Make a SCADA block!
Having four different blocks where you can make "things" is super complicated. I can see it bringing a level of depth to the game, but there comes a point where it's just too much. If you want to keep all these production systems, maybe make a "SCADA Block" - where you can just input your desired item and it will coordinate all the other connected production blocks to achieve the desired result. (Oooo, something NEW!)
For people not familiar with the term: Supervisory Control and Data Acquisition (SCADA) is a software and hardware-based system that allows industrial organizations to monitor, control, and process data from equipment—such as sensors, pumps, and motors—in real-time. It enhances efficiency by facilitating remote control, recording, and analysis of industrial operations, which reduces downtime and improves safety.
We wouldn't be using the system in the purest sense of the real-world technology, BUT, it's "close enough" to make the game easier to play.
AND, if you want to upgrade the block (either a new/different block, or an upgrade module), you could have it manage material flow - either in conjunction with, or replace the existing sorter blocks. Just think, you could have the system manage waste flows, gas flows (splitting hydrogen into different tanks for example), splitting products into different cargo containers, and pushing items into or through connectors. There's so much possibility.
I like this feedback
The production system is still not finalized, and it most likely won’t be linear. The same input items can feed different tiers of components. We already have five production blocks, and there could be more later. So yeah — it’s clearly more complicated than what we had before.
Before, production was simple: a 3-step chain. Ore → ingots → components. You refined raw ore into ingots (cost time and power, sure), but it was automated for you. Just dump ore into inventory and refineries handled the rest. We also had “compound ore” called stone that gave multiple ingots. Ingots were the universal midpoint — everything was made from them. If you had a solid ingot stockpile, you could craft basically anything on demand. There were mods (which IMO should’ve been vanilla) to auto-queue blueprint components, or you could use scripts like irreality.net mentioned.
Now in the sequel they’re clearly going for something different: multi-tier components with non-linear dependencies. Basically a production graph. Multiple blocks making different things, cross-dependencies everywhere. Queuing complex chains manually in its current form would be a nightmare. Before it was as simle as preping ingots and make components. Now it’s ore going into a web of dependencies.
In VS2.2 we’re supposed to get “block wrappers.” We don’t have much detail yet. Sounds like some kind of bundle definition for block(s). Maybe that’s where something like a “SCADA block” idea fits in — you queue a block wrapper, or even select an entire blueprint and create many block wrappers, and it coordinates all production blocks automatically. It could even show required or reamining ore totals so you can prep stockpiles.
Sure, that would reduce complexity for the end user. But is it actually better gameplay? Is it at least as good as the old ore-ingot-component loop? I’m not convinced.
The new system is structurally more complex, but at the same time it kind of pushes you toward centralized mega-factories where you always prefer to start from raw ore. That reduces specialization, trade, faction roles, and different production philosophies. Everything starts from ore. You don’t deal with mixing mid-tier components and ore, as it would mbe a logistical nightmare — you just mine and feed the graph.
Logistics then becomes: move ore to the megabase. Done.
So ironically, more complex production forces you to simplify your production setup.
My guess is ingots and compound ores weren’t added because they’d “overcomplicate” things. That’s the only rationale I can think of. Then you introduce wrappers to reduce compexity, an issue/challenge that no one really asked for.
So what’s the actual gameplay gain?
A production graph with no clear midpoint might not be the best fit for the game. This isn’t real life with millions of people managing supply chains. There are factory games built around that. SE isn’t Factorio. Even with the old simpler system, running a functional economy wasn’t easy. Now imagine that with no universal midpoint like ingots.
Without ingots, ore is the only thing that really moves. No compound ores. No universal refined resource. You mine each ore separately, over and over.
What’s the incentive to specialize? Why build separate refineries, hubs, outposts, trade stations? From a pure gameplay standpoint — there might be none. You’ll just centralize everything for convenience. The planets and biomes look amazing, but if production funnels into one megabase, you’re not really using the world in meaningful ways for the production needs.
Now compare that to what much simpler system with ingots enabled.
Compound ores reduced repetitive mining. They justified mining outposts in rich regions. That naturally led to cargo routes, orbital stations, safezones with jumping capabilities, and other related infrastructure (fuel/energy). You could build water dums or nuclear plants near water to benefit from enevironment in some way, for example improving power output, put refineries next to them to speed up refining having that extra power, use refining waste to build roads and bridgest and use rovers to deliver ore from those big mining sites to your refineries in much more efficient way than using helicopters or rockets (ofc). Reduce the weigth of refined materials before lifting them off the planet.
Ingots created a real midpoint. You could refine in one place, transport ingots to form stockpiles at different bases. It encouraged faction roles and economy specialization. Ingots represented invested time and energy — real value and are still universal input for the farther production graph.
Besides the traditional mining gameplay loop, we also have exploration, scavenging, pirating — and in SE2 it looks like we’re expanding those even further with a full-fledged campaign and contracts.
Now think about loot in that context.
