Space engineer

[LupusExMachina]

I was wondering if anyone already got this game and played it. It looks like one of the nicer post MC voxel games and I'm thinking about buying it. Some opinions about it first would be nice though.

edit:
Should provide a link, dumb me :D
http://www.spaceengineersgame.com/

[DaveYanakov]

Extremely resource intensive. It appears to track every block in a build as a block rather than linking them up into some form of subassembly so if massive builds are your plan you may want to rethink.

The physics are solid and they've come a long way with the updates. It's getting to be worth the play time.

[dawnraider]

It definitely looks interesting, but one thing that may not pan out well:

Community feedback is expected and will direct our future decisions.

It makes a bit of sense, but they will need to be very cautious and not throw design out the window.

I'll definitely keep an eye on it, as it seems really cool, though I am going to wait until it develops a bit more.

[FlowerChild]

I picked it up on sale awhile ago, and it's definitely interesting. There's not much game to it at present though, it being pretty much the equivalent of MC's creative mode, minus the redstone/automation components (although that's what they seem to be working on in the most recent patches).

Anyways, only good for a few hours of fooling around right now IMO, but from what I've read on their forums, "survival mode" seems to be a near future priority to start tying it together into a game.

The general clunkiness of a lot of the UI makes me suspect that they don't have a designer on the team, but what's in there is certainly technically impressive.

[BinoAl]

It definitely looks interesting, but one thing that may not pan out well:

Community feedback is expected and will direct our future decisions.

It makes a bit of sense, but they will need to be very cautious and not throw design out the window.

It's a bit sad that it's gotten to the point where so many developers are letting the players take nearly full reign over their games... Just another awful trend that Minecraft has started, I guess

[FlowerChild]

Just noticed on Steam they've released survival mode. Will definitely be giving this a try again tonight.

[FlowerChild]

Meh. Not much there really.

The underlying mining mechanics are cool, but there's just not much "survival" to it. Reading over some of what the developer has said, I'm also wondering if there's going to be any really. They seem to be creative focused, and I'm getting the impression the only "game" part to this will be in MP.

If you already own it, it's worth a try and entertaining for a little bit until you realize there's no opposition or goals and begin to wonder why you're building stuff in the first place :)

As a general complaint, I also don't much care for how player built structures and asteroids are two distinct things and you can't really just build with an asteroid as the foundation of your construction. That parts feels extremely gamey.

[DaveYanakov]

I believe it is due to the way asteroids are immobile in the engine. Even after blowing one in half with massive warheads there is no momentum imparted to what is left.

[Gunnerman21]

I just bought this game yesterday and I think it's pretty good, but survival is only a challenge for people that haven't read the wiki. As long as you don't run out of power you'll be fine. Although, one thing I have noticed is the timescale in my world slows down by about 3x just randomly for tens of minutes at a time... I can't seem to stop this lag and I don't have any big structures, just the starting yellow ship and a small platform I built into the side of an asteroid in the Four Asteroid map.

All in all, this game (like so many) has great potential.

[DaveYanakov]

Supposedly there will be environmental challenges added in to reinforce the core of working out practical designs for ships and bases. Take with a large grain of early access salt.

[FlowerChild]

New update out, and it looks like a creative game finally started to take automation at least somewhat seriously:

[Gormador]

It seems that the user interface (in general) needs some attention. Is it as unpractical as it appears on video or am I mistaken?

[FlowerChild]

It seems that the user interface (in general) needs some attention. Is it as unpractical as it appears on video or am I mistaken?

Yup, it's pretty impractical, and I've mentioned before that interface design is one of the weaknesses in this title. There's like 3 or 4 separate keys for accessing your inventory in different ways in combination with whatever you are pointing at for example, which is just whacked. I know when I'm playing I'm constantly trial and erroring the various keys before getting the one I want.

In this case though, I think the interface for controlling various systems with a single keypress or whatever (which is really what the automation aspect is missing) is very low-hanging fruit that they're bound to get to. My guess would be the next release for that actually, as I think they just magnified that problem substantially with these new features.

