Dedicated Design Mode

In SE2, developers are improving the building system.

Key improvements for creative building that are already done include:

1. 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.
2. Partial copy-paste and blueprinting of selected sections – something previously possible only through mods in SE1.

What has been announced:

1. 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.