply Edits to move the selection.

Center jumps the map to the point; Clear releases it. The bridge row also offers Set Current Ship (enabled when a transponder is selected) and Route Object, which hands the point to the Route Computer. On the bridge, one direct click on a marker, transponder or capture point copies exactly one GPS — empty map clicks never do.

The string is the Space Engineers exchange format: GPS : Name : X : Y : Z : #Color : — paste it into the game and the waypoint appears on your HUD.

Paste exactly one GPS entry on one line. A valid import becomes the Selected Object; it never creates a permanent marker on its own — that is a separate, deliberate step.

A direct click on a marker, transponder or Capture Point copies exactly one GPS to your clipboard. Clicking empty map space only moves the selected coordinate. And if a GPS entry did not come from your own faction map — do not trust it.

Radar turns your ship into a sensor node. Flip "Enemy Tracking" and "Range Overlay" on the replica and watch the panel — and the map — react.

Radar needs an ACTIVE Current Ship. The line shows your ship, faction and whether tracking is armed. TRACKING READY means contacts will report.

Enemy Tracking arms the scan around your ship. Range Overlay draws the tracking radius on the map so you can see exactly what your bubble covers.

Season One used a 15 km close-range reference around each ship; the Season Two value remains under review. Contacts in this trainer model the intended shared radar picture: every operational tracking ship contributes, and each contact shows its distance from the ship that detected it — not necessarily yours.

Camera + Sensor validation and planetary occlusion are approved Season Two radar targets, not verified live behavior. The tile demonstrates the intended hardware gate; under the planned line-of-sight rule, a planet would fully block a contact.

The rings visualize the 15 km Season One reference at a glance. In the intended Season Two design, new contacts also raise a TextCom line so the faction can share the sighting.

A distress call plants your position and a short message on other bridges. Send one on the trainer — the toast and the map marker show what your faction (or everyone) would see.

Distress uses your Current Ship's position while its transponder is ACTIVE — or the last known position while it is STALE. Older than that and the panel refuses: the map will not broadcast a lie.

Friendly reaches your faction only — and the Gamemaster always listens. Friendly + Neutral adds the neutral consortium; fly for the consortium yourself and it reaches every faction. All means every bridge in Ashara sees your SOS — including the people who shot you.

15, 30 or 60 minutes on the map, then the signal expires on its own. The message is short on purpose — say what you need, not your life story.

Send broadcasts immediately and raises a DISTRESS line in TextCom. Delete withdraws your own calls the moment the cavalry arrives — clean maps win wars.

Receivers see a marked position with your callsign, message and expiry. Click it on the bridge and its controls open — including a one-click GPS copy for the rescue flight.

Seven switches tell your engineers and commanders what your ship needs. Set a field to Red and watch the report line rebuild itself — then send it to the training feed.

Reports belong to the ship, not to you. Select your Current Ship first; whoever reports next simply updates the same entry.

Hull, Weapons, Ammunition, Hydrogen, Energy and Maneuverability are Green or Red. The Jump Drive knows a third state — Charging — because "almost ready" is tactical information.

Optional, short, practical: "need plates + uranium", "docked for repairs". The note rides along with the report.

Send / Update replaces your ship's current report; Withdraw removes it when the dock work is done. Stale reports cost repair crews real time.

Your report becomes a MAINT line in TextCom and a status entry commanders can filter. Red fields are rescue and resupply targets — honesty saves ships.

Origin, target, calculate. The Command Bay turns a map click into a flight plan. Press "Calculate Route" and watch the dashed line appear — the ETA chips are separate overlay toggles you flip yourself.

Your Current Ship by default — and while its transponder is ACTIVE the origin moves with the live data. A STALE ship plans from its last known position.

Whatever the Selected Object holds: a map click, an imported GPS, a signal. The Command Bay reads it automatically — set the coordinate first, then plan.

Lock protects the route from accidental re-clicks: the target stays put until you press Unlock — while locked, the lock button goes inert and reads Target Locked. Copy Target GPS puts the destination string on your clipboard.

Calculate draws the planned route. ETA Origin and ETA Target are independent, latching overlay toggles — their rings show how far you get in 5–30 minutes and 1–4 hours at reference speed, route or no route; the Ruler measures any two points with two clicks.

Distance is the true 3D range; Map distance ignores altitude, and Z delta shows exactly how much height separates you — in a three-dimensional war, a flat-looking 0.5 km can hide a long climb. Two ETAs follow: the 100 m/s reference for planning, your live speed for flying. The bridge rounds route times up to whole minutes and appends the arrival time as a clock ETA.

Markers turn a private map click into shared knowledge. Pick a type on the replica — Make Point unlocks only after an explicit choice, exactly like the bridge.

Faction markers are shared within your faction; Gamemaster markers reach every map. What you pin, your wingmates navigate by — name it for them, not for you.

A Custom Marker takes a name, colour, symbol and note. A Resource Deposit takes one or more approved resources instead — its name, colour and circle symbol derive automatically, and the most valuable resource determines the colour (the server orders value Uranium down to Stone).

