Cosmetics & Liveries
Everything here is purely cosmetic — it changes how your ship and your name look, never how they perform. No livery, decorative block, or name color touches HP, speed, cargo, damage, or any other stat. It's self-expression, status, and faction flavor. That's the whole point, and it's a hard rule: cosmetics in Starbroken are never power.
There are three families:
- Decorative blocks — cheap props you place inside your ship to dress it up.
- Liveries — themed hull repaints applied from a one-shot Livery Coupon.
- Nametag color coupons — recolor your own name (or your ship's floating name).
Decorative blocks
The biggest cosmetic family by far: 122 cosmetic.* items — plain Minecraft building blocks you place inside your ship's interior to decorate it. Wools, carpets, banners, concrete, stained glass, terracotta, planks of every wood, stone/brick/blackstone variants, plus light sources (torch, lantern, sea lantern, glowstone, redstone lamp, soul lantern), bookshelves, iron bars, ladders, ice, and more.
They have no function — they don't carry cargo, fire, mine, or take a module slot. They're decoration only (the ship model lists them as non-module "cosmetic" placements; see Ships).
Buying them
Decorative blocks are stocked by NPC vendors at a flat, trivial price — most cost 8 cr each, with a handful at 4–12 cr (snow and red sand are the cheapest at 4 cr; blue ice 10 cr, gilded blackstone 12 cr). Buy them from a station vendor terminal like any other shop item (see NPCs & Shops). Vendors sell these to you but don't buy them back, so treat them as a consumable you spend a few credits on, not loot to flip.
Salvaging wrecks — including the husks inside wormholes — also coughs up type-flavored cosmetic blocks, so you'll accumulate some just by playing the combat/exploration loop.
Placing them in your ship
Like every ship edit, decorating only works while your ship is DOCKED — you can't redecorate in flight. Right-click the block to place it inside your ship's interior the same way you'd build anything in Minecraft; placements persist with the ship and survive recall/rebuild. Modules go in typed slots; cosmetic blocks go anywhere else you want them. See Ships → Placements for how a ship's interior is built.
Liveries — themed hull repaints
A livery is a hand-authored color variant of your hull — a cosmetic twin of the stock ship. It has the identical hull class, baseline stats, and docking footprint as the base hull, differing only in the voxel palette (the colors of the hull blocks). Applying one swaps your ship's appearance within its family while keeping every stat, placement, and dock pose exactly as it was.
The four themes
Every hull class has four authored livery variants:
| Theme | Look | Coupon dye |
|---|---|---|
| Military | Gray gunmetal scheme | Gray Dye |
| Mining | Industrial mining scheme | (mining-tint) |
| Science | Clean research scheme | (science-tint) |
| Pirate | Blacked-out raider scheme | Black Dye |
Liveries exist for the Frigate, Cruiser, Battlecruiser, and Colossal hull classes (4 themes × 4 classes). The base (un-couponed) hull is the stock livery; you can always return to stock.
Livery Coupons — how you apply one
You repaint a ship by using a Livery Coupon (coupon.livery.<class>.<theme>), not via a menu. The steps:
- Dock the ship you want to repaint.
- Board it and stand inside it (you must be in your own ship's interior).
- Hold the coupon and right-click the air.
That swaps the hull to the themed variant and consumes the coupon (it's a one-time, consume-on-use item — §8Consumed on use.). After it applies, the ship rebuilds; board it again to see the new look. A confirm sound plays.
Three rules the coupon enforces:
- Owner-only. Only the ship's owner can apply a livery. A non-owner's use is rejected and nothing is consumed.
- Must be DOCKED. You can't repaint a ship in flight.
- Class-matched. Each coupon is scoped to one hull class — a Frigate coupon only works on a Frigate, a Colossal coupon only on a Colossal. Use it on the wrong class and it's rejected (coupon kept).
If something goes wrong after the coupon is taken (a rare post-check failure), the coupon is refunded automatically. Applying a livery your ship already wears just tells you so and keeps the coupon.
Pirate is super-rare
The pirate livery is the prestige paint — it's deliberately the hardest to get. It is not in the standard vote-capsule pool (that pool only mints military/mining/science Frigate liveries). The blacked-out pirate scheme is earned-only: think rare drops and special circumstances, not a routine reward. If you see a pirate-skinned hull in the wild, its pilot worked for it.
Nametag color coupons
Two parallel coupon families recolor a name — one for your player name, one for your ship's floating name. Ten colors exist (white, gray, red, gold, yellow, green, aqua, blue, pink, purple); the basic palette (red, green, blue, yellow) shows up in vote capsules, while the premium colors (gold, aqua, pink, purple) are reserved for the store/donators.
Player nametag (coupon.player_nametag.<color>)
Recolors your own name everywhere it appears — in chat, in the TAB player list, and on the floating label above your head. Use it anywhere on foot (you can't use it while piloting): hold the coupon and right-click the air. It consumes the coupon and recolors your name immediately. You can only recolor your own name.
Ship nametag (coupon.ship_nametag.<color>)
Recolors your ship's floating name — the label others see over your hull in space. Use it the same way you apply a livery: stand inside your own docked ship and right-click the air with the coupon. It consumes the coupon, refreshes the docked overhead label right away, and the in-space ship name picks up the new color the next time you undock.
Both nametag coupons, like liveries, refund automatically on a rare post-apply failure, so you never lose a coupon to a hiccup.
Where coupons come from
Coupons (liveries + nametag colors) are reward and store items — you don't craft them. Three sources:
- Vote capsules. Every server vote mints a capsule; opening it (in the
/votemenu) rolls one reward by weight. The capsule table includes the three non-pirate Frigate liveries (~1.9% each) and the basic-palette ship + player nametag coupons (red/green/blue/yellow, ~0.9% each). See Voting Rewards. - The store (Tebex). Premium picks — the gold/aqua/pink/purple nametag colors, and other coupons — are sold as store packages and granted straight into your inventory on purchase. The store sells cosmetics and status only — never power.
- Rare drops. Special circumstances (the path for the pirate livery and other one-offs) — earned in-world, not bought.
Because everything in this category is cosmetic, none of these sources can ever sell an advantage. The rarest pirate paint and the plainest white nametag are mechanically identical to no cosmetic at all.
See also
- Ships — hull templates, placements, and editing while docked
- Voting Rewards — vote capsules and what they roll
- NPCs & Shops — buying decorative blocks at vendors
- Wormholes — wreck salvage drops type-flavored cosmetics
- Factions — faction tags + rank badges (separate from these)