Space Engineers 2 - Expectations & Goals

I am writing this as a fan of SE1, with over a thousand hours invested in it, having gotten a few friends into the game, done a lot of PvP and survival, together with a comp sci background. I’ve been around from the start, but only really got deeply into the game relatively recently.

People have expectations, hopes and fears, and I thought it would be both interesting and helpful to go through a list of what I expect and hope for. Particularly as a set of checklist, and see if the goals here got met by release.

Further, I wrote down the types of players and their playstyles that did play SE1, in particular to clear up what people specifically are after and want to do.

Playstyles

There are certain types of people and associated playstyles, some of which SE1 satisfied well. I think it is helpful to write out what those players want and expect.

Base Builder:

This player wants to make an outpost, a station that is nice, fulfills all needs he has to build. Think of somebody building a missile silo in the ground, with self-deploying defenses, and some assets like a rover, ship and so on.

To a large extent, SE1 fulfills this playstyle, with one massive downside: There is nothing for this playstyle to do or be challenged by.

Rimworld for example sends raids, traders to the base. Tests the player. This doesn’t happen in SE1, and admittedly not every player would want that.

Ideally, players could build an antenna and beckon enemies and traders, essentially opting into that content.

Factory Builder:

This player basically wants to play Factorio in 3D, or Satisfactory with more flexibilty. To a certain extent Space Engineers fulfills that. Building contraptions to mine resources, having to do logistics of bringing over ice from a few clicks away and so on is great. Particularly with all the voxel changes and being able to create your own mining designs.

But overall SE1 is far more simple than factorio when it comes to the actual factory. Bases push/pull everything magically to a large degree.

This is a difficult problem, partly because the current conveyor system design cannot be converted to conveyor belts, or inputs/outputs like Factorio.

Would it be cool? Absolutely. Would it also have mixed reception if to make just metal grid you’d have to set up some sort of system that eats cobalt, iron and only outputs said metal grids? Yes, it would probably not be received well unless the systems were practically perfect from the get go.

I’d personally be highly interested, but the cost to do so is very high, and the risk is also high.

However, since Keen announced that there might be different types of liquids, it might be interesting to have this sort of system for end-game resources, particularly oil refineries with pipes, or assemblers/refineries that can get enhanced with oil/water/lava.

Freelancer:

Literally like the game Freelancer, this player wants to be able to play the game upgrading his ship, taking on contracts and doing trade as well as combat.

In SE1 this is possible to a small extent. Can you do contracts? Sure. Can you buy new ships from stations? Sure. Can you upgrade them? Sure.

But that playstyle exists more as a proof of concept. I’ve never seen anybody even on YouTube play SE1 that way. Its disincentivized, the contract system is far too barebones, the reputation system is barebones. Technically, every system that needs to support this playstyle exists, but the playstyle itself does not.

The question is: Why? Why is that not a problem for a game like Starsector?

I believe a part of it is a lack of information and classification from the game. Does the game tell the player “Hey, you are only flying a small ship, you are at the start of the game.” in any way?

Not quite.

I believe what would be helpful is a ship-class classification system. It wouldn’t have to do anything other than tell the player what size and what kind of level of threat it is. In SE1 it is terrifyingly easy to take a fight you are not ready for, and you can only really know after you have already messed up.

Ideally, any signal would have a signature of size, and threat level. The quick and easy way would be to display the PCU in some way, and the PCU of the armaments. Of course those could be calculated in some other way, but that would allow for a classification system.

If a ship has X size and Y weapon PCU, then we can call it a Corvette/Warship. This would also go really well with a bounty system that’d list requirements. It would also give players a clear idea when they are progressing, buying or capturing ships.

Explorer:

This player wants to wander around planets and asteroids to see what they can find. Wherever they get dragged into combat, find salvage, raw resources. This is supported to a good extent in SE1, with the exception to the depth of content. Sure, players can find wrecks, hostile ships, trade stations. I always had a problem with a lack of depth: Will I find something massive that’ll kick-start my progression? Or a place I should take over and make my own to then run everything from? The answer was pretty much always no. It was always optional stuff that was always neat, maybe a little useful. Never more than that. So ignoring those things was always the play after the initial curiosity subsided.

There is both a lack of reward, and a lack of depth. Is this freighter wreck going to send me on some cool quest with a great reward at the end of it? No.

Is this planetary installation going to be worth exploring it, or even potentially worthwhile enough to take it over and use it as an outpost or even my new main base? Not really.

