3 Easy Changes Keen Can Make to Address Space Engineers' Gameplay Balance Issue

Luca shared this feedback 3 years ago
Submitted

Hey, this is coming from someone who does play / stream official multiplayer vanilla survival a lot (3000+ hours on SE), just pointing that out so you guys know it's a suggestion from someone who's intimately familiar with the game's mechanics c=

I think these changes I'm suggesting won't be too hard to implement, won't break anything, and will make the survival gameplay much more balanced and enjoyable for everyone (and make people play longer and more people play!)

I also made a video of it: https://youtu.be/tiar7t_s3xc

So here's the suggestions;

  1. Jetpack acceleration should be significantly reduced
  2. People shouldn't spawn with a grinder
  3. There should be a block that makes voxel within an area undrillable other than safezone block

And here's the explanations of why;

  • As of right now, the Risk VS Reward balance of the gameplay is pretty imbalanced - if anyone really wants to they can destroy anyone's build without investing in anything, and just using the jetpack + grinder combination they can easily avoid turrets altogether or circle around them until they run out of ammo. By making the jetpack accelerates much slower, it would be much harder to do these cheese methods, and it will give small grid combat vessels more purpose previously occupied by this jetpack method, all without breaking the jetpack's other purposes (building, etc)
  • As of right now, it's very easy to respawn over and over again either through the respawn menu close to someone's base / build, or by parking your ship / survival kit next to someone's base or build, and keep coming with a jetpack + grinder, if people spawn without a grinder they will have at least to make it first or bring in a supply of grinders, which I think is a more balanced approach
  • Now, this is more of a feature request than a change, but there's already safezone and that can be easily modified to make this block - basically this block will give voxel stations more practical purpose, as of right now there's 0 practical purpose of having a voxel station (asteroid or planetary / moon-based), with this block, it will make voxel stations much more useful and it will opens up a lot of fun gameplay possibilities. Or as I wrote it in the video;
    tl;dr: It will be like a safezone block but only prevents voxel
    within its area from being drilled, consumes much less power and
    doesn't require zone chip (200m range limit @ 1MW, for example)
    This would give stationary asteroid or planetary bases an
    actual, practical purpose as a much more defensible
    location or structure, or a place to store your ship, or ships,
    and force any attacker to actually attack with a ship
    or tank, or besiege the base
    It will open up many and much more fun gameplay
    possibilities, where the defenders can actually holdout
    their cave for example, as the attackers are forced to go
    on-foot or on small vehicle to get in and attack
    As of right now, even with the safezone block, it is more
    practical to put the safezone block on your ship anyway,
    the new "particle modulator" block will specifically make
    voxel stations much more purposeful
    And coupled with the other suggested changes, they
    will give small grid combat rovers or ships more reason
    to exist as cheap ways of attacking (instead of jetpack)

I wish you guys would consider implementing these changes + feature I'm suggesting! Cheers! c=

Replies (2)

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Your first point largely nullifies the second. If your base has adequate coverage, lower acceleration prevents a suit from getting within grinding range. Also, it would be really annoying to need to make a grinder for each respawn.

The voxel protector completely destroys realism, but otherwise it's pretty much perfect for adding depth to PvP without needing extra complexity. Bonus points for using only preexisting mechanics and minimizing complexity. I'd add something like a power penalty for having another protector within the radius though, so you can't just spam them around your base and completely prevent sabotage during a siege.

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I suppose, but I still think it would still be more balanced that way, because having a grinder at every spawn allows anyone to just keep going. But I see your point, and there might be an issue too if a group of people in their base is cornered for example and they don't have grinders at hand.

It would yeah, but SE already has jump drive and safezone so realism was already slightly out the window anyway. And I was thinking more in the line of the voxel protector block being limited in number and them not being able to overlap each other (maybe 1? But if that's too harsh maybe 7 so people can potentially make 1 for every planet, but I guess that would be a server-configurable setting anyway if implemented)

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True. Adding respawn costs would help a lot with that (and seriously, we need another use for Canvas), but removing respawn grinders would be a quick and effective fix.

Both Jump Drives and Safe Zones are almost necessary for convenience. This is visible in Gravity Generators as well, and most types of Landing Gear to some extent. While voxel protectors aren't quite up to that standard, I wouldn't be opposed to them being added.

I don't really like artificial limitations on these things. There's always a way to game the system and get away with making extra of whatever's limited. While extra power requirement or other "organic" limitations still have workarounds, I think they at least require more creativity to circumvent than hard block limits.

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About that voxels protectors, it will be good if they protect voxels only against drills, not against rockets, explosives, warheads and impact grids, and add need uranium for crafting warheads because warheads are more cheap than rockets and are more destructible. Also do dissable impact damage of unwelded blocks, because the dedliest thing in SE is person with jetpack and one steel plate in inventory.

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Allowing explosives defeats the purpose. It doesn't matter whether a back door is made with drills or explosives, it still isn't an interesting PvP interaction because of the impracticality of defending the whole surface area of an asteroid. On the other hand, cave bases with these devices have the potential to be offline defenses that aren't largely or entirely countered by carpet bombing.

Builders' kamikaze attacks are too powerful, but there's an organic fix. The reason that these attacks are effective is that turrets target functional blocks, not armor. Simply adding an option to keep firing on enemy grids regardless of functionality should be enough to put these attacks on the level of normal ramming.

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Maybe this "Particle Manipulator" could disable drills within it's range and make voxel stronger instead of indestructible. That way the voxel around planet bases/cave bases/asteroid bases isnt just a massive barrier, but more or a damage buffer that still allows for the voxel to take damage and get deformed by warheads and missiles, but not vaporized like it does currently whilst also making people engage in PvP correctly and not run/fly around like little rats. This would make the "Particle Modulator" seem more realistic as it could (in a scientific view) make the voxel denser therefore stronger and more resistant to damage. This idea i had might be alittle bit or a stretch from the origional purpose of the new block but it could also have an option in its menu (similar to how the safe zone menu is layed out) to also strengthen any armour blocks in its range also but as a result it would consume more power


Also the thing that u mentioned Denis about warheads needing uranium i completely agree with. Warheads should be much more expensive than missiles for obvious reasons and the fact they aren't already seems like quite an oversight on the dev's part.

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