How to Change the Block and PCU Limits on Your Space Engineers Server

In Space Engineers, every block costs PCU (Performance Cost Units). Once the PCU budget is used up, the game shows PCU limit reached. and nothing more can be built. How much PCU there is, how it is split up and how many blocks are allowed is set in your world's config file. There is no field for this in the dashboard – but the dashboard does not overwrite these entries on startup either, so your change is kept.

The settings at a glance

All settings are in your world's Sandbox_config.sbc file:

How the PCU budget is split up

BlockLimitsEnabled determines who TotalPCU applies to:

You set the number of players under Change max players. The server recalculates the budget from the current settings on every start – so after a restart, a change also applies to existing players and factions. If you lower the limits below the current usage, existing builds are kept, but the affected players can only build again once they are below the new limit.

Change the limits

1. Stop the server
   Stop your server via the dashboard.

2. Create a backup
   Create a backup or download a copy of the Sandbox_config.sbc file. This lets you restore the previous state if something goes wrong while editing.

3. Connect via SFTP
   Connect to your server via SFTP, or use the file browser in the dashboard.

4. Open the config file
   In your world's folder /config/Saves/World/, open the file Sandbox_config.sbc.

5. Adjust the values
   Find the entries and change the values between the tags. In this example, the PCU budget is raised to 300000:

   <MaxGridSize>0</MaxGridSize>
   <MaxBlocksPerPlayer>0</MaxBlocksPerPlayer>
   <TotalPCU>300000</TotalPCU>
   <PiratePCU>50000</PiratePCU>
   <MaxFactionsCount>0</MaxFactionsCount>
   <BlockLimitsEnabled>GLOBALLY</BlockLimitsEnabled>
   

6. Start the server
   Save the file and start your server.

7. Check the change
   While the world loads, this line must appear in the server console:

   Sandbox world configuration file found, overriding checkpoint settings.
   

   It shows that the server has applied your Sandbox_config.sbc.

Limits for individual block types

With BlockTypeLimits, you limit how often a specific block may be built – for example refineries or assemblers. You edit the list in Sandbox_config.sbc as described under Change the limits. In the preinstalled world, it is empty:

<BlockTypeLimits>
  <dictionary />
</BlockTypeLimits>

Replace this block with your limits and add one <item> per block type:

<BlockTypeLimits>
  <dictionary>
    <item>
      <Key>Refinery</Key>
      <Value>24</Value>
    </item>
    <item>
      <Key>Assembler</Key>
      <Value>24</Value>
    </item>
  </dictionary>
</BlockTypeLimits>

• <Key> is the name of the block type.
• <Value> is the allowed number – a whole number up to 32767.

Valid names from Keen Software House's default list include Assembler, Refinery, Blast Furnace, Antenna, Drill, InteriorTurret, GatlingTurret, MissileTurret, ExtendedPistonBase, MotorStator, MotorAdvancedStator, ShipWelder and ShipGrinder.

Remove the limits entirely

For an unlimited PCU budget, you have two options:

• <TotalPCU>0</TotalPCU> only removes the PCU limit. MaxGridSize, MaxBlocksPerPlayer and BlockTypeLimits still apply.
• <BlockLimitsEnabled>NONE</BlockLimitsEnabled> turns off all block and PCU limits.