Space Engineers - "Open" Changes Everything

[Space Menace]

I like angular, not so keen on the blocky look.
But it's very easy in SE & indeed EGS to give paint/texture upgrades to ships.

Source: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lVdQ12RtX8U

 

[Sensei Jacksama]

I've tried a couple of Keen's scenarios, but never could really get into them because they felt too compartmentalized and "on the rails". I wish, for example, the abandoned bases that tend to be the focus of these scenarios were just embedded into the main survival game, so that I can randomly come across them in my own ship / rover rather than being spawned in as part of the scenario.

What I'm thinking of doing would be part of the main survival game, and ideally it would have a form of randomness to it, in that an enemy base could grow in unpredictable ways. It would still need to use prefabricated blueprints (I'm not smart enough to make an AI that designs its own bases), but following the C&C model, the layout and composition of the buildings, along with the number and type of ships used, could in theory have a random element to it. The hard part will be building a mobile factory that can 3D print large buildings and ships, all autonomously. It might be out of my reach, and it will definitely require a lot of free time, but even the attempt would be enjoyable I think.

Yeah I agree. Having randomly generated wrecks and more structures would be a great benefit. Maybe even having cargo ships occasionally fall out of the sky on purpose even. Personally I really think the game needs NPCs. Everything feels so empty when you visit these huge stations or break into random cargo ship and its devoid of life. It would even make things more interesting when you find a ship that IS empty. Makes you wonder what happened.

 

[Space Menace]

My only worry with npc's in SE is that they will end up kind of like EGS, NMS, SC, ED etc.

In EGS as in the others mentioned, npc's stand around on furniture, walk around aimlessly, which can be as game killing as none at all. EGS ai ships are good, they act very well in combat, well most of the time.
But it's when the devs introduce npc's without good ai to back them up.
Maybe if the devs gave them more routines, maybe timers, wp's, triggers etc, we could get something that looks good.

But as they are NMS, SC, EGS, ED etc (other than ship ai), all npc's in these games are fairly weak. The ship ai on the other hand can be quite good, so given the choice I would rather good ship ai than poor npc's. I would love both, but I just don't think the games mentioned will get good npc's. Perhaps SC at some stage, years down the road.

The last thing I want in games is npc's that act poorly, I would rather go the way ED went first and just have enemy ship ai, at least they tend to be o.k.

 

[Sensei Jacksama]

My only worry with npc's in SE is that they will end up kind of like EGS, NMS, SC, ED etc.

In EGS as in the others mentioned, npc's stand around on furniture, walk around aimlessly, which can be as game killing as none at all. EGS ai ships are good, they act very well in combat, well most of the time.
But it's when the devs introduce npc's without good ai to back them up.
Maybe if the devs gave them more routines, maybe timers, wp's, triggers etc, we could get something that looks good.

But as they are NMS, SC, EGS, ED etc (other than ship ai), all npc's in these games are fairly weak. The ship ai on the other hand can be quite good, so given the choice I would rather good ship ai than poor npc's. I would love both, but I just don't think the games mentioned will get good npc's. Perhaps SC at some stage, years down the road.

The last thing I want in games is npc's that act poorly, I would rather go the way ED went first and just have enemy ship ai, at least they tend to be o.k.

I cant say for the others but the NPCs in NMS made a massive improvement to starports. I played the game off and on since launch day and the starports were dramatically different when they had nothing in it. It's kind of like how some restaurants during the height of covid were dressing up manaquens to help the customers feel less isolated. Now I do agree it should come with some AI interaction and I think this is probably why keen haven't implemented them yet. On the other hand having a simple body in the room does make a difference. Ironically we have those too. Lol

 

[Space Menace]

I cant say for the others but the NPCs in NMS made a massive improvement to starports. I played the game off and on since launch day and the starports were dramatically different when they had nothing in it. It's kind of like how some restaurants during the height of covid were dressing up manaquens to help the customers feel less isolated. Now I do agree it should come with some AI interaction and I think this is probably why keen haven't implemented them yet. On the other hand having a simple body in the room does make a difference. Ironically we have those too. Lol

Yep, they made a difference, I played from day one too. But they made a difference for a few days, but then...
I play the Arma series (Arma2 mainly), we use an ai mod (kai), it just blows other game ai out of the water, so perhaps I'm spoilt.

