Netquel Help Guide

Netquel is an online multiplayer space combat game in which you pilot ships to mine asteroids and fight rivals.

Game modes and blocks are described on the Wiki.

How to play

Mine asteroids, collect space debris, and destroy other ships to earn points. Your score is the value of all the blocks in your ship plus your surplus balance. As your score grows, the upgrade picker at the bottom of the screen offers you bigger ships.

Points come from:

• Mining asteroids and collecting loose debris — paid immediately.
• Destroying a ship — paid when its core is destroyed, plus a share of its balance.
• Damaging a ship — blocks you shoot off a ship, and pieces of it you eat, only pay if that ship is destroyed within a few seconds. A ship that flies away with a few blocks missing owes you nothing, so there is no point in nibbling at a friend.

How to move with a mouse

Your ship flies toward the mouse pointer.

• Hold left click (LMB), Shift or Space to boost. Your weapons power down while boosting, and you cannot boost while your ship is damaged.
• Move the pointer directly over your ship, or hold right click (RMB) or X, to stop thrusting; your ship drags to a halt.
• W/S thrust forward and backward and Q/E strafe, mixed with the flight toward the pointer and still facing it.

How to move with a touch screen

Your ship flies toward the point you touch.

• Double tap and hold to boost. Your weapons power down while boosting, and you cannot boost while your ship is damaged.
• Touch directly over your ship, or lift your finger, to stop.

How to move with a keyboard

Turn on keyboard controls in Settings (General → Keyboard controls). Then:

• W or ↑ thrusts forward; S or ↓ thrusts backward.
• A/D or ←/→ rotate your ship left and right.
• Q and E strafe left and right, without turning.
• X or right click (RMB) stops thrusting; your ship drags to a halt.
• Hold Shift, Space or left click (LMB) to boost. Your weapons power down while boosting, and you cannot boost while your ship is damaged.
• 1, 2, 3 choose an upgrade when the picker offers one. With the block hotbar up, 1 to 9 pick a block and 0 picks Break.

Every control can be rebound: press Esc and choose Controls. Boost, Stop and the thrust keys work the same with a mouse; only the rotate keys are for keyboard mode alone.

Fleets

A fleet is a team of up to six players who share a single score. The first member is the leader.

• If the leader dies, every member dies with them and everyone’s balance is cut — protect your leader.
• If the leader quits, the member directly below them in the roster becomes the new leader.
• The leader may kick members; a kicked member keeps their ship and a limited surplus balance.

You can join a fleet in three ways:

• Start a new fleet and become its leader.
• Request to join an existing fleet; the leader must accept.
• Enter an invitation code (Play with friends → Accept an invitation).

When you join a fleet, the value of your ship is added to the fleet’s score. The fleet roster appears at the top left. If you are not the leader and the leader is far away, an arrow points toward them.

Tiers

Certain game modes are split into tiers; all players start in the entry tier, and higher tiers unlock upgrades beyond a certain level. A mode without tiers is one world, and none of this applies to it.

To travel up, fly to the “roof” (the top edge of the world) and wait for the hyperspace countdown to reach zero. The countdown is a few seconds, plus a second for each extra member of your fleet. Travel has rules:

• Only the leader can start the trip, and every human member must be nearby — bots are left behind.
• No ship in the fleet may be above the level limit of the destination tier (“level too high”).
• Going down a tier, no ship may be carrying extra blocks beyond its design (“deconstructing ship”).

To return to a lower tier, fly to the “floor” (the bottom edge). Ships with advanced upgrades are not allowed in the lowest tiers because they would be overpowered against new players.

Sometimes the next world is hosted far from you. Its countdown then shows “⚠ lag” and takes longer. If you cross anyway and the lag is too much, you can cross back.

Custom ships

Where building is allowed (on a desktop browser), press B to toggle build mode on whatever you are flying. The first block you place or break makes the design your own, and it stays yours from then on; until then you are flying the builtin you chose, unchanged.

• Pick a block from the bar at the bottom, then click next to your ship to place it. The number keys 1–9, 0 select entries in that bar.
• Pick the ✕ (Break) to remove blocks by clicking them.
• Drag to place or erase a line; hold Shift while dragging for a rectangle.
• R or the mouse wheel rotates the selected block (Shift+R rotates the other way). Middle click copies the block under the pointer. Right click cancels the selection or stops what you are doing.

Ships can be kept in two ways:

• Saved to your account (sign in first): /save <name> in chat stores your current ship and /load <name> brings it back. Names are letters, digits, _ and -. To load a friend’s ship, use /load nick:name with their nickname.
• As a code: /save_code (or /export) prints a code for your ship in chat, and /load <code> or /import <code> loads one.
• Built in: /load <ship> or /import <ship> loads a built-in ship by name, and random in place of a name loads any of them. A name that is no built-in ship is taken for a saved ship’s name instead.

Either way, a ship must fit the size limit, stay under any level limit its world imposes, and be loaded somewhere custom ships are allowed.

Playing with friends, or in peace

Choose Play with friends on the splash screen. From there you can invite friends to the public server, or create a party server — a temporary world of your own that nobody else can reach unless you share the link. A party plays the rules of its mode, plus the sandbox extras: you can always build there, and a player alone on a party server starts with enough points for any ship.

How to win

Grow your score: mine, collect, and destroy. Upgrade your ship to improve its defense and firepower, and keep your leader alive. The leaderboard at the top right ranks fleets by score.

Chat

Chat messages appear at the bottom left; use the panel there to send messages to other players. Never share personal information in chat.

Settings

Press Esc and choose Settings to adjust graphics, controls, and sound, and to switch between mouse and keyboard controls.