v1.189: Spawn Near Players System "Sticks" to One Person and Can be Exploited to Find Enemies

You can't jump the jumpdrive on a timerblock, unless you have a mod that lets you do that.

It doesn't lol

maybe this is actually an intended feature so everyone doesn't just sit hiding in a safe spot indefinitely

it changes the rules, you can still survive, you just have to find a way around the exploit, if you never spawn on your base you'll never be vulnerable to this exploit, and when you do spawn on it, you need to have it be in motion, just drifting in space should be sufficient, maybe a jump every now and then, and when you're done you jump it away and hop out of cockpit before it finishes it's jump initiation phase so that your space suit is never located in the landing zone

are you defending keen here?

Im betting we could still find people, spawn 10-20 times and head to the point where all of the gps points are ~500 km from

Gps satellites are 20 200km from you and you only need know 5+ to get 3D lock with few m accuracy. So yeah 5x spawn + bit of math and no distance will save you.

I assume this for everything now, no one gives a shit until they show/say it. We live in the age of apathy.

I hear that guy's a real wanker

This is not an option, or at least not an easily decipherable option, for dedicated servers. Some servers have been able to increase the range past 25k, but when the server I play tried this it would spawn people 5,000 km from center, which effectively killed space spawns due to a world size of 400k.

i agree. the "requirement: for space spawn and space pod may now be an "option", but both are still the default of any vanilla server. Near player spawning is slightly harder to exploit, but is still totally broken. it only takes about 15-20 minutes to find what ever player grid you were forced to spawn next to, and you will continue to spawn in the near area even if they destroy you and all of your grids. Server-spawned space pod "bombers" persist, so I would avoid any server that does not specifically correct the issue until this retarded "feature" is actually "fixed" or removed.

you arent supposed to, if you want offline raiding confine the world size to be smaller, but who wants to get raided while offline every week? Its a great way to kill server population.

Offline raid? Just about everytime I have used it there has been people there at their base doing stuff. It's a great to create PVP with people that go out of their way to avoid it.

People who go out of there way to avoid pvp usually play SP anyway. And while you may raid online most people wait for the base owner to log before doing anything either because they themselves are afraid of a fight or to prevent the base owner from having a chance to jump the base away. The point stands that if you are continuously blowing up peoples bases its very hard to get any actual pvp.

I agree. even if the victim jumps away, you will still spawn next to them with space pod or spacesuit respawn. It takes only slightly longer to find them at their new location.

i have stopped playing space engineers because of this, takes all the fun out of it. im really surprised to see this is still an issue.

I've been offline raided trwice on the official keen server ... It suck I just started the game. If it even easier to find me I quit.

I know that such game breaking fixes ought to be addressed quickly by dev, for some reason keen seems to disregard PVP related issues entirely. Given this apparent fact, I suggest this wonderful community made mod curtousy of MysterD at Fountain core.

https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=1684792507&searchtext=PvP+spawning

After some abuse by a couple of the locals, this was brought in and has been successful for the last 6 months. Aside from this, all we can do is scream bloody murder and hope that keen starts focussing on important stuff instead of rushing to fix dumb shit like skins...I mean really, keen? Are you not making money with this game already? Hard to recommend a game to people when we know you guys are delivering a broken product.

And while I'm at it I may as well direct you and anyone else who cares about SE PVP to this one as well. Even if they continue to do NOTHING with these issues I think it's important that we at least voice our concerns. So please upvote this post as well, as it's also a keen thing, not a result of mods.

https://support.keenswh.com/spaceengineers/general/topic/191-023-missiles-teleport-through-ship-armor-not-stations

Tested it, spacesuit does not spawn you on other players.

The spawn distance option only counts for spawn pods, which have a timer of usually 10 minutes.

so not solved , just takes longer to exploit?

no.

Okay, but isn't the updated spawn system targeting spawn pods instead of players?

Have you tested all above ideas, since latest relevant update?

And are you sure that not even leaving the pod behind as a "honeypot" has any effect on the spawn targeting?

