I've not heard anything, but you could buy an XBox on sale and get it that way. I admit that I'm surprised that SE isn't available on Windows via either the official Windows Store (which I hate FWIW) or XBox pass or whatever.
I don't understand the hate for Steam. How did Steam do you wrong? I've never had any issue with the platform. I'm not a fan of DRM, mind you, but that's the world we live in.
I've not heard anything, but you could buy an XBox on sale and get it that way. I admit that I'm surprised that SE isn't available on Windows via either the official Windows Store (which I hate FWIW) or XBox pass or whatever.
I don't understand the hate for Steam. How did Steam do you wrong? I've never had any issue with the platform. I'm not a fan of DRM, mind you, but that's the world we live in.
I think it’s how much Steam’s take from a sale is. 30% IIRC. Some people think more of that money should go to directly to developers, as opppsed to “evil” publishers (and distributors.)
On The SE front: contextless spoilers from last night.
I think it’s how much Steam’s take from a sale is. 30% IIRC. Some people think more of that money should go to directly to developers, as opppsed to “evil” publishers (and distributors.)
If that's the only thing keeping someone from buying Space Engineers, well then it shouldn't, because it's Keen who decided they want to use Steam exclusively. By boycotting Steam, Keen gets ZERO money, which is a lot less then 70%.
On The SE front: contextless spoilers from last night.
Now you have my attention. This server hasn't given me a "popcorn" vibe as of yet (unlike Keen where every night something crazy was going on in chat). Cookies, yes, but not popcorn, LOL.
I think it’s how much Steam’s take from a sale is. 30% IIRC. Some people think more of that money should go to directly to developers, as opppsed to “evil” publishers (and distributors.)
On The SE front: contextless spoilers from last night.
The evening started out well. The Mk III Welding arm went up pretty quickly, in part thanks to my new scaffolding technique. I think this is going to be the last time I try something like this while in a gravity well. Still, I’m learning from every failure, or in this case uninspiring results, and my attitude towards failure is that it can be just as entertaining as success.
I ordered the parts I needed for my storage room, and quickly determined I’d need mire iron and silicon to finish construction. So I hopped into my Dragonfly, and flew to my iron mine. And that’s when two members of a peaceful faction logged in, and just like they’ve done most nights since joining the server, began discussing faction business over the global channel.
Three nights ago, the server Admin had essentially requested that the faction stop certain practices that were bogging down the server. The leader of the faction, we’ll call them A, was willing to comply: it was either that, or global PCU limits would be need to be cut to, and I quote, “Keen Levels.” Player B was apparently the lone holdout. Words were exchanged, and B logged out in a huff, much to A’s dismay. I’d actually planned on recording a short video that night, but decided against it in that circumstance.
B didn’t log in for two days while I was online, and A kept popping in and out, which left the server pretty much to myself... which felt a bit odd, to be honest. Last night, though, B had logged in just as I was welding the last of my construction arm, and when A logged in soon afterwards, the two began a tentative reconciliation.
I was paying a little too much attention to chat as I flew home with a full load of iron ore, so I was a little late on my braking maneuver. I then compounded my error by turning the Dragonfly like I normally do, rather than gaining altitude, which caused me to scrape the right side of my ship along the (thankfully reinforced) wind turbine tower. This took out three thrusters, the antenna, some conveyor tubes, and the forward battery... before the ship crashed into the refinery.
Once I finished the repairs on the Dragonfly, I unloaded what I hadn’t hand unloaded already, and set course to my silicon/ice mine. I figured 24 tons of ore would be more than enough. (It was, in fact, too much. Silicon Wagers are bulky. More on that later.)
By thus time, my parts orders were mostly done, so all that remained was to start the welding process.
I soon discovered that I’d forgotten to add a second piston at the “base,” to ensure that I had enough clearance to do the roof. It’s an easy enough fix, but still.
I did have some free moments while tending the welding arm. I used them to add some signing to my base.
I got up this morning, to see how well my storage shed sorted everything out, and that’s when I noticed the silicon wafers could use a cargo container all by their lonesome. I’ll have to fix that tonight... which is one more reason to do the more delicate welding by hand, and letting automated systems do the exterior.
well, I'm curious myself. I've seen people make arguments against steam, personally have never encountered any problems, I also use multiple other clients for games, direct purchase from Ubisoft, Origin, GoG, Everything you buy today is a digital license allowing you access to the content, no one buys a physical thing any more. All of the clients have basically the same setup, format and design.
So, what is the major dispute with Steam that you feel only a developer would understand the answer to?
