Maininstruction Tutorial

Domderek's Maininstruction Tutorial

Maininstruction is a really useful tool, especially for exploring. However, it can be a bit tricky to pick up, so here is a tutorial on how to get it going. Before trying this, you should familiarize yourself with the Ship Computer by reading the Wiki page on it.

What is Maininstruction?

The Maininstruction command allows you to display certain Ship computer commands on screen all the time, so they don not have to be manually typed in every time you need it. They appear just above the Altitude and Speed readouts. using maininstruction can save a lot of retyping common commands into the computer and help provide useful information much more quickly.

What commands can I maininstruct?

Theoretically, any of the "show" commands can be maininstructed. However some are much more useful than others, and a few can cause computer issues in certain situations. It can be used to display information like gravity, pressure, temperature and atmospheric concentration. It can also be used to show capacitor and energy in number forms if you want. Lastly, you could use a maininstruction to display probing progress on a planet.

How do I enter a Maininstruction command?

There are 3 maininstruction commands: add, list, remove. Adding commands uses the folowing format:

maininstruction add display N text show xx.command

maininstruction add - this is the actual command and is the same everytime.

display N - where N is a whole number 0-4. This is used to set the position of this command, in 1 of 5 positions. See the pic above for each one.

text - this is any text you would like to see added AFTER the command output. For example, atm after pressure or C after temperature. If you want no text, make sure 2 spaces are in this gap, or the command will not work.

show xx.command - this is the regular ship computer command you would like to display. You can see the wiki for more details.

So for example, to show the 0 display in the picture, I would type:

maininstruction add display 0 atm show rs.pressure

I am getting an "Unknown Command" error. How do I fix it?

This means you typed something wrong. You can use the remove command to get rid of it and try again. For example, "Maininstruction remove 0" will delete the maininstruction in display 0.

Step-by-Step Guide

I have a set-up to display the most important statistics for planets as well as track my probing progress on a planet. This will take you through the steps of setting up an exact copy of this. You can tweak it to you preferences however you like.

   Open up the ship computer with ctrl+c or the "Manage" button.
   (Optional) use the alias commands so you don't have to type maininstruction each time. I use "alias add m maininstruction" so I only have to type m instead of the whole word. You can do more if you so desire.
   Use the following commands to add the first 4 maininstructions. Note: two space for display 3 and 4 because there is no text section (doesn't show up in forum formatting).
       maininstruction add display 0 atm show rs.pressure
       maininstruction add display 1 C show rs.temperaturec
       maininstruction add display 2 G show gg.g
       maininstruction add display 3 show rs.composition
   The last command displays the progress towards a map overlay on a planet. Make sure to use a search parameter, as without it ALL your map overlays are displayed, which can cause issues with the game if there are a lot of them. The parameter follows the same formatting as a soil sample command. For example, the one I use in the picture is:

   maininstruction add display 4 show mb.samplemaps Systemname1 Rocky Planet (4)
   Confirm that all the commands have come out the way you want, and you are good to go.

That should get everyone up to speed and hopefully save you a bit of time as you journey through the stars. Happy exploring everyone!

ps. Do not try to maininstruction: show mb.coresample or show mb.measure; as these can cause serious computer malfunctions, and crash your game.

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