Improvements for Space Engineers

Foxy shared this feedback 3 years ago
Submitted

Before you read this, take everything I say as my opinion for what Space Engineers should be.


I would like to first say that I love the idea of a space exploration game. Personally, it's a dream come true to play this game, and I have over 1,000 hours playing it. I just feel like the game is lacking a few significant components.

Tech Tree / Progression

To me, the tech tree seems dull. Building a block and just grinding it does not seem like a fun way to progress in the tech tree. I would love an overhaul to the research system. Imagine a block that could do research experiments or just give you points to research for blocks. It would require power and resources to run, and maybe you could buy research from other factions.

Thermodynamics / Max Speed

In real life, when exiting the atmosphere, there is a chance the probe may blow up because of atmospheric drag. I find it really dull flying a probe from a planet to space, just pointing up and waiting until gravity is 0.

The max speed should also be increased, but have limitations from the environment. Going too fast in an atmospheric environment will cause the ship to blow up due to drag. Going too fast in space will cause massive damage due to dust particles hitting the spaceship at high speeds. On land, the max should be 112m/s. Yes, I know no land vehicle will go that speed in SE and not blow up, but the fastest car IRL goes 123m/s. Flying, the top speed should be 900m/s, but it would be more challenging to reach. You would need to shape the vehicle to help tear through the air molecules to go faster. The shape of the vehicles would determine the max speed (At least a safe max speed). In space, you should be able to go any speed, any speed but FTL. If SE added a shield to reflect the dust particles from hitting the spacecraft, it would stop the spaceship from blowing up.

Space Travel / Aerodynamics

The distance of the planets is too close. If SE did add all these features, then the distance between planets would need to be increased. IRL, the moon is like around 360,000 km away from Earth, In SE, the moon is about 150 km away. The distance would just make players get a better tech to go that distance. There should also be orbits/a better gravity mechanic. IRL rockets have to go up then sideways to stay in space.

I would love to create a plane in this game without using thrusters. Really not much to say here, lol.

Food / Animals

Is the character a robot? No, because he/she can die of lack of oxygen. So why do they not require food/water to survive? There can be a machine that turns ice into water, and you can hunt for animals for food. Maybe, later on, you could even domesticate them for food and even as pets.

Painting / Rust

The painting system seems a little cheat to me. You should have to use materials to get the type of paint you want, and there should be a painting tool in the game.

Overtime blocks should form rust from rain. This would decrease efficiency, and it would eventually make the block non-functional. To fix the rust, you would need steel plates.

Adbandon stations / Blueprints

It would be cool to see abandon stations with components or research in space or on a planet. Maybe even obtain a rare blueprint. The stations may still have a security system that you could trigger. Launching drones to attack you or even blowing the station up.

I feel like using blueprints are OP. The projector should be a very late game item after getting most of the research done.

Power / Planets

I don't see how putting a wind turbine on a grid will power it with no visible cables for connection. Have the player connect the power blocks to the function blocks using wires. They can come in different sizes and shapes.

Obviously, by increasing the speed on planets, you would need to create a wider environment for the player to explore. It would also be cool if there were seasons on the planets, natural disasters, or even attacks from AI factions. There is a lot of potential here.

Replies (2)

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While there are ways to have better tech, it's also difficult to create a good tech tree with only what we have. I think that, while the current system can help new players not be overwhelmed with so many block choices, the best option at this point is to remove it and wait for more content.

Regarding speed limits, you should know that we already can have issues with blocks "teleporting" through each other with 100 m/s collisions. Increasing the speed limit significantly could make running the game difficult for players with lower specs, and drastically increase the requirements to run a server. Also, high speeds by themselves aren't necessary because we have Jump Drives for long-distance travel.

We have Jump Drives, which prevent long-distance travel from being alternately boring and incredibly dangerous. And remove the need for the distance between planets to be anything more than impractically long. Orbits are impossible because they'd require speeds that would likely be difficult to handle for most players. I'd also note that planets and moons are scaled down drastically, so the distances don't need to be exact.

Water is a fairly "flat" requirement. No matter where you are, ice is scarce but not impossible to find, and the only solution for thirst is to find it. Food, on the other hand, can get interesting. While hunting is one possible solution, that puts heavy limitations on space travel. Have you ever seen a video of someone trying to take the current mobs out of the atmosphere? Farming in space or on alien planets can have unique challenges though.

Painting is mostly inconsequential. Painting tools might be interesting, but my personal opinion is that they could end up being annoying when you just want to color your ship. And rust, apart from likely causing issues with sim speed whenever your base gets rained on, would definitely just get annoying. Imagine having to go out and weld up all the exterior blocks every time it rains.

There already are some limited forms of random encounters, although most of them don't launch drones. Projectors do seem like a very late-game block though.

The game engine only does grids, voxels, and a few other things like safe zones. How would these power cables be implemented without taking up unreasonable amounts of space?

We have some forms of AI attacks, in the form of pirate bases. However, seasons might have only marginal effects, and natural disasters could range from being inconsequential to requiring far too much computing power. More specific ideas on both would help in terms of understanding new gameplay and feasibility.

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A lot of the ideas I said were a little over the top and unrealistic for our current technology IRL. With the power cables, it might be a visual thing that would automatically make cables attached to blocks. Or it could be a thing you had to place to provide power to something. Or it could just be simply a type of texture that you can paint. There are so many possibilities. What I was thinking about natural disasters were weather disasters, like tornados. Just something that would pose a greater challenge and make the environment more hostile. The Rust still could be added. Rust would only start generating after like say 15 hours after a block has been built. Then it would keep getting worst. If these ideas were implemented into the game it would be years down the road. I like the idea that all odds are heavily stacked against the player. The player is in an escape pod when they first spawn in so, you would think it would be difficult to survive. One idea I forgot to include in my post is to scale down the jetpack. I feel like the jetpack is a little OP once you have unlimited hydrogen. It should only be used in space with low to zero gravity.

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Purely cosmetic cables might still have issues, and not really add much to the game. I'm not sure how "a thing you had to place to provide power to something" is any different than a reactor, but it seems like it wouldn't really do all that much outside of fairly specific circumstances.

Even long-term rust gets annoying. Is there any reason to require going out and rewelding the entire exterior of the ship every so often? I think that maybe it could work with treated armor blocks that don't rust, but otherwise it's just additional work.

The jetpack is a little too powerful, but one of the main reasons that it exists is for convenience while building. I would be in favor of nerfs, but not so much that it's unable to hover in normal gravity.


While making ideas about years down the road does avoid many limitations, I think that Space Engineers won't last long enough by itself to implement many of these. There are already some issues stemming from the VRAGE engine, and I think it's more likely that Keen makes a sequel with better basic design and more clear goals from the beginning, rather than getting to the point where many of these are possible.

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This guy named Marcus made a good mod, which shows what I would like for cables in SE.

https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=2244070861

I don't really see a problem with it if it was in the base game. You would connect the cables to a power source and connect it to your production block, then it would work!

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