This is the world you live in, not us. In the world I live in, there is choice and options. In my world there is also a difference between hating and not liking. There are some good reasons to opt out of Steam and support an alternative platform instead. But since you don't seem to know any of them, although none of them are a secret, I'm going to assume that your question isn't really serious. So why should I bother. However, if the game producer were to ask me the same question, he would most certainly get an answer.
I've been tweaking the design of this ship in creative mode to make it lighter, better at combat, and more ascetically pleasing. I'm not done yet, but I feel I'm making progress!
The majority of the guns are on the top now since orbiting a target at high speed greatly increases survivability compared to face-tanking. This also makes landing a lot easier (note the new landing gear tucked into the fuselage).
BTW, I've not found a good replacement forum for SE yet, so I'll keep posting to this thread until I do.
One of the many problems I have with online play is the feeling like I'm missing out if I don't log in as often as possible. It's foolish, I know, and often I can control it, but especially during the "early" phases of a game, it can be almost a compulsion. Especially when there's a problem to fix, or I'm implementing a plan. So when I woke up early, rather than fixing my lunch for work, I chose to start fixing the problem I had with my storage shed. I only got partway through it, unfortunately, before it was time to go to work. I logged out for the morning, and spent most of my day anticipating finishing the work on my new and improved storage shed.
Instead, Keen updated their game, twice, and the server was down for the better part of two days. So I caught up on some of the shows I wanted to watch instead, checking periodically to see if the server was online.
Friday Night
I have to confess that I was going through withdrawal symptoms on Friday, not being able to progress my online SE game. I'd left a project I was working on "in pieces," and I hate doing that kind of thing in an online game. I left SE open, and hit the proverbial "F5" button every fifteen minutes or so, hoping I could at least finish the functional part of my storeroom. I was about ready to give up for the night, when I saw the server was online. I hopped on immediately and finished the project I'd been fretting about for two days, then ordered enough steel plates to finish the roof.
I really should've sent a quick note to @Old Duck that the server was online before turning in for the night.
Saturday Morning
That morning, before going to work, I took a quick peek at my base, and saw I was out of iron. Again. So I did quick run for iron before logging back out so I could get ready for work. I don't like going to the Subway well too many times, because I'd rather spend my money on things besides restaurant food, even if its just cheap fast food... even "healthy" fast food like Subway. It still didn't occur to me that I should send @Old Duck a quick note.
He was thoughtful enough to make sure I knew it was back online, though.
Saturday Afternoon
After castigating myself most of the day at work for my thoughtlessness, I was anxious enough to work on my base, (and the weather was cold enough, about -17F/-27C... with the wind chill approaching -40 for both measurements) that I skipped my planned workout and resumed work on my base. I really wanted it "done."
First thing was finishing up the storage shed:
Fun fact: Apparently, the components displayed on these storage shelves are not cosmetic. My original blueprint had all three types of shelves... so I was rather surprised that only some shelves finished welding. So I replaced the rare component shelves with the common ones instead.
Next on my agenda was my "Hydroponics Garden." This was another purely cosmetic addition to my base, since it would be made from oxygen farms, and I could extract sufficient O2 from the alien atmosphere using the small grid vent attached to my miner. Still, a girl needs to eat. So I started building it... by hand. Quite frankly, until I start building space infrastructure, I'm much better off just building these things by hand... though I suppose a "simple" structure like this one might've worked out OK.
Finally, I started building proper landing pads for my vehicles. While my future "Starbird" is intended to be an orbital shuttle and space explorer, I'll eventually want to have some heavier lift capacity. Which meant I needed to use heavy armor blocks, so that they can withstand the exhaust from hydrogen thrusters. And that meant cobalt... lots and lots of cobalt. So I mined a Dragonfly load of it, and started production on the blocks as the cobalt refined, before logging out to deal with the needs of real life.
As of this writing, the refinery has only worked its way through about half of load. Once I find platinum, it'll take even more time for even less refined metal. Thankfully, my two windmills, combined with my base's many batteries, seem to up to this task.
Barely.
This area's frequent sandstorms are a godsend when it comes to power management. It doubles their power output, topping off my base's batteries as they very slowly drained.
Saturday Night
When I next had an opportunity to log in (I really need to remember to switch things up, game wise), I started printing my Starbird surface to space vehicle. While that was going on, I finished constructing the rest of my launch pad. Once both were finished, it was time to cut the ship from the printing arm, and move it to the launch pad. The results were... not what I'd expected.
As always, hindsight's 20/20 vision saw the problem right away: Creative Mode fills any H2/O2 tank when it's placed. Survival mode starts them empty. No H2, no maneuvering thrusters. First I crashed the ship into the ground, damaging some of it. Then I attempted to fly it to the pad using the atmospheric lift thrusters: creative was much more forgiving of any mistakes. What I should've done was refuel it immediately after building it... which meant I needed a refueling/recharging/docking port attached to my 3D ship printer.