What’s the best drop from an encounter? Not raw ore. Not some super-specific tier-3 component you may or may not need. The best loot is the universal midpoint resource — something refined, flexible, and easy to use or sell.
That’s what makes loot meaningful across different playstyles. Explorers, pirates, mission runners — they all benefit from a universal material that plugs into the whole production chain. It gives value to encounters and supports alternative gameplay loops without forcing everyone back into pure mining every time they need something.
Stockpiling 10k motherboards? Meh.
Stockpiling refined golden ingots? That’s valuable and desireable to show off and steal.
More complexity doesn’t automatically mean more fun or deeper gameplay.
On paper, this new system promises depth. I genuinely hope it delivers. I want to be wrong. I want to see something innovative that surpasses SE1. But it has to at least match what we had before in tangible gameplay value — not just theoretical system complexity.
Back to the main topic: yes, the graph can be abstracted behind wrappers or automation so players can queue everything easily. That’s probably what we’ll see in VS2.2. But everything is still WIP.
Gameplay systems aren’t vertical slices you “finish.” They’re pretty much horizontal :) — they touch sapce flight and transportation, physics, planets, character suit, voxel destruction, weather, presurisation, everything. Mining and production are core survival pillars. They can’t be rushed.
Overall, I think the devs are on a good path. They’re clearly thinking long-term. I respect that a lot. I’ll keep giving honest feedback, and I appreciate others doing the same.
If we really want SE2 to be the “last Space Engineers” and SE3 to be real life — we’re on the right path. It might take longer than expected, but that’s normal when the ambition is this high.
The production system is still not finalized, and it most likely won’t be linear. The same input items can feed different tiers of components. We already have five production blocks, and there could be more later. So yeah — it’s clearly more complicated than what we had before.
Before, production was simple: a 3-step chain. Ore → ingots → components. You refined raw ore into ingots (cost time and power, sure), but it was automated for you. Just dump ore into inventory and refineries handled the rest. We also had “compound ore” called stone that gave multiple ingots. Ingots were the universal midpoint — everything was made from them. If you had a solid ingot stockpile, you could craft basically anything on demand. There were mods (which IMO should’ve been vanilla) to auto-queue blueprint components, or you could use scripts like irreality.net mentioned.
Now in the sequel they’re clearly going for something different: multi-tier components with non-linear dependencies. Basically a production graph. Multiple blocks making different things, cross-dependencies everywhere. Queuing complex chains manually in its current form would be a nightmare. Before it was as simle as preping ingots and make components. Now it’s ore going into a web of dependencies.
In VS2.2 we’re supposed to get “block wrappers.” We don’t have much detail yet. Sounds like some kind of bundle definition for block(s). Maybe that’s where something like a “SCADA block” idea fits in — you queue a block wrapper, or even select an entire blueprint and create many block wrappers, and it coordinates all production blocks automatically. It could even show required or reamining ore totals so you can prep stockpiles.
Sure, that would reduce complexity for the end user. But is it actually better gameplay? Is it at least as good as the old ore-ingot-component loop? I’m not convinced.
The new system is structurally more complex, but at the same time it kind of pushes you toward centralized mega-factories where you always prefer to start from raw ore. That reduces specialization, trade, faction roles, and different production philosophies. Everything starts from ore. You don’t deal with mixing mid-tier components and ore, as it would mbe a logistical nightmare — you just mine and feed the graph.
Logistics then becomes: move ore to the megabase. Done.
So ironically, more complex production forces you to simplify your production setup.
My guess is ingots and compound ores weren’t added because they’d “overcomplicate” things. That’s the only rationale I can think of. Then you introduce wrappers to reduce compexity, an issue/challenge that no one really asked for.
So what’s the actual gameplay gain?
A production graph with no clear midpoint might not be the best fit for the game. This isn’t real life with millions of people managing supply chains. There are factory games built around that. SE isn’t Factorio. Even with the old simpler system, running a functional economy wasn’t easy. Now imagine that with no universal midpoint like ingots.
Without ingots, ore is the only thing that really moves. No compound ores. No universal refined resource. You mine each ore separately, over and over.
What’s the incentive to specialize? Why build separate refineries, hubs, outposts, trade stations? From a pure gameplay standpoint — there might be none. You’ll just centralize everything for convenience. The planets and biomes look amazing, but if production funnels into one megabase, you’re not really using the world in meaningful ways for the production needs.
Now compare that to what much simpler system with ingots enabled.
Compound ores reduced repetitive mining. They justified mining outposts in rich regions. That naturally led to cargo routes, orbital stations, safezones with jumping capabilities, and other related infrastructure (fuel/energy). You could build water dums or nuclear plants near water to benefit from enevironment in some way, for example improving power output, put refineries next to them to speed up refining having that extra power, use refining waste to build roads and bridgest and use rovers to deliver ore from those big mining sites to your refineries in much more efficient way than using helicopters or rockets (ofc). Reduce the weigth of refined materials before lifting them off the planet.
