I've only explored Earth and the Moon in any serious detail, and even so there's lots of the surface left unexplored. I went to Mars once for like 10 minutes as a trial run, and someday I need to return for proper exploration. I just recently visited the Alien world, and I only explored Dark's base. Triton is my latest discovery, and it's one of my favorite settings!
The trick with online exploration is that planets attract pirates and griefers, so while it's relatively safe to fly over one looking for bases, it's dangerous to park on the surface and log out. I think I will repurpose my original explorer for this specific role, knowing that if I lose it, it's not that big a deal. I also have my little small-grid atmospheric explorer, but it needs a good atmosphere to operate (not sure how it would work on places like Mars).
I know. I was just hoping that we'd sync up yesterday morning. I wanted to test out a new safety feature of for my PCU expensive airlock. In theory, one set of doors shouldn't open if the other set is, but it takes two people to test it properly. It is what it is.
It's looking like tonight the only thing I'll be able to do is jet pack up to the Starbird and install some solar panels. The rest of the week is looking rather rocky, and I'm not sure how much battery life is left. It should've been in low power mode, but...
I know. I was just hoping that we'd sync up yesterday morning. I wanted to test out a new safety feature of for my PCU expensive airlock. In theory, one set of doors shouldn't open if the other set is, but it takes two people to test it properly. It is what it is.
It's looking like tonight the only thing I'll be able to do is jet pack up to the Starbird and install some solar panels. The rest of the week is looking rather rocky, and I'm not sure how much battery life is left. It should've been in low power mode, but...
A change in weather has resulted in better Internet for me (my Internet situation is extremely unique and complicated atm), but I won't be in alien space for much longer. I do want to properly explore Triton for structures before returning home, so there is a chance we'll still cross paths!
Someday I may build a "jump gate" that will allow me to traverse the distance in a single go, especially if you plan to keep alien space as your home. It won't cost that much PCU, but I'll definitely need more gold!
Someday I may build a "jump gate" that will allow me to traverse the distance in a single go, especially if you plan to keep alien space as your home. It won't cost that much PCU, but I'll definitely need more gold!
I definitely like that idea, for myself as well. I was originally thinking of a "relay network," but then I realized that PCU wise, your "jump gate" idea would be more economical.
Since I already described my plan for the very limited time I had yesterday, I'll just post some screen shots instead:
The nice thing about freefall, is that it gave me a chance to chat with @Old Duck on the way back down.
Is there any sort of method to finding ores that isn't just driving a rover with an ore detector around until you find some? I'm lacking cobalt which I need for metal grids which has severely hamstrung my efforts to expand. Currently, I'm doing a survival world that has just myself and a few friends so that we can get experience in how everything works(One friend bought the game about an hour after I did and the other had it but hadn't done much beyond mess about in creative). Without the grids, I'm capped to the basic assembler and refinery but I can't find any cobalt in my area. I have, however, found a lot of gold and silver as well as a fair few silicon and ice deposits. I'm also based in a valley which might not be the best location but I can easily get ice by hiking up the side of a mountain. Not that I really need the oxygen since we're on Earth. Annoyingly, both of my friends have found cobalt. One of them is about 40 km away from me and the other is 120 km away. I'm seriously considering asking the closer of the two to ship cobalt to me once he gets a ship that can reach my location. Currently he has a ship which he uses for mining but he says it overbalances easily when full. The two of us are also considering an eventual move to a point roughly half way between our two locations which has a lake that we could mine for ice.
Since the thrusters that I can theoretically build all require metal grids or components I assume I need the more advanced assembler to make, I'm restricted to wheeled vehicles. My first rover was a big thing with six wheels and a drill that I mostly just drove around and let it pick up stone from the surface it was driving over. I ground down most of that rover in a bid to make it less resource intensive. Unfortunately, this process made it a bit top heavy and I managed to flip the rover when I was trying to find ore(see above) while driving at a recklessly high speed. The resulting flip severely damaged one of the two solar panels I'd mounted on the rover so I ground them down and set about excavating a large hole, hoping that the rover would fall into it and end up at an angle where I could tip it back over onto the wheels. I managed to get it perfectly vertical so I carved out a gentle slope out of the hole, stripped as much extraneous material off the rover as I could carry and hotfooted it back to base to build a smaller rover with a big pole sticking out of it so I could push the big rover over. In doing so, I realised that the big rover hadn't been fitted with a beacon and I had to go and find it again. Fortunately, I was able to extricate it from the hole.
