First Impressions of Space Engineers 2!

Dear Keen,

I attended the first half of the life launch, as I had marked that to do in my agenda.. right? O.O So the game looks absolutely beautiful. Onboarding was a short but solid experience. I presume as mentioned in the life stream it will get longer as more content gets added. So no worries there! :D

First impressions

What I really liked were the various stations and the scrappable large ship is also very appriciated. I noticed the tutorial skipped the GPS thingy, and I later had to redo the tuotrial so I could mark that scrappable ship and all the other base locations from the tutorial. Personally I think it would be a smart move to include GPS setting early, and also I found the difference between GPS marker button and GPS on click in system window a bit confusing at first but figured it out fairly quickly. Not having stones does feel a bit odd, given it removes dealing with stones, but it does speed up the process towards exploring I guess.. The mention of a landing assist (mentioned in life stream) would be super nice. I really enjoy auto landing in other games, and maybe a "horizon" stabalizer kind of mechanic would also be nice.. One of the trickiest parts of flight is landing horizontally.. Also, if wanting to go all out.. maybe supporting a specific buttons to switch off all engines aside of power. I imagine when groups come that would not matter as much, but it would be a nice quality of life feature.

Sound

The music was great, voices a bit shallow but the flow of conversation was fine I think. I have not yet finished colonizing so not yet sure how the story will continue so I cannot yet comment on that. I did really enjoy the sound at the end of the hydrogen ship into space part after the tutorial, and I would argue having more of those moments in when completing certain quests is a big plus. I am a real sucker for epic music so that I think that inclusion was very nice and more memorable than the droppod first landing in fact because it included more sound.. please more of those moments when wrapping up sections or major arcs! O.O

Ship control feedback

Ship movement feels fine, but if wanting to expand on this in the future I would have an idea on that end worth looking into: Some minor thingy that would improve the control of the ship is the ability to set a maximum speed, a sort of trottle capper. Which maybe could be configured using two buttons or for example a shift + mouse wheel or something like that. In that line I would also argue for a speed block in the future, that could help regulate speed if an GPS or beacon/antenna is set as a target; this would prevent overshooting and is particularly handy at night or in dark environments. Maybe such a system could even encompass a radar system for cloud flight safety or even sonar system when water comes some day, where a sonar would yield a flexible gps trigger of sorts to slow down.. but well, I guess my mind goes in overdrive when ever covering water. x.x

UI feedback

It would be nice if boxes with content could have some sort of indicator light, or maybe a hud overlay to indicate which box is filled. I sort of hope UI for blocks will come with ingame specs in the future, it would increase planning and designing a lot. For UI displays in the future I do hope these will get an overhaul too, maybe an easier way of configuring them. I believe I have mentioned that thought in a blog post before somewhere but just blobbing it in here in case that is handy. ;)

Other feedback bits I like to share

Given my tenacity to delete posts quite often on YouTube, I wanted to share an biome idea with Keen in case Keen loves me for loving water. And yes I will build my squid submarine and release a video on that and maybe in the workshop too.. once ready.. I love water.. gonna be wild.. O.O ehrm.. I wanted to share this video:

The Underwater Lakes That Shouldn't Exist

It is about an underwater lake, common in abyssal areas where salt deposits and thermal vents coincide. It creates underwater lakes with beaches and tidal effects. I have no idea what kind of style the water planet will be, but if wanting to send Marek off into a sub to some fancy seabed kind of holiday next, I would personally recommend visiting the red sea seabed.. :P Either way, the biome could offer a very interesting kind of environment depending if the geography of the planet where to allow for such a thing that is.. o.o

Final thoughts

I look forward to what SE2 will bring and hope underwater gameplay will come with a pressure system. I also noticed some chats surrounding heat sinks and vents/heat storage and I would argue any of those kind of systems would be great additions. Most systems are I guess. :) Have a wonderful X-Mas and stay creative!