Creation always starts with an explicit type selection — no accidental pins. Delete Last removes your newest marker; Delete Selected needs a selected one. Refresh re-reads the faction set.

The marker appears at the Selected Point for everyone it is shared with, and one direct click on it copies its GPS. The visibility counter tells you how many of the faction’s markers your current filters show.

Deposits are the faction’s mining ledger: compact element codes beside the dot, an auto-derived “Ressource - …” GPS label trimmed to fit the game’s 32-character limit, and Legend filters per resource. Deposits start hidden until a resource filter is on.

No jump drive? Your faction’s Fleet Command runs a taxi service. Press “Send jump request” on the replica and watch the request card and the route markers appear.

Jump requests go to your own faction’s Fleet Command, who assign Jumper ships from their Jump Requests panel. You ask; command dispatches.

Pickup starts unselected: “Use Current Ship” takes your ship’s position, “Use Selected” the Selected Coordinate — and the destination works the same way. A request needs both ends before it sends.

A short note helps the jumper crew — cargo mass, docking side, urgency. “Refresh jump requests” re-reads your open requests from the server. On the bridge both controls are icon buttons — their tooltips carry exactly these names.

Your card starts as REQUESTED in the captain terminal. You may withdraw it until Fleet Command assigns a Jumper; after that, coordinate over comms instead of deleting the mission under way.

Start and destination render as purple open diamonds labelled START and DEST, with a route line between them — dotted while the request is pending, solid once Fleet Command approves it. “Route Pickup” and “Route Dest” set the Route Computer target from your current ship; the separate Center buttons jump the map to either end.

Everything that happens becomes a line: maintenance, distress, campaign, orders. Learn to skim it by color — the filter row is an academy aid; the bridge feed has no filter buttons.

The four voices you meet first: green MAINT, red DISTRESS, amber COMMS, blue ORDER — intel, jump and system notices add their own colors. Reading by color is how commanders keep a battle readable: the bridge feed has no filter buttons, so you skim the colored category column and collapse the panels you don’t need. The filters here are training wheels.

MAINT mirrors status reports. DISTRESS mirrors emergency calls. COMMS carries campaign traffic — capture windows opening, attempts prevented; the map’s own notices arrive as separate SYSTEM lines. ORDER logs command traffic to ships.

Voice can drop; the written feed does not. When VoiceCom is muted or unavailable, TextCom is the authoritative record of what was said and ordered.

This module is the heartbeat readout: how many ships report, how fresh the picture is, and how your bridge sounds. Flip the audio toggles — they latch like the real ones — and press MIX to open the mixer.

SFX are event sounds, VOICE reads reports aloud, ASMR is the ambient bridge hum; MIX opens the balance. All optional — the written TextCom feed stays the authoritative record when audio is off.

The line names your role view — captain terminal, your faction’s map. Unlock Fleet opens the Fleet-Command panels for authorized officers; the blue frames there are a role cue, not extra rights.

Every tracked construct sits on the state ladder: ACTIVE reports live, STALE holds its last known spot, SILENT is too old for signals, LOST and DARK fade from the picture. The lexicon lists what each state allows.

The map polls transponders on a short fixed cycle and shows when the next check lands. Your picture is always seconds old, never live-frame — plan with that lag in mind.

The map steers with arrows, WASD, QE, C and R by default; mouse movement is an experimental opt-in you re-enable per session. Keyboard first — your aim stays on the game.

MIX opens the mixer: the toggles decide whether a category plays, these sliders decide how loud. Voice direct is the plain path; the radio chain layers the voice with intercom squelch in/out and a static loop under it; the ASMR pair sets the ambience — normal level, and the ducked level while anyone speaks. Values persist in this browser — one mix for every station you open here; Reset restores the shipped defaults. Test Direct plays one plain line, Test Radio runs the whole chain.

The Legend is your display mixer: three sections of toggles that shape what the map shows you. Try the resource filters — All on floods the belt, All off calms it.

Campaign Map for the war geometry, Resource Deposits for the mining ledger, Tactical Overlays for everything that moves or signals. Each collapses independently.

Nebula and Known Space radii, sectors and their borders, Capture Points with their radius rings, planets and their gravity range. For a capture flight, Capture Points + Capture Radius are the two that matter.

Per-resource switches with live counts, OR-combined: a deposit stays visible while any of its resources is on. Deposits start hidden so the map opens calm.

One Live/Inactive transponder pair per faction, with counts — plus your Selected Coordinate, distress signals, order targets and waypoints, and custom markers. Any layer you switch off shows dimmed and struck through; the ship transponder id label starts that way.

Nothing here touches the server: toggles shape your own display only. The section collapse and the resource filters are remembered per browser and role map; the layer visibility itself is one browser-wide choice. Your quiet map hides nothing from your faction.

Fleet Command talks to your ship through orders. This lesson reads them from your seat: what each signal asks of you, how it lands on your bridge, and how you answer. Send a response on the trainer — the feed shows what the fleet hears.