You can’t randomly lay down fat rewards in tiny places either. But what you can do is lay down items that start questlines, fragments of items that start questlines and those lead to a big reward.

Theoretically SE1 has those systems, it just never was deep or well-tuned enough. Partly because SE1 always lacked vanilla content.

Engineer:

This player wants to build cool contraptions to achieve tasks. Efficient, massive and mobile mining rigs, player-made weapons, AI controlled drones. He gets satisfaction from making designs. Wherever they are novel, efficient, good looking or good for specific tasks. This is what SE1 excelled at, even if Clang, subgrids and the likes always caused hindrances.

The question is if the satisfaction players got from creating these and merely having them be good at their in-game task is enough, or if players should be incentivized further somehow.

Commander:

This player wants to make high command decisions. Basically play Starsector or Highfleet, command multiple ships and use them to do his bidding.

This is theoretically possible with AI blocks in SE1, practically its a massive pain in the ass and nobody bothers to set it up. The amount of work necessary to get AI blocks to work even partly reliably is insane, and scripts also bring their own issues, aside from ones like PAM that just do the one thing.

This player has no real content for him in SE1, he just does what is in the game but is far stronger if he has the knowledge to make AI drones like that. I’d say this playstyle is entirely unsupported in SE1 in terms of content.

Raider:

Somebody who gets a kick out of destroying things. In particular hostile ships and bases, infiltrating them, taking them over. Like a little gremlin that takes over one ship, crashes it into another one, and then leap-frogs from one thing from one another.

Taking over a ship is a massive pain, even if you already dealt with all the offensive capabilities and you end up spending a lot of time dismantling blocks. There should be a more convenient way to take over grids. Like some tool like a laptop you can attach to a control station or cockpit, it works for 5 minutes, alerts everyone in the vicinity and takes over the grid block by block.

Foot combat is also really barebones and plain bad. The list of improvements that could be taken from FPS games is long and massive, together with leaning with Q/E while the player is on ground. There isn’t any risk in doing this, but it does take a medium effort.

Nobody really plays the game in this way, just because it's difficult and tedious to play it that way. The desire and the systems are both there.

Vertical Slices & Expectations

These are more than likely do not have the correct expectations in the correct place, and that is okay. This is more about the overall goals that eventually ought to be reached.

1.0 Creative Mode

Features: Really just the new grid system, blueprints, testing engine and so on.

The main goal I believe is to find all the flaws of the current engine. Features that do not work, performance that is lackluster. Getting as much data and feedback as possible.

The new engine is near-certainly going to have problems, and that is to be expected. What is important is prioritizing every issue that gets harder to fix the further in development the game is. This involves performance like the conveyor system, graphical performance and god knows what else.

The functionality of blocks should be lightly considered, since changing them further down the line might get difficult. Are refineries and assemblers just going to have yield and speed modules again? Are weapons going to have modules? Collecting feedback and spending thoughts on that will make further work easier.

In particular how the control panel works. There are some QoL things like GPS Accordion Tabs and Folders, pannable cameras. As well as the features of Build Vision and Build Info which should be in SE2 by default. There is also that discussion wherever the features of Weaponcore should be in SE2, which I’d personally heavily recommend.

[ ] Good Graphics

[ ] Good Performance

[ ] Improved Mechanics

[ ] Improved QoL

1.1 In-Game Workshop

Being able to easily share, modify and especially organize blueprints will be important. SE1 UI for blueprints is cumbersome, slow and difficult to organize. We need both tabs, and folders to organize as we please. In SE1 bringing up the BP menu takes a good few seconds to load when it really should just be loading thumbnails and texts.

I really want to have accordion tabsDownloaded Blueprints, Subscribed Blueprints, Personal Blueprints and Server Blueprints for example. Downloaded are ones I downloaded from the workshop, Subscribed ones that I have not downloaded but am Subscribed, Personal the ones I myself created, and Server Blueprints whatever Server I am playing on is providing.

Inside one of the Accordion Tabs are custom folders that can contain more folders or blueprints. Further I’d love a filter function for Year, Ship/Station, Contains: Weapons/Drills as well as custom tags that I can define as I’d like.

With the blueprint system SE2 has, making modules and parts of things is going to be extremely popular, and the organization of it is a priority.

Being able to create/download blueprints for NPCs and encounters to encounter in your world is something I expect as a bare minimum. It would also be really nice to create planetary encounters, for example a missile silo, and being able to designate where voxels should be deleted/kept free, for underground spawns.

