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[Feedback] Wide as a lake, Deep as a puddle : The case for more depth. Modular Modules of Modularity

Aidan Matthew Galea shared this feedback ago

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You read the title right, it's a common criticism of many games, most notably Spore (2006): The game has a ludicrous volume of features and stuff, but not necessarily much depth to them.

Space Engineers i feel, has historically suffered from this issue. while on SE1, it can be permitted on the grounds that the technology could not support it, SE2 is free from those shackles. Alas, from what I can tell, SE2 just looks like SE1 with raytraced shadows and fancier terrain while having a bunch of mods. For a game that requires a GPU to even open the menu, I find this unacceptable. The aim of a sequel is to expand on the original, at least a good sequel. SE1 has a good core, but is held back by the core flaw of being an aimless, overexpanded albeit very impressive tech demo, rather than purpose-built as a space sandbox. SE2 is shaping up to be more of that.

So, i hear you asking. how do we fix this?

First, let's focus on the positives. SE2 is already making a few great strides with giving the game something of an aim: colonisation as the main focus, more emphasis on exploration, and most importantly; upgrading the physics engine and the underlying building system to a unified grid. this means in theory we can do more of SE1 with less hassle.

But should we limit ourselves to just that? The answer to most, at least according to the few thousand topics on the forums that have been archived, is complexity. I'm not talking stationeers or space-station-13 grade atmospherics and plumbing, or Factorio levels of material processing. I'm talking simpler stuff that already uses existing frameworks, but *ADDS* onto them.

A few examples listed below. [only for demo, they don't all need to be implemented but they're a good start for what "more complexity" looks like]:

Modular engines.

Engines that are just 3 main parts:

-Input determines fuel or electric

-Midsection determines the thrust profile [stacking makes it more powerful]

-Output determines what environment it is best used for.

Then you have aux. parts like turbo-pumps, afterburners and intakes to mess further with efficiency and force at the expense of mass and greater power draw.

This lets us make engines with a wider range of use-cases from maybe 10 more blocks, rather than having to add a block for every additional thrust bracket. want a more powerful engine? Engineer it. Play around with this open system to your hearts' content and if you do it well, you get to make even a mountain fly in gravity.

Modular weapons

Fairly straightforward too, and can again be broken into 3 types of part:

-Receiver determines what ammo it uses

-Barrel determines range and power

-Auxillary components e.g. autoloaders, muzzle brakes, ammo modifiers affect the various miscallaneous traits of the weapon e.g. penetration power, ammo modifiers {high-explosive, proximity, guided} and fire-rate.

If we get to create as well as destroy, then a 305mm HE cannon shouldn't require mods in a space game set centuries after the Iowa class got recommissioned.

A heat system.

This is one I've seen a litany of other space games and especially sci-fi settings tackle in a variety of ways. Cosmoteer's method is probably the easiest to map onto SE due to the grid system and the at least passingly similar aesthetics. for SE's case, we can just simplify it to 2 part sets [with a small twist].

-Radiators can come in 2 types, combat and civilian. Combat radiators are effectively thrust vents without the thrust that, in exchange for high power, rapidly empty out a heat-pipenet, but are extremely fragile and thus must be protected from all but the environment-facing side or they will explode. Civilian radiators, while also fragile, work entirely passively, albeit at a slower rate, and are much cheaper to build as well as safer.

-Heat-pipe. functionally identical to a standard pipe system, but moves raw thermal energy. Unlike conveyors, doesn't require power to move things, but is dedicated to siphoning heat from components it makes contact with.

why have this?

a big problem with a lot of space combat in SE is that ships are forced into brick-like, spammed shapes to be actually effective in combat, resulting in borg-bricks that can only be countered with more borg-bricks. This has actually been proposed a few times, as I've found out, but I present a more cosmoteer-like answer: don't make heat management a requirement, make it a side-grade: Reactors get more powerful, batteries get even more efficient, weapons fire for longer, but you have to be a smart enough designer to know either how to shield these precious machines, or be willing to embrace redundancy as a feature rather than a flaw. Making it so that you need genuine comprehension of geometry and systems will filter out the more common offenders, especially trolls, while making combat much more interesting by presenting more considerations when designing ships. Depth through literally just 2 sets of blocks that changes the entire structure of the game's combat system.

