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Base content catalog

Every id and asset the base game ships, so your mod can reference them instead of guessing. Six registries matter to a mod author: section prototype ids (what source: Prototype(id: "<id>") can name), ship ids (what design: Prototype(id: "<id>") can name - tabled in Ships), style ids (what a design's style: can name), scenario ids (what NextScenario and campaigns can target), UI theme ids (what a theme's inherit: can name), and base asset paths (what dep://base/<path> can reach). All of it is generated from the Rust builders by cargo run content gen into assets/base/**/*.content.ron - the generated RON is the shipped truth, and content -- lint checks your references against it.

base is the IMPLICIT universal dependency: every mod may reference base content and dep://base/ assets without listing base in meta.dependencies. Declaring it explicitly is allowed and also resolves - the shipped portal mods do - but it is never required.

Section prototypes

Lengths are in METERS and speeds in meters per second: the number in the file is the number in the world, and there is nothing to convert. World units survive in one place a creator ever touches - the BUILD GRID a ship is assembled on, whose cell is 10 m on a side. A section's collider, its link_points and its position in a ship's sections list are counted in cells, and so is a thruster's exhaust cone; everything else on this page is metric.

A prototype id is used two ways: a ship's section list references it compactly (source: Prototype(id: "<id>") resolves the whole config, meshes and sounds included, with an optional patch over it), and a mod Section item that reuses the id REPLACES that part everywhere. See Ship sections for mods for the Section grammar and the overlay flow.

Ids are lowercase snake_case, in the <variant>_<kind>_section form. Every base prototype is GENERIC - a hull cell, a drive, a mount, a bay - so the same part serves every hull. Section kinds are Hull, Thruster, Controller, Turret, Torpedo, and Railgun.

Core sections (the editor palette)

id kind display name health notes
reinforced_hull_section Hull Reinforced Hull Section 200 the armor workhorse
basic_thruster_section Thruster Basic Thruster Section 70 magnitude 1.0; authored 1x1 shell bell; one socket on the -Z mounting face; cone plume starts at Z = 0.51 with radius 0.24 and exits +Z
vector_thruster_section Thruster Vector Thruster Section 480 3x3x2 collider and footprint; magnitude 9; nine -Z mounting sockets; one vectoring bell and plume
capital_thruster_section Thruster Capital Thruster Section 1250 5x5x3 collider and footprint; magnitude 25; 25 -Z mounting sockets; one capital bell and plume
basic_controller_section Controller Basic Controller Section 100 steering lag 0.5 s, max torque 9760.0; the hull derives its own turn ceiling from that torque, its inertia and its length
light_hull_section Hull Light Hull Section 60 scavenger-grade hull
cargo_hull_section Hull Cargo Hull Section 200 the reinforced cell's stats under caged freight; a visual choice until real hull types arrive
tank_hull_section Hull Tank Hull Section 200 the reinforced cell's stats around a pressure vessel in open frame rails
pdc_kinetic_turret_section Turret PDC Turret (Kinetic) 130 the gatling every craft mounts, on a 0.5 mount box; fits any hull face. Kinetic 4.0/hit at 100 rps, ammo 500, +200 after 3 s idle
pdc_pierce_turret_section Turret PDC Turret (Pierce) 130 the same 500-round, +200 after 3 s idle gatling loading penetrators: Pierce 2.0/hit, dealt to every section it rakes through
pdc_twin_kinetic_turret_section Turret Twin PDC Turret (Kinetic) 130 the same slugs from the two-barrel mount: each tube at half the gatling's cadence, so two offset streams at the same total rate and magazine drain
pdc_twin_pierce_turret_section Turret Twin PDC Turret (Pierce) 130 penetrators from the two-barrel mount - half per-hit damage through every layer, split across two offset streams
torpedo_section Torpedo Torpedo Bay (Serpent) 100 blast 750 dmg over a radius of 300 m, ordnance 10 hp, ammo 6 restoring +1 after 10 s idle; loads the WEAVING Serpent - cruise 320 m/s, ~390 PDC rounds an intercept, killed ~400 m out
lance_torpedo_section Torpedo Torpedo Bay (Lance) 100 the same six-round, +1 after 10 s idle bay and warhead loading the straight-running Lance: no weave, cruise 350 m/s, ~116 PDC rounds an intercept, killed ~1.14 km out
railgun_lance_section Railgun Railgun Lance 180 the spinal lance: no traverse, so the HULL aims it. A 1.5 s charge you can see walk the bore, then Pierce 300 to every layer it rakes until 1800 slug power runs out; a slug at 15,000 m/s for 1.2 s, rake radius 10 m, recoil 45 at the muzzle, one round reloading over 12 s
docking_port_section Docking Docking Port Section 90 the sealed-hatch port: DOCK holds the hull to the ship it has locked, port face to port face, within 10 m of gap, 15 deg of opposed and 5 m/s of closing speed. Its sleeve reaches 5 m out once the dock holds and is art alone. The workship, both frame tenders and the line warship carry one
cargo_intake_section Cargo intake Cargo Intake Section 90 a 3x2x1 hold mouth behind an accordion door on its -Z face: the door opens for a canister within 40 m, and the intake takes one whole, at any speed, once it touches the 1 m deep trigger in front of the 22.2 x 15.3 m opening, if the hold has room. One jettison may queue several canisters; each drops out at 3 m/s. The line warship carries one on its top deck
mining_beam_section Mining Mining Beam Section 90 a 1x1x1 emitter behind sliding doors on its -Z face: while its own input_mapping key is held the doors part, the tip runs out, and once a second the beam cuts a 1.5-cell sphere from the locked rock where it hits within 100 m. The line warship carries one at its bow, bound to V

