To execute the Starminer power transfer spinning fix, select your ship's large power nodes and manually toggle off both the "Receive Power" and "Give Power" settings before initiating a docking sequence. This crucial step prevents the game's zero-G physics engine from entering an infinite energy feedback loop that causes your vessel to vibrate violently, drain all energy reserves, and spiral out of control. If your ship is already caught in the dreaded "warning: low energy" death spin, immediately pause the game and reload your last autosave to reset the physics grid.
If you have spent more than a few hours in CoolAndGoodGames' ambitious space strategy sim, you have likely encountered the most notorious physics glitch in the current Early Access build. You position your meticulously crafted vessel near a Scavenger Station, initiate a transfer to recharge your batteries, and suddenly the game engine loses its mind. Structural joints snap, Eonite Fuel vents into the void, and your multi-million credit investment becomes a spinning hazard. Beating this bug requires an understanding of how the game calculates structural integrity and grid connections.
What Causes the Power Transfer Spinning Bug?
Starminer relies on a highly complex, interconnected physics and energy grid system. Every module you place—from a T1 Power Storage unit to a massive T2 mount & drill node—has a physical weight, a center of mass, and an energy throughput rate. When you attempt to transfer power between two separate entities (like your ship and a station), the game temporarily merges their energy grids.
The spinning bug, affectionately dubbed "the wobble" by the community, triggers when the game's logic fails to reconcile the power transfer rate with the physical docking constraints. This is most notoriously experienced during Tutorial 2. Players are tasked with using the Restorer-7 ship to repair a station. The ship's grid goes online, the solar panels deploy, but a logic error causes the ship to rapidly cycle between "powered" and "unpowered" states.
This rapid cycling spams the UI with "warning: low energy" alerts. Because thrusters and stabilizers require constant power to maintain zero-G positioning, the micro-interruptions cause the thrusters to misfire. The ship twitches. That twitch applies torque to the structural joints. The physics engine attempts to correct the torque, overcompensates due to the fluctuating power, and the ship begins to vibrate. Within seconds, the vibration escalates into a violent spin that tears T1 beam connectors apart, scattering packages of Iron, Thorium, and Cobalt across the sector.
Implementing the Starminer Power Transfer Spinning Fix: Step-by-Step
Surviving the Early Access jank means taking manual control of systems the game assumes it can automate. The core of the Starminer power transfer spinning fix lies in isolating the big nodes before the physics engine has a chance to panic.
Step 1: Isolate the Big Nodes Before you approach a station like the Marie Curie or a Scavenger outpost, open your ship's grid overlay. Select the large power nodes—the primary connection points intended for heavy throughput. Manually toggle off "Receive Power" and "Give Power." By disabling the automated handshake, you prevent the grids from attempting a massive, instantaneous equalization that crashes the thruster logic. Dock using kinetic alignment, and only re-enable the transfer toggles once the physical connection is hard-locked and stable.
Step 2: The Autosave Reset If you are already in the spin, your thrusters are locked in a feedback loop. Do not attempt to counter-steer; manual inputs will only add more conflicting vectors to the physics calculation. Hit the ESC key immediately. Reloading the most recent autosave forces the game engine to recalculate the physical state of all objects in the sector. Upon loading, the "warning: low energy" spam will clear, and your ship will render in a static, stable position.
Step 3: Disable Remote Charging Remote charging is a brilliant concept executed poorly in the current build. The wireless transfer of energy between nearby grids frequently drops packets of data. When a mining laser or a T2 Gauss Gun expects 50 MW of power and receives 48 MW due to distance falloff, the grid stutters. Turn off remote charging entirely in the early game. Rely on hard-docking and localized T1 Power Storage units to keep your mining operations stable.
Ship Design: A Permanent Starminer Power Transfer Spinning Fix
Software toggles are a temporary bandage. A permanent Starminer power transfer spinning fix requires a fundamental shift in how you engineer your fleet. The game's structural integrity system is unforgiving; long, sprawling ships with spindly pylons act like tuning forks. Once the vibration starts, the length of the ship amplifies the frequency until the hull shatters.