But there again, no I'm not spoilt, I just want some decent ai behind the npc's. Routines would make a massive difference and believe it or not, it's not that difficult to do. Whereas as you can see npc's take off, not land then stand by the ship, then take off, but go to the shops in the station buy something and leave. Its basic ai really, it's triggers, timers, wp's and a few varied animations. Not talking fsm here, something simple.

 

[Old Duck]

Yeah I agree. Having randomly generated wrecks and more structures would be a great benefit. Maybe even having cargo ships occasionally fall out of the sky on purpose even. Personally I really think the game needs NPCs. Everything feels so empty when you visit these huge stations or break into random cargo ship and its devoid of life. It would even make things more interesting when you find a ship that IS empty. Makes you wonder what happened.

I'm definitely with you on this. I doubt we'll have "smart" NPCs anytime soon, so in the meantime I've suggested to Keen that they at least provide us "prop" NPCs so that we can solo players can build large ships and stick "people" sitting in chairs and standing in certain locations, to give the illusion that our big ships are manned. Same goes for NPC stations - having some guy at the "bar" while another couple of guys are sitting at a table going through various idle "I'm alive" motions would at least make the place feel more alive.

If I do make myself an automated enemy, I'll be designing that enemy to be an actual machine-based race like the Xenon in X Universe, since it's immersion-breaking to be attacked by empty ghost ships built for people who do not exist in the game..

Yep, they made a difference, I played from day one too. But they made a difference for a few days, but then...
I play the Arma series (Arma2 mainly), we use an ai mod (kai), it just blows other game ai out of the water, so perhaps I'm spoilt.

But there again, no I'm not spoilt, I just want some decent ai behind the npc's. Routines would make a massive difference and believe it or not, it's not that difficult to do. Whereas as you can see npc's take off, not land then stand by the ship, then take off, but go to the shops in the station buy something and leave. Its basic ai really, it's triggers, timers, wp's and a few varied animations. Not talking fsm here, something simple.

X4 NPCs are "good enough" for me. They're nothing that impressive, but they walk around and have voice lines and feel generally "alive". Obviously there's no FPS in X4 like SE has, but I can live without NPC FPS combat in SE for now. Like I say above, I just want some sense of life in my game. This is why I greatly prefer playing online over playing single-player, but even online I'd like to have an NPC copilot to fill the empty seat beside me (should I decide to build a bigger ship).

 

[Space Menace]

I've suggested to Keen that they at least provide us "prop" NPCs so that we can solo players can build large ships and stick "people" sitting in chairs and standing in certain locations, to give the illusion that our big ships are manned. Same goes for NPC stations - having some guy at the "bar" while another couple of guys are sitting at a table going through various idle "I'm alive" motions would at least make the place feel more alive.

You can do that already ingame now and have been able to for a while (yrs). Just use the 'admin' - 'replay' mode. I have crew in larger ships, you can flick between them as well. But it gets old quickly.
Also if doing that, mix it with a character mod 'or two' and you'll get a variation in faces and indeed races. Sit them at controls etc, have them walk around the ship, you'll need to spend time on that though. Does look good for a while.

But your right, we shouldn't have to do it, KSH should, but not npc's like NMS, EGS, SC or ED. We need routines for the npc's and indeed variation in faces/races.

 

[Old Duck]

You can do that already ingame now and have been able to for a while (yrs). Just use the 'admin' - 'replay' mode. I have crew in larger ships, you can flick between them as well. But it gets old quickly.