Every shipped prototype authors its damage effects by kind, and the whole catalog follows one rule: Hull wears ([Cracks]) (the default, so it is omitted), Controller, Turret, Torpedo, Railgun, Docking, Cargo intake and Mining wear ([Cracks, Sparks]), and Thruster wears ([Cracks, Sparks, Plume]). No shipped mod authors the field at all, so base is the worked example.

Cladding (not a prototype)

A ship's outer SKIN is DERIVED from the structure it wraps, as a pure function of it: nothing places a plate, no id names one, and none is saved. Build the structure and the skin follows. There is nothing here for a mod to reference.

A ship asks for it with one field - skin: true on the ship's hull - and gets destructible cladding: each plate carries its own health and mass, comes off when it is shot out, and leaves the hull behind it bare. Build the hull out of the unit-cell sections above; modelled parts a mod brings are shapes of their own sizes and are not on the lattice the derivation reads.

What the cladding LOOKS like is a style, which IS content and does have an id.

Skin styles

id what it is
industrial a working hull: exposed services, corrugation, radiators, safety-yellow paint on its edges
armoured flat plate, a belt down every straight edge, sensor blisters
civilian a private yacht's: pale satin paint, a cobalt livery rail, lit cabin windows
salvage mismatched patches, weld beads, a lashed drum, a whip antenna

A ship names one with style: Some("<id>") beside skin: true on its hull. A mod declaring a Style with the same id replaces that look everywhere; a new id is a new look. See Ship skin styles.

Open-world ships wear one of these by role, intact or wrecked: civilian civilian, industrial industrial, scavenger salvage, armored armoured. Overlay the id to restyle them. The open world does not start if one of these ids is missing.

Modelled ship parts (not base content)

Base ships NO parts cut for one craft. Every base hull is built out of the generic prototypes above, on the build grid, and clad by the derived skin.

A mod that brings modelled craft brings their part prototypes and their meshes with it. The Ledger is the worked example: its racer, cargoa, cargoa_raider, cargob and cargob_lance are assembled from racer_*, cargoa_* and cargob_* prototypes it declares itself, over GLBs it carries under its own gltf/parts/. Those ids resolve only where The Ledger is installed; nothing in base references them.

Turret MOUNTS are not prototypes either, in base or in a mod. A hull names where a gun goes; the gun is pdc_kinetic_turret_section, seated on the face it stands on, and a scavenger-grade craft flies the SAME gun with a patch: (health: Some(60.0)) on the mount.

Scenario ids

What NextScenario((scenario_id: ...)), a Campaign member list, and the Scenarios picker can target. Only a role: Chapter scenario is a picker row; a backdrop or a practice range stays off it but is still launchable by id.

id display name in the picker what it is
open_world Open World no the New Game start (role: OpenWorld): the line warship at the origin of the world generated from the seed the player picks
tutorial Basic Training yes the first-flight course: the Fleet gunnery range, a qualification card read over the radio
season_one_chapter_one A Useful Job yes Season 1, chapter one: thread a working lane on RCS, come about on a stranded ship, and dock to take three people off
menu_waystation Waystation Traffic no menu backdrop: hauler convoy; done after a 150 s rotation limit
menu_gauntlet Torpedo Gauntlet no menu backdrop: a doomed point-defense stand; done when the stand falls
menu_weave Asteroid Weave no menu backdrop: waypoint run through a dense rock band; done after a 150 s rotation limit
menu_duel Duel Cycle no menu backdrop: a duel ended by a siege torpedo; done when the victor is erased
drill_momentum Momentum Range no practice range: two marks and no flight computer
drill_stop STOP Range no practice range: one mark, and room to overshoot it
drill_autopilot Autopilot Range no practice range: a rock to fly out to, and a mark to come home to
drill_gunnery Gunnery Range no practice range: five hulks on the line, and none of them answer

The four drill_* ranges belong to the handbook: each is reached from the Practice button of the lessons that name it, and from nowhere else.

