Space Engineers vs Empyrion: Galactic Survival - Sidewinder Edition

Darkfyre99 · Nov 5, 2020

Welcome back to SE vs EGS: Sidewinder Edition!

Looks like I didn't have to worry about CP2077 coming out by the time I got tired of SW: Squadrons after all.

Today, on Space Engineers: Sidewinder Edition...
Episode Twenty Seven
Exploring Other Options!

When last we left our stranded space engineer, I had returned to the surface to refill my space transport's hydrogen tanks, having failed at locating either ice or platinum among the nearby asteroids. The long climb up and down the planet's gravity well was consuming too much time. And so, my immediate plan, upon waking up in my underground base, was to check out a trading base I had coordinates for.

Since it was a quarter of the way around the world, I'd need to take my Firefly personal transport. Which was, of course, at my starting base.

And so, the long journey began...

Eventually, I arrived at the trading base. It did not look good. The landing platform was all but hidden behind some trees growing through it.

The interior wasn't any better. It looked like a landslide had buried half the base... and I couldn't dig it out, thanks to the base's defensive shield.

Only one terminal was left unburied. I knew platinum was valuable, but they wanted a fortune for a single bar.

So I went with plan B: attaching a large hydrogen tank to my orbital shuttle, and filling it with hydrogen. Which, of course, required returning to base. Along the way, a drop pod landed on my path. I stopped to investigate, hoping for something good... and to render the rest for spare parts.

Based on phase of the planet o'Clock, it was approaching sunset.

I landed at my initial base near dusk, and made my way back to my main base. There, I turned in for the night.

The next morning, I opened up the Orbital Shuttle's doors. It was sunny out, and there was no need to work solely by the light of my suit's lights, if I didn't want to.

I ordered a large hydrogen tank from the assembler, and rather quickly noticed I needed some silver.

Which, of course, I'd moved to my orbital base along with much of my other materials. I'd need to mine more, which meant...

Granted, the Termite was overkill for what I needed to do: mine maybe half a ton of silver ore by hand. But getting the Firefly would've taken longer. I did briefly entertain using the Termite directly, but decided it wasn't worth it.

It may have taken most what I'd left behind the last time I returned to space, but it was sufficient to build the large hydrogen tank. Of course, by the time it took to assemble it, night had fallen. So I again turned in for the night.

The next day I hoped to launch the fully fueled Orbital Shuttle, complete with oversized tank, back into space. There was one tiny problem... it was raining.

Okay, the rain wasn't the problem, even if it made me nervous about lightening strikes. The problem was that what little ice I had barely moved the dial on that huge tank. It was time to do some ice mining. A lot of ice mining. The whole process took so many trips, it was starting to get dark by the time I made my last run.

But it was worth it. With the dawn of my actual launch day, it was time to return to space again... hopefully never to return. The hydrogen tanks were full...

A new camera was installed at the top of my ship...

And I lifted off the surface of the planet. I aimed my ship near my growing space station, and at the right altitude, I shut off the engines, so my ship could come to a stop just above the planet's atmosphere. The whole process only burned about 5% of my total fuel, rather than the nearly 50% fuel this ship had consumed before, when it was near capacity. That tank holds a lot of fuel.

Next Time on SE-Squared: Episode 28... Exploring the nearby asteroids for exploitable resources.

But First... on EGS:SE2... Episode Ten - Hanger construction begins!

Darkfyre99 · Nov 6, 2020

Welcome to yet another episode of Empyrion Galactic Survival vs Space Engineers: Sidewinder Edition!

Today on Empyrion Galactic Survival: Sidewinder Edition 2
Episode Ten - Hanger construction begins!

The morning started out party cloudy, with a stiff cold breeze coming out of the north. It took a few moments to get my bearings back in this game, but thankfully, I'd set both games to use controls I'm familiar with.

By the time I'd set my small constructor up producing concrete blocks, and harvested my crops from the greenhouse, the local moon was rising to the north-north east. It looks weird, but given the latitude of my base, and its orientation relative to this world's sun, it's actually correct.

One of the many things I needed to do as I started to plan out the walls of the hanger, was move my micro-hauler's landing pad by the greenhouse. I've also started doing some more decorating.

Sunset came soon enough. You can see part of the back wall of the hanger, just beyond my hovertruck.

As the next day progressed, I started to cap off the back wall of the hanger. I realized only afterwards that my hanger wouldn't be tall enough once the roof was in place.

I always wince when I have to remove a block unnecessarily, thanks to the promethium required to build power cells for my multi-being somewhat rare, but soon enough I got the back wall back on track...

The sun set before I knew it...

The next day saw me sending a drone below my base to dig up additional stone to produce concrete. I was originally planning on having flat sides for the hanger, but I decided I wanted to keep the slanted walls. The front of the hanger will have to be flat, though, since there are no slanted hanger doors. This did require extending the foundations even further.

Sadly, I was so focused on building the thing, that I forgot to take screen shots.

I had almost finished the top of the hanger the night before, having run out of concrete again. I decided to steal a little time from the next round to finish the roof... well, not so much finish the roof, but at least complete the hanger's ceiling. I've got quite a bit of greebling planned for the actual roof... along with some defensive batteries.

Next time on EGS:SE2... Episode 11: Hanger Construction, Phase Two!
But first... SE-Squared: Episode 28... Asteroid Mining Begins!

(edited to add a missing title)

Darkfyre99 · Nov 8, 2020

Today... on Space Engineers: Sidewinder Edition...

Episode 28... Asteroid Mining Begins!

This is the stage of Space Engineers that I find can be extremely tedious, to the point where I've started a new game: searching asteroids for rare ores. Seriously, if I don't find platinum and ice in a couple of rounds, I'm prepared to declare this game "finished." Between the short range of the ore scanner relative to the size of asteroids, the distance between asteroid clusters, and how slow the maximum speed is, trying to find anything in space is an exercise in frustration for me.

At least I brought plenty of fuel, so I can accelerate at top speeds frequently.

At any rate, on with the show!

The round starts out with me choosing an asteroid cluster to explore.

I'm quickly reminded of the other thing that frustrates me with searching asteroids for resources: the size of spotlight. With half the asteroid unlit, and the short range of the lights, it's hard to find anything.

