If you use a merge block to attach any of the starter ships/pods to a stationary grid it will permanently remove the despawn option when you die.
Space Engineers - "Open" Changes Everything
- Thread starter Old Duck
- Start date
I dont think the respawn ship ever despawned for me. It's all full of despawn this despawn that but I have a feeling it is for MP.
Yep. It’s a MP thing.
I caught a beautiful sunrise that I just had to screenshot:
I'm a "shadow snob", and I've always been very impressed with shadow quality in Space Engineers. Lighting quality is a bit more hit or miss, depending on the type of lighting. It does great with spotlights (which the sun is one), but I do find the "regular" lights to be a bit disappointing, though I understand why Keen uses these for performance reasons.
I'm a "shadow snob", and I've always been very impressed with shadow quality in Space Engineers. Lighting quality is a bit more hit or miss, depending on the type of lighting. It does great with spotlights (which the sun is one), but I do find the "regular" lights to be a bit disappointing, though I understand why Keen uses these for performance reasons.
PRO TIP
If you're having trouble managing power, you can cut your power consumption in half by putting your survival kit on a cycling timer. I have mine toggle on / off every minute, which means overall it's on only half the time it would normally be, but I only need to wait a minute tops before I can respawn at my little rover. I could technically use two timers to extend this power savings even further - on 10 seconds, off 50 seconds, for example, though as of right now I think just cutting the power consumption in half is enough to allow my limited solar panels to have a net positive charging effect on the batteries.
If you're having trouble managing power, you can cut your power consumption in half by putting your survival kit on a cycling timer. I have mine toggle on / off every minute, which means overall it's on only half the time it would normally be, but I only need to wait a minute tops before I can respawn at my little rover. I could technically use two timers to extend this power savings even further - on 10 seconds, off 50 seconds, for example, though as of right now I think just cutting the power consumption in half is enough to allow my limited solar panels to have a net positive charging effect on the batteries.
Thats a good idea. It didnt occur to me that an after death timer would still work like that.
Such crafty. Many smarts. Add contemplative message during energy savings time and noone will suspect is just cheapskating power usage rather than meta designed respawn mechanucs
Good lord, Keen's cleanup routines have become excessively aggressive. I lost my Dragonfly after I went to get some nearby cobalt, just because I accidentally removed the wrong block as I was cleaning up my temporary base. The connector it was attached to while recharging wasn't attached to the battery, so Keen counted the while thing as "abandoned," so it was despawned. 
And they keep closing up the mineshafts I've dug.
And they keep closing up the mineshafts I've dug.
That's weird.. I'm not having any of these problems, and I'm finding abandoned mine shafts that are weeks old. I'm not doubting you, just wondering why you're having such bad luck. (Now excuse me while I find some wood to knock on)Good lord, Keen's cleanup routines have become excessively aggressive. I lost my Dragonfly after I went to get some nearby cobalt, just because I accidentally removed the wrong block as I was cleaning up my temporary base. The connector it was attached to while recharging wasn't attached to the battery, so Keen counted the while thing as "abandoned," so it was despawned.
And they keep closing up the mineshafts I've dug.
Is that on CA1? Because CA2 has been acting like crap every time I log in.
Both CA1 and CA2 have been fine for me, except for the occasional lag spikes (probably due to some player going overboard with drilling or something). Oh, and that one day when the server crashed and rolled back a dozen times.Is that on CA1? Because CA2 has been acting like crap every time I log in.
But normally the server is fine for me.
I've changed things up a bit on my new CA1 server save. While I still have my moon buggy, I wanted to start fresh in space. Of all the different starts, I'm beginning to think the deep space start is my favorite. It kinda reminds me of Elite, where I start with a bare-bones ship, SE's version of the Sidewinder. Using the merge block trick, I claimed this starter ship as my own, and I've slowly been modifying it to make it more useful.
Being a starter ship with just the barest of equipment, function trumps form, but I'm kinda digging this steampunk vibe.
I do enjoy the early game, before FTL and nuclear reactors, where space feels HUGE, and power management is absolutely crucial. I'm been slowly plodding along for days, looking for all the critical resources needed to build my first proper FTL ship. I've found everything except gold and uranium. I also need nickle, but I can get that from stones if I have to.
Someday I hope Elite adds EVA and the ability to mine asteroids (and planets) by hand. There's something breathtaking about landing on a huge asteroid and surveying it in person for rare ores.
Being a starter ship with just the barest of equipment, function trumps form, but I'm kinda digging this steampunk vibe.
