REALISM: Asteroid clusters, Physical Sun, Block wear and tear, Fire, Food, Concrete bases.

I think to really make SE2 more immersive than SE1, we need some key mechanics beside the "main ones" that are already announced (NPCs, realistic planets, water, etc).

Those mechanics could include:

- Realistic Asteroid belts or clusters!

In reality, asteroids arent just randomly scattered in space, they form belts and clusters. Implementing such belts would also offer key progression mechanics, e.g. you can reach space and find near-earth-asteroids with the Materials needed for stronger thrusters (ideally max. thrust and grid mass would determine the Maximum speed, like the relative top speed mod in SE1). Then, with stronger thrusters you can reach another belt farther away or build refineries to process better materials to build a jump drive or whatever and so on.

These belts could be home to different tiers of pirates and bases to avoid or raid.

- Realistic Sun!

A physical sun instead of a skybox sun shouldnt be too hard right? There are versions for SE1 with high gravity and a decent look. With fluids like water now being a thing, you could even have the sun be made of plasma, which kind of behaves like a liquid when dense enough (like it is in the sun). Adding devastating damage effects and you have a more realistic sun that adds a ton of immersion!

- Block degradation, wear and random failures!

In reality, machines fail. In space engineers your ships work, always and exactly the same. No danger at all in flying a ship a hundred times (unless you're a bad pilot^^). If certain blocks like large thrusters or generators/reactors, especially during a heavy use (like lifting off a Planet), randomly could fail or even catch fire in the engine room (maybe after a warning mechanism Like glowing red hot for a while). This way, there would actually be a reason to have a friend beides the pilot who keeps and eye out in the stats in the engine room and warns you If a reactor or thruster overheats! Which Brings me to the next point:

- Fire!

According to the mechanic in the point before, there could be random fire events of reactors, generators, thrusters etc.

When not dealt with it, the fire could slowly spread and damage more components!

- Food, water!

Since we eventually get plants and water, why not add a food mechanism (not too annoying, but enough to have you worry about it from time to time).

- More materials!

We have stone and trees, why not implement a concrete and wood building mechanic (eg. concrete is made from gravel in a refinery so it is very cheap and durable, but is extremely heavy and can only be placed as flat panels for floors and walls. This way bases would be much easier to build than ships and would give static bases the upper hand in fights against ships (which is how it should be, bases are at a huge disadvantage bc they are... well... static). In SE1, bases are equally expensive as ships but have huge disadvantages. They should be cheaper and stronger than flying ships!

- Better Exploration!

I know this will be adressed and is planned, but Just wanted to mention that many new mechanisms could make exploring even more fun. Examples would be nebulas in space that hide objekts in them, valuable Cargoships being hit by random solar flare events, that you have to loot in specially armored ships due to radiation and much more.

Lets discuss These ideas! :)

Until then, keep up the awesome work Keen❤