[FlowerChild]

Hehe...too funny. Last time I played a ship-based grinder was exactly what I wanted to be able to build next:



So that I could disassemble captured ships faster and not have to constantly go back and forth to them to take off individual parts with limited inventory space.

And there it is in the very next update :)

I've mentioned it before, but they're starting to do some very cool stuff with automation in this game.

[Gunnerman21]

when some sort of AI comes along, i really hope we can make self replicating drones which take apart ships, offload the material to their hive, and construct more of themselves... good luck building anything on my server ;)

If the pattern of development is continuing as it is now, large ship drills or ship welders are most likely coming next. Which would definitely calm like.. half the space engineers population, because large ship drills are a must for automatic asteroid consuming ships. When imagine that I think of the giant robot eating transformer from the transformers movie.

Although the last wheels update did do something to the main code, because now i cant start the game without getting asteroid texture glitches.

[FlowerChild]

Personally, what I think they're doing is trying to give specific purpose to each class of ship, so I'm not certain large drills would be next, or would make sense in that context.

The way I'm seeing it right now, there's a progression in survival mode where you start off with just your suit, manually mine ore, work towards building a small ship to act as an upgrade to your hand drill, then start working towards a large ship to act as a large grinder.

So, the progression in broad stokes would be: manual mining, partially automated mining with small ship, start hijacking passing ships (which I suspect will have additional gameplay and challenges involved than at present and may involve a subset of making a small ship suited to the purpose), manually disassemble said ships for resources instead of mining (they produce far more and more valuable resources than mining does), construct large ship with grinder to automate dissassembly.

Keep in mind that asteroids are finite, whereas passing ships are not, which tends to also suggest the above is where they're headed. I think the ships are meant to be your primary source of resources in the later game, not asteroids.

Having say a small ship grinder or a large ship drill would at least partially break that progression and eliminate the need for multiple ship types for different jobs. I don't think it would necessarily be the right move as a result. Also, in terms of motivating the player to move forward, if you have a large ship drill, they may feel less motivated to start hijacking ships at the appropriate point in the progression and instead continue mining asteroids until the environment is devoid of them. If the large ship is where you get the large grinder on the other hand, it becomes the clear upgrade path the player will be drawn towards.

I think this might also be where they're heading in saying they don't want large ship welders but are going to have some kind of 3D printer instead. I suspect the 3D printer is meant to be so large that it's only really effective as a station-based part and is intended to be the primary gameplay motivation towards building a station. A ship based welder would muddy that progression and thus at least partially reduce the player's desire to work towards that goal.

Anyways, if you look at the different ship-classes as being somewhat informal "tech levels", I think all this will make more sense.

[Sarudak]

So you're basically forced to become a pirate?

[FlowerChild]

So you're basically forced to become a pirate?

I hate the word "forced" in this context (or in most things game-design), and much prefer terms with less negative connotations like "guided", but yes, I feel like that's where it's heading. In my own survival play I started noticing my own motivations were being subtly guided towards it and upon further analysis of the tech tree, I do think it's intentional, and frankly, quite cool as you hardly notice it unless looking closely (from the "WE WANTS LARGE DRILL!" comments I keep seeing, I don't think most people notice it or understand it if they do). It creates clear gameplay progression without it feeling "forced" :)

I'm not too impressed by this team's UI design, but I am starting to become impressed by their gameplay design. I still strongly question the decision to make asteroids and ships entirely separate object types that don't mesh together in a voxel style game, but otherwise there's some really neat stuff in there.

But in terms of "forced", I don't think they're forcing you to do anything more than say I am forcing you to become a soul-consuming monster with BTW ;)

[FlowerChild]

As an aside, I suspect that one of the next releases we'll be seeing will be defenses for the AI ships that pass through.

We got those ships a few releases ago. Two releases ago we got systems for automatic collection and distribution of resources. The release before this one we got automated turrets which seem suspiciously suited to AI vessels. This release we got the ability to disassemble those ships effectively.