Ingots created a real midpoint. You could refine in one place, transport ingots to form stockpiles at different bases. It encouraged faction roles and economy specialization. Ingots represented invested time and energy — real value and are still universal input for the farther production graph.
Besides the traditional mining gameplay loop, we also have exploration, scavenging, pirating — and in SE2 it looks like we’re expanding those even further with a full-fledged campaign and contracts.
Now think about loot in that context.
What’s the best drop from an encounter? Not raw ore. Not some super-specific tier-3 component you may or may not need. The best loot is the universal midpoint resource — something refined, flexible, and easy to use or sell.
That’s what makes loot meaningful across different playstyles. Explorers, pirates, mission runners — they all benefit from a universal material that plugs into the whole production chain. It gives value to encounters and supports alternative gameplay loops without forcing everyone back into pure mining every time they need something.
Stockpiling 10k motherboards? Meh.
Stockpiling refined golden ingots? That’s valuable and desireable to show off and steal.
More complexity doesn’t automatically mean more fun or deeper gameplay.
On paper, this new system promises depth. I genuinely hope it delivers. I want to be wrong. I want to see something innovative that surpasses SE1. But it has to at least match what we had before in tangible gameplay value — not just theoretical system complexity.
Back to the main topic: yes, the graph can be abstracted behind wrappers or automation so players can queue everything easily. That’s probably what we’ll see in VS2.2. But everything is still WIP.
Gameplay systems aren’t vertical slices you “finish.” They’re pretty much horizontal :) — they touch sapce flight and transportation, physics, planets, character suit, voxel destruction, weather, presurisation, everything. Mining and production are core survival pillars. They can’t be rushed.
Overall, I think the devs are on a good path. They’re clearly thinking long-term. I respect that a lot. I’ll keep giving honest feedback, and I appreciate others doing the same.
If we really want SE2 to be the “last Space Engineers” and SE3 to be real life — we’re on the right path. It might take longer than expected, but that’s normal when the ambition is this high.
I like idea, but maybe this is a something which can be left to be solved by engineers in-game with use of C# scripts similar to autocrafting scripts from SE1 or more general automation blocks (which hopefully will be added to SE2 someday).
Simple scripts could be written even by people who are not familiar with programming with help of AI agents.
I think what would help a lot with building such system without need to use of in-game script would be (compared to what SE1 offered):
- extension of event controller that it can trigger action based on quantity of specific items in specific containers,
- toolbar actions for assemblers to control their queue and loop mode
In SE1 I managed to build such system without scripts but it required sorter, cargo container and assembler for each type of item because event controllers can only react to "cargo fill level" and assembler was configured to run in loop mode and only action available is to enable/disable it by the event controller.
So it is not suitable for many types of items but was possible to run script-less.
If only we could trigger event by quantity of specific item and control assemblers in actions toolbar then it would be much compact setup with just single cargo and single assembler.
Only event controllers would be needed for each item type.
I suggest "buildable" solution instead of ready block with its pre-defined logic because I think this is more general problem of management of "stock levels" which can be managed not only by production but also by inventory transfers between grids (automatic loading/unloading of defined quantities) or even trade (automatic buy/sell offers on store block).
I like idea, but maybe this is a something which can be left to be solved by engineers in-game with use of C# scripts similar to autocrafting scripts from SE1 or more general automation blocks (which hopefully will be added to SE2 someday).
Simple scripts could be written even by people who are not familiar with programming with help of AI agents.
I think what would help a lot with building such system without need to use of in-game script would be (compared to what SE1 offered):
- extension of event controller that it can trigger action based on quantity of specific items in specific containers,
- toolbar actions for assemblers to control their queue and loop mode
In SE1 I managed to build such system without scripts but it required sorter, cargo container and assembler for each type of item because event controllers can only react to "cargo fill level" and assembler was configured to run in loop mode and only action available is to enable/disable it by the event controller.
So it is not suitable for many types of items but was possible to run script-less.
If only we could trigger event by quantity of specific item and control assemblers in actions toolbar then it would be much compact setup with just single cargo and single assembler.
Only event controllers would be needed for each item type.
I suggest "buildable" solution instead of ready block with its pre-defined logic because I think this is more general problem of management of "stock levels" which can be managed not only by production but also by inventory transfers between grids (automatic loading/unloading of defined quantities) or even trade (automatic buy/sell offers on store block).
How are 4 production blocks "super complicated" when you can access all 4 on the same screen? I keep reading everyone saying they want everything to be as simple as possible, while also wanting SE2 to be as complicated as possible with a million systems and granular ground manipulation... Make up your minds, do you want complicated engineering that only engineers truly understand or do you want simplified 1 click and done on everything simplicity? I mean anyone calling for SE1 block progression, wants end game blocks on first day, as an example as I just saw this asked for a bit ago... Keep seeing all these calls for complicated systems, yet at the same time crying for 1 click simplicity because everything is too complicated.... Can we not just have some middle ground here and let them work?