Are you noticing a theme here???

Platinum!!! I found Platinum! Platinum! Platinum!!!

I'm going to pretend I didn't find this...

Eventually, I finish searching the cluster, and move on to the next one.

I can't believe I didn't find any gold in the motherload cluster...

Have I mentioned I don't like asteroid mining in Elite: Dangerous as well?

As I drift to the next cluster, I spy a couple lightning strikes on the night side of the planet below. At least I had something to occupy my time during the long trip to the next cluster.

Eventually, I arrive at the next cluster. It takes forever to search it. Eventually, I chose another cluster and moved on.

Ice! I have found Ice!!! Talk about luck!!!

At the next cluster, I finally find a source of iron that doesn't involve operating in a gravity well.

I load up the orbital shuttle with all the iron it can carry, and set course back to my orbital station. It was time to finish construction of the refinery on board.

Minus almost three tons of platinum ore, of course.

Not wanting to make too many trips out to the iron deposit, I made a few tweaks to the orbital shuttle. Once I've got the refinery built, I'll be able to build a hydrogen tank on the base, and drain the large tank. It's served its purpose.

Before departing, I moved the spotlight to the side, added a second one, and attached a drill to the front of the shuttle. It was time to go asteroid mining.

Soon enough, the shuttle's ore containers are full, so I return to base to refine it. I don't want to process all of it using the basic refinery, naturally, so I put most of it in an unattached storage container on the station.

It's at that point I figured that enough time had passed in the round, and decided to call it good. I really wish there was an in-game clock. All things considered, it was a fairly productive round. With all the iron I mined, I'll be able to finish the refinery, and a few other things as well. Plus, I have cunning plan to extend my detection range, without having to build a huge ship to do so.

Next time on SE-Squared: Episode 29... Asteroid Mining Continues!
But first... EGS:SE2... Episode 11: Hanger Construction, Phase Two!

CMDR Dizzy · Nov 8, 2020

My two different sized launch vehicles. The 2 hydrogen tank models has let me map 20+ asteroids so far.

Darkfyre99 · Nov 8, 2020

CMDR Dizzy said:
My two different sized launch vehicles. The 2 hydrogen tank models has let me map 20+ asteroids so far.

View attachment 194616

That reminds me...

The next time I need to return to the surface, I might as well build a new launch site at the top of a nearby mountain. Not only is it a shorter commute, but there'll be plenty of ice nearby. I don't know what I've been thinking launching from what is basically the bottom of a valley.

Darkfyre99 · Nov 10, 2020

Welcome to Empyrion: Galactic Survival
Sidewinder Edition 2
Episode 11
Hanger Construction, Phase Two!

The round began with inspecting the roof's structural integrity. Much like how thruster placement is important to ships in this game, structural integrity is important to bases. You simply can't build too far out without support. As it is, the hanger's roof is near the limits of how large a single room can be. Even building a second story on top of the hanger could case the roof to collapse without the necessary support.

You'll notice that the middle beam supporting part of the roof is turning red. This is because the single door to the hanger was sitting right below it, leaving a gap in the support. I ended up moving the door to another location to a less structurally necessary area, which was also closer to the door to the workshop, and adding a second door for access to my micro-hauler.

Once that was done, I moved on to adding the hanger door. I originally planned on having with a proper hanger door, but there wasn't a size that matched the opening. The one that was the right width was way too tall, so I went with shutters again. Naturally, I included a sensor for the doors to open automatically.

In order to actually build shutters, I had to install additional storage, because the construction kit for the hanger doors was huge. I also took the time to increase oxygen storage. By the time I got all that sorted out, and the shutter construction started, it was getting close to sunset. I harvested my crops, and turned in for the night.

One aspect of my gaming these days is that I rarely get to play a round from start to finish in one setting. Frequently, it's fifteen minutes here, 20 minutes there, maybe an hour if I'm lucky. This was the case here. By the time I returned to the game, I had a bit of a quixotic idea that I simply had to try. This is the result.

My hanger had ended up with a bit of a spikey theme going on in the corners, which gave them a bit of an ominous appearance near sunset, as seen from the living quarters. And what goes well with an ominous appearance? Why floating glowing crystals of doom, of course!

A quirk of EGS's building system is that as far as the structural integrity system is concerned, partial blocks are treated as whole blocks. So you can effectively "levitate" blocks for a high-tech look. At any rate, with that out of my system, I returned to sealing off the hanger, so I could pressurize it.

Nothing like having a some place you can breath and not freeze or roast to death (depending upon the local environment) to make building easier. I spent a bit of time mining more stone to build more concrete blocks so I could continue working on the roof, ordering up a defensive turret to place on the roof, and of course some ammunition for that turret, and went to bed.

Sadly, I overlooked one key detail.

Once I got the turret installed, I checked my base's CPU capacity.

It was over 90% capacity. Again, sadly, I still overlooked one key detail, and instead turned to working on the roof. Once I'd leveled off the top of the roof where the turret was, I turned to greebling. I simply love the variety of blocks in this game, which can be used in creative ways to add detail.

Finally, the key detail I overlooked came back to haunt me. The Zirax attacked. In this case, it was a troop transport. It took me forever to wonder why it wasn't taking more damage before I realized that I hadn't installed an ammo case, and directed the ammunition my assemblers built into it. My turret was unloaded!!!

The darn thing landed, unloaded four Zirax warriors, and then fled the scene, leaving me to deal with the foot soldiers. I killed one using my ship's guns before it got to the ramp, killed a second at the top the ramp, damaging my hovertruck in the process, killed the third as they attempted to breach my base's door, shooting up quite a few windows along the way, and then had to race after the fourth as it went for my base's core!

Sadly, I didn't think to take any screen shots of the damage, but it looked like my base had definitely been in a fight. I was more interested in restoring my workshop's integrity, so I could restore oxygen to that part of my base.

That done, I fixed the flaw in my base's defenses, and returned to greebling. With the sunset came the rapid drop in temperature, which sent me scurrying back inside.

Next time on EGS:SE2... Episode 12: Hanger Construction, Phase Three! Plus, the building of perimeter defenses, and maybe a scavenging trip or two.

But first... SE-Squared: Episode 29... Asteroid Mining Continues!

