Settings, HUD & UI

Most of what you see on screen in Starbroken is automatic — the locator bar, the action-bar readout, the TAB list, the holo-boards in the hub. But a fair amount of it is tuneable, per player, and a couple of pieces are interactive. This page walks every player-facing knob and surface: what it is, what it shows, and how to open or change it.

The /settings chest

Everything you can personalize lives in one place — type /settings to open the Settings chest. There are no chat sub-commands; you click your way around. Three tabs run along the top row:

• Render (spyglass) — projection / level-of-detail knobs
• Locator Bar (compass) — which markers show on the locator bar
• Chat (book) — which optional chat traffic you receive

Changes apply live and persist — close the chest and they stick, across logouts. The bottom-row barrier button resets the current tab to its defaults.

Render tab

These tune how far away — and how detailed — other ships, stations, and gates draw for you. They're a per-player performance/fidelity dial; they don't change anything for anyone else, and they never affect gameplay.

Each render knob is a preset you cycle: left-click for the next value, right-click for the previous. The presets:

The one to get right is Entity Distance. Raise your client's own Entity Distance video setting first, then set this preset to match it. Declaring a higher preset than your client actually renders makes far ships vanish instead of drawing as impostors — so match, don't bluff. A sector is 4096 blocks, so an 8-sector horizon culls objects past ~32,000 blocks (the default); Unlimited disables the cull.

Defaults: 100% / 8 Sectors / Balanced / Performance / Off / Off / Standard — the shipped global look, so you render exactly as before if you never touch this tab.

Locator Bar tab

The locator bar is the strip of directional markers across the top of your screen (vanilla 1.21.6+ waypoints). It shows nearby in-sim objects as colored dots — no map needed — so a glance tells you where things are relative to your bow. By default it shows a lot; this tab lets you pare it down to what you actually want.

Each entry is a simple ON/OFF toggle (click to flip):

The quest-objective marker is the one to keep on — it points a new pilot straight at "mine here." The objective belt rides the Quest Objective toggle, so it shows even with generic belts hidden, and it ignores the range cap so it's always on the bar.

There's also a Bar Range knob (cycle like the render knobs):

Your chosen reach is clamped to the server-wide cap (16,000 blocks), so Full always tracks that cap. Anything farther than the cap never appears on anyone's bar — beyond nav range you warp or gate rather than fly visually.

Chat tab

These mute optional chat you might find noisy. They gate only flavor and convenience traffic — combat, quest progress, and error messages are never affected. Three toggles, all ON by default:

Going AFK — /afk

Type /afk to flag yourself away. A §7[AFK] prefix appears on your TAB-list name so other players know you're parked, and moving clears it — no command needed to come back. The server also flags you AFK automatically after 5 minutes of no movement, interaction, or inventory activity.

Beyond the cosmetic tag, AFK has one real consequence: an idle, docked ship belonging to an AFK owner becomes evictable — if a busy station runs out of berths for arriving ships, your parked ship can be bumped to Overflow Dock to free the slot. (A ship docked in the last 10 minutes is protected, so you won't lose a berth you just parked at.)

The action-bar HUD

While you're piloting, your action bar (the line just above the hotbar) shows your live master-sim position — XYZ x, y, z — plus your current speed. This is where you are in the universe, not where you're standing inside the ship's interior. It updates continuously as you fly; you don't toggle it.

The TAB list

Hold TAB to see the player list. Two things to know:

Player names carry their identity:

• A faction tag in brackets, e.g. [IPU], with a rank badge: a gold ★ for a faction Leader, a yellow ✦ for an Officer (members get no badge). See factions.
• A [AFK] prefix when that player is away (see above).
• A cosmetic name color, if they've earned a nametag-color coupon.

The TAB footer (the multi-line block below the list) is your live status panel:

• A STARBROKEN brand line + a rotating tagline.
• Your master-sim XYZ + speed (same as the action bar).
• Your current region and sector.
• Your sovereignty + security-zone line — the risk zone you're in (Patrolled Lanes / Outer Lanes / Frontier / Wild Drift; see mining).
• Your credits, faction, and faction treasury balance. This footer replaces the old /balance command — your wallet is always one TAB press away.

The Prestige hover card

Every player's chat name carries a Prestige hover card — point at a name in chat to read it. Prestige is a cosmetic "fleet worth" score from the ships someone owns: hull class as a base, plus points per installed module tier. It gates nothing and pays nothing — it's a status read, so a T5-fitted Capital pilot reads as endgame at a glance while a fresh Frigate pilot reads as a rookie.

The card shows the score, a rank title, fleet size, and the player's flagship. Titles climb with score:

The same score feeds the PRESTIGE leaderboard in the hub (below).

Hub-Prime holo-boards

The IPU Hub Prime atrium has a set of floating holo-boards — large text panels you read by walking up to them. They're static objects (they don't rotate to face you) and double-sided, so they read from either side. Four boards:

• GALACTIC FEED — a live event ticker streaming the galaxy's happenings in real time: kill announcements, wormhole openings, bounty payouts, faction foundings, plus rotating IPU advisories to keep it lively on a quiet server. Newest events land on top, stamped with the wall-clock time. It seeds from recent history at server boot, so it's never empty.
• ✦ PRESTIGE ✦ — the top pilots by fleet prestige (every ship owner, not just who's online). Refreshes about once a minute.
• ✦ RICHEST PILOTS ✦ — the top wallet balances.
• ✦ SOVEREIGNTY ✦ — the top factions by sov score (the same data as /faction top).

The regional map

For a spatial overview, open the regional map — a vanilla map item that renders the current region's belts, stations, and points of interest, with zoom levels matching the spatial grid. While a wormhole is open it paints a purple pin at its portal. See ships → map and navigation.

The anchor compass

Your vanilla compass is repurposed as an anchor compass: its needle points at whichever anchor you've selected, instead of world spawn. Right-click the compass to cycle to the next anchor; sneak + right-click to cycle back. The new selection flashes on screen as a title so you get instant feedback. The four anchors cycle:

• North Star — a fixed cosmic reference (region centroid)
• Nearest Ship — the closest other ship in your region
• Nearest Belt — the closest asteroid belt
• Nearest Station — the closest active station

The compass complements the locator bar: the bar shows everything around you at once, the compass needle gives you one steady heading to follow — handy for hunting a specific target or running a raid. Your selection isn't saved across logouts; on rejoin it starts back at North Star.

See also

• Ships → map and navigation — the regional map + anchor targets in context
• Mining — risk zones, the locator's quest-objective marker
• Factions — faction tags + rank badges in chat/TAB
• Wormholes — the purple map pin + the GALACTIC FEED spawn announce