Lobby

The lobby is the area of SPB where players gather before and after games. From here, you can chat with other players, or change games settings. A player will be put into the lobby after the initial ship registration.

Lobby Commands

These are the commands that can be used while in the lobby of SPB. The commands may be typed in either upper or lower-case characters, but extra spaces will cause the command to not be recognized.

start

The start command is used to either start a game, or to rejoin a game already in progress, if the game setting 'game/respawn' is not set to 'off'. When used while a game is not active, all players who are currently logged in, but not marked as ‘away’ will be added to the new game.

end/exit/quit

The end command is used to disconnect from the SPB server.

help/?

The help command will display a list of all commands that are available in the lobby.

The login command will allow you to change your power or ship name, by starting the ship registration process over. You will not be disconnected from the server during this process.

roster

The roster command will display a list of all ships currently attached to the SPB server, and will include their status: LOBBY, AWAY, PLAYING.

stats

The stats command will display a table with statistics from the last game played on the screen. Each ship or base will be represented by both a row and a column. To determine the damage that one ship did to another, find the row of the ship that caused the damage, and follow along to the column of the ship that received the damage. And asterisk ('*') indicates that the attacking ship destroyed the ship that received the damage.

handicap #

If the 'game/handicaps' setting is set to 'on', a player may use the handicap command to select a handicap. Handicaps are used so that a more experienced player to give a newer player an advantage. The handicap is measured in extra seconds between commands. The standard minimum time between possible commands is one second. A player with a handicap of 3.0 will have a minimum of 4 seconds between commands.

settings

The settings command will display a list of all the current game settings. These settings may be changed by the set command.

set category/option=setting

The set command is used to change a game setting. The slash (/) and the equal sign (=) are both optional, and any of the strings may be abbreviated down to the minimum unique length.

away message

The away command is used to tell the game and other players that you are stepping away from your screen. The option message will display whenever a new player logs into the game. Typing in any command or message will end the away status.

The game will automatically set a player's status to 'away' if they do not type any commands for 15 minutes.

say message

The say command is used to communicate with players currently in a game. Normal chat communication is not sent to players to allow those in the lobby to freely discuss the current game. Therefore, the say command is required to get a message through to the players.