Lesson seemingly learned, I messed about with the wheel settings and capped the speed at a low level to try and reduce flipping. I also mounted the new solar panels in a frame of light armour blocks to protect them in case the rover DID flip. The rover worked well enough for a while and I discovered a few ore deposits that I couldn't actually refine and was able to gather a hell of a lot of stone to turn into usable material. As a result, I was able to expand my base a little to include a flat platform on which to park the rover and I built a conveyor system to connect the rover and my basic refinery once the connectors I had installed were lined up. Unfortunately, the second flip happened. The good news was that the frame around the solar panels seemed to have worked as they were undamaged. With my experience from the last time, I quickly had the rover vertical and the hole dug to allow it to drive out again. I went to fetch the emergency rover, reassembled the pushing arm and drove it over to the site.
It was then that disaster struck. As I mentioned previously, I had stripped as much weight off the rover in the previous crash in order to make it easier to push as well as to build the second rover I needed to rescue the first. At the time, I'd sunk most of my resources into building a rover to increase my resource gathering and the investment hadn't paid off by the time of the first flip. At the time, I had scrounged the layer of light armour I had built as the roof of the rover's battery compartment and it transpired that I never actually put it back. Additionally, I had managed to sink the rover into the ground at JUST the right height for everything to go horridly wrong. With no idea of the upcoming tragedy, I dutifully drove the small rover forwards to bring the pushing arm into contact with the large rover.
The next thing I knew, there was some sort of explosion and, when I looked, there was a hell of a lot of debris, damage and some missing parts. It turned out that I'd pushed the long shaft of light armour blocks straight into the battery compartment, setting off an explosion that took out the batteries, the door I'd built to access the batteries if I ever needed to, the solar panels, a chunk of the frame around the solar panels, both of the large cargo containers I'd mounted on the rover, and the connector. At the same time, I'd also managed to trap the smaller rover in the hole with the larger rover pinning it in place. With no power in the large rover and no prospect of getting the smaller one out without making things worse for the big one, I ended up grinding both of them down for parts and taking the bits back to base. Now, and possibly in a manner guaranteed to bring chaos further down the line, I'm planning to build the biggest, widest, most bottom-heavy rover I can make. I've gotten as far as about half the wheel base. I kinda got discouraged because of the setback and the lack of cobalt.
Of course, this isn't the worst thing that happened. Towards the start, I didn't bother transferring the survival kit out of the little pod I started off in. After all, it had been functioning perfectly fine up until that point and I told myself I'd install another one on my base when I got the resources. Queue the survival kit somehow shutting down and going offline without my knowledge and a death due to reasons I can't remember. Next thing I know, I'm 40 km away at my friend's base. I raised the idea of somehow running all the way back to my base but my other friend argued against it, reasoning I'd run out of power way before reaching my own base. At this time, he'd already died with his survival kit failing as well and he'd ended up at the same base earlier, before he'd left our faction, respawned himself in a pod and wound up 120 km away before rejoining the faction. Without much prospect of getting my stuff back, I went to help my friend with trying to excavate his rover from the hole he'd trapped it in before helping to grind it down once it became too trapped to escape. While putting the salvaged material into his cargo container, I noticed my friend had some energy restoration consumable things. His explanation was that he'd gotten them from some of the pods that frequently spawned and which offered a chance to get some cosmetic items. After asking if I could take them, I dumped everything except the basic tools, swiped my friend's entire stock of energy things, topped up my energy at his survival kit and nicked his rifle and half his ammunition for good measure. He didn't have any ice or a hydrogen/oxygen generator but I had a full hydrogen tank from respawning. Somewhat prepared for the journey, I set out to get home.
