VANILLA COMBAT SUGGESTION - both for SE 1 and SE 2

Hello this is a love letter to Space Engineers both 1 and 2 as I strongly believe both would benefit from the listed bellow.

NO AI has been used at writing this. I am not native English and some sections were written while sleep deprived. But everything was written with heart and consideration.

In an attempt to make vanilla combat more entertaining instead of the current stale “doge” evade and endurance fights I have the following suggestion.

The bellow all should be considered a unified system rather than modular parts.

This mostly focuses on space combat.

1. Make ship speed relative to mass and volume in such a way that the larger and heavier the ship the worse its top speed will be.

Let’s have the following hypothetical example. (Values are used just as a reference not final, they are used just to have a point of reference)

*Space top speed should be increased to 200m/s

A flagship – 250 Ktons – should be able to reach a top speed of 90m/s – 100m/s with a boost

(Boost you keep pressing W and burn extra fuel, ideally thruster color change)

A fighter – 15 Ktons – should be able to reach top speed of 180m/s – 200m/s with a boost

(Boost you keep pressing W and burn extra fuel, ideally thruster collor change)

*This speed change suggestion is to allow lighter craft to perform better in their “ROLE” where they traded armor for speed and will prevent the awkward cases were 2 ships blast off at 100m/s in the same direction without ever being able to have contact for engagement.

*The speed/top speed/boost calculation should be rather logarithmic – note: inspired by the mod relative top speed. – This section is highly inspired by the MOD RELATIVE TOP SPEED and I consider adding its features to vanilla game and refining them would make space engineers more engaging and rewarding as well as allowing more builds to be viable.

2. All ballistic weapons, should have a longer projectile lifetime.

Let’s take the case of the humble Gatling gun – small grid – has a range of 800m and an AI tracking range of 800m.

Ideally the projectile should keep existing after the 800 m have been passed but as it happens IRL it should lose its energy meaning that past 800m its damage should start going down but the projectile should still exist.

Considering the in game item says 25x184mm NATO I suggest that the projectile life should end ~ 2km and at that and from 800 to 2km to lose its damage linearly.

Side note: For SE1 especially it is a CRIME that over all these years the Gatling turret is not modeled to follow in simmilarity after the PHALANX CIWS

3. ROCKETS? MISSILES? TORPEDOS? CIWS? SENSORS

Despite the fact that block made torpedo's/rockets are fun to made I want to iterate that they will certainly benefit from the change suggested at 1.

To this I also want to add that the current array of weaponry is lacking in the guided weaponry.

In this regard I believe the following should be added.

3.A - Offensive

a. “Short range missile” – missile with on board radar missile. A humble missile with an onboard “Heat seeking” guidance package modeled after any IRL - 1 – 1.5 km range

b. Rockets buff – considering rockets are meant more for burst damage “bombing” in such a way the vanilla rocket launcher rate of fire is quite lacking. An increase in fire rate akin to how IRL launchers where they can shoot fast salovs or even empty the launcher in a second would be a great addition to the game.

An example of how to offset rocket damage and damage model in SE1 and SE2 would be my following realistic principles a launcher that immitates a HUEY’s hidra pod of rockets should be able to dish out damage to vehicles in its relative “weight” range.

While still being able to cripple targets but not dealing critical damage then incentivising the player if he wants on bigger craft to build bigger “relative” to the craft size launchers rather than spamming multiple instances of the same damage.

Let’s assume “the light version of

c. “Medium range missile ” – Line of Sight missile, for this case let’s imagine a more robust missile being launched from a launcher block but it will need 2 parts it will also need a “TRACKER” to always keep looking at the target for such the laser antenna could be used to “designate” a locked target (by the current locking system) in order to have all laser guided missiles follow that specific target – 1.3 – 2 km range

d. “Radar communication long range missile” – a missile that should be guided by the launcher ship radar systems and if the radar systems fail the missile should self destruct or continue the heading and detonate shortly.

Obviously ballancing the missiles is subject to change but they should at least feel like missiles.

3.B – Deffensive / Radar / PING OF DEATH / PASSIVE

I strongly believe that space engineers, space combat should draw high inspiration from a mix of expanse, modern air dog fighting,children of a dead earth, submarine combat. And in turn would benefit GREATLY from such a direction expanding the creative possibilites of upcoming content.

a. RADAR SYSTEM ACTIVE/PASSIVE – A ideally TIERED (small medium big) radar block should be added that should allow one to scan a sector ~50km actively and to be able to hear passive signals ~100km away doing so the passive signal should be created proportional to a ship power consumtion rating thrust power and ship size.

This radar system should be able to PING and identify within the sector, asteroids, grids, debries and should provide visual feedback

b. RADAR SYSTEM ACTIVE/PASSIVE – additionally directional radar panels to suit different configurations and weight ratings should be added as well as laser receivers to serve as EARLY warning systems.

c. JAMMER SYSTEMS should also be added to allow one to spoof or increase the time it takes for the enemy radar to calculate one’s possition and in order to offset such systems they should either be of high power draw or unable to both use RADAR and JAMMER systems in the same time ideadlly damaging the blocks and then giving them a usage cooldown

d. Observation camera turrets, camera turrets that would have the ability to “optically” scan a direction and provide a “suspicion” % let’s assume that a player A is in space at coods x y z 0 0 0 and another player B is at x y z 0 0 15 if the camera looks at the z 15 direction from the perspective of the player should be able to hit a “SCAN” that would lock the camera in position draw more power and then even tho the ship is not in the game visual “render” (I say this cause I mostly play on 7/5 km rendering) the camera should then give off a “suspicion” % this would basically work simmilar to radar system in principle but more manual and more “gambly” sometimes giving false positives and unable to identify fried foe debries it would just “suspect” that something is there “past” render range but within a sizeable 10/15km range

4. NOVELTY

RT CAMERA FEED LCDs – inspired by the RT Camera feed plugin – I believe that it would be very immersive, for the cases where one is locked in 1st person perspective only to command his ship from an array of Cameras or Camera turrets that feed to a multitude of displays

HOLOGRAPHIC RADAR display – inspired mostly by eve’s UI or other holographic display mods – using the onboard radar if the ship has any passive or active a high interval holographic represenation at a “low resolution” should represent the ship postion relative to the radar range and resolution

DIRECTED Energy weapons – this is more of a simple nudge that laser weaponry both offensive and defensive would serve as a great additon to the current weapon systems – the drawback would be the high power demand heat management and heatsing requirements