Tranquility Base — Admin Guide

This is the reference for running a Tranquility Base server: who counts as an admin, the two places you type commands, and a full walkthrough of every admin command and admin-only tool.

It's a standalone document for operators. Players get PLAYER_GUIDE.md; the engine internals live in docs/. This guide doesn't assume you've read either.

Who is an admin

Admin status is a list of player names in config/server.yaml:

server:
  admins:
    - "space55"
    - "someone_else"

• Names are exact and case-sensitive — they must match the name a player typed on the Connect screen.
• An empty or missing admins: list means nobody is an admin, and every admin command and world-edit mode is unavailable to everyone connected.
• The list is read once at server start. Changing it means restarting the server.
• The server console is always an admin (see below), regardless of what's in the list.

Every admin command re-checks this list on the server the moment it runs — a modified client can't grant itself admin, and world-edit stays gated on every single tile edit, not just when you toggle the mode on.

Where you type commands

In-game chat

Open the chat box (the ` backtick key, just above Tab), type a command starting with /, and press Enter. A command is intercepted before it becomes a normal chat line, so /give … never shows up as "YourName: /give …" to the room. Replies come back as colored chat lines visible only to you.

The server console

The terminal running the server process is itself a player — a reserved one that is always an admin. Type the same /-commands straight into it and press Enter; replies print to the server log instead of a chat packet.

Two differences from in-game:

• The console has no body in the world — no position, no inventory, no "self". Commands that act on "you" (/give with no name, /filltank) need you to name a target or stand somewhere, so they mostly can't be driven from the console. Name a recipient explicitly (/give space55 WRENCH) and they work fine.
• Any line that doesn't start with / is broadcast to every connected player as a chat message from [Server]. Handy for announcements ("rebooting in 5 minutes").

/help

/help

Lists every command you are allowed to use, with a one-line description. Non-admins see only the handful available to them; admins see everything. This list is generated from the same table the commands are implemented from, so it never drifts out of date — when in doubt, /help is the source of truth for this server build.

/save — write the world to disk

/save

Persists the current live world back to the map file the server loaded (assets/maps/station.json by default). After this, a server restart comes back up with your changes.

What /save persists:

• Every tile you've placed or removed in world-edit mode.
• Tile-backed fixtures' own state (a door's locked/unlocked flag, a generator's on/off, a console's settings — anything stored as a property on the fixture).

What /save does not persist (known limitations today):

• Atmosphere. Room air, temperatures, and pipe contents all reset to a freshly-built state on reload. A vented room comes back full; a charged pipe network comes back empty.
• Container contents. What's inside a mining drill, an ore container, a scrubber regenerator, or any storage panel is not written out.
• Free-standing objects. Anything placed as a movable object rather than a tile — dropped items, ore containers, gas tanks — is gone after a reload. (Tile-backed fixtures like doors and generators survive; these don't, because there's no grid cell to remember them by.)

So /save is for building the station, not for snapshotting a live game in progress.

/edit — world-edit (building) mode

/edit

Toggles building mode for you alone. A persistent "EDIT MODE" banner shows while it's on; run /edit again to leave.

While it's on:

• Two palettes appear — a Tile Palette (every tile type: walls, floors, doors, wires, pipes, ladders, windows, machines, …) and an Item Palette (every item type). Click an icon to select it; selecting from one palette deselects the other. Hovering an icon names it.
• Drag either palette by its title strip to reposition it; it stays put for the rest of your session.
• Left-click a tile in the world places your current selection there:
  • a selected tile is added to that cell's layer stack;
  • a selected item is dropped there for free (no inventory cost) — and if that item type places a machine (a mining drill, an ore container, a gas tank, …), the machine itself is spawned, skipping the normal placement rules (e.g. a mining drill can go anywhere, not just on the lunar surface).
• Right-click a tile removes the topmost layer at that cell. Removing a fixture's tile despawns the fixture.
• Edits always apply to the floor you're standing on. You can't edit another level from a distance.
• Every edit is broadcast to all connected players immediately, so the station changes under everyone's feet in real time.

Changes are in memory only until you /save.

Laying pipe

Pipe (PIPE, and PIPE_RISER for vertical runs between floors) is placed from the Tile Palette like any other tile. A run auto-connects into a network that carries gas between its ends. Pipe carries no gas until something puts gas in — today that's a gas tank set down on a pipe tile with its valve opened (see /filltank below and PLAYER_GUIDE.md's "Gas tanks" section).