Navigare Necesse Est · Nov 11, 2020

Just a little side note: From the Depths left early access yesterday. Just in case some of you wants to have a look. It's got one of the best modular weapon systems I ever saw.

Darkfyre99 · Nov 11, 2020

Welcome to Empyrion: Galactic Survival vs Space Engineers, Sidewinder Edition!
Episode 29
Asteroid Mining Continues!

Last round, I managed to find the proverbial motherload, a cluster of asteroids with loads of platinum, and quite a bit of silver as well. I also found a generous amount of silver. I also found a small deposit of ice, which should be able to provide me with hydrogen in the future. It was time to start really concentrating on building my orbital infrastructure.

The round started out with me feeding the basic refinery metal ore, so I could build my base's main refinery. It consumed about 75% of the ore I mined last round, but eventually it was built.

The next phase was to install the productivity boosters. A speed booster and efficiency booster would be shared by both the refinery and the assembler, and three yield boosters would be attached to the refinery.

Sadly, I only had enough gold to complete one of the yield boosters. Hopefully, I would find some gold when I revisted the Motherload cluster, using my cunning plan. But before I did that, I needed to transfer the remaining hydrogen from the external tank of the shuttle to the station's hydrogen tank. And that would require actually building it.

Which is exactly what I did.

Of course, in order to do that, I'd need to dock the orbital shuttle, which in turn required completing its docking location. All in all, there was a whole lot of construction required, before I could even think of draining the tank. Eventually, though, everything was in place.

What was left in the external tank only filled up the station's tank about 5%. That is one huge tank.

With the tank drained, it was time to move on to my cunning plan to extend my sensor range: attaching a large-ship sized detector to a connector, and docking the orbital shuttle to it. Phase one was making the modifications to the shuttle and building the sensor attached to the station.

Phase Two, naturally, was docking the ship to the connector, and cutting the assembly free.

Towing a detector almost as large as the ship itself, I flew back to the Motherload Cluster

My cunning plan worked... to a degree. I managed to find a platinum deposit deep in an asteroid...

That being said, I found a lot more platinum and silver visually, thanks to the sun being at a different angle than last time. But since I was in the area anyway, I mined as much platinum as the ship would hold before returning to the station.

I love the disparity between small ship parts and large ship parts... the ship, including its two connectors, cockpit, and drill, can carry 17.6 tons of platinum ore... including the three tons of ore I had in my pockets. The large connector attached to the large detector can carry 21.6 tons. Nearly forty tons of ore altogether. I returned to base, ecstatic about my haul...

Until I noticed that my station was drifting. After I got the shuttle docked, I sat in the cockpit for several minutes, as the shuttle attempted to bring the station to a halt. Eventually, it was successful, but I realized that since this station wasn't attached to an asteroid, it would need station keeping thrusters. And since I had discovered platinum, I could use ion thrusters to do so. All I would need would be six small ones and...

There's nothing like the feeling you get when you do the math, and realize exactly how much platinum six small large-grid ion thrusters would require. I needed to get more gold, ASAP, to improve refinery yields. Plus, the two oxygen farms was barely producing any oxygen at all.

And so, I formed a new cunning plan... to return to the surface to get some gold, as well as bringing up a generous supply of oxygen and hydrogen gas. Which, in turn, would require a redesign of the orbital shuttle, and refueling base on a mountaintop.

Next time on SE-Squared: Episode 30... Redesigning the orbital shuttle, and a return to the surface!

But first... EGS:SE2... Episode 12: Hanger Construction, Phase Three! Plus, the building of perimeter defenses, and maybe a scavenging trip or two.

Darkfyre99 · Nov 14, 2020

Welcome to Empyrion: Galactic Survival - Sidewinder Edition 2!
Episode 12
Hanger Construction, Phase Three!

One of the first things I did was see of I could install a second turret with my remaining computer resource capacities. It turns out that I did, so I ordered up a second one, and started preparing the installation site. After it was installed, I was planning my strategy for decorating the inside of the hanger, testing various combinations of textures, when my "favorite" weather phenomenon reared its ugly head:

I spent the rest of the day painting the inside of the hanger. This is the result:

The next day was spent decorating the exterior. I decided to go with a solid, dark grey marble, just to maintain the ominous theme.

Much to my surprise, a second radioactive fog rolled in as I was working...

One of the interesting aspects of this game is that I rarely use the drones available to me for anything but mining. Main reason is that the drone isn't as stable as you are, which makes precise work more difficult. But despite the fact that I have an easy way of removing radioactive contamination now, my initial reaction to a radioactive storm is to quickly find shelter, and use the drone for the outside work.

It was well into the night by the time I finished (mostly) with the exterior painting.

The day after that, I figured I had enough CPU cycles left over to add some decorative items to the hanger. This occupied about half my day.

I forgot to take screen shots, though, so I borrowed a little time from the next round to take them.

I was originally going to put the radar dish on the roof of the hanger, but I realized that it would obstruct line of sight for the turrets too much. I'm still not sure about the antenna's location either. Upon reflection, I'm thinking that I'll relocate the radar dish as well, since I'm thinking of redoing the greenhouse as well. It was, after all, a temporary structure to avoid starving to death.

The rest of the day was spent at the wreck of the Heidelberg, hoping to find something else salvageable. While there, the Evil Zirax attacked the salvage site. Repulsing the attack completed the inevitable fall of my reputation with them to hostile. Which means that it's finally time to start the main quest line. If I'm going to expand this base any further, I'm going to need some of the rewards the quests bring.

Even if doing so is rather dangerous, because I suck at combat...

Next time on EGS:SE2... Episode 13: Redesiging the Greenhouse, and the Quest Begins!

But first... SE-Squared: Episode 30... Redesigning the orbital shuttle, and a return to the surface!

Darkfyre99 · Nov 15, 2020

Tonight, on Space Engineers: Sidewinder Edition
Episode 30
Orbital Shuttle Redesign, and a Return to the Surface!

The round began with me trying to preserve as much unprocessed ore as possible in unconnected cargo storage. By the time this was finished, I had about 1.5 tons of platinum ore remaining in the refinery, which yielded about 9 kilograms of refined platinum. As I suspected last round, it's going to take a lot of unrefined ore to build station keeping drives for my orbital base.

