Switch to sandbox

Take your flying off the shared world and onto this phone, where you can warp time, save a world and lose a rocket for nothing.

You need this to practise a landing, to try a design you expect to crash, or to skip a four-hour coast that the shared world will not let you skip.

Steps

  1. Open Settings. Tap the small figure at the foot of the hangar's parts column, below the palette. The Settings screen covers the hangar.
  2. Drag the list up to WORLD. It is the section under SOUND, with a paragraph explaining what sandbox does.
  3. Tap Sandbox off. It turns amber and reads Sandbox on, and the line under it warns that turning it back off will drop whatever you flew.
    The Settings screen scrolled to the WORLD section, the sandbox paragraph, and the amber Sandbox on button with its warning line beneath.
    The switch reads back its own state: amber and Sandbox on means you are in your own world.
  4. Tap Close and fly. The chip at the top of every screen now reads SANDBOX instead of the shared world's.
  5. Warp time from the map. In flight, open MAP. A rate button appears in the top right under the menu button; tap it and pick a rate. The ladder runs 1×, 2×, 4×, 8×, 20×, 50×, 100×, 1000×, 3000× and 5000×. The button then reads the rate you picked, and the game says it once across the middle of the screen.
    The map in flight in sandbox, with the 50× rate button in the top right corner and the words Time warp 50× across the middle.
    The rate button, and the world running fifty times over underneath it.
  6. Save the world if you want to come back to it. The flight menu's SAVE and LOAD only appear in sandbox. A world saved mid-flight is loaded back mid-flight.
  7. To leave, tap Sandbox on again. It reads Sandbox off, the shared world is fetched back, and the line underneath says you are in it.

What you should see

The chip at the top of the screen reads SANDBOX for as long as the switch is on, including after you close the game and open it again. Your credits, tech, buildings and crew look exactly as they did, because they are the ones your account holds, and they do not move while you are here. Everything you launched in sandbox is dropped the moment you switch back.

Heads up
Warp needs a coasting orbit clear of the air. Ask for a rate on the pad, under thrust or inside the atmosphere and the game says so and stays at 1×. Reminders do not reach your phone from a sandbox world either, since its clock only runs while you are playing.
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