Inventory management was a pain in SE1, and I expect it will be in SE2 as well. As mentioned above it required scripts(thank you modders). I like the idea of in game mechanics to control inventory, I wouldn't think it would be that difficult... You have a vote from me! I was called out the other day for using IRL facts to dispute an IRL claim about ingots, so careful using IRL here apparently...
How are 4 production blocks "super complicated" when you can access all 4 on the same screen? I keep reading everyone saying they want everything to be as simple as possible, while also wanting SE2 to be as complicated as possible with a million systems and granular ground manipulation... Make up your minds, do you want complicated engineering that only engineers truly understand or do you want simplified 1 click and done on everything simplicity? I mean anyone calling for SE1 block progression, wants end game blocks on first day, as an example as I just saw this asked for a bit ago... Keep seeing all these calls for complicated systems, yet at the same time crying for 1 click simplicity because everything is too complicated.... Can we not just have some middle ground here and let them work?
Inventory management was a pain in SE1, and I expect it will be in SE2 as well. As mentioned above it required scripts(thank you modders). I like the idea of in game mechanics to control inventory, I wouldn't think it would be that difficult... You have a vote from me! I was called out the other day for using IRL facts to dispute an IRL claim about ingots, so careful using IRL here apparently...
The production system is still not finalized, and it most likely won’t be linear. The same input items can feed different tiers of components. We already have five production blocks, and there could be more later. So yeah — it’s clearly more complicated than what we had before.
Before, production was simple: a 3-step chain. Ore → ingots → components. You refined raw ore into ingots (cost time and power, sure), but it was automated for you. Just dump ore into inventory and refineries handled the rest. We also had “compound ore” called stone that gave multiple ingots. Ingots were the universal midpoint — everything was made from them. If you had a solid ingot stockpile, you could craft basically anything on demand. There were mods (which IMO should’ve been vanilla) to auto-queue blueprint components, or you could use scripts like irreality.net mentioned.
Now in the sequel they’re clearly going for something different: multi-tier components with non-linear dependencies. Basically a production graph. Multiple blocks making different things, cross-dependencies everywhere. Queuing complex chains manually in its current form would be a nightmare. Before it was as simle as preping ingots and make components. Now it’s ore going into a web of dependencies.
In VS2.2 we’re supposed to get “block wrappers.” We don’t have much detail yet. Sounds like some kind of bundle definition for block(s). Maybe that’s where something like a “SCADA block” idea fits in — you queue a block wrapper, or even select an entire blueprint and create many block wrappers, and it coordinates all production blocks automatically. It could even show required or reamining ore totals so you can prep stockpiles.
Sure, that would reduce complexity for the end user. But is it actually better gameplay? Is it at least as good as the old ore-ingot-component loop? I’m not convinced.
The new system is structurally more complex, but at the same time it kind of pushes you toward centralized mega-factories where you always prefer to start from raw ore. That reduces specialization, trade, faction roles, and different production philosophies. Everything starts from ore. You don’t deal with mixing mid-tier components and ore, as it would mbe a logistical nightmare — you just mine and feed the graph.
Logistics then becomes: move ore to the megabase. Done.
So ironically, more complex production forces you to simplify your production setup.
My guess is ingots and compound ores weren’t added because they’d “overcomplicate” things. That’s the only rationale I can think of. Then you introduce wrappers to reduce compexity, an issue/challenge that no one really asked for.
So what’s the actual gameplay gain?
A production graph with no clear midpoint might not be the best fit for the game. This isn’t real life with millions of people managing supply chains. There are factory games built around that. SE isn’t Factorio. Even with the old simpler system, running a functional economy wasn’t easy. Now imagine that with no universal midpoint like ingots.
Without ingots, ore is the only thing that really moves. No compound ores. No universal refined resource. You mine each ore separately, over and over.
What’s the incentive to specialize? Why build separate refineries, hubs, outposts, trade stations? From a pure gameplay standpoint — there might be none. You’ll just centralize everything for convenience. The planets and biomes look amazing, but if production funnels into one megabase, you’re not really using the world in meaningful ways for the production needs.
Now compare that to what much simpler system with ingots enabled.
Compound ores reduced repetitive mining. They justified mining outposts in rich regions. That naturally led to cargo routes, orbital stations, safezones with jumping capabilities, and other related infrastructure (fuel/energy). You could build water dums or nuclear plants near water to benefit from enevironment in some way, for example improving power output, put refineries next to them to speed up refining having that extra power, use refining waste to build roads and bridgest and use rovers to deliver ore from those big mining sites to your refineries in much more efficient way than using helicopters or rockets (ofc). Reduce the weigth of refined materials before lifting them off the planet.
Ingots created a real midpoint. You could refine in one place, transport ingots to form stockpiles at different bases. It encouraged faction roles and economy specialization. Ingots represented invested time and energy — real value and are still universal input for the farther production graph.