Which meant that I was going to need to return to the surface to mine more gold, to finish the yield modules on my orbital refinery. So I ordered up some thruster components to build ion thrusters for my orbital shuttle... which also require gold to construct.

I promptly salvage some of the superconducting coils from the third yield module, and render them down for the gold they contain.

Once those ion thruster components were completed, I started the orbital shuttle redesign. I removed the large scanner and its attendant connectors, removed two of the small hydrogen tanks (draining them into the station's hydrogen tank first) and all but one of the ship's hydrogen thrusters. With that done, I installed two atmospheric thrusters to operate on the surface, and six ion thrusters for maneuvering in space. In theory, they should also allow the ship to maneuver slowly on the surface.

One interesting thing I discovered recently is that my activities on the station are enough for it to obey Newton's third law. It isn't much, and it can be countered by the docked orbital shuttle's thrusters and gyroscopes, but it still exists. Which again makes me wonder why Keen doesn't model torque from thrusters on ships, when their engine is clearly capable of doing so.

At any rate, I finished the redesign, and after stabilizing the station again, I launched the vehicle, and let it plummet towards the surface of the ship.

With the ship barely massing more than eight tons, the atmospheric thrusters were more than sufficient to halt the ship's freefall.

That being said, the ion thrusters are too weak to accelerate the ship quickly, so I left it where it landed, and used my jetpack to return to my underground layer. I'd move it to the launch site once it was built.

At the base, I hopped into the Termite, and flew to my gold mine. I debated on using the Termite to mine, but ended up doing it by hand.

The trip yielded 2.7 tons of gold ore, which produced about 45 kilograms of gold. It isn't a lot, but it should be more than enough to finish the orbital refinery. First part of my task on the surface completed, I headed into the mountains with the Termite full of equipment, in search of a good place to build my launch site.

I found a likely site about eight kilometers from my underground base, and four from my landing site. Sadly, I don't know what I was thinking when I ordered my first set of construction kits. I really should've brought parts for a battery and wind turbines first, rather than parts for conveyors, a survival kit, an assembler, and an O2/H2 generator.

I soon realized my mistake, and went to back to base to get the proper parts. I would've needed to make two trips either way, but at least I could've started accumulating power in the meantime...

By the time I got the base up and running, and my orbital shuttle docked, a fierce blizzard struck the mountaintop.

Since the base was completed, and the shuttle docked, I started phase two of my plan: adding oxygen and hydrogen tanks to the ship. The oxygen farms on the station may have been enough to supply my needs, but eventually I'll want an oxygenated environment to live in. Getting oxygen from the planet made more sense than refining it from the single asteroid ice deposit I found.

I actually ran out of iron before I could build more than a single oxygen tank and the one hydrogen tank. Which meant I'll be commuting quite a bit between this site, and my main surface base, in the next round. Soon enough, though, the sun rose... reminding me that it was time to finish the round. It went a little long, but at least it felt like a natural place to finish the round.

Next time on SE-Squared: Episode 31... Construction of the Launch Site and the Tanker continues!

But first... EGS:SE2... Episode 13: Redesigning the Greenhouse, and the Quest Begins!

Darkfyre99 · Nov 16, 2020

Welcome to Empyrion: Galactic Survival!
Sidewinder Edition Two
Episode 13
Redesigning the Greenhouse, and the Quest Begins!

On the first day of the round was split between harvesting the last of the crops before removing the seedlings, and prototyping my new Greenhouse design. I knew approximately what I wanted to do with it, but as always, it was how to go about doing it that proved to be a challenge. In particular, finding a good design for the corners of the structure proved to be a challenge, given the options available.

Ultimately, this is the design I went with:

I was actually hoping for something more dome-like, but it'll do.

Once I was ready, I drained the old greenhouse of oxygen, and proceeded to salvage the structure.

As I built the structure, I was surprised when I leveled up.

Level ten is a critical level, because it allows me to unlock the Deconstructor, which allows me to render salvaged blocks back to their individual components. It's especially important if I want to salvage thrusters from wrecks for their flux coils.

Of course, I'll need to find enough flux coils in order to build it in the first place...

Soon enough, the new Greenhouse was finished, and my crops replanted.

The next day dawned, and I decided to try to free up some computer resources by replacing concrete supports with metal trusses. Yes, concrete is essentially "free," while iron is not... but concrete is, surprisingly, CPU intensive. Nearly half of my base's CPU capacity is consumed by concrete. It was time to start exploring alternatives.

Once that was done, I hopped into my scout ship, and departed on the main quest.

The two Zirax drones that appeared during part of the quest were rather easily downed...

But not before doing a bit of damage to the armor of my scout ship. Thankfully, nothing critical was destroyed.

The rest of the night was spent finishing the chapter one of the main quest, and then moving on to chapter two. I was about halfway through, when I started getting low on oxygen. I returned to base for resupply, just before the Zirax attacked! It turned out to be two troop transports.

Before they could be destroyed, they managed to land and deploy a total of six warriors to raid my base.

The base's defenses managed to down one of the transports before it escaped out of range, and I was too distracted by the ground troops to take care of the second. Thankfully, the two squads split up, allowing me to kill the ones trying to blow up the my workshop's door, before killing the group that tried to sneak in by making a hole in the foundation.

Since I was in the area anyway, I planted my chosen reward from the first half of chapter two, a coffee plant, and went back to finish the quest.

Ironically, I spent a miserable month weaning myself off caffeine twenty years, and have avoided it since. But I need a source of "natural stimulants" for certain medicines.

It was well into the fourth night when I returned back to base, chapter two complete. Enemies certainly take a lot more damage on Hard difficulty, which means I'm going to need better defenses. And of course, I'm going to need a better ship when I move on to chapter three.

Next time on EGS:SE2... Episode 14: Perimeter Defenses and Gunship Diplomacy!

But first...

SE-Squared: Episode 31... Construction of the Launch Site and the Tanker continues!

Darkfyre99 · Nov 18, 2020

And now, another episode of Space Engineers!

Sidewinder Edition
Episode 31
Construction of the Launch Site and the Tanker continues!

The episode began with me needing iron. A lot of iron. So I returned to my underground hanger to mine some more.

