[PROPOSAL] Backpack Levels & Modules

1

Alex ●

Extra Equipment 7

Backpack Atmospheric Thruster (Increases carrying capacity)

Atmospheric Thruster Mk1 (Speed Limit++++, Thrust++++, Battery consumption+) (1 Parameter Module slot)

Atmospheric Thruster Mk2 (Speed Limit+++++, Thrust+++++, Battery consumption++) (2 Parameter Module slots)

Atmospheric Thruster Mk3 (Speed Limit++++++, Thrust++++++, Battery consumption+++) (3 Parameter Module slots)

Backpack Ion Thruster Parameter Modules (Overheat Risk!!)

Efficiency Module Mk1 (Battery consumption-)

Efficiency Module Mk2 (Battery consumption--)

Efficiency Module Mk3 (Battery consumption---)

Overdrive Mk1 (Overheat ++) (Performance loss after overheating)

Overdrive Mk2 (Overheat +++) (Performance loss after overheating)

Overdrive Mk3 (Overheat ++++) (Performance loss after overheating)

Thruster Optimization Module Mk1 (Overheat-)

Thruster Optimization Module Mk2 (Overheat--)

Thruster Optimization Module Mk3 (Overheat---)

Speed Module Mk1 (Speed Limit+)

Speed Module Mk2 (Speed Limit++)

Speed Module Mk3 (Speed Limit+++)

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1

Marcus Parriott ●

i like the layout you have here... i would like to add one thing, specific tool and weapon slots.

this would make the character info page look more polished. and the inventory be JUST inventory.

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1

Alex ●

Yes Marcus, dedicated modules can be added to this system. In line with the overall purpose of this proposal, equipment usage can also become part of the progression system.

Hand tools and weapons could be used in three different ways:

They can be stored in the inventory.
They can be used through the "empty hand" slot accessed with the 0 key. (Provides a single equipment slot.)
They can be added to the backpack equipment slot through the Tool & Weapon Holster module, providing quick access.

The Holster slot allows quick switching between tools and weapons using the mouse thumbwheel, or by using the 1, 2, 3... keys within the related equipment tab.

To prevent the Holster slot from interfering with other tabs (such as CTRL + 1, CTRL + 2, etc.), it could have its own dedicated key combination, for example (CTRL + ").

At the start of Survival, the character has two hand tools:

Drill
Welder

The Grinder is not available at the beginning. It can be produced after collecting the required resources and progressing through the Gearforge.

Extra Equipment 8

Tool & Weapon Holster

Tool & Weapon Holster Mk1: 2 slots

Tool & Weapon Holster Mk2: 4 slots

Tool & Weapon Holster Mk3: 6 slots

Once the Tool & Weapon Holster is installed in the backpack, tools and weapons can no longer be equipped through the empty hand slot on the 0 key.

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1

Kisai ●

> In the current survival system, the character starts with an advanced backpack that has ion and hydrogen thrusters with no altitude limit and heavily restricted speed, and also supports backpack building.

It seems some of these suggestions make the backpack work like it does in NMS, which ... eh... There are some parts of that I like, but the most frustrating part of that in NMS is that if you break the suit/upgrades in the suit/respawn things get destroyed and if you don't have the tool to repair it, fueled and the unrepaired thing becomes a super painful experience (which is why I dropped NMS the first time I played it, got stuck in a hole, couldn't dig my way out, couldn't jump out, eventually when I came back to it a long while later I managed to parkour over the edge of the hole.)

How I would arrange it (same with the weapons, grinder, welder and mining drill) is that any upgrade you get is permanent, but can be "turned off", or you can explicitly save settings on a per-planet basis (so you don't accidentally boost straight into the landscape on a planet with weaker gravity/atmosphere density), and settings for "zero g" mode and if you respawn it respawns with the upgrades intact, but the energy/fuel/ammo dropped to avoid people using "die and respawn" as a strategy, especially if multiplayer PvP becomes a thing later.

> Atmospheric density should affect altitude

That would only make sense, otherwise the game would allow players to land on gas giants without being crushed. In the real universe, see Venus. Chemical composition aside, you would need a stronger suit.

> Hydrogen thrusters should carry explosion risk

That risk shouldn't be any worse than vehicles. If you accelerate >75kph and hit something you already die. In PvP someone could/should be able to target the tank, and that immediately disables the players boosters.

Like the one problem I find with how any of the thrusters work in the game work is that you have "atmosphere" and you have "ion" and neither work in each others environments, in the real world "ion thrusters" consume a noble gas like Helium, Argon or Xenon. The Atmosphere engines therefor consume Oxygen in the atmosphere because the shape of the engines in the game resemble Jet engines. However on the ships, both of these consume only electricity. I suppose the "rule of fun" applies here, where if you had to carry enough fuel to operate any of the jetpack modes at all times or on the ships, it would devolve into survival modes mostly seeking/producing fuels and little else. But that also asks a valid question about how the hydrogen thrusters/engines work then. They technically shouldn't be able to work either unless they are are generating thrust by expelling the hydrogen itself, as they require oxygen to work as a rocket fuel.

