Space Engineers

I found this game last week during the Medieval Engineers sale and got it for 15 bucks. So far I've put over two days of time into it, and I've gotta say I'm still having fun with it. I learned bit by bit, starting with small projects and working my way up to a carrier that has taken all my play time since yesterday to build, and I'm getting the hang of this. At least the design. I know survival mode will kick my ass if it's taken me hours just to design the thing.

I even made a faction on my own map, and started a Steam group for it. We're focused on the whole game, from mining to building to even fighting. I'm not that great a pilot, but the plan is to build multiplayer ships that require crews and let everyone find their skills. So I don't have to be a pilot.

If anyone's interested, look up the Wallaby Materials Combine group on Steam.

You can make the design in survival easier by designing in creative, then saving the ship as a blueprint (ctrl+b) and then using the blueprint with a projector in Survival and build the ship.

I did not know that, that is good information to have. I've got blueprints for a gunship, a fighter, my carrier, and some other partial stuff.

Got the game during the same sale. Built a scout ship, working on a carrier. Built a gunship using a gun mod, it proceeded to tear itself apart with the recoil of its own gun. I was somehow very happy.

I once built X wing with it. Then later built several of my own fighter craft.

I'm still in the learning stages. The carrier's my first really big project. I'm liking how it's turning out. Got two big bays for fighters, with six connectors on the floor and six on the ceiling. That's 24 fighters. A comfortable amount of space left to fill up in the central ship, and a shit ton of thrusters in every direction. All buried in armor to make it slightly harder to kill them. I've got an observation deck up front where I have the control console, though I'm not sure if I want that to be the bridge or just a navigation deck.

My computer ain't fast enough so I can't make a big ship.

I haven't actually flown it yet, so I don't know how it'll go. I know my computer lags when I fire too many rockets at a time. I built a gunship that mounted four launchers and four gats, but had to give props to a friend who placed extra gats around the cockpit on his and wound up with seven of the fricken things.

You know what would be cool? A craftable robotics system? That allow you to make big robots or small robots to pilot or serve as a AI companion.

Why yes, that would be cool. We have remote control drones, but they have limited range unless used with a relay.

And I'm not just talking drones. Like actual progression of robotics as we have them today. Like the robot astronaut developed by NASA.

I like the procedural damage system and the concept but I'm unoriginal and can't build anything to save my life.

Well you don't need to build original ships. You can build any ship from fiction if you try hard enough.

Go to multiplayer, join up with a faction and either mine to help others build, or fly for them once they've got the craft up. I suck at fighting, but that gunship of mine impressed a fighter/builder enough that he helped me finish it. Thing handled rather nicely in the base game, but I lost it because I got shot up by a mining carriage. I really need to learn to strafe.

I think I've entered a horrible feedback loop

go mining for half an hour > finish mining > start refining > get annoyed at slow refining speed > build more refineries > add more drills to mining ship > go mining for half an hour....

This either ends when my graphics card craps out or I manage to eat an entire asteroid in one go.

Second itteration of my gunship has managed to survive shooting its own guns. Progress!

Enclosed the cockpit in heavy armor. Ship is piloted through cameras, that way a hit to the cockpit is unlikely to cripple the ship.

edited 4th Mar '15 11:36:44 AM by Ghilz

Can you still use weapons in camera mode?

If so, that sounds like my next design change too. I lost my prototype gunship to a blown up cockpit. Might have at least retrieved the damn thing if the enemy hadn't added me to the corpse pile right after.

Aye. I DL'd a pretty snazzy looking ship but the cockpit was up front by some glass. I think I lasted ten seconds.

Right now my carrier's cockpit is in the front, buried behind three panes of glass in the front and two to either side for a multi angle view. Not sure if it's going to stay there, but for now it's where it is. I'm considering burying the bridge, and keeping the observation deck for navigation. Instead of letting the Captain see everything, s/he'll have to rely on his/her navigator to do the job.

Yup, you can man weapons through cameras. It's in fact useful for long range weapon that some mods have as the cameras can zoom like a scope, while a default cockpit view cannot. Of course the trade off if the ability to look around inside the cockpit and see what's around your ship, but third person view deals with that.

On larger ship, cameras are almost a necessity for some weapons as it can be nearly impossible to line up the shots otherwise since the ship is so big the crosshair has nothing to do with where the guns are pointing.

edited 4th Mar '15 7:29:51 PM by CobraPrime

Right now I'm not working with mods, but once I get the hang of the game I'll have to try them out. Any good ones I should keep in mind?

A few of the laser blasters. I'd also suggest the armored thrusters and a lot of mods by Video Sage. Such as the Cryopods and his Industrial Thrusters.

I kind of like the more realistic non-laser approach of the base game. Otherwise those do seem like good mods to get. I always bury my thrusters inside the ship's armor to make it harder for enemies to kill them.

I haven't had much luck with the vanilla guns, I might check out lasers and see if they're a bit better at taking down turrets. Honestly some sort of EMP or something that would let me get within 200ms of an NPC without eating 10,000 rounds directly into my face would be good. I find it really hard to salvage a ship if I have to blow half of it up first.

ACS Battlecannons give you tank-like cannons (Available in High Explosive and Armor Piercing versions with different recipes) capable of sniping ship components beyond the turrets' ranges.