Getting started

Welcome to Spacewar — a sandbox where you fly small ships through a hand-painted galaxy, mine asteroids, fight pirates, build factions, and construct stations that hold real territory.

You play in first person, walking around the cockpit of your ship like any other Minecraft build. The ship itself is the world: you move it by sitting at the helm seat and steering. When you step out of the cockpit through the rear of the ship, you appear in space at whichever station or dock you arrived at.

The 5-minute loop

1. Spawn. A starter Frigate is in your hangar at the IPU station. You're a member of the Independent Pilots Union by default — a neutral open-membership faction. You'll graduate to your own faction later.
2. Embark. Walk into your ship's interior and sit in the helm seat (the lectern at the front). You're now in flight. Move with WASD, pitch with mouse, fire weapons with the items in your hotbar.
3. Find an asteroid. Open the regional map to find belts. Fly close to an asteroid, equip the Mining Laser, right-click to mine. Ore falls into your ship's ore hold.
4. Sell what you mined. Fly back to the IPU station, dock at any open bay. Step out of the cockpit, walk to a Trader NPC inside the station, sell your ore for credits.
5. Spend. A Shipyard NPC sells modules (cargo extensions, better lasers, basic weapons). A Mission Officer NPC sells quests with extra rewards. The cycle is: mine → sell → fit → mine more.

That's the loop. Everything else — factions, sov, sieges, lore — sits on top of it.

What's on this wiki

• Guide — guided walkthrough of common arcs. You're reading the guide now. Read in order:
• Getting started (this page)
• Your first hour — mine, sell, fit
• Your first faction — solo-found, invite, ranks
• Your first station — Station Seed, Construction Arm, sov
• Reference — per-subsystem explainers. Useful when you hit a specific thing in-game and want to know how it works.
• Crafting / balance — what it takes to build every item in the game, summed to the floor. The "how do I get to X?" lookup.

What you can do

• Mine ores from asteroids; refine them; fabricate higher-tier modules. Reference → Mining
• Combat pirates (and other players, in unsafe zones). Reference → Ships
• Insure your ships so death costs less. Reference → NPCs & Shops
• Form factions, invite members, set ranks. Reference → Factions
• Build stations that earn sovereignty score and let you control regions. Reference → Stations
• Ally with other factions so they can dock at your stations. Reference → Factions → Diplomacy
• Take quests from Mission Officers for guided arcs + extra rewards. Reference → Quests

Player-friendly conventions

• Commands always start with /. Most are optional — the in-game UI covers nearly everything. The few commands you'll actually type are in the relevant reference page.
• The TAB menu (hold Tab) shows your credits, faction treasury, faction rank, and a leaderboard.
• Right-click NPCs to open their interfaces. Vendors, shipyards, insurance, bounty hunters, mission officers all live here.
• Locator HUD at the top of your screen shows nearby things; your vanilla compass needle points at whichever target you've selected (cycle with the cycle item).

Now go read your first hour — it's the next step.