To my knowledge it has never targeted spawn pods, only players. "I tested it with a Space Pod. Spawned about 8 times, marked each spot, and went to the middle. There was the newest asteroid base and player on our server." He is not targeting a spawn pod, just using the spawn pod spawn option instead of the space suit spawn option.

Okay, but is it certain that this new player was using one of the above ideas? What if the new player you found didn't delete the pod GPS or still has a spawn pod standing somewhere in the base?

Wouldn't you agree that to be truly sure in this test, it is necessary to be tested the other way around - that is, does other players find you if using one of the ideas above?

It is the player that the spawn exploit targets, it has nothing to do with a spawn pod. And yes, it has been used to find people that were developed far beyond the spawn pod phase.

Okay that's unfortunate. Thanks for the clarification!

Then I hope the player-targeting at least will be updated to target random players at each spawn, making it impossible to triangulate anyone.

Supposedly there is a torch plugin that solves the problem.

I have 3k hours of pvp server experience (4k hours in total) and moderate two servers.

The spawn mechanic spawns on players, this includes players in cryo pods and beds as their character stays loaded in. The spawn mechanic only spawns on players when spawning with the space pod. When spawning with the space suit the game spawns you in a random place dependent on the world size of that server.

Space suits have no timer, space pods have a timer that can be set to a longer respawn limit timer. Players often think that the space suit spawn mechanic spawns near players, either because they are mis-informed or intentionally as that would be a way more serious problem, with the objective to abolish spawn distance. Honestly it just causes the problem not to be taken seriously. Spawn distance should be optional, and the spawn location sticking to players should be looked at.

The first problem is that the spawn pod spawn mechanic tends to stick about 50% of the time on the same player, even with 10 other players on the server. This allows for triangulation of a player's location. Setting the spawn pod respawn limit timer to half an hour or longer and setting spawn distance to the max does make it much much harder to find a player. It would take hours if the player is in mid space away from any asteroid. Part of this problem is not being able to turn off player to player spawn distance.

But the way larger but largely unknown problem is that spawning in a spawnpod does not load in asteroids until you get out of the seat except for those already loaded in by other players. This can be used to find people. If the player you're spawning on is playing on an asteroid, or he has mined asteroids around him, then the game saves the voxel deformation on those asteroids. When staying in the spacepod seat, those asteroids will be the only ones loading in. Instantly giving you the player his location, or mining locations. Even at 25km spawn distance you can see the asteroids. This can be for example be mitigated by resetting voxels every hour on the server, but that prevents underground bases from being built.

This is a bit of a segue but it's how I deal with it in regards to a survival pvp server, and it may be interesting.

As a start, on the server spawnpod pvp is considered griefing and bannable to dissuade spawnpod raiding, and only keep it for scouting. The attack needs to be done with or from a grid built by the player.

I advise new players on the survival pvp server is to never make an asteroid base, as it wont be able to move away when found by someone, and is easily found. To make a mobile base ship, keep it in mid-space away from asteroids (hunting players check asteroids that are on the spawn distance). And when they have a jump drive, to jump their ship when logging off, and then suicide their character (rather than use a cryo bay). This ensures the base to be jumped away from any players that would have spawned nearby, and make it near-impossible for anyone to spawn onto it until the player is back online, preventing offline raiding. And it's good practice to jump the base once every one or two hours of gameplay 50 to 100 km. It also helps to store unused ships like combat ships jumped away from the play area.

I see this hasnt been fixed yet... anyway back to my own solo game...

@Logan Zentz, you misunderstood. I said you need to spawn using the spawnpod in order to spawn on another player. Spawning without a spawnpod, thus floating in your spacesuit and nothing else, does not spawn you on players.

"The spawn mechanic spawns on players, this includes players in cryo pods and beds as their character stays loaded in. The spawn mechanic only spawns on players when spawning with the space pod."

Have you watched the original trailer? Do you realise what the game has always been about?

and they wonder why Official servers are empty