Multiplayer · in beta

Shared space

The other ship on your scanner might be a person. In shared space you fly in the same star system as other commanders, live: you see their ships, read their callsigns and ranks, and choose whether to fly together, keep your distance or fight.

Play now, it’s free How to join

How to join

One key, on the title screen

Open the game at witchspace.org.uk/play, on a computer or a phone. Nothing to install.
Press S on the title screen, or tap Shared space (beta), until it says on. It stays on until you turn it off.
Fly under Modern rules. Shared space is Modern only; Classic stays the 1984 game, alone.
Launch. As you leave the station the game tells you who else is in the system: “Shared space · 2 other commanders in Lave”. Hyperspace takes you to the next system’s, and whoever is there.

Want to meet someone? Pick a system and a time, and both launch there. Lave, where every commander starts, is a good place to look.

What you’ll see

Every commander is a person, and you’ll know which

Their ship, in their paint

Other commanders fly the ships they own, in the colours they chose at the yard: a Cobra in Diso Amber is somebody’s Cobra.

A callsign and a rank

A tag follows each one: their rank insignia, callsign and range, like ◆◆ CMDR Jameson · 0.8 km. Signed-out players show as guests.

A diamond on the scanner

Commanders are diamonds; the ships the game flies are short bars. A commander who has just fired on you turns red, and stays red for a while.

Ships running dark

Switch your transponder off (0) and you’re an unidentified ship until someone gets close enough to read your hull. The police will want a word.

Fair play

The server referees

Each star system has its own small server, and it decides what happened, not your browser.

Flying: it refuses impossible moves (too fast, teleporting, outside the system) and puts you back where you were.
Lasers: it checks the laser is fitted and not firing faster than it can, then judges the shot where the shooter saw the target. It keeps everyone’s shields and hull, and only the server says who was destroyed.
Missiles and ECM: lock on (T), launch (X). The server flies the missile and decides if it hits. An ECM destroys every missile nearby, yours included.
Collisions: both ships take damage, more the faster they met. A collision is an accident: no crime, no kill.
The law: firing on a commander makes you an Offender. Destroying one brings a Marshals warrant, anywhere there’s law. Anarchies have none: fly there at your own risk.

Your callsign

Sign in, and it’s yours alone

A callsign nobody else has

Sign in with your email (no password: we send a code) and your callsign belongs to your account. Without an account you fly as a guest.

One ship per account

Join from a second window or device and the first one leaves shared space, so nobody meets themselves or flies two ships at once.

The same commander everywhere

Your commander is saved to your account, so the phone and the computer carry on from each other.

Even when you fly alone

One galaxy, the same for everyone

With shared space off, you don’t see other ships, but you still live in the same galaxy as every other commander.

One clock: the news, the markets, the contracts and the shipyards’ build lines are worked out from the galaxy’s own clock, so a famine at Riedquat is a famine for everyone.
Firsts: the first commander to survey a world or finish a trail goes on the chart, and on the home page, for everyone to see.
Numbered editions: when the yard says 41 of 100 are left, that’s 41 for the whole galaxy.

Where it’s going

What shared space will become

Today you can see other commanders, fly together and fight. The plan is a galaxy where people work for each other, ride shotgun on each other’s convoys, enforce the law, crew ships together and build stations together. None of it is built yet. Every step below comes from a document you can read, and each is marked for what it is: designed (worked out, stage by stage), a proposal still open to argument, or an idea.

One evening, one day

You post a job on the Lave exchange: twenty tonnes of furs to Zaonce, 400 Cr on delivery, held in escrow. A newer commander takes it. Your wingmate, a Marshal in Lancer livery, flies escort. Halfway there a voice crackles on the local radio, faint and off to the left: a pirate band has heard about the furs, and somebody has bet against the delivery. Two of you hold them off; the third runs for the slot. The Mutual pays per hauler that arrives. On the way home you drop the survey data you picked up, and the colony you helped supply opens its first berth. Your guild’s name is on the charter.

None of that is a promise of how it will feel, and most of it isn’t built yet. It is what the designs below add up to.

Designed

Talk to each other

Text on the radio first: local radio for ships in range, hails to the ship in your sights, guild channels. Voice later, opt-in, fading and crackling with distance. Distress calls go out over the radio, so nearby commanders hear them. Mute, block and report ship with the very first message, never after it.

Radio and comms

Designed

Commanders kept on the server

Your credits, cargo, kit, ratings and record live on the server, and kills, bounties and salvage are decided there from what actually happened. So nobody can claim a rank or a ship they didn’t earn. Future market events mix in a secret seed whose fingerprint is published in advance and revealed afterwards: a shared economy that’s provably fair.

Servers and hosting

Designed

Work for each other

Contracts are claimed, so two commanders can’t fly the same one. A trader who needs more than one hold can post haulage jobs for others, with the cargo and fee held in escrow. Delivery contracts lock in a price for next week; futures let you bet on where prices go. And where money moves, pirates follow: someone who bet against a delivery has a reason to hire them. Cargo insurance becomes a product.

Economy and exchanges

Designed

Fly in wings

Escort a company convoy through dangerous space, paid per hauler that arrives. Defence and bounty contracts for fighters. Pirates who fly in wings are worth more to the commander who brings them down.

Companies and contracts

Proposal

Build the galaxy together

The first commander to bring home a mineral find decides which company develops it, for everyone. Every commander’s deliveries move the same build, and the station rises by its moon over days, in front of the whole galaxy. Guilds will post contracts of their own, and compete with the Big Four.

Discovery to development

Proposal

Guilds and the law

Guilds with team insignia, channels and their own news networks, with limits so no guild can corner a market overnight. Commanders who witness a raid are witnesses the server believes. Player kills counted in the combat rating, under the same law as everyone else.

Combat rating

Idea

Join the Marshals

A clean record, a high rating and a run of Marshal missions earns a Lancer in Marshal livery, issued by the server so nobody can paint themselves as the law, and withdrawn the moment a Marshal commits a crime. Marshals answer warrants and break blockades.

Ideas

Idea

Crew a ship together

Big ships crewed by friends: a pilot, gunners on turrets, an engineer routing power between shields, engines and weapons, a navigator plotting jumps and reading the scanner.

Ideas

Proposal

Stations run by players

New stations on the frontier, run by players, guilds or the community, earned by contributing as well as trading. Never bought with real money, and never a takeover: a fair, rules-bound station is always a jump or two away.

Player-run stations

Proposal

Servers run by the community

Later, volunteers host star systems on servers of their own, so the galaxy can outgrow us and outlive any one host.

Servers and hosting

Want a say in the order? Vote on the ideas board, or argue a design in GitHub Discussions. The community decides what comes next.

Found something broken? That’s the most useful thing you can tell us. Fly shared space with a friend, and report what broke or email hello@witchspace.org.uk.

In shared space, your position, callsign and rank are sent to the other commanders in your system while you’re there, and nothing is kept after you leave. Privacy.

Play now, it’s free