feature request Wishlist for SE2

Hello Keen, this is my first time communicating with you but I've been a long time player and support of space engineers science the first wave of early access and seeing as updates to SE1 continue I think SE2 is a huge opportunity to branch the game in more of a different direction.

Below I will outline several things I would like to see in the game at some point. I understand many of these things may not be possible but I think some of them may have not been on your radar.

1. a thermal system

Space engineers stands to gain allot if each block had a specific heat capacity along with proper thermal dynamics sim even if its a simple approximation. It would open the door for blocks like heat syncs, heat exchangers, heat pups, radiators, and coolant lines/pumps. Weapons would generate heat etc. it would expand the engineering challenge , reward and depth of ships vastly. and its one step closer to clever design winning over just having more stuff.

2. More in depth reactors

Reactors should be split into multiple parts. In real life a reactor core generates thermal energy that moves to a mechanism to convert the thermal energy into electrical. and many more. we dont need a full reactor simulation.

but it would be good to have several core types, Light water, MSR, fission fragment and many other possible nuclear power types. and several choices for how to harness the thermal energy such as. MHD direct conversion, light conversion, brayton cycles, or sterling engines.

being able to design the conversion system and the cooling loops would be a fun engineering challenge. the benefit of doing this could be an effectively unlimited power source as in real life the core could last many years between replacement. but of course the max power you could draw from them would depend on the setup and the cooling. combine with the thermal system people could engineer their own cooling loops to keep the reactor cool while separating weapons and other system on other loops. so other heat does not back feed into the core.

This would position custom reactor setups as a challenging rewarding end game power solution to work towards. Leaving the other types of power such as wind and solar and hydro as the starting power sources. But because custom reactor loops require so many components it will be very hard to make a high power system in a compact fighter craft size. so the other power sources will still be required for certain tasks even in the late stages. you can keep the existing reactor blocks as the Small modular reactor that would be simpler to start with less to manage and lower power output. where as with the custom loops you would have more opportunity to scale out put up in a non linear fashion. if the thermal system is implemented then heat rejection can be used to deepen the gameplay. no form of power generation is 100% efficient. all form of power generation will have waste heat. Therefore if you increase the power output of a ship, you will also need to increase its ability to reject heat. you wont just be able to add more reactors. Each reactor will demand an amount of surface area for radiators, surface area that now cannot be used for other things. I think this will lead to more thoughtful design and more interesting combat.

3. more flexible moving part systems.

so far in SE we have had pistons rotors and hinges and that's fine but if I want to make an elevator I'm limited by how far the piston can extend. or having to make some cursed clang inducing stack of pistons. But why not have a multi block solution. you could add for example 3 new blocks.

Rail section. Rail end cap. and Rail body connection.

the way this would work. is you place an end cap, and then place rail sections for as long as desired with an other end cap at the other side of the rail. or maybe no cap if you entend to use this system to make a launching system. while rail body connection can be attached to any part of the rail and it would be a grid that can slide along the rail. using power. it can have breaking torque and all kinds of parameters to configure. this would allow the creation of so many more things. I'm sure you can also extrapolate this line of thinking beyond just rail sections also.

3. modular weapons. - I think it would be nice to be able to build custom weapons in the game in a more supported manner. having for example gun barrels, turret frames etc. to make custom coil guns, rail gins and more. also maybe being able to make custom ammo and loading mechanisms.

also on the weapons front directed energy weapons (mostly as point defense) and guides missiles for them to shoot down.

you would start with the traditional gatling guns and others block weapons but later advance to building bigger systems made up of more then one block. I know we have been able to do this to an extent already science the start of the game with player built torpedo's. but I see value in having more native support for this type of building.

4. I saw that you have an area welder that can weld behind what its looking at. I would really like to see that in a ship mounted form. hopefully being able to weld many blocks behind the one your working on.