The first bit of the journey home wasn't too hard. The entire region we seemed to be in was quite mountainous but my friend had lucked out and landed in an area of gently rolling hills. It wasn't until I was about ten kilometres into my run that I started hitting really steep hills. Even then, it was fairly easy to run over them and the few detours I had to take weren't too far off a straight run back to my base. I even had a few pods drop relatively close to my path but unfortunately there weren't any more of the power consumables. I ended up finding the lake that I mentioned earlier and set myself a GPS marker so I could find it again. Then my suit's power started running out and I discovered that the consumables only replenished so much of my energy. The power had been holding out well and I wonder if that was because I hadn't used any tools between my friend's base and my location. As I got closer to my base, the altitude kept getting higher and I found myself having to use the drill to cut a path in some places. To save time, since the mountains stretched to either side as far as the eye could see, I was going straight up the side of what was basically a cliff. Eventually, I hit the top and found snow. I was ten, maybe fifteen kilometres from home so I stopped to drill myself as much ice as I could carry out of the ground before continuing onwards. Cue my horror when I discovered that, due to the altitude, my oxygen levels were dropping. Having shaved off about a quarter of my health already from mishaps while descending, I was reluctant to simply return down the side of the cliff and, anyway, I was running out of the power consumables. With oxygen getting in the red but with the terrain becoming more gentle, I used some of my precious hydrogen fuel to increase my speed. Finally, I found myself looking down into a familiar valley and the beacon, which was still mounted on the pod and hadn't gone offline when the survival kit had, was only a few kilometres away. I quickly descended to the valley floor and soon was on the homeward run. With power slowly trickling down, I took the grinder to the survival kit and, way later than I should have done, installed it on the grid of my base. Turns out I didn't need the rifle.
The lake I found. Here I'm holding the redundant rifle. View attachment 210196View attachment 210197
My base, thrown together without much planning at all. View attachment 210198
The rover, now ground down for parts: View attachment 210199
The conveyor system I built and which is currently useless until I get the new rover up and running. In a bit of uncharacteristic foresight, I've included junctions to ease the expansion of the system. View attachment 210200
Last night I spent some time exploring Triton. I just love the atmospherics of this small moon:
While I was out and about on foot, a dust storm kicked up. I wasn't expecting that, because Triton's atmosphere is so thin. It did make for some lovely visuals. I raced back to the safety and comfort of my ship until the storm cleared.
Later I found a single starter base down on a lake, tucked into the side of a very jaggy cliff. This fellow has an epic view, I'll give him that!
I'll probably do a little more exploring of this moon today before heading back to my neck of the solar system. My next project will be building my detachable jump drive booster.
Sorry to be a pedant Old Duck, but Triton is the frozen planet that came with Frostbite.
The moon of the Alien Planet is Titan https://www.spaceengineerswiki.com/Moon/Titan
A place with relentless dust storms and awful extended lightning when it starts. I started a survival game and built my only proper planetry base there, to date, but something is buggy because the weather also happens inside the base as well
Sorry to be a pedant Old Duck, but Triton is the frozen planet that came with Frostbite.
The moon of the Alien Planet is Titan https://www.spaceengineerswiki.com/Moon/Titan
A place with relentless dust storms and awful extended lightning when it starts. I started a survival game and built my only proper planetry base there, to date, but something is buggy because the weather also happens inside the base as well
As I predicted, yesterday was a 3P day: a pencil and paper prototyping day. A day spent trying to formulate my strategy for exploring Titan by using the relatively accurate space engineers wiki, rather than being able to play the game. I was hoping to drop a “base in a box,” a seed from which I could make a base, and then the vehicles I needed to explore the moon.
After several rejected ideas, I decided it made much more sense to drop a nuclear powered variant on my “Carpenter Ant” design. Drop it from orbit towards a rover-friendly location, and then find a good location to set up shop.
I just think it’s a pity that small vehicle parts cost exactly the same, PCU wise, as large vehicle parts. I can see why, given that the size of the voxel has no affect on the server resources necessary to track and model it, but still...
I found cobalt! I tried to follow people's advice on looking for discolorations in the rock but for some reason it wasn't working. I dunno, maybe I was mistaking purely decorative variations in rock colour for the stuff I was meant to be looking for. Ended up whizzing about with an inventory full of hydrogen bottles while holding the drill.
Only problem is, it's halfway up a steep mountainside that happens to be about 5 km from base. And I took a break because of the cobalt shortage and I've still got to build a functioning rover again.
I'm aiming to build myself a spacecraft in survival so I know what I'm supposed to be doing before I take the plunge into any proper multiplayer server or anything. I guess I'm back on track with that.