Without getting to nitpicky, it's already beyond the realm of believability to carry the quantities of materials the game already lets you use. Especially on land. We should be thinking of the suit as also an exoskeleton, and if the battery dies, the ability to move would effectively stop, but the player shouldn't die until the Oxygen is used up (maybe a friend in multiplayer can come rescue you.) How it works right now is that the suit battery dies and then you start losing health for no apparent reason even if you stand still

Thus I would suggest that the suit upgrades just have a "power grid" itself. So the default settings work in space and on a planet. When you get an upgrade it consumes more of the suits power generation. If you install too large of a power consumer, other upgrades have to be switched off. So if you have, say, mk3 tool/weapons, you can't use all of them simultaneously so the power use isn't really a concern, but if you are using it WHILE the jetpack is on, the power consumption increases. So you may want to use the MK1 mode of the tools even if you have the upgrades for them if your vehicle isn't nearby.

Which gets back to the main bugbear I think people have is that the suit building is a bit too easy. I think "out of the box" MK1 suit building should actually NOT be able to make anything without a smelter/assembler except armor/hull parts that require only iron (Eg steel plates and steel tubes), and the mk1 grinder should only be able to deconstruct the same parts off targets. The immediate MK2 upgrades for these add "utilize nearby smelter" and MK3 adds "utilize nearby assembler", presumably on a vehicle/ship. So if you have a MK2 grinder it can deconstruct things that the smelter makes, and the MK3 grinder deconstructs things that the assembler makes. Ideally, when building something that the backpack can't build itself alone, you'd see a drone animation going between the "ghost" block/item the actual smelter/assembler/storage location. If there are multiple nearby smelters/assemblers, then it would use all of them in parallel unless toggled to "do not use for backpack building".

Upgrades to the backpack should really be in terms of storage, building speed, while the suit as a whole should have a movement speed/energy generation/consumption balance. If you don't have mk3 power generation then all upgrades temporary downgrade to mk1 mode until resolved. If storage/mass-carry is downgraded from from mk3 to mk1, movement speed is reduced and boosters use more fuel.

> In the current survival system, the character starts with an advanced backpack that has ion and hydrogen thrusters with no altitude limit and heavily restricted speed, and also supports backpack building.

It seems some of these suggestions make the backpack work like it does in NMS, which ... eh... There are some parts of that I like, but the most frustrating part of that in NMS is that if you break the suit/upgrades in the suit/respawn things get destroyed and if you don't have the tool to repair it, fueled and the unrepaired thing becomes a super painful experience (which is why I dropped NMS the first time I played it, got stuck in a hole, couldn't dig my way out, couldn't jump out, eventually when I came back to it a long while later I managed to parkour over the edge of the hole.)

How I would arrange it (same with the weapons, grinder, welder and mining drill) is that any upgrade you get is permanent, but can be "turned off", or you can explicitly save settings on a per-planet basis (so you don't accidentally boost straight into the landscape on a planet with weaker gravity/atmosphere density), and settings for "zero g" mode and if you respawn it respawns with the upgrades intact, but the energy/fuel/ammo dropped to avoid people using "die and respawn" as a strategy, especially if multiplayer PvP becomes a thing later.

> Atmospheric density should affect altitude

That would only make sense, otherwise the game would allow players to land on gas giants without being crushed. In the real universe, see Venus. Chemical composition aside, you would need a stronger suit.

> Hydrogen thrusters should carry explosion risk

That risk shouldn't be any worse than vehicles. If you accelerate >75kph and hit something you already die. In PvP someone could/should be able to target the tank, and that immediately disables the players boosters.

Like the one problem I find with how any of the thrusters work in the game work is that you have "atmosphere" and you have "ion" and neither work in each others environments, in the real world "ion thrusters" consume a noble gas like Helium, Argon or Xenon. The Atmosphere engines therefor consume Oxygen in the atmosphere because the shape of the engines in the game resemble Jet engines. However on the ships, both of these consume only electricity. I suppose the "rule of fun" applies here, where if you had to carry enough fuel to operate any of the jetpack modes at all times or on the ships, it would devolve into survival modes mostly seeking/producing fuels and little else. But that also asks a valid question about how the hydrogen thrusters/engines work then. They technically shouldn't be able to work either unless they are are generating thrust by expelling the hydrogen itself, as they require oxygen to work as a rocket fuel.

Without getting to nitpicky, it's already beyond the realm of believability to carry the quantities of materials the game already lets you use. Especially on land. We should be thinking of the suit as also an exoskeleton, and if the battery dies, the ability to move would effectively stop, but the player shouldn't die until the Oxygen is used up (maybe a friend in multiplayer can come rescue you.) How it works right now is that the suit battery dies and then you start losing health for no apparent reason even if you stand still

Thus I would suggest that the suit upgrades just have a "power grid" itself. So the default settings work in space and on a planet. When you get an upgrade it consumes more of the suits power generation. If you install too large of a power consumer, other upgrades have to be switched off. So if you have, say, mk3 tool/weapons, you can't use all of them simultaneously so the power use isn't really a concern, but if you are using it WHILE the jetpack is on, the power consumption increases. So you may want to use the MK1 mode of the tools even if you have the upgrades for them if your vehicle isn't nearby.

