Config

Configuration

Every NeroColonies setting, in config/nerocolonies.properties. The file is written on first launch with each key at its default and a comment describing it, and it is hot-reloadable with /neroland config reload.

Every gameplay key is server-authoritative: the server decides and clients are told. The one exception is telemetryEnabled, which is client-local — anonymous crash reporting is a personal opt-out that a server must never force on or off.

Crash telemetry

Key	Type	Default	Server-authoritative	Purpose
telemetryEnabled	boolean	true	no — client-local	Send anonymous, NeroColonies-only crash reports (Sentry, EU servers): stack trace, mod/MC/loader/OS/Java versions, your other installed mods, this mod's config, recent in-game actions, anonymous stability and timing data. No IP, username, UUID, world data, colony ownership or chat; file paths scrubbed of your account name. false opts out of all of it. See Telemetry and ../PRIVACY.md. Read once at bootstrap, so a change takes effect on restart.

Claims and caps

Key	Type	Default	Range	Server-authoritative	Purpose
maxColoniesPerPlayer	integer	3	0–64	yes	How many colonies one player may own at once. 0 disables founding new colonies.
maxColoniesTotal	integer	200	1–10,000	yes	Server-wide colony cap. The safety net behind the per-player cap; also bounds how much work the colony tick can ever create.
claimRadius	integer	48	8–512	yes	Beacon claim radius in blocks. RANGE upgrade modules add to this per colony.
minColonySpacing	integer	192	0–8,192	yes	Minimum distance between two colony beacons in the same dimension. A placement inside this radius is refused with a translated message rather than silently allowed.

Population and performance

Key	Type	Default	Range	Server-authoritative	Purpose
colonistsPerColony	integer	24	0–256	yes	Population cap per colony. Housing capacity can never raise the roster above this.
founderColonistCount	integer	2	0–8	yes	Colonists that arrive with a newly placed colony beacon. They exist without housing (they are what builds the first housing) but still count toward colonistsPerColony and maxLoadedColonists. 0 disables founders, which also means autonomous construction never starts until you build housing by hand.
maxLoadedColonists	integer	300	0–5,000	yes	Global cap on colonist entities alive at once across all loaded colonies.
colonyTickIntervalTicks	integer	100	20–12,000	yes	How often a colony processes production, food and morale. Colonies are staggered across this interval so N colonies never tick on the same game tick.
colonyTickBudgetMs	integer	5	1–200	yes	Millisecond budget for colony processing per game tick. The remainder of a batch is deferred to the next tick rather than blowing the tick time.
aiActiveRadius	integer	64	0–512	yes	Distance from an owner or access-list member within which colonist AI runs at full rate. Beyond it the goal selector runs at a quarter rate and pathfinding is suspended.
housingScanIntervalTicks	integer	600	100–24,000	yes	How often the claim is rescanned for housing blocks to recompute capacity and comfort.

Offline catch-up

Key	Type	Default	Range	Server-authoritative	Purpose
catchUpMaxHours	integer	24	0–720	yes	Cap on the offline window a colony catches up on when its chunk reloads. 0 disables catch-up entirely (colonies then only ever produce while loaded).
catchUpEfficiency	double	0.5	0.0–1.0	yes	Multiplier applied to production and consumption during offline catch-up. Below 1.0 so there is no incentive to chunk-load a planet for free yield.

Life support and food

Key	Type	Default	Range	Server-authoritative	Purpose
foodPerColonistPerCycle	integer	1	0–64	yes	Food items consumed per colonist per colony tick. 0 makes colonies never hungry.
oxygenMbPerColonistPerCycle	integer	20	0–10,000	yes	Millibuckets of oxygen gas burnt per colonist per colony tick to hold life support.
oxygenGeneratorEnergyPerTick	long	40	0–1,000,000	yes	Energy per tick the colony oxygen generator draws while running.
lifeSupportGraceTicks	integer	1200	0–72,000	yes	How long life support stays DEGRADED before it is considered FAILED. Failure drives morale decay; it never kills a colonist.