I burned through the remaining daylight hours doing so.

I ended up with over 35 tons of refined iron, along with three tons of silicon and two and a half of nickel from the rocks that I mined as I dug towards my starting iron deposit. I also had about half a ton of silver and cobalt which I had left behind previously. Well, I decided that I wasn't going to leave them behind this time, and loaded them all up in the Termite. Despite the weight, it managed to fly.

A ship that can only make it partway up the mountain, apparently. At least I didn't damage anything. Well... anything important.

I ended up making three trips up the mountain, carrying ingots by hand, before lifting off again.

At any rate, by the time I made it to the top of the mountain, another blizzard was raging.

I built a landing platform for the Termite, and went to work mining ice. There was just one teeny, tiny problem...

I soon figured out what the maximum capacity of the Termite was. It turned out that each load of mined ice filled the hydrogen tank by about 10%, so I did a lot of ice mining before that tank was full.

I loaded up my rare metals, a ton of silicon and nickel, and about ten tons of iron, and lifted off, bound for space. It didn’t take too long to notice a teeny, tiny flaw to my plan: the jet engines lost thrust long before the ion engines could take up the slack.

It is at this point where I decided to nominate myself for a virtual Darwin Award. Rather than ease my my ship down, or try to calculate exactly how much thrust I had to work with before going for a suicide burn, I decided to wing it.

- cue epic face palming meme -

I love Kerbal Space Program, where the main enemy you face is gravity and your own mistakes. One of my favorite strategies in the game is the suicide burn: setting your thrusters at full at just the right moment to bring your ship to a halt just above the surface. I have a spreadsheet that can do the calculations based on my angle of descent, but a downward descent is fairly straight forward to calculate, and after many powered landings, I could get a good feel of how well, or poorly, I was doing.

I was doing rather poorly. It had taken a little too long to realize what a stupid idea winging it was, and by then I’d built up quite a bit of speed. A quick estimate of my rate of deceleration, and I realized I was 73 meters too low to stop in time. In a moment of serendipity, because it certainly wasn’t foresight, I had built the launch site near the top of a cliff. Out of desperation, I tried to push the ship, extremely slowly, towards the edge of the cliff with the lateral thrusters, all the while counting down to the moment of impact.

Amazingly, I managed to bring it back down intact. By which I mean I only had to replace the landing gear, and repair the cockpit and connector. Unfortunately I was too busy cursing my short sightedness to actually take a screenshot.

In short order, I repaired the damage, attached the tanker to its launch site, and fixed the flaws. It was time to return to space, again.

I kept the ship centered over the launch site during the assent, so hopefully it would be a fairly straight forward gravity assist to return to the surface again. Of course, an 8km separation on the surface meant a 22km distance above the atmosphere... not that I had done a very good job putting the station straight up in the first place.

At any rate, I soon discovered a second flaw in my ship. At the time, I thought I thought the ion thrusters were too weak to move the ship. I’m not sure what the threshold is, but I seemed to remember that there was one. On the other hand, six small sized ion thrusters are able to bring my station to a halt... eventually. Either way, I had to rotate my ship to bring it to a relative stop.

I eventually managed to get the ship close to my station, but once again the ion thrusters proved to be useless.

Slowly and painfully, I brought the ship close enough to the station to get the parts I needed to install sufficient thrusters for maneuvering the ship.

It was only after I'd docked the ship, and thought something was on fire, that I realized why the ship wasn't maneuvering like it should: I'd accidentally shut the ion thrusters off when I broke atmosphere, instead of the atmospheric thrusters.

Ship safely docked, and thruster hotkey placement fixed, I turned to unloading my tanker. It turned out that I only needed two small oxygen tanks, not three, to fill up the one on the station. Naturally, I installed a second to make sure the trip doesn't go to waste. I also drained the large hydrogen tank into the station's depot. Finally, I removed the ship's external tanks.

Since I now had sufficient oxygen, I turned to making transforming the orbital platform into a proper livable station. It isn't much: a bed, bathroom, shower, kitchen, and an airlock, but at least I can take my helmet off.

That accomplished, I finished upgrading the refinery, so I could start processing the platinum ore while I went to mine some iron asteroids. Which, of course, required me to add additional cargo and a drill to my orbital shuttle.

Before I headed out to the asteroids, I started with 42.2 tons of platinum ore. By the time I returned with my ship full of iron and stone, there was 38.8 tons of platinum ore, and 28.6 kilograms of platinum, in the refinery. I also discovered that at when full of ore, a single small ion thruster wasn't enough to move the ship. Stop the ship yes, but not get it moving from a dead stop.

Thankfully, I had added two thrusters at the back of the ship to provide forward thrust, so I didn't have to drift way back to the station in my suit, and then return the same way, just to get the ship and its cargo to the station. In fact, I didn't notice anything was wrong until I tried to maneuver the ship onto its docking port, and it would only move forward. This was easily rectified by adding more thrusters: two in each cardinal direction.

It was at that point I'd realized I'd gone over time again, and it was getting late, so I decided to call this round good, and went to bed.

Next time on SE-Squared: Episode 32... The Station Keeping Quest!

But first... EGS:SE2... Episode 14: Perimeter Defenses and Gunship Diplomacy!

Darkfyre99 · Nov 18, 2020

Welcome to the next exciting chapter of Empyrion: Galactic Survival - Sidewinder Edition Two!

Episode 14: Birth of a Gunship!

The day began with an uncharacteristically good idea. I have this huge pressurized hanger... why not use it? So I hopped into my "Medium Scout" and flew it into the Hanger.

After ordering many of the parts I thought I'd need for the Gunship, I started salvaging the old ship for parts, starting with the outer hull.

Eventually, I was left with four blocks, none of which I wanted to remove: the Core (obviously), fuel tank (partially full), oxygen tank (ditto), and the generator.

After installing the cockpit, and activating symmetry mode, it was time to design my brand new gunship!

I had noticed that my previous ship, the "Medium Scout Ship" (aka the micro-hauler), struggled a bit with defending itself and my base, so in addition to the two fixed guns from the old ship, I added two downward oriented turrets for attacking ground troops. These Zirax attacks were annoying, and they sure to get more so in the future!