Which gets back to the main bugbear I think people have is that the suit building is a bit too easy. I think "out of the box" MK1 suit building should actually NOT be able to make anything without a smelter/assembler except armor/hull parts that require only iron (Eg steel plates and steel tubes), and the mk1 grinder should only be able to deconstruct the same parts off targets. The immediate MK2 upgrades for these add "utilize nearby smelter" and MK3 adds "utilize nearby assembler", presumably on a vehicle/ship. So if you have a MK2 grinder it can deconstruct things that the smelter makes, and the MK3 grinder deconstructs things that the assembler makes. Ideally, when building something that the backpack can't build itself alone, you'd see a drone animation going between the "ghost" block/item the actual smelter/assembler/storage location. If there are multiple nearby smelters/assemblers, then it would use all of them in parallel unless toggled to "do not use for backpack building".

Upgrades to the backpack should really be in terms of storage, building speed, while the suit as a whole should have a movement speed/energy generation/consumption balance. If you don't have mk3 power generation then all upgrades temporary downgrade to mk1 mode until resolved. If storage/mass-carry is downgraded from from mk3 to mk1, movement speed is reduced and boosters use more fuel.

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1

Alex ●

I think there may have been a small misunderstanding about the purpose of my suggestion.

First of all, this suggestion is only a concept-stage idea. I have not defined technical values such as power consumption, fuel usage, movement speed, or balancing values yet. The reason is that Space Engineers 2 is still in Alpha. Many core mechanics may change before the game is completed, and Keen may already have different plans for these systems. Time will show.

My main goal was to suggest a modular suit/backpack system that would give players a stronger sense of character progression.

Many of the points you mentioned seem more like feedback about Keen's overall survival and equipment design. The main purpose of my suggestion was not to completely redesign existing systems, but rather to add a modular progression system on top of them.

For example, the point about hydrogen requiring oxygen to be used as rocket fuel is technically correct. However, as you also mentioned, Space Engineers sometimes prioritizes gameplay over complete realism. Compared to many sandbox games, it already puts much more emphasis on engineering, technical design, and production logic. However, some physical details are simplified to preserve fun gameplay. My suggestion does not aim to change these core principles.

Regarding the idea that "hydrogen thrusters should have a risk of explosion," I think this is exactly where a modular system becomes important. Players should not be forced to use hydrogen thrusters. Before a combat mission, they could remove hydrogen modules and choose atmospheric or ion thrusters instead. I think players should prepare according to the mission and make choices between performance and risk.

Also, regarding carrying capacity, I suggested movement servos in the link below. As this module is upgraded, carrying capacity could increase. Maybe movement servos could even have Tier 5 or Tier 6 versions; I'm not sure yet.

https://support.keenswh.com/spaceengineers2/pc/topic/54701-modular-suit-system-proposal

I also have a different opinion about equipment disappearing after death. If a player has reached MK3-level equipment, they most likely already have an advanced base. The respawn system will probably happen at the nearest Clone Chamber, or at a cloning station located on a base, ship, or vehicle chosen by the player. At this stage, it feels more natural that the player would already have the infrastructure or spare parts needed to reproduce their equipment.

However, I definitely agree with some of your criticisms.

* I think the main complaint from players is that building directly from the suit is too easy.

I agree with this point. My idea was that early-game suit manufacturing should be slower and less efficient. As upgrades progress, production losses could decrease and efficiency could improve. I also think component limitations could be an important mechanic. In other words, a low-level suit should not be able to produce everything; advanced production features should be unlocked through upgrades.

* If storage and carrying capacity are reduced from MK3 to MK1, movement speed should decrease and thrusters should consume more fuel.

At this point, the game already has a similar basic mechanic. If I remember correctly, in the current system, when power usage exceeds around 60% of the available output, energy consumption increases, and at higher consumption levels the energy drains much faster. This type of balancing already exists in the current mechanics of the game.

I think a similar approach would be used when creating the technical values for the system I suggested.

Also, evaluating the backpack only as a "storage and building system" might be incomplete. The thrusters are also located on the backpack. Therefore, storage capacity, mobility, energy generation, and propulsion systems are not completely independent from each other; they should be considered parts of the same modular system.

One of the ideas in your comment that I liked the most was the idea of the backpack having its own power grid.

This could actually be a very interesting direction. In addition to extra batteries, power modules such as a hydrogen generator or a small reactor could be considered. Of course, these should also have their own risks. For example, both could have an explosion risk when damaged, while a reactor could release radiation and gradually harm the player if proper precautions are not taken. This idea is definitely worth exploring further.

Overall, thank you for your detailed comment. Even though we may disagree on some points, your feedback was valuable and gave me some new ideas to think about.