You do the math :)

[DaveYanakov]

The guns are already on those passing ships and now the rocket launchers to disable them are active. Combined with the booby traps I believe the intention is to require a large ship capable of both stripping those defenses and latching on to tow the prize back to base or at least bring it to a stop without activating the AI ships thrusters in order to grind it to a pulp. Small ships would be useful in multiplayer since they can avoid the large rockets from large ships.

We're just waiting on a faction system so that the guns can have a target list rather than just requiring decoys to be included in your ship to make things more difficult. Things are starting to get very interesting for this title.

[FlowerChild]

The guns are already on those passing ships and the rocket launchers to disable them are active. Combined with the booby traps I believe the intention is to require a large ship capable of both stripping those defenses and latching on to tow the prize back to base or at least bring it to a stop without activating the AI ships thrusters in order to grind it to a pulp. Small ships would be useful in multiplayer since they can avoid the large rockets from large ships.

Well, so far what I've been doing to capture those ships is use a small ship with a lot of thrusters, disable kinetic dampeners on approach, perform what is basically a docking maneuver to attach with landing gear, exit my ship, EVA into the enemy vessel, and make my way to the bridge to control the prize from there.

It's already fun, but if the turrets were active, it would be very interesting indeed. I may start putting decoys on my boarding ships so that those turrets (in theory) try to take me out.

I think there may be a real progression to the targets that wander through as well. For example, those solar sailors seem to be the easiest to board, but overcoming their momentum and steering them back to your base is a real bitch due to their low power output. In that case, your towing method might be easiest.

Then you have the military escorts, which I suspect will be "high level" targets both with valuable resources on board and what feels like potentially heavy defenses to match. I suspect you will likely need a heavily armored and potentially armed ship to take one of those.

Things are starting to get very interesting for this title.

Yup, agreed. When it was just creative mode it didn't interest me much, but the survival aspect is really starting to come together and show promising direction.

I just really hope all the whining from the creative mode types doesn't fuck it up, but from what I'm seeing the devs don't seem too susceptible to that and seem to have a clear vision they're pursuing.

[DaveYanakov]

The mining ships are pretty well defended as well with both internal and external turrets. I am using one of them as a shipnapper but it would not make a very good combat ship at all. One of the private yachts would likely be a good first grab for my own strategy.

I've found it helps if I orient things so that the landing gear of my ships is in front of the cockpit as well. Makes the grab a whole lot easier.

[FlowerChild]

I've found it helps if I orient things so that the landing gear of my ships is in front of the cockpit as well. Makes the grab a whole lot easier.

Hehe...valid point, but I suspect all my time in KSP has made docking in Space Engineers a joke for me. I just pretty much slap the landing gear wherever :)

[DaveYanakov]

So the new update was a real game changer. Turrets will now track moving targets and missiles, missile turrets are up and running. Raiding the NPC ships just became a major challenge. I am thinking of designing a ship that uses detachable slugs of heavy armor in combination with certain other systems in order to sneak in. Not sure how to deal with the interior turrets yet.

Also conveyors can curve now

[FlowerChild]

So the new update was a real game changer. Turrets will now track moving targets and missiles, missile turrets are up and running. Raiding the NPC ships just became a major challenge. I am thinking of designing a ship that uses detachable slugs of heavy armor in combination with certain other systems in order to sneak in. Not sure how to deal with the interior turrets yet.

Also conveyors can curve now

Yeah, I played that one last week, and the AI defenses definitely change things :)

The curved conveyors weren't really something that made a big impression as you could already do the same thing with the conveyor blocks. Guess it's a lower cost alternative when you just need to turn a corner and not actually branch, but it's not really new functionality.

I still find the conveyor system rather wonky though. It's difficult to predict its behavior and get it to operate reliably. I think they should really move to directional conveyors with clear inputs and outputs on the processing units so that how the resources are flowing is more explicitly stated by the player. Right now I find that having the system try to intuit what you actually want to have done is way too prone to error.