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Starforge: parts, paints and limits.
A Starforge design is a list of parts, each painted with one swatch from the design's palette. This page covers what the parts are, what the paints do, and the limits that keep designs light.
The parts
Every design is built from parts. There are six kinds, and each one can be solid, or can cut a hollow out of what came before:
| Part | What it is | Used for |
|---|---|---|
| Box | A block, with square or rounded edges. | Walls, floors, crates, bodies of things. |
| Cylinder and cone | A round post, a disc, or a cone that comes to a point. Can have a few flat sides, such as a hexagon or a pyramid. | Posts, discs, pointed tops. |
| Sphere | A ball, an egg, or a half ball (a dome). | Domes, heads, lamps. |
| Ring | A hoop, or half a hoop (an arch). | Handles, arches, rims. |
| Tube | A bent tube, through points you set. | Bent pipes and rails. |
| Wedge | A slope, low at the front and high at the back. | Ramps and roofs. |
The Shapes and Kits drawers offer these ready-made. A kit is a set of parts that already fit together, such as a window with its opening cut, or a lamp with its bulb.
Hollowing
A part can be set to hollow, which cuts its space out of the parts that came before it. Put a box on a design and hollow a smaller box inside it to make a room, a hull, or a hollow tube.
Paints
Each part takes one paint from the design's palette. The paint library holds more than twenty groups, such as:
- Woods, Fine woods and Timber yard
- Metals, Worked metals and Precious metals
- Stone and ceramics, Stone, tile and plaster, Tiles and mosaics and Quarry
- Fabrics, Cloth and upholstery, Leathers and hides and Prints and weaves
- Glass and water, and Lights and screens
- Starship and Starship fittings, Spaceport and Dockyard and depot
- Garden and wild, Wild places, Food and nature and Sweets and snacks
- Modern home, Kitchen and pantry, Luxury and Legends
A paint is one of three kinds. A solid paint is the plain colour or texture. A glowing paint lights up, as a lamp or a screen does. A glass paint is see-through, for windows and water.
Textures come from the game's own block detail library, and you can mix your own colour on any texture. A paint can be used many times in one design.
The limits
The game keeps every design light enough to run in the world. Starforge refuses a change that goes over a limit, and tells you why in a sentence:
| Rule | Limit |
|---|---|
| Parts in one design | 400 |
| Paints in one design | 64 |
| Faces the world draws | Set by the size of the design. A bigger design may have more faces, but not without limit. |
| Separate pieces | One piece only: nothing may float |
The faces limit is worked out on what the world draws of your model, after the surfaces that cannot be seen are removed. Parts that are hidden inside the surface draw nothing, so they add nothing to it. Before an upload, a final check looks at every rule once more, and says how each one did.
Tidying
As you work, Starforge tidies the design so it stays light, without changing how it looks:
- A part whose every block is covered by what comes after it is removed.
- Paints that are the same paint twice become one, and paints nothing uses are removed.
- Boxes that together make a single box become that box.
Each tidy step is built again and checked block by block, colour by colour. A step that would change anything is undone.
Ships
A ship in Starforge must be walkable. Every helm, seat and bunk must be reachable on foot, through a door or hatch, and up a ladder, by a body a player's size that walks, steps up a block and falls. A cabin with no way in is refused before anyone buys or builds it.
For the basics of making a design, see Starforge: how to build.
← Back to the wiki · Last updated 25 October 2026. Mantlenaut is in alpha, so things change.