I continued working on the hull, working my way towards the back, where the cargo area, and three of my basic thrusters, would be installed.

It was at this point I noticed the time in the game. I harvested my crops, and turned in. The next day was spent working on the ship's hull and major components. Eventually, I had the rest of the ship's components installed. It was unpainted, but functional.

At sunset, I harvested my crops again, and turned in. The next morning, I woke up to another radioactive storm... for all of five seconds. The after-effects lasted longer than the storm itself.

I spent most of the morning working on the detailing of my new gunship. The basic colors were easy, because I've been using these colors for 20 years, whenever possible: blue and gold. It’s the little things that take so much time. This game has a wealth of textures to choose from, and it’s the “greebles” that bring a vehicle to life for me: air intakes, heat radiators, “access panels”, mysterious glowing thing that is mysterious, racing stripes, and so on. Eventually, though, I was satisfied, which means it’s time for that EGS tradition...

With that done, I turned to preparing my vase’s perimeter defenses. My plan is to set up a few “minibases” that are nothing but solar powered turrets. My chief concern is that it may increase the number of Zirax attacks. If it does, I'll try plan b: some turreted hovertanks near the common approaches.

Either way, it'll be an interesting experiment.

While I waited for the parts to be fabricated, I decided to finish the remaining exterior and interior portions of the base.

Sunset came soon enough, so I gathered my ripe crops, and called it a night.

Next time on EGS:SE2... Episode 15: Preparing for the Zirax Attack and the Totally Overpowered Quest begins!

But first... SE-Squared: Episode 32... The Station Keeping Quest!

Darkfyre99 · Nov 19, 2020

Today, on the utterly uninteresting episode of Space Engineers!

Sidewinder Edition!!!

Episode 32 - A Whole Lot of Mining Going On

I started this round, completely convinced that I would get my space station's station keeping engines built. I had platinum! A lot of platinum! Granted, it had to be refined, but it was still a lot of platinum!

It turns out, what I didn't have was gold. A lot of gold. This meant a return to the surface... which was okay, because it was going to take a long time to process that ore.

I did have enough gold to install a gravity generator, and I did so because dealing with the slightly quirky effects of magnetic boots was getting old...

It took a bit of experimenting, since I'd never actually built this block before, but eventually I had things set up to my satisfaction. And then came the very long, very dull drop to the surface, where I set up my gold mine:

It's a lot simpler than past designs: a small cargo container to collect the gold ore, a basic refinery to process the stone, and a collector to gather up the stuff as I mined, as it tumbled down the slope from the vein above. Every 20 tons of ore or so, I'd bring the gold ore back to base to be refined, and then returned to base.

Source: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=U7CZcd-UYmU&ab_channel=SpongeBobTimeCards

I had about half a ton of refined gold. Mission complete, I decided to return to space... but I didn't want to waste the trip either, so I decided to bring more cobalt and iron. Not wanting to overload my orbital shuttle, I only brought up a ton of cobalt and two tons of iron. Feeling quite satisfied with my foresight, I launched my orbital shuttle towards space.

In an attempt to develop a better strategy for returning to space (and vice versa), I decided to turn off the hydrogen thrusters from time to time, until my ion thrusters were enough to fight the pull of gravity.

It turned out to be fairly effective.

Once I arrived at my station, I started constructing my station keeping drives. Things were going well... at first. After four had been built, I was rather surprised when the parts stopped coming. I had, after all, plenty of gold and platinum now. So what was the problem?

A bit dismayed that the stuff I brought as an afterthought turned out to be of critically short supply, I debated what to do... return to the surface for all the materials I'd gathered... or do my mining in space?

Decisions... decisions...

Oh, and because there wasn't very many interesting screen shots this round, have better screen shot of my station's small living/work space:

Being so close completing the station's thrusters, I started checking my suit's inventory, to see what I could recycle to scrape up the iron and cobalt. It's at this point that I discovered, to my dismay, that I only put the gold into the assembler. I don't know what I was thinking...

I corrected that oversight, finished the last two thrusters, and thus, phase one of my orbital base was complete.

Next time on SE-Squared: Episode 33... Even More Mining!

But first... EGS:SE2... Episode 15: Preparing for the Zirax Attack and the Totally Overpowered Quest begins!

Darkfyre99 · Nov 21, 2020

Today, in a very special episode of Emprion: Galactic Survival - Sidewinder Edition Two!
Episode 15
The Totally Overpowered Quest, Part One

I kind of lost track of time over the last real life two days, so I think this episode took place over five in-game days, rather than my normal three. That's the problem with space in both games... I lose my touchstone of the day/night cycle. With the number of interruptions I often experience, not witnessing that sunset means I'm not sure how much time has passed.

At any rate, on with the show!

The first thing I did that morning was install the first of my perimeter defenses. It's a simple structure: A Solar Capacitor, Fuel Tank, Ammo Storage, Small Generator (for backup) and a remote link surrounding the core. Concrete blocks protecting the core infrastructure as well as four anti-personnel turrets. Four Solar Panels (the one to the north for symmetry's sake) to provide power, and an anti-aircraft battery to screen the northern approach.

Base defenses slightly increased, I take a quick peek at the flux coil construction requirements (cobalt and neodynium ingots, and titanium rods), and set out on the TOP Quest! I bring with me all the unnecessary weapons and ammo the Zirax had dropped, so I can sell them as I do the quest.

At the TOP facility, I sold my excess arsenal, and discovered I had enough credits to buy a necessary boost to my environmental. Of course, in the process I kind of forgot about my original purpose in doing so, but that surely won't come back to bite me later...

After a bit of exploring of space, including identifying some resource rich asteroids, I made my way to the TOP Distillery.

After doing my necessary business at the TOP facility, including accepting an EVA module from them, I decided to return to base. I had barely brought any food, and I also wanted to top off my oxygen and power supplies. The EVA module is just as important to me as the eventual reward from the quest. Not only will it make operating in space easier, but I'll also be able to salvage those wrecks near the arctic circle without freezing to death.

I returned home about a minute before the Zirax did. I had just enough time to activate my base's defenses, before a trio of drones came into range. Between my fixed defenses, and my Gunship, they were soon defeated.