I ended up recycling what was left, by hand, and building this before logging out for the night:
Sunday Morning
I had the day off from work, and the temperature outside was still at arctic levels of cold, so I dedicated the period of time between when I wake up, and the rest of the household wakes up, to adding a landing platform around the docking port, while I printed a second Starbird to replace the first. It was only after dealing with the less than stellar results of my second attempt that the truly obvious solution became evident:
Once the ship is built, I can connect one of the small conveyor ports on my arm, to an available port on my ship, and fuel it that way. At least the damage was minimal this time.
Once the Starbird II was fueled, repaired, and moved to its launching pad, I grabbed a hydrogen bottle, and prepared for this afternoon's launch: by using my suit's thrusters to fly straight up so I can plant a GPS target right above my base. Experience for the win! Why drift all over the place in a space ship, when you can get by with trace amounts of hydrogen instead?
Once I'd set my target, I let myself fall freely back to the surface of the planet, looking for any ice lakes near my base. I may have found a nearby ice deposit, ice lakes are much easier to source from. I spotted one about five kilometers "east" of my base.
This is my base currently:
My Medical Bay dominates the western end of my base, while my Dragonfly's landing platform and the base's windmills are at the eastern end. North lies my living quarters, the base's storeroom, and the refinery/assembly complex. South is my 3D ship printer and the Starbird II's launch pad. The launch pad includes an attachment point so I can add a connector to the end of a hinge and piston, which will allow me to launch heavier vehicles... eventually. For now, it's just an excessively reinforced landing pad.
I also have three plots of space at the center of my base that I'm still not sure what to do with. I'm thinking about some decorative industrial blocks for the NE plot to enhance the industrial quarter of my base, since it's rather small. The SW plot would make sense as a parking space for a future wheeled transport, since all my mines are easy to drive to. That just leaves the NW plot...
I definitely get this. I will often log in just for a few minutes to make sure my reactor has fuel and my batteries have juice, since like a fleet carrier, my "balance" is whittling away whether I'm logged in or not. Of course this works to my advantage as well, since when I finally got logged back in after the two day outage, my refineries had completed processing tons of ore.
The other part of FOMO is that other people will get ahead of me, LOL. @Darkfyre99 may have an entire Starfleet by the time I'm able to invest serious time on the server. Between crappy internet of late (all this weird winter weather in the states is causing troubles) and some IRL stress factors taking my time and distracting my otherwise creative mind, I'm really falling behind in my virtual life.
What is it with my favorite games nerfing the graphics to Minecraft level after an update?!?!?!?? Pizzas me off..
Before:
After:
UPDATE - supposedly Keen broke high-quality models. Switching to medium quality fixes this, but obviously this isn't the perfect solution. BUGS BUGS BUGS BUGS no matter where I go!!!!!
UPDATE - supposedly Keen broke high-quality models. Switching to medium quality fixes this, but obviously this isn't the perfect solution. BUGS BUGS BUGS BUGS no matter where I go!!!!!
Apparently, Keen's latest update broke the server again. Casey's taking it down, after the server crashed. Apparently, the last backup was two hours ago. I lost about 40 minutes of progress, which covered my first launch into space, and scouting the nearest asteroid cluster. Between the lack of valuable resources, and a flaw in my Starbird II redesign, my reaction to this can be pretty much summed up like this:
At last, it was time to launch the Starbird II into space. Immediately upon launch, I started experiencing control issues, again, but I managed to keep it going on a relatively upwards trajectory. I managed to get it into space, but it was a close thing.
I headed towards a nearby asteroid cluster. Hydrogen levels were low, so I scouted them out via jet pack. I found nothing but silicon and iron... valuable for building a base, but not exactly what I was looking for.
And that’s when the server crashed. When I got back online, I’d been rolled back to the beginning of my session. I decided to reconfigure the Starbird II to its original launch configuration. That’s when Casey logged in, and decided to bring the server down to try and fix the “Keen Clang” update.
Sunday Night
When I checked with the server's status that evening, it was up. Naturally, my first thought was to make another attempt to travel to space in (hopefully) corrected Starbird II. This went about as well as I should've expected, given the issues I’ve been having to date.