The base bundle ships ONE campaign, in assets/base/campaigns/base.content.ron:

id header chapters
season_one Season 1 season_one_chapter_one

A campaign is a list, not a container: every chapter it names is also an ordinary picker row that can be launched on its own, and what the campaign adds is the order they are meant to be flown in and the header the Scenarios board draws them under. A mod may add its own campaigns, or replace season_one by reusing its id - see Campaigns.

There are no other content kinds - a content file holds Section, Scenario, Campaign, Ship, Style, Lesson and UiTheme items only; factions are not content, and neither is impact audio, a comms channel or the table a generated hull is drawn from - all three are engine-owned. The base ship ids are tabled in Ships, the style ids above, the theme ids below.

New Game is base-owned: new_game_scenario: Some("open_world") in assets/base/base.bundle.ron is honored only from the base bundle; a mod declaring it is warned and ignored.

UI theme ids

What a UI theme's inherit: can name, and what declaring the same id RESTYLES. Both are root themes, so either is a complete parent.

id display name what it is
base/phosphor Phosphor the shipped default: the CLI-drawn terminal - flat phosphor-on-black fills, square-ish corners, a block-meter slider and bracketed [TAG] badges
base/hardware Hardware the moulded casing: case-gradient faces, drop-shadow bevels, amber selection, round corners, a solid slider fill and chip badges

A player whose selected theme stops resolving - they disabled the mod that declared it - falls back to base/phosphor, so a mod must never leave that id unpaintable.

Assets: what dep://base/ can reach

dep://base/<path> resolves against the base bundle's own folder (assets/base/<path>), gated on <path> being in the base bundle's declared resources list - an undeclared path is a lint/merge Error, not a silent 404. A #Scene0-style gltf label is stripped before the membership check, so dep://base/gltf/hull-01.glb#Scene0 is fine.

The editor reads this same list. A row holding an image, a sound or a model opens a picker of the files the installed bundles declare, writes the dep:// ref for the one you pick (with the #Scene0 label where a mesh needs it), and marks a dep:// path no bundle ships - so you never type one of these paths from memory.

The declared list, complete:

Meshes (25 glb)

Named meshes (all use label #Scene0). First the thruster bells:

  • gltf/shell_bell.glb, gltf/shell_vector.glb, gltf/shell_capital.glb - the three thruster bells

Then the generated section parts the catalog renders (scripts/gen-section-parts.py, committed under gltf/):

  • gltf/hull_personnel.glb, gltf/hull_cargo.glb, gltf/hull_tank.glb - the three hull cell looks (reinforced, cargo, tank)
  • gltf/core_wires.glb - the controller core
  • gltf/pdc_gatling_yaw.glb, gltf/pdc_gatling_pitch.glb, gltf/pdc_gatling_barrel.glb - the gatling PDC joint meshes
  • gltf/pdc_twin_yaw.glb, gltf/pdc_twin_pitch.glb, gltf/pdc_twin_barrel.glb - the twin PDC joint meshes
  • gltf/pdc_housing.glb - the stow housing both PDC mounts sink into, with its animatable stow_lid_* nodes
  • gltf/bay_tube.glb - the two-cell torpedo bay, with its animatable door_petal_* iris nodes
  • gltf/railgun_lance.glb - the three-cell spinal lance, with its animatable charge_bolt node
  • gltf/dock_flush.glb - the docking port, with its animatable dock_tube sleeve
  • gltf/intake_accordion_3x2x1.glb - the cargo intake, with its animatable intake_slat_* door nodes
  • gltf/cargo_canister_cuboid.glb - the cargo canister an intake drops and a mined rock sheds
  • gltf/mining_beam_compact.glb - the mining beam, with its animatable stow_lid_* doors and beam_tip

The retired first-pass art stays in the bundle so old refs resolve, but no base section renders it: gltf/hull-01.glb, gltf/turret-yaw-01.glb, gltf/turret-pitch-01.glb, gltf/turret-barrel-01.glb, gltf/torpedo-bay-01.glb.

Base ships no per-craft part meshes. A mod that brings modelled craft carries them itself, under its own gltf/parts/.