I was quite happy to see that the perimeter AA turret also got into the act.

Satisfied my base would remain standing for at least five more days, and my Gunship having been resupplied, I lifted off for space again. On my way to the "Hidden" Pirate Base to retrieve the galaxy's best root beer, I investigated two more resource rich asteroids.

The good news was that they were cobalt asteroids, and I needed cobalt. The bad news was they were defended by a Zirax Laser Drone, and I'm not currently equipped to deal with one of those. I'm lucky I escaped with as little damage as I did...

I did my business with the Pirates, then returned to the TOP Distillery. Unfortunately, I discovered that there was now a Zirax signal very close to the Distillery.

It turns out that they were closing with the station, and when they got into range, they opened fire on my ship! The good news is that I was watching that ship approach, so I hadn't disembarked like I'd originally intended. The bad news is that they did a lot of damage to my ship. I beat another hasty retreat.

What do the Zirax have against root beer anyway??? It's my favorite soft drink!!!

This is one of those instances where Space Engineers does a better job modeling things than this game. In Space Engineers, I would've completely lost the wing, including the attached thruster nacelle. This would've been fatal damage to my ship in EGS, because losing that nacelle completely would've prevented my escape, thanks to the loss of maneuverability and thrust it represented.

On the other hand, losing the wing in Space Engineers wouldn't necessarily be fatal damage, since torque isn't modeled in that game, while in EGS, the damage to the nacelle did made landing back at my base a challenge, thanks to decreased maneuverability on two axis.

I've said it once, and I'll say it again... I really wish I could import SE's strengths into EGS.

At any rate, I limped home, repaired my ship, upgraded the hull to steel, and added a thruster to the nose of the ship to compensate for its slow downward pitch rate. It decreases visibility from the cockpit a bit when active, but it'll only be active when the fixed weapons are deployed.

Next time on EGS:SE2... Episode 16: Totally Overpowered Quest, Part Two!

But first... SE-Squared: Episode 33... Even More Mining!

Darkfyre99 · Nov 22, 2020

Welcome to yet another transformative episode of Space Engineers: Sidewinder Edition!

Episode 33
From Framework to "Finished"... with Even More Mining!

I ended the last episode with a bit more iron than I had originally thought I had, so rather than focusing solely on mining iron this episode, I decided to "finish" my station. By which I mean completing the framework of the station, adding some detailing, painting the entire thing, fixing a few flaws, adding more solar panels, and removing some unnecessary parts. If I'm to expand operations, this station needs to be ready to support them!

One of the first things I did was install a "drop ceiling" in my living space, because looking at the exposed infrastructure was getting old. I would've preferred using a block other than... Wait just a second, I have an idea I want to try. BRB...

...Ah, the joys of not having anywhere urgent I need to go in the morning. I don't have to wait until I get home to try this out.

As I was saying, I was wishing I had a better block than what I used for my "drop ceiling." The grated catwalk block was a bit too transparent for my tastes. I just realized that there's a better combination of blocks that does job I needed it to.

Granted, the fresh coat of paint does help, but the other catwalk looks better, especially when combined with the slotted window to allow air to pass between the oversized vent and living space. This realization is really going to help my next project, given how huge the large blocks in this game are. What I wouldn't give to use the two interchangeably. That's why I wanted to build a small grid Sidewinder in the first place: I don't mind running "pipes," but with large ships, the large "pipes" are unnecessarily big compared to their function.

This also illustrates why I feel like EGS edges out SE when it comes to ship design: I can paint each surface of a block a different color and texture. If I wanted to, say, put a high-tech red texture behind the white medical station's tanks, for example, it wouldn't bleed out to the other sides of the block. It also makes greebling a lot easier, since you don't have to think about how a particular texture will look on the inside as well as outside.

At any rate, having "completed" the drop ceiling in my living space, I turned to the exterior of the station. Outside, I noticed something that could potentially be a problem: Space Pirate signals nearby.

I think this is the closest I've seen them... which means I may want to add a few defensive turrets. And that, in turn, means obtaining a decent supply of magnesium. Which I haven't found in space yet.

-sigh-

So many demands... so little time.

Once I was sure they weren't going to come any closer, I turned back to working on my station. One of the first things I wanted to fix was my oxygen farm. It was oriented incorrectly, which meant it wasn't producing much oxygen. Granted, I had a huge supply that I had obtained from the planet, but I'd rather not have to rely on returning to the surface too often. It's a long drop down, and an even longer trip back.

It was only after I'd completed redesign that I noticed I'd omitted the conveyors to move the oxygen from two of the farms to the tanks.

After correcting that oversight, I turned to expanding my power production. Currently, my base was just about breaking even, which is really something, considering how much platinum ore it was still processing. I wanted to double that, because I was going to add a second huge power drain relatively soon.

I was working on completing docking area when I realized I was getting low on iron. I ordered up more steel plates, so I could finish the job, then headed out to do some mining. Thankfully, I'd done the math this time, so I knew that I had 28.8kN of thrust available to this ship. Empty, this ship could accelerate at almost exactly 3 m/s², which works to be a stopping distance of 1.7 kilometers at 100m/s.

Once at the ore site, it didn't take very long to fill up on iron ore.

Again, I did the math before returning to my station, and when full of ore, this ship could accelerate at about 1.2 m/s², or a stopping distance of 4.2 kilometers. Since I always leave a safety margin for my "suicide burns," when I got close to the station, I stepped down my approach rate to 10m/s until 100m out, and stepped it down to 2m/s for final approach.

For comparison's sake, in KSP when docking, my final approach speeds are typically 0.1 m/s, and I'd use time acceleration to speed things up. When monopropellant for docking maneuvers is so expensive (in terms of time, kerbal space bucks, and delta V), you tend to be frugal with it.

Once docked at the station, I gave the iron ore priority in my refinery (I still had five tons of platinum ore to process), and finished all my welding jobs. After that was completed, I started painting the station, starting with my living space.

You can see why I wasn't happy with the old catwalk. It looked decent enough when everything was the same shade of white, but it didn't look right when the colors changed. I also added a set of lockers to the airlock. Because I had relocated the airlock vent to a more out of sight location, I could add something nice to this location instead. Originally, a grated catwalk had helped disguise the vent, but now a slotted window is doing the job instead.

