Icarus: Prospects, Open World, and the server lobby

A prospect is Icarus's version of a world save. There are three kinds:

• Missions: timed drops with a set objective.

• Outposts: a persistent base area with no timer.

• Open World: a persistent, full-size sandbox with no timer. This is what most server groups want.

Your server can hold many saved prospects, but only one runs at a time. When none is running, everyone who joins lands in the lobby instead of the world. That is where prospects are created, loaded, and swapped.

1. Start your server from the dashboard and join it in game.

2. You land in the lobby.

3. Create a new prospect there and pick the Open World type.

4. Everyone else joins the server normally and drops into the same world.

To play another saved prospect, expand your server's Overview card: the Basic tab shows Prospect with Switch Prospect beside it. Pick a prospect and press Switch to its name: a running server powers down and starts again on that prospect, even with Auto-Resume on, and resumes it after that. To create a new prospect, or to switch from inside the game, an admin types /ReturnToLobby in the in-game chat, which sends everyone back to the lobby to load or create another prospect. Starting a new prospect does not delete the old ones, so your saved Open World stays on the server and you can load it again later.

These live on the Details tab of the Overview card in your server settings.

• Auto-Resume Prospect (on by default): after a restart, the server reloads the last active prospect on its own. It remembers that prospect even when the server starts on a different machine. Turn it off if you want the server to wait in the lobby every time so an admin picks what runs. Change it here and nowhere else: Haptic writes ResumeProspect into your ServerSettings.ini from your dashboard every time the server starts, so editing that one key in the file does not stick.

• Players Can Launch Prospects (on by default): anyone in the lobby can create or load a prospect. Turn it off and only admins can, which is the setting you want for a curated server where you control what is running.

• Players Can Delete Prospects (off by default): leave it off. With it on, any player in the lobby can permanently delete a saved prospect. It is off out of the box so a stray click or a griefer cannot wipe your group's progress.

Being an admin in Icarus means typing /AdminLogin followed by your Admin Password into the in-game chat. That password is generated for you and shown in the same settings card, so nobody gets admin by accident.

Changes save from the dashboard and apply on the next start. See changing your server settings for how saving and restarting work.

Max Players is a normal server setting, set to 8 by default.

Eight is the count Icarus officially supports, and dedicated servers can go higher: the dashboard lets you set up to 20. Expect a real cost for that, because every extra player adds meaningful CPU and memory load, and a crowded prospect is the most common reason an Icarus server starts to feel heavy. If you push past 8, watch performance and give the server room (understanding your memory budget).

Your prospects are .json files in %LOCALAPPDATA%\Icarus\Saved\PlayerData, in your Steam ID folder, under Prospects. Quit Icarus first, then upload one, or the folder, with Upload World on Backups. It joins the server's prospects; a same-name one is replaced after a backup. To play it, load it from the server's lobby in game; if another prospect is running, an admin types /ReturnToLobby in the chat first. If a prospect's file was renamed, for example GD Styx (1).json, we save it under the prospect's own name, because Icarus only loads a prospect from a file named after it. If a prospect's .json is missing, empty or was copied while the game was saving, we restore it from its automatic backup with the most play time (<name>.json.backup) in the same folder and tell you which one we used. Characters stay on each player's PC and work on any server, so they never need uploading. Mods are not part of a world upload: add them on the Mods card.

Moving a whole server from another host? Upload its Saved folder, which holds PlayerData and Config. It replaces every prospect on this server (the current ones are saved as a backup first), and when its ServerSettings.ini names the prospect your old server was running, the server starts that one. Your own prospects that come with it, from your Steam ID folder, are added beside the server's; where both have a prospect with the same name, the server's copy is kept. The old server's settings file is not copied: set your server's settings on its Overview card. If you upload only PlayerData and it holds several prospects, load the one you want from the server's lobby.

A new world deletes every prospect. New World on the Backups card clears all of your server's Icarus data, not just the prospect that is currently running, and its window says so. If you only want to stop playing one prospect, switch to another with Switch Prospect, or leave it in the lobby instead. Your prospects are saved as a backup first, so a restore brings them back; see Start a new world and pick its seed.

Do not change ShutdownIfEmptyFor and ShutdownIfNotJoinedFor from -1. Both keys are already in your ServerSettings.ini, set to -1 on purpose, because Wake & Play already puts your server to sleep after about an hour with nobody on. Waking is manual: you press Wake up in your dashboard when you want to play, and the server never wakes on its own. Generic "best server settings" guides tell you to set them to a number of seconds. Do that and the game shuts itself down a few minutes after the last player leaves, which looks exactly like a crash.

Your other edits to ServerSettings.ini do stick, apart from the server password and the Admin Password, which your dashboard writes into the file on every start too. Open the file from the ServerSettings.ini chip next to Quick access in your Files card.

Reach us in Discord or at support@haptic.gg. Include your server name, the prospect type you are trying to run, and a screenshot of the lobby or settings screen you are stuck on.