Besides the traditional mining gameplay loop, we also have exploration, scavenging, pirating — and in SE2 it looks like we’re expanding those even further with a full-fledged campaign and contracts.
Now think about loot in that context.
What’s the best drop from an encounter? Not raw ore. Not some super-specific tier-3 component you may or may not need. The best loot is the universal midpoint resource — something refined, flexible, and easy to use or sell.
That’s what makes loot meaningful across different playstyles. Explorers, pirates, mission runners — they all benefit from a universal material that plugs into the whole production chain. It gives value to encounters and supports alternative gameplay loops without forcing everyone back into pure mining every time they need something.
Stockpiling 10k motherboards? Meh.
Stockpiling refined golden ingots? That’s valuable and desireable to show off and steal.
More complexity doesn’t automatically mean more fun or deeper gameplay.
On paper, this new system promises depth. I genuinely hope it delivers. I want to be wrong. I want to see something innovative that surpasses SE1. But it has to at least match what we had before in tangible gameplay value — not just theoretical system complexity.
Back to the main topic: yes, the graph can be abstracted behind wrappers or automation so players can queue everything easily. That’s probably what we’ll see in VS2.2. But everything is still WIP.
Gameplay systems aren’t vertical slices you “finish.” They’re pretty much horizontal :) — they touch sapce flight and transportation, physics, planets, character suit, voxel destruction, weather, presurisation, everything. Mining and production are core survival pillars. They can’t be rushed.
Overall, I think the devs are on a good path. They’re clearly thinking long-term. I respect that a lot. I’ll keep giving honest feedback, and I appreciate others doing the same.
If we really want SE2 to be the “last Space Engineers” and SE3 to be real life — we’re on the right path. It might take longer than expected, but that’s normal when the ambition is this high.
The production system is still not finalized, and it most likely won’t be linear. The same input items can feed different tiers of components. We already have five production blocks, and there could be more later. So yeah — it’s clearly more complicated than what we had before.
Before, production was simple: a 3-step chain. Ore → ingots → components. You refined raw ore into ingots (cost time and power, sure), but it was automated for you. Just dump ore into inventory and refineries handled the rest. We also had “compound ore” called stone that gave multiple ingots. Ingots were the universal midpoint — everything was made from them. If you had a solid ingot stockpile, you could craft basically anything on demand. There were mods (which IMO should’ve been vanilla) to auto-queue blueprint components, or you could use scripts like irreality.net mentioned.
Now in the sequel they’re clearly going for something different: multi-tier components with non-linear dependencies. Basically a production graph. Multiple blocks making different things, cross-dependencies everywhere. Queuing complex chains manually in its current form would be a nightmare. Before it was as simle as preping ingots and make components. Now it’s ore going into a web of dependencies.
In VS2.2 we’re supposed to get “block wrappers.” We don’t have much detail yet. Sounds like some kind of bundle definition for block(s). Maybe that’s where something like a “SCADA block” idea fits in — you queue a block wrapper, or even select an entire blueprint and create many block wrappers, and it coordinates all production blocks automatically. It could even show required or reamining ore totals so you can prep stockpiles.
Sure, that would reduce complexity for the end user. But is it actually better gameplay? Is it at least as good as the old ore-ingot-component loop? I’m not convinced.
The new system is structurally more complex, but at the same time it kind of pushes you toward centralized mega-factories where you always prefer to start from raw ore. That reduces specialization, trade, faction roles, and different production philosophies. Everything starts from ore. You don’t deal with mixing mid-tier components and ore, as it would mbe a logistical nightmare — you just mine and feed the graph.
Logistics then becomes: move ore to the megabase. Done.
So ironically, more complex production forces you to simplify your production setup.
My guess is ingots and compound ores weren’t added because they’d “overcomplicate” things. That’s the only rationale I can think of. Then you introduce wrappers to reduce compexity, an issue/challenge that no one really asked for.
So what’s the actual gameplay gain?
A production graph with no clear midpoint might not be the best fit for the game. This isn’t real life with millions of people managing supply chains. There are factory games built around that. SE isn’t Factorio. Even with the old simpler system, running a functional economy wasn’t easy. Now imagine that with no universal midpoint like ingots.
Without ingots, ore is the only thing that really moves. No compound ores. No universal refined resource. You mine each ore separately, over and over.
What’s the incentive to specialize? Why build separate refineries, hubs, outposts, trade stations? From a pure gameplay standpoint — there might be none. You’ll just centralize everything for convenience. The planets and biomes look amazing, but if production funnels into one megabase, you’re not really using the world in meaningful ways for the production needs.
Now compare that to what much simpler system with ingots enabled.
Compound ores reduced repetitive mining. They justified mining outposts in rich regions. That naturally led to cargo routes, orbital stations, safezones with jumping capabilities, and other related infrastructure (fuel/energy). You could build water dums or nuclear plants near water to benefit from enevironment in some way, for example improving power output, put refineries next to them to speed up refining having that extra power, use refining waste to build roads and bridgest and use rovers to deliver ore from those big mining sites to your refineries in much more efficient way than using helicopters or rockets (ofc). Reduce the weigth of refined materials before lifting them off the planet.
