Smart Assemblies Overview

Some EVE Frontier smart assemblies are programmable — you can customize their behavior in-game by deploying custom Move contracts.

Getting Started

Prerequisites to customize a smart assembly:

  1. Create a Character — your on-chain identity that owns all your assemblies. See character.move.
  2. Build a Network Node — anchor a network node at a Lagrange point. This is the power source for your base. See network_node.move.
  3. Deposit Fuel and Go Online — deposit fuel into the network node and bring it online to start generating energy.
  4. Anchor a Smart Assembly — create a smart assembly (e.g., Storage Unit, Gate, Turret) in your base. It automatically connects to the network node for energy.
  5. Bring the Assembly Online — the assembly reserves energy from the network node and becomes operational.
Tip

For local development and testing, all the above steps can be simulated using scripts. Refer to builder-scaffold so you have everything you need to directly write custom logic for your smart assembly.

🚀 Automate this with efctl

efctl can automate local environment setup, world deployment, and gate creation with a single command:
efctl env up

Programmable Assemblies

Each assembly type has its own extension pattern. The world contracts provide the core functionality, and builders extend behavior through the typed witness pattern:

Smart Gate

Custom rules for space travel (e.g., toll gates, tribe-only access). The gate owner deploys a custom contract that issues JumpPermits based on arbitrary logic.

Smart Storage Unit

Custom rules for item deposits and withdrawals (e.g., vending machines, trade hubs). The owner deploys a custom contract that controls deposit_item and withdraw_item operations.

Smart Turret

Custom targeting logic for defense structures. Turrets evaluate ships and NPCs entering their engagement range and maintain an on-chain priority queue for target ranking. Builders control two behaviors — InProximity (ships entering range) and Aggression (hostile actions such as starting or stopping an attack on the base) — and can inject custom logic through extension contracts. When the game detects a proximity or aggression event, it sends the turret the full target list along with an AffectedTarget vector describing what changed, and receives back a prioritized ReturnTargetPriorityList with (target_item_id, priority_weight) pairs.

Extension Pattern

All programmable assemblies use the same typed witness authorization pattern:

sequenceDiagram
    participant Owner
    participant Assembly
    participant Extension as Custom Extension

    Owner->>Assembly: authorize_extension of Auth
    Note over Assembly: Auth TypeName added to allowlist

    participant Player
    Player->>Extension: call custom logic
    Extension->>Extension: create Auth{} witness
    Extension->>Assembly: call with Auth witness
    Assembly->>Assembly: verify Auth registered
    Assembly-->>Player: operation succeeds
  1. The owner registers the extension’s witness type on the assembly
  2. The extension creates instances of its witness type to call assembly functions
  3. The assembly verifies the witness type is registered before allowing the operation

For complete extension examples, see the Extension Examples section.