Real life has been getting in my way as well, but hopefully I'll get a break soon. A jump drive booster is definitely on my TODO list now, and I've been designing something in my head that should serve this purpose.
In other news, I'm tempted to buy a second copy of Space Engineers for Jenny (my alt Steam account), mainly to double my PCU on Keen's server. Lame, I know, but if I can get it cheap during a good sale, why not? It'll also help support Keen, and I want them to "keep the lights on" with this game and continue adding content to it.
In other news, I'm tempted to buy a second copy of Space Engineers for Jenny (my alt Steam account), mainly to double my PCU on Keen's server. Lame, I know, but if I can get it cheap during a good sale, why not? It'll also help support Keen, and I want them to "keep the lights on" with this game and continue adding content to it.
I'm taking a little break from Space Engineers, beside the occasional logging in to check on my assets. The tide of life / work is coming back in, so when I do have free time for gaming, I'm looking for something less "committal", like a quick round or two of Overwatch or doing a couple dailies in Red Dead Online.
Ironically ED offers "quickie" gameplay in the form of exploration. Using the FSS to discover new worlds is kinda like fishing in RDO - relaxing, sometimes rewarding, and something I can jump in and out of relatively quickly.
Yesterday, the day dawned bright... on the Keen CA2 server, since I'm up before dawn in real life I drove over to my main base, the last main structure I needed to remove to free up extra PCU (barring getting a second Steam account and a second copy of Space Engineers), and starting dismantling the base: starting with the interior walls:
Once again I was surprised how little time it took to reduce a structure that took a long time to build to just the bare necessities.
Saturday Afternoon
During one of my trips back to the launch site with 40 tons of refined iron, and the remaining hydrogen, I started thinking about buying some platinum. So I visited the nearby NPC base. There, I got a contract to supply them 800 motors for 1.6 million credits... and getting the millionaire achievement in the process. Sadly, they had no platinum for sale. It did, however, reawaken my desire to further explore this world before I left it behind. I'd never visited the site of dreaded "Harry's" alien base, so I converted the Dragonfly into its exploration configuration, and headed out into the vast world. I loaded all my planetside uranium into the Dragonfly's reactor, just in case of an emergency, and set out into the alien sunset!
As I traveled west, the sun slowly "rose" higher into the sky in front of me. It really says something about the scale of these tiny worlds when my Dragonfly can outpace the sun. I saw lots of desolate landscapes, but no signs of human activity. After about twenty-five minutes of flying, or about 150 kilometers as the Dragonfly hovers, I arrived at "Harry's" base... to find not a single sign that anyone had ever been here.
Undaunted, I continued to press on for another fifteen minutes, until I was down to about five minutes of flight time. I was almost to the antipodes point from my base, when I needed to set the Dragonfly down so it could recharge. As I started to attach its solar panels, a sand storm blew in.
With so much wind, and so little sunlight, I decided to execute plan "B" - construction of a wind turbine and connector. I removed the medical components from the Cryo-Chamber, and attached a survival kit to the side of the vehicle. I had sufficient small tubes to make a connector, so all I had to do was a little mining, and some chasing of supply pods, to start charging my exploration ship. As I looked around at the surrounding desert, the core planets low to the East, and Titan barely over the horizon to the West, I realized I couldn't be too far from where I'd set up a base on Casey's server.
Saturday Afternoon
Saturday night saw me tearing down the tower I'd built, and storing the components in my Dragonfly. I had to fill my inventory with the heaviest components, but the ship was able to lift off. It had taken about around 40 or so minutes to get half way around this world, and I wanted to return to the launch site by the end of the day. But first, I needed to investigate a mysterious signal my antenna had picked up about 40 kilometers away. Naturally, a dust storm decided to grace me with its presence just as I lifted off.
As I flew closer, SE graced me with a phenomenal sunset. Technically, it was a "sunrise," because I was outpacing the sun again, but still...
At any rate, it was pretty dark by the time I landed the ship, and set up the survival kit... just in case.
The signal I had detected was a small grid and fixed grid of an player "enemy" faction, with a single member. I knew I was pushing my luck, but I still wanted to take a closer look. After depositing my valuable gear in the Dragonfly... the server announced it would be rebooting in ten minutes. I put the medical components back into the cryo-chamber, started up the ship's reactor, and decided it was time to start supper a little early. I made a note of the time, though, so I could log in when it was sunny locally.