Ingots created a real midpoint. You could refine in one place, transport ingots to form stockpiles at different bases. It encouraged faction roles and economy specialization. Ingots represented invested time and energy — real value and are still universal input for the farther production graph.
Besides the traditional mining gameplay loop, we also have exploration, scavenging, pirating — and in SE2 it looks like we’re expanding those even further with a full-fledged campaign and contracts.
Now think about loot in that context.
What’s the best drop from an encounter? Not raw ore. Not some super-specific tier-3 component you may or may not need. The best loot is the universal midpoint resource — something refined, flexible, and easy to use or sell.
That’s what makes loot meaningful across different playstyles. Explorers, pirates, mission runners — they all benefit from a universal material that plugs into the whole production chain. It gives value to encounters and supports alternative gameplay loops without forcing everyone back into pure mining every time they need something.
Stockpiling 10k motherboards? Meh.
Stockpiling refined golden ingots? That’s valuable and desireable to show off and steal.
More complexity doesn’t automatically mean more fun or deeper gameplay.
On paper, this new system promises depth. I genuinely hope it delivers. I want to be wrong. I want to see something innovative that surpasses SE1. But it has to at least match what we had before in tangible gameplay value — not just theoretical system complexity.
Back to the main topic: yes, the graph can be abstracted behind wrappers or automation so players can queue everything easily. That’s probably what we’ll see in VS2.2. But everything is still WIP.
Gameplay systems aren’t vertical slices you “finish.” They’re pretty much horizontal :) — they touch sapce flight and transportation, physics, planets, character suit, voxel destruction, weather, presurisation, everything. Mining and production are core survival pillars. They can’t be rushed.
Overall, I think the devs are on a good path. They’re clearly thinking long-term. I respect that a lot. I’ll keep giving honest feedback, and I appreciate others doing the same.
If we really want SE2 to be the “last Space Engineers” and SE3 to be real life — we’re on the right path. It might take longer than expected, but that’s normal when the ambition is this high.
My hopes are not as strong because with progress of time it is more and more difficult, expensive or sometimes impossible to change anything in foundations.
Especially that SE2 is already open for modding (IMHO too early) so any breaking changes will break mods as well (so people will move to other games and never look back) or worse - will break existing saves (which is already happening - disappearing blocks, missing grids, missing ores or complete failure to load save file). Same will happen with all other community content like blueprints.
So far the game is still "playable demo" so no big deal. But the more time is invested in the game the more important is to keep "old new" things running and is less possible to improve or rework things.
Second factor is that "alpha" game development can't span over years because at some point the engine, libraries and entire technology stack will become overtaken by competition, new hardware or just outdated. It must be released and earn its money. VS4 is promised in 2026. I'll keep crossing fingers.
Third factor is money - reworks are costly, very costly. Reinventing wheels - same. And the pile of fundamental and basic stuff missing but expected from mature game in 2026 is still huge. Looking at bugs and feedback just at this forum (and we probably just see the tip of iceberg) the pile of bugs is huge as well, but worse symptom that these are basic bugs, which could be avoided straight away with experience from SE1. This eats resources. This frustrates players. Can't make first impression twice.
It is far more cheaper to work at greenfield than trying to modify something which is already deployed and in use.
Early adopters and those who long awaited the sequel already gave their money. There will be no more from them.
We roughly know how many people play SE1 worldwide on Steam: https://steamdb.info/app/244850/charts/#1y - I don't know exactly how the metrics are generated but I'll take "Peak" as a reference number, so it is about 14K people, but regular players are much less 2-3K on average.
SE2 had its peak when it was released - 9K people, that's already 64% of peak SE1 population!
Now compare this with No Man's Sky - 110K players in recent peak: https://steamdb.info/app/275850/charts/#1y
Why I'm even mentioning NMS? Because SE2 in its current shape is more similar to NMS than to SE1.
So my assumption is that it targets NMS audience. That's why UI looks like it looks. That's why backpack building. That's why arcade and simplification.
SE1 players already gave they money when they purchased promises of sequel, mainly in January 2025, before seeing the actual product. No more money from them. They are not customers anymore. Except maybe that they are word-of-mouth influencers, and they are those who kept SE1 afloat for so long time.
VS2 release interested just 4.5K people. That means 50% of those who already own the game did not try it despite Christmas season. I would not call it right path.
I hear "everyone plays Space Engineers in space and mines asteroids". So why 99% of effort is now invested in more and more planets, weather, sectors, contracts, or even water? How many of ~10K players will play Space Engineers because of water as key selling point?
Does it make sense to create prefabs, blueprints and encounters at such early stage when there are just few non-functional blocks and walls have to be made from identical panels and tables?