Cladding ships no meshes and never will: a ship's skin is derived from its structure and built at run time - see Cladding.

Greebles (54 glb)

The decoration models the base styles scatter, under dep://base/gltf/greebles/, named <kit>_<piece>.glb: the four authored kits - armoured_* (10), civilian_* (12), industrial_* (14), salvage_* (14) - plus four magenta placeholder_* pieces no base style uses. All are generated from committed JSON recipes (scripts/gen-greebles.py, scripts/greeble-recipes/), and a mod can ship its own .glb the same way.

Sounds (31 wav)

All under dep://base/sounds/: ammo_dry.wav, bay_door.wav, destroy_rock.wav, destroy_ship.wav, dry_fire.wav, explosion.wav, impact.wav, impact_explosive.wav, impact_pierce.wav, impact_rock.wav, lock_off.wav, lock_on.wav, pdc_stow_close.wav, pdc_stow_open.wav, pdc_twin_fire.wav, radar_deny.wav, radar_retarget.wav, railgun_charge.wav, railgun_fire.wav, railgun_reload.wav, rcs_loop.wav, safety_on.wav, salvage_pickup.wav, thruster_capital_loop.wav, thruster_loop.wav, thruster_vector_loop.wav, torpedo_detonate.wav, torpedo_launch.wav, turret_fire.wav, warn_hull.wav, warn_lock.wav.

(UI chrome sounds - menu clicks, objective chimes - are engine assets, not base bundle resources, and are NOT dep-referenceable.)

Images (7)

  • textures/cubemap.png - the stock skybox, and the sky the training range is flown under
  • textures/cubemap_alt.png - the alternate skybox: a SetSkybox swap target and what the editor sandbox loads
  • textures/asteroid.png - the asteroid surface texture
  • thumbnails/tutorial.png - the picker plate
  • banner.png - the base mod's banner
  • portraits/*.png - the faces a NarrativeCue puts on the comms card: player.png, the player's own label, and range-control.png, the training range's voice, both in the HUD's own green; and season one's crew - jonah.png, leila.png, tomas.png, rina.png, samir.png, nadia.png and elena.png - drawn from the story's character palettes. Reusable by any mod - a portrait is just an image ref, and a mod that wants a face of its own ships it under its own tree

Skybox .png.meta sidecars ride along with their image automatically and are never listed or referenced directly, but a sky needs one: it is what makes the stack a cube. Both cubemaps above carry the same two settings, and assets/mods/example/textures/nebula.png.meta is the copy a mod of your own starts from. array_layout: Some(RowCount(rows: 6)) cuts the stacked PNG into six array layers at load time, before the renderer uploads it. asset_usage: ("MAIN_WORLD | RENDER_WORLD") keeps the decoded pixels in main memory after the upload as well, which is why a sky costs its size twice - once on the card and once in main memory - and why Scenarios asks you to size the faces for both.

Ship a sky with no sidecar and the stack uploads as one tall 2D texture. A later reinterpret still rescues the binding, but not the upload, and 4096 px faces are 24576 px stacked: over the 16384 texture limit of smaller GPUs, where the upload itself is fatal.

The overlay rule

How a mod item interacts with this catalog (implemented in crates/nova_assets/src/merge.rs):

  • The matching key is the id string per kind - Section matches on base.id; Scenario, Campaign, Ship, Style, Lesson and UiTheme on id. Names and file paths never participate.
  • Same id as base (or an earlier bundle) = REPLACE, whole item. It is not a field-level patch: an overlay must restate every field it wants to keep. Sections replace in place, so the editor palette order is preserved.
  • New id = ADD alongside the catalog. Prefix your own ids with your mod's name (example_* in the shipped example mod) so they cannot collide.
  • Same id twice within ONE bundle = a conflict: the first item is kept, the duplicate skipped and logged.
  • Merge order is catalog order (base first), then downloaded mods, then a topological pass so a dependency merges before its dependents - so a mod overlays base and everything it depends on, and the last independent mod wins.

See the source

The builders behind this page live under crates/nova_authoring/src/base_content/: sections/ owns the section prototypes, one module per family (hull, controller, thruster, turret, torpedo_bay, railgun, docking_port), styles.rs the skin styles, ships/ owns the block hulls, scenarios/ groups the training range and the main-menu backdrops, and lessons.rs owns the handbook screens. The two UI themes are built one level down, in crates/nova_ui/src/theme/base.rs, beside the format they are written in. If this page and the generated RON ever disagree, the RON is the truth and this page has a bug - the content_ron_parity test pins the RON to the builders.