Sunday Night
I started the night by restarting the Survival Kit again (my next exploration ship will have both!!!), and creeping up on my "enemy." I tried to stay under cover as much as possible, but eventually, I took a peek to snapped screen shot of the base. The base's defenses snapped a non-screen shot at me, so I hurried back under cover, and returned to my Dragonfly.
I restored the Dragonfly to its normal configuration, and started heading West again. I soon picked up another signal... a neutral NPC base! This was my main purpose for exploring this world. Maybe they had platinum for sale?
While their store wasn't selling platinum, a vending machine was selling platinum ore. 515 kilos of ore, to be precise. They were also willing to buy all the steel plates from my recharging tower for a pretty decent sum. Though I must admit, having to buy that ore one kilogram at a time was a bit of a chore...
With precious platinum in my Dragonfly's hold, I resumed my westward flight. I soon overtook the sun again, turning day into night. Sadly, the rest of the trip home wasn't eventful. About half way there I decided to extend my ship's flight time by turning on the reactor, so I didn't need to stop to recharge again. Watching its operational time go from 26 minutes to ten hours convinced me that this was a good move. Once I got close to home, I switched off the reactor, and saw I had plenty of battery life to spare.
As soon as I'd docked, I ordered a refinery and four yield modules for my launch site... just so I could refine the ore I'd bought.
The 515kg of platinum ore yielded 5.15kg of refined platinum. Just enough to make myself an elite set of tool, plus I had enough left over to add maneuvering thrusters to a small ship.
Hopefully.
Feeling like I'd had a productive day, I logged out for the night.
Sunday Morning, before work.
I finished demolishing what had once been my main base on this world. The elite tools cut through everything like butter. Sooner than I'd expected, all that remained of my base was a hole.
After unloading the last of the components and recycled metals at the launch site, I took stock of everything I needed to move into space:
420 tons of iron
21 tons of nickel
26 tons of silicon
4 tons of cobalt
3 tons of silver (and other precious metals)
Not to mention 26 mega-liters of refined hydrogen gas.
And my "Resupply Rocket", original design, can only launch about 20 tons and half a mega-liter at a time.
No doubt about it... I'm going to need to build a bigger rocket!
Didn't have much time to play yesterday, but I did get everything set up to assemble one. It's pretty much a scaled up version of the small-grid resupply rocket, only without an attached oxygen tank, since the cockpit should contain enough O2 to survive the short trip. It should be able to carry half of everything I have up into space.
I also took another trip to the nearby trading post. Sold about 250 silver ingots for 700 kilo-credits. If I find more platinum for sale later, I want to be able to take advantage of it.
I had just enough time Tuesday Night to complete the functional components of my larger resupply rocket:
I might've gotten a bit more done, but the server reset soon after I logged in, and even after the reset, performance wasn't the best. Simulation speed was still at 0.8, which doesn't make for a fun evening.
Last night I got home so late, that I didn't even bother trying. I have a proper weekend coming up, but I'm planning on splitting my attention between this game and ED. I want to get my main to Colonia before the Alpha starts.
The session started with me transferrin the bulk of my iron and silicon to my big rocket. This caused a bit of clang, due to it being attached to a piston so the engines wouldn't be buried in the ice, but its H2 tank was filled, and the battery fully charged, so not a big deal. I also added a bit of armor to the front half, so it wouldn't look so unfinished.
The launch went well, since the large thruster was easily able to handle the nearly 400 tons of cargo it was carrying, as well as its own weight.
At the orbital insertion point, I took the time to adjust the Starbird's solar panels.
Once at my shipyard, I hurriedly added a large hydrogen tank to the bottom of the base, so I could drain what was left of the smaller supply rocket I'd built, to grind it down and free up more PSU. Then I stayed online just long enough to finish construction of my station's living quarters.
While this was going on, several of the people online at the time were having... issues keeping vehicles from crashing. I know that feeling well.
Well, Old Duck, I’ll keep the light burning on this thread. If you find a new forum, let me know. I’ll continue playing on Keen CA2, as time and schedule allows, between 5-7 am central on the weekends, and 6-8 pm weekdays... though I do intend to give the Odyssey Alpha a whirl.
I'm not alone!!! 