"The start with all free stuff is just an optional tutorial" - but actually this is only content provided. And it does not teach anything. It looks like introduction to storyline of "brothers". For me tutorial ends when player acquires his starter platform and arrives to Verdure's Space Station to get first colonization contract. But the story so far does not look impressive. Colonization by welding existing machinery is not interesting gameplay
.
So, if it will be reworked that means wasted money and more money needed to develop meaningful and engaging gameplay.
And we are not even close to thinking about SCADA blocks, inventory management, modular systems or any of great ideas presented on this forum.
My hopes are not as strong because with progress of time it is more and more difficult, expensive or sometimes impossible to change anything in foundations.
Especially that SE2 is already open for modding (IMHO too early) so any breaking changes will break mods as well (so people will move to other games and never look back) or worse - will break existing saves (which is already happening - disappearing blocks, missing grids, missing ores or complete failure to load save file). Same will happen with all other community content like blueprints.
So far the game is still "playable demo" so no big deal. But the more time is invested in the game the more important is to keep "old new" things running and is less possible to improve or rework things.
Second factor is that "alpha" game development can't span over years because at some point the engine, libraries and entire technology stack will become overtaken by competition, new hardware or just outdated. It must be released and earn its money. VS4 is promised in 2026. I'll keep crossing fingers.
Third factor is money - reworks are costly, very costly. Reinventing wheels - same. And the pile of fundamental and basic stuff missing but expected from mature game in 2026 is still huge. Looking at bugs and feedback just at this forum (and we probably just see the tip of iceberg) the pile of bugs is huge as well, but worse symptom that these are basic bugs, which could be avoided straight away with experience from SE1. This eats resources. This frustrates players. Can't make first impression twice.
It is far more cheaper to work at greenfield than trying to modify something which is already deployed and in use.
Early adopters and those who long awaited the sequel already gave their money. There will be no more from them.
We roughly know how many people play SE1 worldwide on Steam: https://steamdb.info/app/244850/charts/#1y - I don't know exactly how the metrics are generated but I'll take "Peak" as a reference number, so it is about 14K people, but regular players are much less 2-3K on average.
SE2 had its peak when it was released - 9K people, that's already 64% of peak SE1 population!
Now compare this with No Man's Sky - 110K players in recent peak: https://steamdb.info/app/275850/charts/#1y
Why I'm even mentioning NMS? Because SE2 in its current shape is more similar to NMS than to SE1.
So my assumption is that it targets NMS audience. That's why UI looks like it looks. That's why backpack building. That's why arcade and simplification.
SE1 players already gave they money when they purchased promises of sequel, mainly in January 2025, before seeing the actual product. No more money from them. They are not customers anymore. Except maybe that they are word-of-mouth influencers, and they are those who kept SE1 afloat for so long time.
VS2 release interested just 4.5K people. That means 50% of those who already own the game did not try it despite Christmas season. I would not call it right path.
I hear "everyone plays Space Engineers in space and mines asteroids". So why 99% of effort is now invested in more and more planets, weather, sectors, contracts, or even water? How many of ~10K players will play Space Engineers because of water as key selling point?
Does it make sense to create prefabs, blueprints and encounters at such early stage when there are just few non-functional blocks and walls have to be made from identical panels and tables?
"The start with all free stuff is just an optional tutorial" - but actually this is only content provided. And it does not teach anything. It looks like introduction to storyline of "brothers". For me tutorial ends when player acquires his starter platform and arrives to Verdure's Space Station to get first colonization contract. But the story so far does not look impressive. Colonization by welding existing machinery is not interesting gameplay
.
So, if it will be reworked that means wasted money and more money needed to develop meaningful and engaging gameplay.
And we are not even close to thinking about SCADA blocks, inventory management, modular systems or any of great ideas presented on this forum.
The development approach Keen is using is called “Vertical Slices.” It’s probably their own take on software development strategy — some kind of “multiple waterfalls,” where they work in parallel on different parts of the game while making the progress open and transparent for us. These slices work well for developing technically complex systems like the voxel engine, volumetric water and weather, the unified grid system, and so on. These systems require focus and time to get right.
BUT when it comes to gameplay, I don’t think it can really be done in vertical slices. Gameplay depends on almost everything else in the game. The world should be built to support gameplay, or at least the main gameplay features — but what exactly those features are, we don’t fully know yet. We can only assume certain things will be there.
The game is their vision, their “child.” You can consider it “not optimal” or “bad,” but ultimately it’s their responsibility, and honestly, no game can satisfy everyone. The scope of SE2 is huge, and there’s just so much going on.
When it comes to the survival aspect, I still think feedback from core veteran players can shape the final product. That’s why I keep leaving my feedback and love seeing others do the same.
If anything, the so-called “survival foundations” we see now seem more like scaffolding to test another vertical slice — the contract engine — rather than a serious attempt to implement survival gameplay. This isn’t the right approach, imho. You don’t make a “contract system” before you actually have the base survival mechanics. The contract system should be built on top of and use the survival mechanics already in the game. It’s like reserving pages for chapters before writing your novel.
