Starting Guide

Have you just discovered the wonders of Waste of Space? Do you find yourself wishing to "build timeless structures," meet and greet interesting friends, and create a variety of downright peculiar contraptions, but you don't even know how to set up a factory? This guide will teach you how to play Waste of Space and escape the starter.

Setting Up: Speedrunning NVG
The first thing you should ALWAYS do after first spawning in is to make Night Vision Goggles. Without them, doing anything at night will be very hard due to the darkness. Start mining stone until Flint appears. Get to sand, find anything flammable, like a piece of grass or oil, and ignite it near some sand parts by dropping/rubbing the flint on it repeatedly. Add more flammables to increase the chances.

If you did this correctly, the sand will turn into Glass after some time. Get a piece of copper to craft into a wire, and get a piece of iron. You should have a ruby by where you were mining, in which case you can now craft NVG.

Finding the right spot
A good base location will have an Iron and Copper node close together. It should also be close to An ocean and have Stone and Coal nearby.

Coal
Waste of Space is a game about automation. To automate anything, you need power. To make a coal burner for said power, you will need:


 * 1 to 7 BurnerGenerators
 * An extractor
 * At least 1 PowerCell
 * A bin
 * A chute

Total raw materials = 1 sulfur, 3 wires, 12 iron, +2 wires and 3 iron per generator added

See Coal Burner Generators for another guide. Start by placing the Extractor on the Coal node. Make sure that the extractor has been configured to Coal with a capital C using the Hammer. Rescale the PowerCell to the max size of 10x10x10, and attach it to the side of the Extractor. Place a coal in the bin, then put it onto the extractor, close to the PowerCell. Add the BurnerGenerator so that it is touching the PowerCell and the Bin at the same time.

If you did this correctly, you should now be generating power! It's not a very good power source, so you should expand it later by placing a chute on the Bin and extending it to fit more burners on. Think of the chute as an extension to the bin. You can put a maximum of 7 BurnerGenerators on before you start losing coal.

Extraction
You aren't going to manually mine everything, are you? Now that you have coal power, you can start extracting resources. Put an Extractor on a resource node, and set it to the name of the resource. Stone has multiple resources, so set it to the resource you want in that case. Add a bin to collect the resources, then attach a wire from the Coal Burner from earlier to the new extractor. If you did this correctly, the bin should start filling with resources from the node. Continue until you are extracting the following essential resources:


 * Iron
 * Copper
 * Grass
 * An extractor on a stone that you can change to any rock material (Sulfur, Quartz, Stone, etc.) Or multiple extractors on stone.

Assemblers
At this point, you could escape the starter by building everything you need out of iron, copper, and grass. It is very inconvenient to craft large amounts of wires, so it is recommended to set up Assemblers.

Like how you set up the Extractor, you configure the Assembler by putting the item name into the adjust menu. Link up your bins from earlier to one chute if you haven't already. Attach your Assembler to this chute, and then power it. Assemblers use a lot of power, so add a Switch to turn off assembly when its not needed. Important materials to assemble include pipes, wires, and rubber. If you're feeling fancy, start assembling a few Engines.

You should also consider extracting and producing Glass. Set an extractor on Sand, then route the mined sand to a Kiln to create Glass.

Solars
Don't bother. Solar is the shittiest form of power in the entire game due to their high cost and low power output. By the time you can reliably make SolarPanels for a solar farm, you are better off with reactors.

Steam Power
Assemblers consume a large amount of power compared to any other base constructions. A simple steam power setup should be considered if you wish to further expand your base before leaving.

You will need:


 * A ZapWire
 * Pumps and Faucets, as well as Pipes
 * Containers to collect the steam
 * SteamTurbine, connected to power system

Boilers are bad for steam power since they use more resources for less, so do not use them. Start by placing the Pumps in your planets ocean, then power them. Make sure they are adjusted to pump Water. Add a Container to collect the water. Hook up all the containers to a pipe, leading to a few faucets. Put a ZapWire underneath the faucets. Put a container above the Zapwire, make it large, and attach one or more SteamTurbines to said container. Turn on the pumps and Zapwire, then enable the faucets. If done correctly, the ZapWire will evaporate the water, creating steam that rises to the Container. The steam then goes into the SteamTurbine, creating enough power to fuel a medium-large size starter base.

Creating a ship from Model Loader
You can load a preexisting ship template by checking out Models. Copy the desired Model Loader code or Github Gists link into the Models menu. Press N or click the purple button to pull that up.

If you wish to create your own Model Loader creations, you will need Roblox Studio and MBTools, the Waste of Space Model Loader plugin. See the Model Builder tutorial for more information.

Spawn in parts using the plugin into Studio. If you don't do this, the parts won't weld correctly for whatever reason. Assemble a ship like you would create a ship in game. Once you are done, select your entire ship by click-dragging and hit Compile. You should then be able to copy and paste it into the game. If the output is too big, upload it to Github Gists.

As of Stable, you will need to clean out the StringValues and NumberValues from non-keybind Buttons and Switches to make them work correctly.

Creating a ghetto lookin' ass ship from scratch
There are some situations where you need an ultra cheap ship as fast as possible, or you don't want to use Roblox Studio. This tutorial can be applied to Model Loader as well.

You will need:


 * HyperDrive
 * AirSupply
 * A button
 * VehicleSeat, with PolySilicon and buttons
 * SpawnPoint
 * PowerCell with acceptable charge
 * StarMap (optional, used to find planets)
 * Anchor (optional, necessary for easy stopping and hovering)
 * Telescope (optional, lets you examine coordinates)
 * Propulsion (IonRocket recommended)

Start by making a ship floor with any material. MAKE SURE that the base is separated from the ground with a small block of Grass or whatever, or your ship will be welded to the planet and will not launch. Add the HyperDrive where the front of the ship will be. Attach the button where you can easily press it and still see the coordinates. Resize the StarMap to a manageable size and place it on the HyperDrive, so that star coordinates go straight to the HyperDrive instead of having to adjust them in. Attach the Telescope to the StarMap too, for a similar effect.

Add the VehicleSeat, and rotate it so that it faces the HyperDrive. Set a buttons key input to what you want to use for the Anchor. Attach the Anchor to the button, and then test it out by pressing the key while in the seat. Make another button, and set its KeyInput to what you want for toggling the propulsion. Add a polysilicon to the button, and set its mode to 2. Mode 2 sends trigger signals that toggle objects on and off. Now, attach a switch that will be linked to the PowerCell. Test to make sure the switch toggles.

Take your PowerCell and place it on the ship. Link the PowerCell with antennas or wires to the Ionrocket's switch (but not the ionrocket) and the HyperDrive, StarMap, and Telescope. Add switches to those too if you wish to conserve power.

Congratulations! Your ship should now be ready to fly. If you are feeling fancy, add more things like heaters/coolers, lights, and armor. All thats left to do is pack your bins on the ship and leave the planet for an alien one.

They fear the base leecher
If you wish to skip the process of making a base, simply use someone elses instead. Older starters with more bases will be the first on the planet list, so pick that one.


 * 1) Find a good factory with enough resources to start leeching. These can usually be identified by their noticeable size, alongside having more than 5 bins.
 * 2) Follow the Building A Ship tutorial, or this articles section on ship building for more explanation. Either grab a suitable model loader code or build your own. The base will need to have enough materials to craft a HyperDrive, AirSupply, VehicleSeat, and a propulsion device of your choice.
 * 3) (optional) Craft a gun and a bin. Try to get some iron into the bin, then start shooting the gun at bins and PowerCells to unlock them. You are now free to bring what you stole onto your new ship.