Morale

Key	Type	Default	Range	Server-authoritative	Purpose
moraleBase	double	50.0	0–100	yes	Morale baseline before any weighted term is applied.
moraleWeightHousing	double	20.0	0–100	yes	Weight of the housing-comfort term in the morale sum.
moraleWeightFood	double	20.0	0–100	yes	Weight of the food-stock term in the morale sum.
moraleWeightLifeSupport	double	30.0	0–100	yes	Weight of the life-support term in the morale sum.
moraleWeightCrowding	double	15.0	0–100	yes	Weight of the overcrowding penalty in the morale sum.
moraleWeightHazard	double	10.0	0–100	yes	Weight of the planet-hazard penalty in the morale sum. Only ever non-zero when a planet mod is installed and reports a hazardous planet.
moraleChangeRate	double	2.0	0.01–100	yes	Points morale moves toward its target per colony tick. Morale is never snapped.
moraleWorkStopThreshold	double	20.0	0–100	yes	Below this morale jobs halt and colonists idle. Colonists are never deleted.
moraleMinMultiplier	double	0.25	0.0–1.0	yes	Output multiplier floor at zero morale. Production is a curve down to this, not a cliff.

Jobs and exports

Key	Type	Default	Range	Server-authoritative	Purpose
jobSlotsPerColony	integer	4	0–64	yes	Base number of simultaneously worked job slots per colony. Research raises it.
jobBaseRateMultiplier	double	1.0	0–100	yes	Global scalar on every job's production rate.
exportBufferSlots	integer	18	1–54	yes	Slots in the beacon's export buffer. Overflow blocks further export production rather than voiding items.
exportValueMultiplier	double	1.0	0–1,000	yes	Scalar on the credits paid when an export entry is sold.

Autonomous construction

See Construction for what these actually govern.

Key	Type	Default	Range	Server-authoritative	Purpose
constructionEnabled	boolean	true	—	yes	Whether colonies build their own structures from the datapack blueprints. false leaves every structure to the player; nothing else changes.
constructionBlocksPerCycle	integer	2	0–64	yes	Blocks a colony may place per colony tick while building. Deliberately small: a colony growing visibly over minutes reads as a colony, one that snaps into existence reads as a command block.
constructionUnsuppliedFactor	double	0.25	0.0–1.0	yes	Build-rate multiplier while a structure's materials are not in colony storage — the colonists fabricate from scrap instead, for free but slowly. Put the materials in storage and the same build runs at full speed. 0 means an unsupplied colony never builds at all.
constructionRequiresColonist	boolean	true	—	yes	Whether a colony needs at least one living colonist to build. This is a roster check, not a proximity one: block placement is colony-tick logic and never depends on a colonist actually reaching the site.
maxAutoStructures	integer	12	0–128	yes	Total structures one colony may build for itself. Each blueprint also carries its own smaller max; this is the ceiling over all of them.

Outposts

Key	Type	Default	Range	Server-authoritative	Purpose
outpostsPerColony	integer	4	0–64	yes	How many outposts one colony may parent.
outpostClaimRadius	integer	16	4–256	yes	Claim radius of an outpost beacon.
outpostColonistCap	integer	2	0–64	yes	Colonists an outpost may hold.
outpostJobSlots	integer	1	0–16	yes	Job slots an outpost may work.
outpostMaxDistance	integer	512	16–16,384	yes	Maximum distance between an outpost and its parent colony, same dimension only.

Privacy

Key	Type	Default	Range	Server-authoritative	Purpose
accessLogEnabled	boolean	false	—	yes	Off by default. When on, a colony records {player UUID, action, timestamp} rows for administrative review — never chat, never IP, never coordinates. Rows expire after accessLogRetentionDays. See ../PRIVACY.md.
accessLogRetentionDays	integer	7	1–365	yes	How long an access-log row is kept before the retention sweep deletes it.
erasureOwnedColonyPolicy	string	transfer_to_server	transfer_to_server / dissolve	yes	What happens to colonies owned by a player who requests erasure: transfer_to_server (the colony keeps running, ownerless — a co-op server is not griefed) or dissolve (the colony record is deleted).

Ecosystem integration

Key	Type	Default	Server-authoritative	Purpose
gateWritesEnabled	boolean	true	yes	Whether founding a colony opens Core's first_colony progression gate. NeroColonies never requires a gate to be open; this only controls the write.
thresholdEventsEnabled	boolean	true	yes	Whether colony food, oxygen, morale and structure-completion threshold crossings are published on Core's event bus for other mods. Scope is a colony id, never a person.
linkModuleEnabled	boolean	true	yes	Whether the NeroLink companion module is registered. Snapshots are per-player scoped and never enumerate other players.

See also

• Admin guide — which of these to reach for, and when
• Construction — founders and the autonomous build loop
• Colony basics — what the claim, morale and catch-up keys actually govern
• Data storage — the privacy keys in practice
• Telemetry — telemetryEnabled