The actual survival gameplay is still far away — probably much farther than some expect. That’s why VS2.2 “survival xtensions” focuses on mechanical blocks and core systems. Physics and subgrids are things that need to be solid first. Some requirements for those systems might depend on gamplay features, but the final gameplay also depends on how those core systems are built, for example how do you control wheels or thrusters on a subgrid. You do not make automation blcoks and UIs before you have all the core systems in place. Even this projection building was a bit rushed I think. It might be completely reworked closer to the release.
That’s also why some basic functional blocks, like beds or seats, don’t do much yet. We don’t even know how character animations will work for sitting, standing, or sleeping. It wouldn’t make sense to implement them now because they will likely change.
I think we can call VS2.0 a “Survival Foundation,” but not in terms of survival gameplay — more like the underlying mechanics forming the core of the game engine. That’s why I don’t think it’s as bad as it might seem.
Personally, I wouldn’t mind if my save broke after a future VS5.0 “Survival Gameplay” update. This is basically the definition of alpha. If someone plays in a survival world hoping it won’t break in future updates, we can’t really blame Keen for that. This is just how software development works. And I do agree that it is way to early to mod the game.
When I bought the game in alpha, I accepted this kind of possibility and wasn’t expecting to actually “enjoy the game” yet. I see a lot of people constantly asking if it’s worth buying at this stage, and my usual reply is: “Do it only if you want to test the game, share feedback, and support the devs.”
I expect Keen has a huge document detailing all aspects of gameplay. I’d love to see more of that shared with us — otherwise negative feedback like this will keep piling up. Maybe it’s still too early and we’re worrying too much. Who knows? I’ll try asking during the next developer stream (tomorrow as I write this) when they plan to start working on the actual Survival Gameplay update. Come with me and ask too — more voices, better chance of getting an answer.
The development approach Keen is using is called “Vertical Slices.” It’s probably their own take on software development strategy — some kind of “multiple waterfalls,” where they work in parallel on different parts of the game while making the progress open and transparent for us. These slices work well for developing technically complex systems like the voxel engine, volumetric water and weather, the unified grid system, and so on. These systems require focus and time to get right.
BUT when it comes to gameplay, I don’t think it can really be done in vertical slices. Gameplay depends on almost everything else in the game. The world should be built to support gameplay, or at least the main gameplay features — but what exactly those features are, we don’t fully know yet. We can only assume certain things will be there.
The game is their vision, their “child.” You can consider it “not optimal” or “bad,” but ultimately it’s their responsibility, and honestly, no game can satisfy everyone. The scope of SE2 is huge, and there’s just so much going on.
When it comes to the survival aspect, I still think feedback from core veteran players can shape the final product. That’s why I keep leaving my feedback and love seeing others do the same.
If anything, the so-called “survival foundations” we see now seem more like scaffolding to test another vertical slice — the contract engine — rather than a serious attempt to implement survival gameplay. This isn’t the right approach, imho. You don’t make a “contract system” before you actually have the base survival mechanics. The contract system should be built on top of and use the survival mechanics already in the game. It’s like reserving pages for chapters before writing your novel.
The actual survival gameplay is still far away — probably much farther than some expect. That’s why VS2.2 “survival xtensions” focuses on mechanical blocks and core systems. Physics and subgrids are things that need to be solid first. Some requirements for those systems might depend on gamplay features, but the final gameplay also depends on how those core systems are built, for example how do you control wheels or thrusters on a subgrid. You do not make automation blcoks and UIs before you have all the core systems in place. Even this projection building was a bit rushed I think. It might be completely reworked closer to the release.
That’s also why some basic functional blocks, like beds or seats, don’t do much yet. We don’t even know how character animations will work for sitting, standing, or sleeping. It wouldn’t make sense to implement them now because they will likely change.
I think we can call VS2.0 a “Survival Foundation,” but not in terms of survival gameplay — more like the underlying mechanics forming the core of the game engine. That’s why I don’t think it’s as bad as it might seem.
Personally, I wouldn’t mind if my save broke after a future VS5.0 “Survival Gameplay” update. This is basically the definition of alpha. If someone plays in a survival world hoping it won’t break in future updates, we can’t really blame Keen for that. This is just how software development works. And I do agree that it is way to early to mod the game.
When I bought the game in alpha, I accepted this kind of possibility and wasn’t expecting to actually “enjoy the game” yet. I see a lot of people constantly asking if it’s worth buying at this stage, and my usual reply is: “Do it only if you want to test the game, share feedback, and support the devs.”
I expect Keen has a huge document detailing all aspects of gameplay. I’d love to see more of that shared with us — otherwise negative feedback like this will keep piling up. Maybe it’s still too early and we’re worrying too much. Who knows? I’ll try asking during the next developer stream (tomorrow as I write this) when they plan to start working on the actual Survival Gameplay update. Come with me and ask too — more voices, better chance of getting an answer.
Replies have been locked on this page!