Dedicated Design Mode
In SE2, developers are improving the building system.
Key improvements for creative building that are already done include:
- Unified grid system – no more small vs. large grid choice; you have a single grid where you can place blocks of 3 different sizes: 0.25m, 0.5m, and 2.5m.
- Partial copy-paste and blueprinting of selected sections – something previously possible only through mods in SE1.
What has been announced:
- Projection Build in Survival, where you can design a grid without components — basically constructing a projection of blocks.
My Concern
I do not like the projection building system shown in the sneak peek.
The blocks appear semi-transparent, using a projection shader that makes building visually confusing and less clear than using fully constructed blocks. Even if the transparency issue could be fixed by adjusting opacity or making them non-transparent, there are still other drawbacks.
In Creative, you can use the Spectator Camera to move freely and reach otherwise inaccessible areas to place or remove blocks.
In Survival, you’re limited by your jetpack — especially in gravity wells — which makes this tool still less convenient than building in a creative world. This defeats the purpose of “not needing to load a creative world” to design your grids, making the feature feel underwhelming and like wasted potential.
Proposed Solution
I propose adding a Dedicated Design Mode instead.
When you enter this mode (either from a Projector Block or a new Design Station — for example, a table with a chair and monitors), the current grid you’re sitting in automatically loads, or you can start from scratch with a completely new grid or a subgrid of the existing one.
You would then see only what you’re building, in a separate virtual space — without other players, grids, planets, or distractions. This would also make it much lighter on performance and more focused on design itself.
In this environment, you wouldn’t fly around as your engineer, but instead use more traditional design-oriented controls — orbiting the grid, panning and zooming with the mouse wheel. This setup would allow room for dedicated tools and a full design interface instead of being limited by the small toolbar at the bottom.
Design Mode Features
A dedicated design mode could include:
- Full block catalog access with categories, search, and filters.
- Fill tools: select multiple faces and fill the volume between them with armor blocks, the game will propose the most efficient armor layout using exiting blocks of in correct size and orientation for minimal block count.
- Shape tools: for making large ramps, planes, rings, spheres, slopes etc. Similar to "fill tool" but with different presets and parameters for the shape
- Partial copy-paste made much easier and more precise.
- Access to the blueprint library directly inside the mode.
- Grid statistics display with details like mass, block count, PCU usage, acceleration, rotation rate, fuel and power capacity, etc.
- Option to preview grids from your library or the Workshop before placing or building them — even comparing multiple grids side by side.
Once we have this kind of dedicated design environment, the possibilities become endless.
Console and Cooperative Design Considerations
For console players, this new control scheme might be more difficult to adapt, as it’s less suited to controllers. Even if optimized, console players would likely be more limited in what they can do compared to PC users.
As for cooperative design, it would require additional development effort to allow multiple players to work on the same grid in this mode — a feature that’s already technically possible through creative building in SE1 and SE2.
However, I believe the value of a dedicated design tool far outweighs these drawbacks. It would offer a huge step forward for both creativity and usability, making SE2’s building experience truly next-level.
I like this feedback
Update after trying the projection building and confrontation with many other players
There are too many gameplay mechanics layered on top of each other in this game. Even as someone with 10+ years of Space Engineers experience, it’s hard to wrap my head around all the controls. For a completely new player, this must be overwhelming.
As a character or pilot you can do many different things:
Each of these could be a game on its own. But here we have a common UIs and controls for all those situations, which means it is extremely difficult to do those UIs and controls to be good and intuitive.
On top of that, we’re mixing tools, weapons, consumables, emotes, actions, building blocks, blueprints ( did I forget something? 😄) all on the same toolbar. That’s just too much.
I strongly believe there should be at least a separate mode for projection building, with its own UI and controls.
In that mode:
How to activate a “projection build mode”? My favorite idea would be a small drone attached to your backpack.
Ideally, this drone could be deployed even while sitting in a cockpit or seat, and it could “phase” through some obstacles (cockpit glass, walls) when deploying on top of your character or when returning.
For example:
This kind of system is used in many other games, and I think it would fit Space Engineers extremely well.
The drone itself could be crafted in the gearforge and occupy a consumables slot. By default, players could spawn with one—similar to how we currently spawn with basic tools, so it's no issue for FTUE. There might be other, more advanced, craftable drones, plus modded ones ofc.
As a bonus, you now can nerf the overpowered jet-pack on planets 😄
In any case, having a dedicated projection building mode would be more accessible, less confusing, liberate your regular character hotbar from being cluttered with blocks you don't need all the time. With a drone, you can easily fly around your building project, fit through the smallest holes and place projections where you normally would be able to.
Thx for reading. Comment and suggest your alternatives.
Update after trying the projection building and confrontation with many other players
There are too many gameplay mechanics layered on top of each other in this game. Even as someone with 10+ years of Space Engineers experience, it’s hard to wrap my head around all the controls. For a completely new player, this must be overwhelming.
As a character or pilot you can do many different things:
Each of these could be a game on its own. But here we have a common UIs and controls for all those situations, which means it is extremely difficult to do those UIs and controls to be good and intuitive.
On top of that, we’re mixing tools, weapons, consumables, emotes, actions, building blocks, blueprints ( did I forget something? 😄) all on the same toolbar. That’s just too much.
I strongly believe there should be at least a separate mode for projection building, with its own UI and controls.
In that mode:
How to activate a “projection build mode”? My favorite idea would be a small drone attached to your backpack.
Ideally, this drone could be deployed even while sitting in a cockpit or seat, and it could “phase” through some obstacles (cockpit glass, walls) when deploying on top of your character or when returning.
For example:
This kind of system is used in many other games, and I think it would fit Space Engineers extremely well.