Since I'm 99% positive I haven't found any magnesium in space yet, I'm going to have to make yet another drop to the surface. I'd better make sure I take a look at my supplies of gold as well, not to mention consider bringing up more oxygen and hydrogen from the planet. The hydrogen tank in particular is so empty that it doesn't even rate a single pip on the external display!

Next time on SE-Squared: Episode 34... Another long commute!

But first... EGS:SE2 - Episode 16: The Totally Overpowered Quest, Part Two!

Darkfyre99 · Nov 23, 2020

Welcome to another death defying episode of Empyrion Galactic Survival : Sidewinder Edition 2!

Episode 16
The Totally Overpowered Quest, Part Two!

The next morning, I decided that my ship’s main nacelles needed to be armored as well. I was just deciding whether I liked their current placement, when an unwanted storm front rolled in.

I moved it inside the hanger, and went back to work. I decided I wanted the nacelles further out, and I worked in making them less... bulbous. I also added two lateral thrusters near the nose, since the weight of the armor was making it sluggish on that axis. As I was working on it, I noticed that I was getting low on silicon and copper ore. Being inside, I failed to notice the sunset, so it was just shy of sunrise when the upgrades were finished to my satisfaction.

The upgrades exceeded the ship’s electronic capacity, but only by 5% IIRC. The ship seemed to handle well enough as I returned to space, and that’s all that matters. Once I broke atmosphere, I turned towards my destination. Sadly, I could see that the Zirax Corvette was still hanging around.

So I opted to scout the moon instead.

The moon turned out to have a tenuous, though not breathable, atmosphere

Naturally, there was a Zirax presence there, along with several wrecked human ships, and a deposit of cobalt and some trace deposits of titanium and pentazid, which would require a mining machine to extract. I buzzed several Zirax guarded resource deposits, but thankfully their attacks did only minor damage. I set down briefly to do some repairs.

Once I’d sufficiently scouted the moon, I returned to space, and headed back to the refinery. It seems the refinery had called for help, because one of their destroyers was approaching the station, and the Zirax Corvette had beat a hasty retreat.

Naturally, the Destroyer was nowhere to be found when the Zirax made one last raid to prevent the Andromeda galaxy from enjoying the frosty mug goodness that is TOP’s special root beer. My Gunship made quick enough work of them that I had enough time to loot some of the bodies before they were teleported away!

Despite the heavy return fire, nothing critical was damaged. I didn’t even need to replace any of its armor! Most of the damage was to the cockpits and turrets, naturally. Once repairs were completed, I took off to the Inferno club to complete this quest. After that, I headed to the Polaris Orbital Trading Post to sell my loot, and hopefully pick up more supplies.

I made a small fortune from the weapons I’d looted from the Zirax raiding party, enough for more neodymium and titanium. I had found an unguarded cobalt deposit on the moon, so I didn’t buy any of that.

After that, I returned to the moon to follow the next chapter of the storyline, which involves searching the wreck of the Titan I’d already found there for answers. Since I was already there, I also searched the wrecks for salvage. I actually found a decent cache of supplies.

The cobalt will come in handy, but even better is the force fields. As tempted as I am to install them in my hanger in the place of the current shutters, once I build my recycler, they’ll yield a treasure trove of high-tech parts.

Speaking of the recycler, somewhere along the line, probably during the fight with the root beer hating Zirax, I reached level 12, which is the level where I can unlock it. Once my oxygen supply got low, I mined what I could of the cobalt, and returned home.

Sunrise was approaching when I arrived home. I had no sooner touched down, when the base alarms went off. The Zirax were attacking again! I hurriedly activated my perimeter turret, and jumped into the cockpit of my gunship. There were three drones approaching from the east!

Needless to say, my gunship and base defenses were able to make quick work of them too. Once I’d salvaged the wrecks, I harvested my crops, and ended the episode. It was time to expand my base!

Next time on EGS:SE2 - Episode 17: Base Expansion Begins!

But first... SE-Squared: Episode 34... Another long commute!

Darkfyre99 · Nov 24, 2020

On today's placid episode of Space Engineers: Sidewinder Edition...

Episode 34
Another long commute! Plus a lot more mining!

The “Day” started out with another long drop from orbit. Getting more comfortable with the capabilities of my orbital shuttle, and with how this game models physics, I ignored the spot in space over my landing zone, and set a course and speed that would hopefully bring me directly overhead by the time gravity bled away my forward momentum...which is a really weird thing to say...

I was still 8 kilometers up by the time time I’d aligned fully with my destination.

Once docked, I ordered up oxygen and hydrogen tanks, and added them to my shuttle. This time, I remembered extra thrusters for the extra mass I’d inevitably be carrying k into space.

I then scraped away more ice to start the process of filling the hydrogen tank. I really should install a mechanical miner, and save me some effort in the long run. Hey! I now have a project for my next episode!

With the sun getting low in the horizon, I decided to head back to my underground lair. But before that, I stopped to get some magnesium. My new mine is currently a hole in the ground, but should I ever need to expand it, actually dug a fair distance below it to better set up a gravity fed one.

Speaking of gravity fed mines, I returned to the gold mine in anticipation of needing more. Sadly, I didn’t plan for the future the first time I dug here, so things were rather primitive to begin with.

But as time passed, I gradually improved things down there. Not as good as if I’d planned things from the beginning, but still an improvement.

I made some improvements on the surface as well.

By the time I ended this episode, I had about 250 kilograms of magnesium processed, as well as nearly 400 kilograms of gold. Fun fact, at today's price, the gold is worth about $24 million USD.

Next time on SE-Squared: Episode 35 - Mountaintop Ice Mining Station begins!

But first... EGS:SE2 - Episode 17: Base Expansion Begins!

Old Duck · Nov 24, 2020

Do you upload your images as bitmaps? They always download sooooo slooooowly for me.

Darkfyre99 · Nov 24, 2020

Old Duck said:
Do you upload your images as bitmaps? They always download sooooo slooooowly for me.

They shouldn’t be. They might be 1440p, though, since that’s my native resolution. It’s one of the reasons why I put them under spoilers. The other is that I consider it the polite thing to do, given how many people are on mobiles these days.