Essentials

Essentials is a Space Engineers dedicated server plugin for Magnetar. It bundles common quality-of-life server behaviour, configured through the Magnetar PluginSdk with the UI rendered by Quasar from the generated schema.

Features

• Auto commands — timed, scheduled and triggered server command sequences: restart/shutdown countdowns, cleanup passes, MOTD reminders, player votes, and shell-script hooks. See Docs/AutoCommands.md.
• Server control — save, reload config, restart and stop, with !ess chat commands and warning sequences.
• MOTD — connect messages and a Steam-overlay URL, with first-time variants.
• Ship fixer — cut/paste a grid to clear physics issues, with cooldowns.
• Voxel deformation controls — independent switches for missile, meteor and grid collision voxel cutouts.
• Blocks, economy, PCU/ownership transfer, Stone cleanup, grid conversion, safezone, GPS and station maintenance utilities.

See Docs/ for the full documentation and the chat command reference.

Command Coverage

Essentials currently exposes 160 !ess chat commands plus the legacy top-level !stone command. The complete command reference lives in Docs/Commands.md; the main groups are:

• Admin/player QoL — MOTD, stats, player count, player list, promote level, reserved slots, item give, kick/ban/unban, teleport, mute/unmute and private messages.
• Lookup/admin info — getsteamid, listids, listnames, updatename, lastlogin, isnpc, getfacid and worldpcu.
• Homes & info — home add, home del, home list, home goto and info list.
• Auto commands & voting — runauto, cancelauto, admin cancelautobyindex, listauto, vote, vote yes, vote no, vote list, vote cancel, vote debug and vote reset.
• Cleanup & world maintenance — cleanup scan/list/delete, floating object cleanup, identity clean/purge/clear, reputation wipe, faction clean/remove/info and sandbox cleanup.
• Voxels — reset all, cleanup asteroids/distant asteroids, reset planets, reset one planet, reset area and reset GPS area.
• Entities & grids — entity find/refresh/stop/delete/kill/power/eject, grid list/export/import/ejectall/stopall/static-large, plus admin makeship, admin makestation, admin rename, protect, unprotect, convert and gridtype.
• Safe zones, GPS & NPC stations — zone, ez hide, ez show, ez delete, place station, fixallstations, fixstation, isecon and sywavefix. Destructive station cleanup commands require confirmation.
• Economy — native econ give/take/set/reset/top/check/pay, eco player/faction aliases, faction wallet aliases (eco givefac, eco takefac), account reset commands (eco resetbalances, eco resetplayers, eco resetfactions, eco resetplayer, eco resetfac), physical SpaceCredit conversion (eco deposit, eco withdraw) and local account refresh/debug commands (TestEconSync, FullEconSync, SingleEconSync, econ sync all, econ sync player, econ debug account). eco withdrawall is present as a disabled compatibility command; use eco withdraw <amount>.
• Ship fixer, PCU & ownership — fixship, moderator fix commands, PCU/author/owner checks, claim/sell/accept/deny grid workflows, rename and PCU/ownership transfer commands.

Prerequisites

• Space Engineers Dedicated Server
• Magnetar - the Space Engineers server with plugin support
• .NET Framework 4.8.1 Developer Pack
• .NET 10 SDK
• Python 3.12 or newer, for setup.py

Setup

1. Clone the repository.
2. Build Essentials.sln. The Dedicated Server and the Magnetar installation are found automatically. If that fails, run setup.py or set Dedicated64 and Magnetar in Directory.Build.props.user.

Plugin version

The plugin version lives in Version.Build.props, which is committed and imported by Directory.Build.props. Keeping the version separate from the local path overrides means it is shared by all contributors and stays under version control. Bump the version there.

Folder path overrides

Directory.Build.props declares the overridable folders with empty defaults: Dedicated64 (the Dedicated Server's DedicatedServer64 folder), Magnetar (the Magnetar installation folder holding PluginSdk.dll) and MagnetarData (the Magnetar config folder to deploy into). Empty Dedicated64 and Magnetar values are auto-detected on Windows and Linux.

To override them, put the first PropertyGroup of Directory.Build.props into Directory.Build.props.user, wrapped into a <Project> element. That file is not committed. setup.py writes it with the auto-detected Dedicated Server folder.

Development and deployment

Load the working copy through a Magnetar development folder: start Magnetar with -sources and add the repository with the Sources button. Magnetar then compiles the plugin from source.

Builds deploy nothing by default. To copy the build into <MagnetarData>/Local, set MagnetarData in Directory.Build.props.user or pass -p:MagnetarData=... to the build.

Project Layout

• ServerPlugin contains the Magnetar plugin entry point.
• Shared contains common plugin code, configuration, logging, and Harmony patches.
• Essentials.xml is the MagnetarHub plugin registration template.

Documentation

• Documentation index
• Auto Commands — scheduled/triggered command sequences
• Chat Commands — the full !ess command reference

Configuration

Server configuration lives in Shared/Config and uses Magnetar PluginSdk. The PluginConfig defaults are applied by the dedicated server plugin, and the editor UI is rendered by Quasar from the generated schema. See the documentation index for a tab-by-tab overview.

Compatibility

Use the EnsureCode attribute on Harmony patch methods to safely skip loading the plugin when patched game code changes after a Space Engineers update. The logged hash can be copied back into the attribute after validating a new game version.

Publishing

Register server plugins in MagnetarHub, so they become available in Magnetar.