5. more detailed energy, reactor being able to ramp to meet power demmand additional waste heat if producing more power then you can use/store. power connections circuits with circuit brakers would also make more of a fun challenge.

6. more detection based blocks.

radars, IRST, lidar, RWR panels and others. the existence of these items could also extend ship combat beyond visual range. (this would also make custom weapons more useful as you could add an engine exception allowing for rail gun slugs and coilgun rounds to travel faster then 300ms by simulating them in a cheaper way) would be cool to have long range battles in SE where shots can have 12 seccond travel times and of course cqc would still exist as it would be hard to get consistant hits and long range.

7. more broad radio transmission, right now in SE you can transmit specific things point to point. but what if you could do a little more. as a single example. say you wanted to build a tactical data link for a group of ships to share info. lets assume the above radar blocks are in the game. the radars might generate and store a list of track files for all the things they see that are stored in a target computer block.

you setup a radio block to transmit a data packet. on repeat that contains a list of all the targets the ships radar sees and their positions, along with an encryption code. All ships with that code and data structure entered would then receive that target data if they are in range of the transmitter this is one example buit idealy you could setup custom data packets to contain anything you want. I think this could even be done without in game scripting.

8. better in game scripting. I think previously SE1 in game scripting was and still is a fairly poor experience, as the only way to get anything done easily is to export the vrage symbols to visual studio then copy paste the code into SE when finished. if you could make a better in game text editor or find a way to link a code editor to the game directly it would be a massive quality of life improvement.

9. better AI blocks for automation.

In SE I get the most fun by designing and building, and then using what I built for combat/ transport etc. piloting a mining ship can be fun for a bit but it gets tedious doing the same ore runs repeatedly. while this dan already be done with scripting and I have done so in the past. I would like to see an easy way for people to (once they already have a mining ship built) place an AI block on it. and give it instructions of what resource to look for. have it go search on its own find it. mine it and the deposit to a specified location. maybe even more remote command capability beyond just taking over with a remote control blocks like long distant orders.

10. RCS thrusters is a primary means of rotation.

RCS would add depth to the game because its another thing competing for outside surface real estate. also the location of the thrusters relative to center of mass will affect the torque they apply. this means rotation performance of the ship can move beyond the quantity of gyros and the design will matter. if you want to take it a step further can also have gold gas and hot gas.

11. more realistic thrusters. in SE ion thrusters just purely use energy. in reality they still need a propellent like xenon argon or others. (some reactors produce xenon as a byproduct by the way so infinite propellent may still be possible in some designs if the above reactor ideas are also implemented) But I think all thruster types should require propellant tanks to draw from.

also I would like to see longer thrusters that are the same width and height but produce more thrust this way outside surface rebate does not necessarily need to keep being consumed to increase thrust if you can instead of the option of using more internal space in the form of a longer engine that provides more thrust. maybe even have gas accelorators and thrust nozzles as separate blocks. modular thrusters system possibly.

many of these ideas may seems like they would over complicate the game but, right now in SE without mods or other limiting enforcement outside the vanilla rules. PVP or combat just tends to lead to packing as much PCU into a ship as possible and stacking the most quantity of weapons. I think many of these systems will naturally need to fewer overside designs. and in some cases require bigger designs for certain things. but will over all lead to more thoughtful design where. engineering matters more then quantity of stuff. Because in SE1 you could engineer some pretty cool stuff, like custom landing gear but it usually is just for cool factor and a detriment to performance of the task. in most cases. it would be good to have more engineering like designs that positively contribute to your outcomes in the game and maybe two ships of the same size and mass/material value can have vastly differing performance based purely on design.

there's more I can say but even so I already know including all of the above in the game is likely not possible on your timeline. I'm excited to see where SE2 goes even if none of the above is included I'm sure it will be a great game. but I hope I've inspired you to take the game further and if even one of these changes makes it in directly or in directly in some form I would be excited to see it. Even if not until an eventual SE3. thank you for reading.