Atmospheric Immersion

In a lot of games of a similar nature and genre as Space Engineers, many gamers, and quite possibly engineers, love the sights and sounds of the games they play; its one of the best ways to achieve immersion.

There's a few suggestions I'd like to make that have been mentioned and talked about I'm sure at one point or another throughout the years; and I will list them below:

• Flora and Fauna
• Creatures/NPCs
  
• Water Environments (Already been mentioned for years I know)
• More Survival Features (Basic Needs, Exposure & Perhaps medical)
• Environmental Disasters

A lot of these, as said previously, have been mentioned before but I wanted to re-iterate my thoughts on the subject, and that of many other gamers. I'll explain each point below with an example or fictional scenario to give some idea, hopefully the point I try to make gets across!

• Flora and Fauna

- We have trees, grass and Ice lakes. While they do add a sense of "nature", and sure is better than nothing, there's so much more potential. Ignoring the issues of flora remaining after a reloaded save, having more in-depth environments such as better rendered and modeled trees, would really add to the game. Things like different kinds of trees with colored leaves, types of grass or flowers; in addition to a weather system it would seriously add to the games immersion!

• Creatures/NPCs

- Probably one of the most demanded features to the game, we have wolves and funny alien bugs that launch themselves at mach two into orbit; with improvements to their AI behavior and pathfinding of course. Variety! Its good that we have factions now, with different kind of threats and allies; but having more variable life both passive and aggressive, either of an earth-like nature or alien, it would be a ton more fun.

• Water Environments

- A timeless demand from the community surely, but whenever I think of water environments I think of all the cool planets both modders and the developers could add. I think of the movie waterworld a lot in this regards, and of course, of subnautica; but who hasnt thought of how cool it would be to build in an underwater environment? Especially for PvP and multiplayer servers, not to mention if fauna ever get implemented. Just thinking of a space ship (maybe even with new tech added to the game) rising out of the water would be amazing; so much could be done with this!

• More Survival Features

- We have a lot of cool implementation so far with the basic exposure (running out of energy) and weather, but our engineers surely can't tinker on O2 and batteries right? Implementing a more in-depth survival experience such as needing food, water and better exposure could create new potential variety in planets; both in the modding community and dev team, and a challenge!

• Environmental Disasters

- They happen, however unfortunate. Meteors are a fun concept; but why stop there? What about other threats such as: Volcanic Eruptions, earthquakes, tornadoes etc. Just to name a few. Having new threats and challenges would add more entertainment and challenge to the game.

Overall, a lot of these features may not be possible to implement in the game as everything does have limitations, but that does not change the fact that these features would really improve immersion. Players already have a lot of fun ways to entertain themselves in Space Engineers. Combatting drones, running economy, multiplayer wars and roleplaying; engineering challenges. Theres just so much more potential, and in any other sandbox sci-fi game, you'll find players saying the same thing; more immersion and freedom to the players is hard to find in any one game. I personally haven't seen a game like Space Engineers that has all these fleshed out features to my liking, what a sight it would be to see them implemented either here, or in a future project.

Sorry for the lengthy post, thank you for reading!