The panel lists only ACTIVE orders addressed to your Current Ship — directly, or because your ship flies in an addressed Strike Group. No Current Ship, no orders; an empty inbox reads "Standing by for orders". The list re-reads the server on a short cycle.

Move, Waypoint, Rally, Follow, Defend, Docking, Harvest, Target, Retreat, Stop — the same icons Fleet Command presses are the signals you receive. Jump support and repair jobs are dispatched from their own panels (Jump Terminal, Maintenance) — but their orders still land in this inbox as Jump Service and Repair cards, and there your Done or Reject also completes or cancels the linked job.

From names the issuer, To your ship or group, Target the destination. Target Data shows the mode — TRACKING TRANSPONDER, SIGNAL POSITION or LOCKED COORDINATE — with X/Y/Z in metres. Route Target hands the point to your Route Computer, Copy GPS puts it on your clipboard, Center Target jumps the map.

Your three answers, and none of them is private: each raises an ORDER line the whole fleet channel hears — a rejection with high priority. Your ship keeps one standing answer and the latest replaces it — only your standing answer's button greys out. The normal flow: Confirm, fly the task, then Done. The order itself normally stays ACTIVE until Fleet Command closes it.

An active order draws its marker at the target — a Target order is a red cross labelled TARGET — and a dashed command vector from your ship. Waypoint routes chain green WP1, WP2, … markers. Harvest marks only the delivery point and draws no vector: the route is yours to choose. Everything sits in the Order Targets and Order Waypoints legend layers.

Your ship holds one active order at a time. A new order replaces the old one — a different order family announces "Previous active order cancelled" before the new transmission, a same-family reissue arrives as a single ORDER UPDATED line — and Stop cancels without a replacement. Once closed, the response buttons disappear and the server refuses late answers.

The Campaign panel walks three states: schedule, battle, result. Switch them on the replica — the hotspots jump to the right state for you.

Before the battle you read the schedule. During the window an Ongoing Event card appears — and the Schedule keeps pointing at the following event the whole time; when nothing further is planned, it says exactly that. After server finalization the result card shows, then the panel returns to neutral.

The Campaign panel sits on each protected role map, and its title names the view — here the neutral Titan Belt role. Your own faction's panel carries the same structure.

Overview tracks both factions' Campaign Points against the profile-managed victory goal — red for Noricum, blue for Va'Char (frozen training values). Because this is the Titan Belt view, a mini line adds the points the consortium has denied. The same totals are public on the front page.

A scheduled battle reads "Next Capture Event · Point" plus its authoritative code. Look the code up in the Capture Zone Registry; cosmetic names decide nothing.

The start line is always announced in UTC — convert it to your local time. The start is a server-announced deadline; your browser counts down to it, and the panel re-reads the schedule every 15 seconds.

On the flat map the objective is an X with its code and a dashed radius ring; in 3D it becomes a dashed sphere. Season One reference sizes, for orientation only: Small 1.25 km, Medium 2.5 km, Large 5 km, Huge 10 km radius — not the Season Two rules.

A running operation is titled "Capture Zone" plus its code and counts the window down. Both factions accumulate progress on a 0–100 scale, the chips show who is inside (N / V / TBM), the lower-case Leader chip names the side currently gaining — or, while the bars hold, the side that is ahead — and "AAP advantage" spells the surplus out — limited by the profile cap. That visibility is intentional gameplay information.

Three drills from the old field guide: check your admission, push crews into the volume and advance the window, then read the grade the server would write. Every number is a training value.

Drawn exactly like the dashed sphere in the map’s 3D view. The server merges presence by stable construct identity and counts the technical transponder — the registry name is cosmetic, renaming a fighter “Freighter” changes nothing.

The Season Two player rule targets admission from the 250th mechanically connected block, with power on and the configured Main Cockpit occupied — a gunner seat does not count. Production alignment is still in progress: the currently verified StarCore implementation requires more than 250 blocks and may accept static constructs without power. Connector-docked ships remain separate constructs and never pool their blocks. Until alignment is complete, the active event brief is authoritative.

The server counts eligible piloted ships per faction inside the objective volume — nothing else. One construct is one presence unit: extra crew or mechanically attached subgrids never multiply it, and tonnage, guns and cosmetic classes are irrelevant to the count.

Only the side with strictly more effective presence gains progress; the surplus drives the rate, limited by the profile cap. Equal presence freezes both bars. Rates, cap and the win threshold are all profile-managed — the trainer’s 100 stands in for the configured completion threshold, and a window that ends without an award closes automatically.

The loser's final progress decides the class: exactly 0 is a Victory Without Resistance, below 25 a Heroic Victory, below 50 Clear, below 75 Average, below 100 Close — the loser reads Crushing, Clear, Average or Close Defeat.

Winners and losers see mirrored perspective titles; the Gamemaster and Titan Belt read a neutral winner-labelled form. A prevented capture is summarized as "Capture attempt successfully prevented."