/setrole — reassign a player's crew role

/setrole <username> <ROLE>

Changes a connected player's crew role live — their name color, their map/HUD color, and the color of the access keycard they carry all update on the spot, no reconnect needed. The target gets a chat line telling them what happened.

<username> is exact and case-sensitive. <ROLE> is case-insensitive. The roles that ship today, each with its keycard color:

An unknown role name is rejected with the list of valid ones. Every player is assigned a random role on join anyway; /setrole is for overriding that.

Example:

/setrole space55 ENGINEERING

/kill — die / kill a player (ghost mode)

/kill              ← kill yourself (any player can do this)
/kill <username>   ← kill another player (admin only)

There's no health or combat system — /kill is the whole death mechanic. The target immediately becomes a ghost and gets an on-screen notice.

As a ghost:

• You pass through walls and move freely, ignoring collision.
• You see the entire floor you're on — no fog of war, no line of sight — but still can't see other floors.
• The living can't see or hear you — you're absent from their view entirely, and your footsteps make no sound.
• You can walk up to certain machines (a generator, for one) and interact to trigger a fault — a quiet sabotage (kill its power, jam it) that a living crew member then has to diagnose and fix, usually with a wrench. There's a cooldown between faults (ghost_fault_cooldown in config/server.yaml, default 30 s), shared across every object, per ghost.

Getting un-ghosted: there's no command for it yet. Disconnecting and reconnecting brings you back as a normal living player (with a fresh random role).

Examples:

/kill
/kill space55

/give — put items in an inventory

/give <ITEM_NAME>                     ← give yourself 1
/give <ITEM_NAME> <count>             ← give yourself N
/give <username> <ITEM_NAME>          ← give them 1
/give <username> <ITEM_NAME> <count>  ← give them N

<ITEM_NAME> is case-insensitive. The two-token form is read as <ITEM> <count> if the second token is a number, otherwise as <username> <ITEM>.

Items that ship today:

ATMO_SCANNER   BATTERY        CO2_FILTER     GAS_TANK
KEYCARD        MEDKIT         MINING_DRILL   O2_TANK
ORE            ORE_CONTAINER  PDA            SPACE_HELMET
SPACE_SUIT     WRENCH

Notes:

• An item that equips (a keycard, PDA, space suit, CO₂ filter, O₂ tank) drops straight into its equipment slot if that slot is empty; otherwise it lands in the hotbar/backpack.
• /give can't set item attributes — a KEYCARD from /give has no access color. Use /setrole to hand someone a working, colored keycard.
• From the server console, always name a recipient — there's no "you" to give to.
• GAS_TANK, MINING_DRILL, and ORE_CONTAINER are placeable: give one, then left-click the ground to set it down. (Or place them straight into the world from /edit's Item Palette.)

Examples:

/give WRENCH
/give MEDKIT 5
/give space55 SPACE_SUIT
/give space55 GAS_TANK 1

/filltank — fill a gas tank with pure gas

/filltank <GAS> [kPa]

Empties the gas tank you're standing next to (within about 3 tiles, on your floor) and refills it with pure <GAS> to the given pressure. [kPa] is optional and defaults to 3000.

<GAS> is one of the simulated gases — O2, N2, CO2 (case doesn't matter). An unknown gas name is rejected.

Why this exists: a gas tank's own valve can only fill from the air around it, which is a ~21/79 oxygen/nitrogen mix — there's no in-world way to get a bottle of pure oxygen (or CO₂, for testing a scrubber). /filltank is that shortcut.

The pressure is applied at standard temperature (20 °C). Keep it under the tank's relief-valve limit (4000 kPa) or the relief valve will immediately bleed it back down.

Steps:

1. /give GAS_TANK and left-click the ground to place it (or drop one from /edit's Item Palette).
2. Stand next to it.
3. /filltank O2 3000

Examples:

/filltank O2
/filltank O2 3500
/filltank CO2 500

F4 — atmosphere overlay (admin-only)

Press F4 to tint every tile you can see by its atmosphere: brighter = higher pressure, hue shifts with temperature, hard vacuum shows violet. It's a live view of the server's gas simulation, refreshed a few times a second, and it only covers what's in your current line of sight.

The toggle is checked on the server — a non-admin pressing F4 gets an "admin-only" chat line and nothing else. Press F4 again to turn it off.

This is the fastest way to see a leak, watch a room re-pressurize, or confirm a vent worked. It does not show gas inside pipes.

(F3 toggles a performance/debug overlay — frame timing and counters. That one isn't admin-gated; anyone can use it.)

Quick reference

All admin gating is backed by config/server.yaml's admins: list; /help in-game always reflects what this exact build supports.