Now for milder suggestions that probably don't fit as well here, but still would be neat

More dynamic controllers

Blocks that do the function of scripts so that at least more complex grids aren't penalised when not relying solely on programmable blocks for everything

e.g. thrust-vectoring, leg animators,

If you don't want to make more complex systems on the grounds of "keeping the game casual" then at least make it so you don't need scripts to do half of the actually cool stuff with building

More sensors

To continue the trend of "If you don't want to add more complex wholesale systems then at least give us more toys" more sensors would be a welcome change. Even just more powerful versions of the vanilla sensors of SE1 would allow for a lot more and there's countless mods doing just that. If you guys want better combat, better sensors are a surefire way to do it; combat in SE1 is locked to 2.5km unless utilising mods or wizardry.

Something like static radar or even just sensors with extra range [which can just be a reskinned defence AI block] would be welcome for the simple reason that it adds depth to combat with nothing more than allowing the player to command their grids better to tackle threats and targets over longer ranges. space-piracy, base defence, good old-fashioned dogfighting, it all benefits from even the simplest change of sensor distance.

While I do not have faith every single system in this will be added, even one of these suggestions would massively alter the depth of Space Engineers 2 and actually improve on the overall experience through making the game more in-depth.

"But maybe players don't want more depth" My counter to that argument: Make them. When I got my younger brother into Space Engineers 1, he absolutely detested having to do conveyors on the grounds that "other games just make shit teleport into where you want it" but because he liked everything else, he got to learn the conveyor system, he figured out all the tricks of it, and most of all, how to make it so that when you ram someone else, your ship actually survives so you can brag about it, thanks to being able to comprehend how to manage the conveyors to his thrusters and reactors and how to place fuel tanks such that they're well-guarded. If learning something as comparatively simple and straightforward as SE1 conveyors can inspire that much joy, imagine how much more can be done with actually in-depth systems and engineering? I'm not asking for rocket surgery [well, maybe] but what I am asking for is that there's more than just mashing modules together. Most people tend to stick around past the "smashing shit with rockets" stage of space engineers. Those people will spend thousands of hours even with the simple systems we have. I myself got into SE because of the shit you could do with subgrids that literally no other space game at the time even came close to achieving.

SE in my eyes has always been the king of space-gaming, second only to Space Station 13. It has the best 3-D ship building as of starbase's death, it has one of the largest spaceship builders communities on steam, and it was the first to the punch on all these regards, but it will be the one getting knocked out of the park if we do not do something to give people more after 15-odd years of Space Engineers 1 on an engine that is old enough to drink in some countries. Marek wants the game to appeal to more people? Enlist the systems crowd and you will never go bankrupt. Do you have any idea how much money you could make from letting even more fellow autistic people build rockets at a finer grain than KSP allows?

KEEN SOFTWARE HOUSE. MAKE A SINGLE ONE OF THE FIRST 3 REAL, AND MY LIFE IS YOURS!!!! MAKE LITERALLY ALL OF THIS REAL AND I WILL DONATE MY LIFE SAVINGS AS OF WRITING THIS TO KEEN SOFTWARE HOUSE!!!!

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Replies (1)

Olivier Jacot-Descombes ●

I agree that it should be possible to create more complex systems without having to use a programmable block. I like Minecraft's redstone circuit system which allows to connect sensors, logic blocks, actuators and more to create complex systems. Preferably these blocks should be as small as possible (25 cm). A 2.5m block event controller is massive just for a simple trigger. As an example for a block, I would like to have: A PID-Controller block would be a great addition.

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