... in the planet
I was lamenting my woes when @Old Duck logged in. He was kind enough to inform me of a bug regarding ships with subgrids I wasn't aware of, and my Starbird redesign had them so I could track the Sun in space. Between his advice and Casey's, the server's admin who had just logged in to see how things were going, I decided to follow the KISS principle for my next space shot. I was 4km away from base, so I ironmanned most of the way back to base, and ran the last kilometer. I decided that a "disposable" launch vehicle was the way to go: it would have just what it needed to do the job I needed it to do, no more, no less:
get into space
scout asteroids for a good base location
scout asteroids for platinum, uranium, and ice
return rare ores (and me) safely to the surface...
relatively cheap to produce
I wasn't going to fret about logging out in space: that's what the base will be for. I wasn't going to worry about an oxygen supply: the cabin carries 60L, and I'll bring two oxygen bottles with me, just in case. I wasn’t going to concern myself with returning it to base under its own power: I’ll build a salvage/recovery vehicle. I just want to get into space.
And I wanted to build it “Old School”, in survival.
I started with the necessary connector, and a pair of small batteries. With no heavy atmo-thrusters and the necessarily heavy battery pack, it’s all I should need for short trips.
I attached three small hydrogen tanks where the battery usually is, plus the necessary conveyors. The cockpit ended up in its traditional place. Sensors, parachute, antenna, and thrusters soon followed.
I was initially not going to attach landing gear, but thought it would be a good idea after all. I decided to dub it the “Star Flea,” due to faintly resembling one.
All that remained was to lift it into launch position.
Tonight... assuming the sun is in the right position and I have at least an hour available after sunrise... Reaching for the Stars, Attempt Three! The Star Flea leads into action!
It just occurred to me that I can take advantage of this setup to “print” launch vehicles right on their launch gantry.
I was lamenting my woes when @Old Duck logged in. He was kind enough to inform me of a bug regarding ships with subgrids I wasn't aware of, and my Starbird redesign had them so I could track the Sun in space.
An alternative to using rotors for solar tracking in space on a ship is overriding your gyro(s) to a really slow pitch. This is in theory - I haven't tested it yet to know if you can pitch the ship that slowly (once rotation every two hours). I have successfully used gyro overrides for mining (allowing me to drill big holes as if I had a rotor / hinge combo), so it's worth looking at.
For stations, solar panels on rotors work fine. Things get a little more dicey when you start having lots of weight distributed over subgrids, at least in gravity, due to multiple centers of gravity. This is a weakness in Keen's physics model.
For stations, solar panels on rotors work fine. Things get a little more dicey when you start having lots of weight distributed over subgrids, at least in gravity, due to multiple centers of gravity. This is a weakness in Keen's physics model.
The silly thing is, Starbird II only had a pair of small rotors attached. That little mass, especially compared to the main body of the ship, shouldn’t have thrown things off that much. I have a theory about what happened, but it’ll have to wait until I get an opportunity to test it. Hopefully tonight, I’ll be making my first proper foray into space on this server.
I've kinda hit a wall of sorts, but I don't blame the game any. A combination of some IRL distractions (the kinda that occupy the brain 24x7) along with unreliable Internet of late has made long, "in the zone" sessions somewhat difficult. SE isn't the best "hop in, hop out" game, at least not when it comes to achieving any sort of goals. I still log in to check on my refinery, maybe explore a little bit, but life and wire need to settle down a bit before I can figure out what I want to do next.
I've kinda hit a wall of sorts, but I don't blame the game any. A combination of some IRL distractions (the kinda that occupy the brain 24x7) along with unreliable Internet of late has made long, "in the zone" sessions somewhat difficult. SE isn't the best "hop in, hop out" game, at least not when it comes to achieving any sort of goals. I still log in to check on my refinery, maybe explore a little bit, but life and wire need to settle down a bit before I can figure out what I want to do next.
I can sympathize. Weirdly enough, the fact that we’re playing online actually makes it easier for me to “hop in, hop out”... assuming I plan ahead, and I my base/station is located in a good position. Currently, my base is within 2km of all the resources I need, and my base material mine (iron, nickel, and cobalt) is within 600 meters. I really lucked out when it came to where my escape pod landed. I can hop in for fifteen minutes to do some mining early in the morning, or maybe order some parts, and hop right back out again. That way I when I get an opportunity for an evening log in, I can simply start my next project right away.
Ore deposits in space, on the other hand, can be separated by dozens of kilometers. Which explains why I lingered a bit when it came to surface building. Between the 45km climb out of the gravity well, and the long distances between asteroid clusters, the next phase of my game is going to be long and rather dull, unless I get really lucky. I may have found iron and silicon, but I'm going to need at least one nickel asteroid as well before I can start space construction in earnest.
Yes, you did. Poor Casey’s getting grey hairs from having to repeatedly fix what Keen keeps breaking. More about last evening’s “entertainment” later...
Once I find platinum, it'll take even more time for even less refined metal. 