Additionally, players want to be able to customize their experience and have their or other players blueprints show up in their game. Ideally it should be easy and simple to add an entire faction’s ship design from the workshop, planetary encounters, whole questlines and god knows what else.

I would also highly prefer SE to stay on the steam workshop. There will be a lot of controversy if SE2 stays Mod.io exclusive, but that is another discussion.

[ ] Blueprint Organization with Accordions & Folders

[ ] Blueprint Filtering

[ ] Blueprint can be used by your World’s spawns

1.2 Improved Mechanics and Interface Refinements:I am deeply unsure what Improved Mechanics refers to.

The UI/UX is something that always sucked in SE1. GPS not having folders and faction folders, the jetpack warning that you are about to run out of jetpack fuel coming way too late, the power duration display just being plain wrong quite often, troubleshooting conveyor systems requiring that one mod, feedback on why weapons/assemblers aren’t working doesn’t really exist and so on.

[ ] Troubleshooting Grid Issues

[ ] GPS Folders

[ ] Control Panel Folders

[ ] Power/Hydrogen Usage/Display

1.5 Modding Support:

There are two separate things that modding in SE2 should be:

1. “Easy” things like making new blocks, planets, resources, items should be well documented, streamlined and easy. In SE1 changing ore spawns, their density and such was so badly documented, it was surprising to me
2. “Hard” things like reworking the weapon system akin to weaponcore, completely new block systems like conveyor belts should be possible.I’d reach out to all the ‘big’ modders of SE1, and ask them what specific accesses or features to the modding system they wanted, and what documentation would have helped them.

[ ] Good Documentation & Tutorials for Modding “Easy” things

[ ] Significant access and depth for modders

2.0 Planets & Survival

The main thing here is that players are looking for what SE1 had, and more. Basically it has to be a straight up upgrade.

This is admittedly difficult, because knowing what needs to be better, and what the goal to achieve is, is difficult to define. We can easily point out the bad things in SE1 when it comes to survival:

An utterly awful tutorial, and a lack of progression.

Everyone knows that getting into SE1 and the tutorial there is and was just plain terrible. A good tutorial teaches a new player the mechanics he needs to know to engage with the game and progress, and displays what is going to be possible to ‘hook’ the player.

In SE1 that doesn’t happen, and worse, the progression-system is a flat out hindrance. All it does is block off blocks and make you work through that wacky, nonsensical ‘tech-tree.’ Rather than providing upgrades, leading the player through what he ‘ought to be doing and giving a sense of progress, its something that you have to work around. It actively confuses and makes new players give up. Its just plain wrong.

This also leads to the sense of progression. SE1 doesn’t really have any, other than finding resource nodes. Oh great, I found gold/uranium now. But does that unlock the tech, does the game tell you that you built a jumpdrive and can do X now? Not really. Factorio for example clearly directs you through the tech tree, and also through achievements. Print out X Iron plates per minute? Achievement. To progress the tree? Figure out oil production. It has amazing progression, even if single steps can be long and difficult.

There is another thing that really needs to be changed about Survival, and that is the printing of large ships. In SE1 its a massive issue that is only solved through mods like instant build, Nanobots Build and Repair or Laser-welding Turrets.

Mostly because to print a large scale ship, you’d need a wacky apparatus to pull the ship out, and a stupid amount of welders. Those welders cause massive amounts of lag because each of them needs to pull whatever items, the point they are welding needs to check which blocks its touching. It basically will bring down an entire server. This is an issue.

[ ] Tutorial that explains the functions and how to troubleshoot well

[ ] Tutorial that actually hooks newcomers

[ ] Sensible Progression

[ ] Better Ship Printing

[ ] Caves on Planets

3.0 WaterI am deeply skeptical about water and water-physics in SE2, especially wherever it will work well in multiplayer. I’d also be curious how liquids in space will be handled.

That said, if liquids work in SE2 and in MP, it’d be amazing just immediately. I do not like naval stuff, but I certainly see the appeal of building submarines, underwater bases and ships.

That said, ideally it’ll essentially add Subnautica to SE2, and then there are a lot of cool industry related things one could do with lava and oil, and god knows what alien liquids.

[ ] Water Functionality

[ ] Water Performance

[ ] Actual Water Content

4.0 Multiplayer & NPCs

Multiplayer in SE1 is actually decent in terms of technical stuff. Beating that is going to be difficult, basically players are just looking for better performance, higher player counts and less lag when ships get broken in half or built.