The "Cubus" Meta Veteran commanders on the Steam forums have abandoned aesthetically pleasing sci-fi designs in favor of the "Cubus"—a brutally efficient, hyper-compact cube design. By condensing the ship's footprint, you pull the center of mass inward. A cube has virtually no extremities to act as levers during a physics glitch. When the power transfer bug triggers on a Cubus, the ship might shudder, but it lacks the leverage to spin out of control.
Mastering Structural Joints Never mount a T2 Drill or heavy mining equipment directly to a single T1 beam connector. The torque generated by the drill combined with a minor power stutter will snap the beam instantly. Instead, build redundant scaffolding. Use multiple T1 Parts Storage modules as structural anchors. They have high physical mass and excellent joint strength.
Radiator and Battery Placement Imbalanced ships die quickly. If you place all your T1 Power Storage units on the port side and all your radiators on the starboard side, your center of mass is compromised. When the thrusters misfire during a power transfer, that imbalance dictates the axis of the spin. Distribute your batteries, solar panels, and radiators symmetrically. A perfectly balanced ship can survive the energy grid feedback loop long enough for you to manually sever the connection.
Patch 0.33.1.0 and the Future of the Starminer Power Transfer Spinning Fix
The developers at CoolAndGoodGames are acutely aware of the issue. The release of Patch 0.33.1.0 specifically targeted the physics engine, with the patch notes proudly highlighting a "Preventing wobble (part 1)" fix and a dedicated "T2 Drill wobble/spinning fix."
To mitigate the energy starvation that triggers the loop, the developers aggressively buffed base power generation. The Nuclear power plant output was increased to a massive 500 MW, and additional power generators were hardcoded into the Marie Curie and Scavenger Stations. Furthermore, the Autopilot logic was rewritten to ignore engineers, fighters, and floating chunks of ore on a collision path, preventing the AI from initiating evasive maneuvers while docked.
Despite these massive under-the-hood changes, the bug persists in complex sandbox builds. Why? Because "part 1" of the fix addressed the symptoms—low energy and AI panic—rather than the root cause: the mathematical collision between zero-G thruster stabilization and instantaneous grid merging. Until the engine's memory leak is fully patched and the torque calculations are decoupled from the energy grid's tick rate, the manual node toggle remains mandatory for serious fleet commanders.
Frequently Asked Questions (FAQ)
Why does my ship explode randomly in Starminer? Random explosions are almost always the result of structural integrity failure caused by the power transfer bug. When your ship attempts to balance its energy grid with a station, micro-stutters in the thrusters cause the ship to vibrate. If your design relies on weak T1 beam connectors, this vibration snaps the joints, causing the ship to break apart and detonate.
How do I fix the 'warning: low energy' spam in Tutorial 2? The Restorer-7 in Tutorial 2 is notoriously prone to this bug. To fix it, pause the game and reload your autosave. This clears the physics loop. Afterward, ensure you manually turn off "Receive Power" on your large nodes before approaching the repair target.
Is the Cubus ship design mandatory? It is not mandatory, but it is highly recommended in the current Early Access build. Building a compact, cube-shaped vessel minimizes the ship's extremities, preventing the physics engine from applying excessive torque during a power grid stutter.
Will the developers permanently fix the wobble bug? Yes. Patch 0.33.1.0 introduced "part 1" of the wobble fix, adjusting T2 Drill mechanics and buffing Nuclear power plant output to 500 MW. However, completely resolving the issue requires deep engine-level rewrites to decouple zero-G physics from the energy transfer logic, which is slated for future updates.
Sources
- CoolAndGoodGames Patch Notes: Starminer 0.33.1.0 Official Release.
- Steam Community Discussions: "Parts Randomly Blowing off ship" and "Is the Energy system broken?"
- Reddit r/Space4X: Starminer Early Access bug reports and meta ship design analysis.