The drone itself could be crafted in the gearforge and occupy a consumables slot. By default, players could spawn with one—similar to how we currently spawn with basic tools, so it's no issue for FTUE. There might be other, more advanced, craftable drones, plus modded ones ofc.
As a bonus, you now can nerf the overpowered jet-pack on planets 😄
In any case, having a dedicated projection building mode would be more accessible, less confusing, liberate your regular character hotbar from being cluttered with blocks you don't need all the time. With a drone, you can easily fly around your building project, fit through the smallest holes and place projections where you normally would be able to.
Thx for reading. Comment and suggest your alternatives.
Update after trying the projection building and confrontation with many other players
There are too many gameplay mechanics layered on top of each other in this game. Even as someone with 10+ years of Space Engineers experience, it’s hard to wrap my head around all the controls. For a completely new player, this must be overwhelming.
As a character or pilot you can do many different things:
Each of these could be a game on its own. But here we have a common UIs and controls for all those situations, which means it is extremely difficult to do those UIs and controls to be good and intuitive.
On top of that, we’re mixing tools, weapons, consumables, emotes, actions, building blocks, blueprints ( did I forget something? 😄) all on the same toolbar. That’s just too much.
I strongly believe there should be at least a separate mode for projection building, with its own UI and controls.
In that mode:
How to activate a “projection build mode”? My favorite idea would be a small drone attached to your backpack.
Ideally, this drone could be deployed even while sitting in a cockpit or seat, and it could “phase” through some obstacles (cockpit glass, walls) when deploying on top of your character or when returning.
For example:
This kind of system is used in many other games, and I think it would fit Space Engineers extremely well.
The drone itself could be crafted in the gearforge and occupy a consumables slot. By default, players could spawn with one—similar to how we currently spawn with basic tools, so it's no issue for FTUE. There might be other, more advanced, craftable drones, plus modded ones ofc.
As a bonus, you now can nerf the overpowered jet-pack on planets 😄
In any case, having a dedicated projection building mode would be more accessible, less confusing, liberate your regular character hotbar from being cluttered with blocks you don't need all the time. With a drone, you can easily fly around your building project, fit through the smallest holes and place projections where you normally would be able to.
Thx for reading. Comment and suggest your alternatives.
Update after trying the projection building and confrontation with many other players
There are too many gameplay mechanics layered on top of each other in this game. Even as someone with 10+ years of Space Engineers experience, it’s hard to wrap my head around all the controls. For a completely new player, this must be overwhelming.
As a character or pilot you can do many different things:
Each of these could be a game on its own. But here we have a common UIs and controls for all those situations, which means it is extremely difficult to do those UIs and controls to be good and intuitive.
On top of that, we’re mixing tools, weapons, consumables, emotes, actions, building blocks, blueprints ( did I forget something? 😄) all on the same toolbar. That’s just too much.
I strongly believe there should be at least a separate mode for projection building, with its own UI and controls.
In that mode:
How to activate a “projection build mode”? My favorite idea would be a small drone attached to your backpack.
Ideally, this drone could be deployed even while sitting in a cockpit or seat, and it could “phase” through some obstacles (cockpit glass, walls) when deploying on top of your character or when returning.
For example:
This kind of system is used in many other games, and I think it would fit Space Engineers extremely well.
The drone itself could be crafted in the gearforge and occupy a consumables slot. By default, players could spawn with one—similar to how we currently spawn with basic tools, so it's no issue for FTUE. There might be other, more advanced, craftable drones, plus modded ones ofc.
As a bonus, you now can nerf the overpowered jet-pack on planets 😄
In any case, having a dedicated projection building mode would be more accessible, less confusing, liberate your regular character hotbar from being cluttered with blocks you don't need all the time. With a drone, you can easily fly around your building project, fit through the smallest holes and place projections where you normally would be able to.
Thx for reading. Comment and suggest your alternatives.
I imagined dedicated seat with cryopod effect on character (be it table with monitors or maybe could look like Cyberpunk Netrunner station!) which takes player to dedicated design mode with tools for full screen design of blueprints.
And a drone is a cool idea for field works (could be FPV with character wearing VR gogles ;).
The character stays "aware", suit consumes energy, hunger, radiation if they will be added etc.
Basically kind of remote control experience but with dedicated controls and HUD.
Phasing through objects could be potential exploit in multiplayer and combat scenarios, so it would need to be protected somehow to act as current 3rd person view with limited distance of control maybe.
I think Subnautica made it quite right with their camera drones. They are very small so can enter places where player can't but are physical objects which can run out of energy, stuck or be attacked (but most predators just ignore them). Same could be in SE - tiny drone, deployed from backpack, but with limited energy, range and physical entity. It could be as tiny as smallest block but still limited by closed hangars, doors, safe zones etc.
I imagined dedicated seat with cryopod effect on character (be it table with monitors or maybe could look like Cyberpunk Netrunner station!) which takes player to dedicated design mode with tools for full screen design of blueprints.
And a drone is a cool idea for field works (could be FPV with character wearing VR gogles ;).
The character stays "aware", suit consumes energy, hunger, radiation if they will be added etc.
Basically kind of remote control experience but with dedicated controls and HUD.
Phasing through objects could be potential exploit in multiplayer and combat scenarios, so it would need to be protected somehow to act as current 3rd person view with limited distance of control maybe.
I think Subnautica made it quite right with their camera drones. They are very small so can enter places where player can't but are physical objects which can run out of energy, stuck or be attacked (but most predators just ignore them). Same could be in SE - tiny drone, deployed from backpack, but with limited energy, range and physical entity. It could be as tiny as smallest block but still limited by closed hangars, doors, safe zones etc.
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