Actual game modes would also be helpful. Currently the only thing that exists is scenarios, and Survival/Creative which are just goal-less sandboxes. Usually the community themselves have to set up goals like King of the Hill, Faction Wars, First to X. You could do wacky things like actual survival where players are hunted down by NPC factions, Salvage Only, Money Leaderboards and god knows what else.

NPCs in SE1 are plain terrible. Spiders and wolves have both terrible AI in terms of combat and pathfinding, and also terrible design since they just sneak up on you and are unintended and ineffective jump scares.

AI drones are more interesting, but also tend to be awfully simplistic. The old ones that ran on scripts, as well as the terrible AI blocks which are very limited, and also exhaustingly difficult to set up properly.

Aside from that, there isn’t much to say about NPCs. They are singular, one-time encounters that do not matter. Players want to engage with NPCs that have their own goals and actions, belong to a faction and for their interactions to mean something. If they anger a faction, they want to get raided. If they please someone, they want rewards and questlines. They want wildlife like in Subnautica.

[ ] Higher Playercount

[ ] Better Performance

[ ] Good Wildlife

[ ] Faction/NPC engagement

[ ] Gamemodes

[ ] Quests/Contracts

SE1 Mods & Features

Space Engineers 1 over the many, many years had a ton of mods, and many of them are basically something I can’t imagine playing SE1 without.

Features:

[ ] Build Vision & Build Info:

Being able to easily access, modify and name a block without going through the control panel is such a large QoL change that it is impossible to go back

[X] Paint Gun

Addendum: Being able to paint gradients easily would also be great.

[ ] Weapon Core:

This is going to be controversial, but I believe the features of Weaponcore like painter mode, sequence firing and so on should be in the game by default. Maybe hidden or part of another block. Regardless, there are many good reasons for why it is a part of so many SE1 mods. The people who do not like it typically hate it because it is very difficult to start using it, and because it is difficult to shoot it: “Why is my weapon not firing? Is the mod broken?” -> Feedback on a weapon not firing because of low battery, no ammo, damage, energy overload or broken conveyors is also an issue in SE1

[ ] ISY’s Inventory Management

This script exists for sorting all the items in your grid. Cargo X should only have ores, Cargo Y only ingots and so on. That is achievable in vanilla with sorters. But what is not are the features to make sure all the assemblers aren’t clogged, have the required amounts of items, ore priorities for refineries, or even the special cargo, which allows you to let the script fill up a Cargo Container automatically with a list of items. Which makes restocking a breeze.

On multiplayer servers it is basically a must have because it smooths over so many issues the vanilla game has. How do I get rid of all but 10k units of gravel? With sorters that isn’t really achievable.

[ ] Production Quota

Also included in ISY, but basically we want some grids to have X and Y supplies. For example 100k Iron Plates. Having Assemblers automatically produce these is important. Error handling would also be great.

[ ] AutoLCD

How do I find out how much of X and Y my grid with 50 cargo containers has? Counting it by hand? I want to see easily just how much stuff I have, that includes Hydrogen, Items, Ammo and Energy. This script lets me set up cool LCD displays with the information

[ ] Electric Network Info

Overlap with AutoLCD, but basically all the information for power with graphs, estimated runtime, troubleshooting when things overload

[ ] Multi Grid Projections

Highly requested, many of the ships to look cool needed subgrids for 45 degree angles, custom turrets and so on.

[ ] Toolbar Manager

Saving how you set up your toolbar between different servers

[ ] Mousewheel Tool Select

Some plugin whose name that I cannot recall. Basically it lets you to place all your tool on one button, say ‘1’ by pressing 1 you select your most recent tool, and with mousewheel you can go through all your tools. Its nice.

[ ] Easy Block Remaining

In SE1 I frequently found myself requiring naming blocks in bulk, particularly if sharing a base with people in multiplayer. Being able to apply Pre and Suffixes on names in mass really is a massive QoL

Addendum: I also hope SE2 will allow folders inside the control panel, as well as sub folders.

[ ] Projections to Assembler

All the items required to assemble said projection get queued in assemblers, really nice.

[ ] Pannable Cameras

I always forget this is not in vanilla. It really should be.

Further Content I do not expect in the game, but would be nice eventually:

[ ] Tank Treads:

This is just some bezier curve magic, hence why it already exists as a mod. People would love to have vanilla support for tank treads.

[ ] Rails:

Everyone has tried making a train in SE1, and most have failed. Actual Rails and systems that can run on those would not be that difficult to implement, if Keen is willing to implement bezier-curve based rails.

I hope this is useful. I am going to check the boxes off as things get worked on