What is this voodoo you speak of? How does "replay" allow me to add a crew to my Space Engineers ships and bases?

Also, I'm pretty sure this isn't available on Keen's official servers... Still, I'm interested in what this is and how it works.

 

[Space Menace]

@Old Duck
The ship interior is a little err, bright...
But pause if you have trouble reading the captions.

To have them do independent movements go to SE youtube, there will be a full tut there. It's easy, but time consuming.

Source: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FpStjl0tyho

 

[Old Duck]

I'm in an interesting situation on CA2, where I basically own all the ships I "need", along with a functional hub to refuel and repair them, but I still get the itch to build more. I've got about 3600 PCU available after trimming the fat from some of my ships, but this includes purposefully gimping my ships a little bit (removing doors that are more cosmetic than functional, for example). It's not enough PCU to build another high-level ship or base, and I like having some spare PCU for things like advanced weapons (guided torpedoes and drones).

My first thought was to use my wife's account to double my PCU by signing her up to my faction and playing as Jenny to build new ships and bases for Duck (faction shared). I may still do this just to have a bigger PCU buffer (Keen's limitations are ridiculous and almost everyone is using alts to circumvent this). However, it dawned on me that I could just run a new "save" on a different server, using that "save" to explore different gameplay options. For example, my current setup is a fleet of three smallish ships - an explorer, a gunship, and a miner, along with a small starbase of sorts. On my new "save", I could instead focus on having one larger multipurpose ship with a hanger of SLFs and SRVs.

The advantage of running two saves is that not only do I double my PCU, I also double my world size in a way, since Earth 1 will be different than Earth 2 regarding who's there and what they have built. The disadvantage is that I have to start from scratch, but as others have said, some of SE's best gameplay is the early gameplay.

This idea popped into my head when I recently visited CA1 and found it to be running at full speed. It used to be that CA2 was the only fast Keen server I could find, but they must have done something to fix their servers in general. Despite the limitations to Keen's servers, I haven't found a private server that I like yet, so official servers remain my go-to for now.

Anywho, just thinking out loud. I still have things I'm working on with my current fleet on CA2, and I definitely will not be abandoning CA2, but I may be running a parallel operation on CA1 this winter if I find that I have a new ship / station / base that I'm itching to build but cannot afford PCU-wise.

 

[Darkfyre99]

OTOH, trying to run parallel shards can also result in much hilarity, such as forgetting which one of your save’s “suicide burn” landers is equipped with the higher thrust engine…

Not that that’s ever happened to me.

 

[Old Duck]

OTOH, trying to run parallel shards can also result in much hilarity, such as forgetting which one of your save’s “suicide burn” landers is equipped with the higher thrust engine…

Not that that’s ever happened to me.

I'm now entertaining the idea of joining an existing faction on CA1 (one that works together as a team), as that's gameplay I've not really experienced, and it would provide me full facilities to experiment with some of my new ideas. Rumor is CA1 has a hostile faction causing trouble, and as much as I love peace, I have this nice gunship with nothing to shoot at in CA2.

Speaking of, I've done some work on my three ships in CA2 to specialize them further, which actually reduces PCU (since I remove redundancies like ore detectors on combat ships). I'm now converting Valkyrie's "workshop" into something a bit different...

It's still in the prototype stage, thus not the prettiest design, but form will follow function soon enough! Now for some tests.

 

[Old Duck]

Even the Earthlike world felt more challenging just starting out than Titan did. At least it requires exploration to find resources.

I’m going to choose a new starting location. This one wasn’t very satisfying…

Earthlike up in the high mountain ranges can be very challenging, relatively speaking. Atmospheric thrusters don't work that great due to the thin air, resources are harder to find (at least by eyeballing), and even just getting around can be challenging if you're on the side of a steep mountain.



AFAIK snow does not count as ice, either..

 

[Old Duck]

Since this server is so full of friendly folk, I've converted the HMS Pearl into a passenger ship. It's still great for exploring, but if I come across some hitchhikers, I can now carry 8 passengers safely seated to almost any destination (though with one jump drive, long trips are best left for the larger cruise ships).

 

[Darkfyre99]

Earthlike up in the high mountain ranges can be very challenging, relatively speaking. Atmospheric thrusters don't work that great due to the thin air, resources are harder to find (at least by eyeballing), and even just getting around can be challenging if you're on the side of a steep mountain.

View attachment 269294 View attachment 269296

AFAIK snow does not count as ice, either..

The alien planet can be very unfriendly to ground vehicles, as I rediscovered yesterday morning. I sometimes wonder why I even bother with them, but then I realize I can be a bit of a masochist at times when it comes to gaming. Trying to navigate the maze the rough alien terrain creates is more interesting than just flying straight from point A to point B Not to mention that a ground vehicle is ideal for locating ore deposits, because it travels slower and lower. And of course it can carry a lot more weight.

Also, snow definitely counts as ice. Back when I was trying the food and drink mod, it made survival much easier if you dropped in the mountains, because it made water so easy to acquire.

 

[Space Menace]

I was in SE the other day. I only went in to have a look and see a few ships that I still have in build ( years inbuild ). It seems as though I keep changing ships around, they never really get finished.

I had missed SE, probably not enough to get back in fully, but enough to get a very nice nostalgic feeling for the game. I wish updates were shorter, but the game seems to be in a kind of semi retirement.

 

[Old Duck]

Last night CA2 was full, so I jumped onto CA1 as a new engineer. I started on the moon since I wasn't planning to actually "stay", so having a rover to at least go around and explore for a few minutes seemed a good a plan as any. I did very little mining, nor did I build any base equipment. However, I did come across some ruins which gave me components to scavenge, so I decided to try a trick I learned about awhile back - converting the starter pod into a permanent, personally-owned asset. It worked!

Not being in the mood to drill all day, I decided that scavenging will be my main method of progressing, at least until I am able to build or buy an actual drill machine rather than this silly jackhammer. While I've done some scavenging in the past, it's not been my main method of surviving and progressing. I actually quite enjoyed this approach to a game start. It feels more "real", being someone who used to "shop" at junkyards IRL the way others shop at malls, back when I used to repair and modify used cars for fun.

The other aspect of survival is avoiding the gangs, which apparently are quite active on CA1. The whole thing (scavenging, hiding from gangs, being alone in a Mad Max car) feels very post-apocalyptic. When I was done for the evening, I painted my buggy and removed the very visible solar panels in hopes that nobody will spot me as they fly overhead. That's another thing I really need to micromanage - power. I'm solely dependent on the battery while I'm logged out, and even with everything but the survival kit shut off, I only have two days of power. This means I'll be revisiting CA1 often, even if it's just to recharge while doing IRL chores.



ps - I haven't fully tested the "it's my buggy now" hack, so fingers crossed that I have a buggy to return to today!

 

[Darkfyre99]

However, I did come across some ruins which gave me components to scavenge, so I decided to try a trick I learned about awhile back - converting the starter pod into a permanent, personally-owned asset. It worked!

Details, man! Details!!!

 

[Old Duck]

UPDATE - My rover DID survive the logout

However, I seem to have sunk down into quicksand... Hopefully a relog will fix this. Keen really needs to fix rovers on servers.

 

[Old Duck]

UPDATE - My rover DID survive the logout

However, I seem to have sunk down into quicksand... Hopefully a relog will fix this. Keen really needs to fix rovers on servers.

View attachment 269424

UPDATE - turns out I didn't sink into quicksand after all. What actually happened was.... MY TIRES DESPAWNED! The trick to convert a temporary respawn rover into a persistent vehicle that I myself owned worked on the rover, but not the tires because they are subgrids. So basically I had four flat tires!

Thankfully I had everything I needed to change those tires. This brought back more than one memory of IRL vehicle breakdowns I've had over the years, LOL.