I do enjoy the early game, before FTL and nuclear reactors, where space feels HUGE, and power management is absolutely crucial. I'm been slowly plodding along for days, looking for all the critical resources needed to build my first proper FTL ship. I've found everything except gold and uranium. I also need nickle, but I can get that from stones if I have to.
Someday I hope Elite adds EVA and the ability to mine asteroids (and planets) by hand. There's something breathtaking about landing on a huge asteroid and surveying it in person for rare ores.
Honestly, I've never played until FTL. I think I had one ship from workshop where I tried a jump once. Then I pressed a button and some mergeblok thing happened and it webt down the drain. I too find the early game phases more interesting.
I find FTL most useful on multiplayer servers where you want to get around quickly to visit people on different planets, but if there was a server where FTL was disabled, I think that would be an interesting challenge that I'd love to try. In fact, like you I never did FTL in my first solo games - it wasn't until I started playing online that I finally committed to installing one (and then two and three) because I was missing all the action.
Ahh, those where the days, when even a simple trip from the earth to the moon was like a Hutton Orbital run.
Disclaimer - while I didn't use FTL in solo games, I did mod my top "Newton speed" to be much higher than the game's default.
I started a new save last week. I went for a challenge and started playing with just my space suit. No ship no base. Just me and the asteroids. I spawned in and just picked a moon and started flying towards it. As my O2 was reaching 50% a distress beacon poped up. I flew towards it, and it was debris field with a single turret guarding it. I disabled it with some tactical flying and then turned to examine the debris. Apparently I was in luck and they were actually a series of life pods that had exactly what I needed. The one the turret was guarding was mostly intact with a single working solar panel and on the inside was an O2 generator and a survival kit. It has become my home now. I've spent most of my time scouting for ice deposits and mining rock to manufacture parts to repair the second solar panel. It's a slower start than a normal game but very rewarding to start completely from scratch.
That is a hardcore start! It might be a bit too hardcore for my liking, but I dig it.
Sometime this winter I want to really dive into the sandbox side of the game and start making my own scenarios. The key is they need a random aspect to them. On example is I'd like to create a Subnautica-like start where I land on earth in an escape pod, but that's because my mothership suffered a catastrophy, fell out of orbit, and crashed in some random place on earth. I can do this by downloading a capital ship from the workshop, paste it in the gravity well in some random location, plant a warhead by the reactor (to simulate a reactor breach), and let it fall naturally as I trigger the typical escape pod random spawn. The ship would crash to the earth somewhere, and my goal would be to find it and salvage it. I could even add an enemy capital ship patrolling space above the earth, with an ultimate goal of getting my revenge on that enemy ship.
This is one of the things that keeps me interested in Space Engineers - it is a TRUE sandbox, which means a person can make their own games out of it. As I mentioned earlier, another goal is to design my own version of Command And Conquer using automated factories. The designing of such "games inside the game" is just as fun as playing that final game itself. How do I design an automated enemy that grows and expands over time? That's a puzzle I can't wait to try to solve, but it'll be a winter "I've got all day to focus on this" project, because it will require scripting and possibly even modding (though I hope to do it using just in-game tools).
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You should really try it sometime. You might die a few times before you can get a good set up but its definitely rewarding once you get started. I once had a save with meteors set to apocalypse mode and I just bunkered down in my underground tunnel. Loads of fun too until the pcu hits its limit and the game crashes. Lol
I like this idea. If you get it finished upload it Mod.io and I'll play it sometime.Sometime this winter I want to really dive into the sandbox side of the game and start making my own scenarios. The key is they need a random aspect to them. On example is I'd like to create a Subnautica-like start where I land on earth in an escape pod, but that's because my mothership suffered a catastrophy, fell out of orbit, and crashed in some random place on earth. I can do this by downloading a capital ship from the workshop, paste it in the gravity well in some random location, plant a warhead by the reactor (to simulate a reactor breach), and let it fall naturally as I trigger the typical escape pod random spawn. The ship would crash to the earth somewhere, and my goal would be to find it and salvage it. I could even add an enemy capital ship patrolling space above the earth, with an ultimate goal of getting my revenge on that enemy ship.
This is one of the things that keeps me interested in Space Engineers - it is a TRUE sandbox, which means a person can make their own games out of it. As I mentioned earlier, another goal is to design my own version of Command And Conquer using automated factories. The designing of such "games inside the game" is just as fun as playing that final game itself. How do I design an automated enemy that grows and expands over time? That's a puzzle I can't wait to try to solve, but it'll be a winter "I've got all day to focus on this" project, because it will require scripting and possibly even modding (though I hope to do it using just in-game tools).
I've started yet ANOTHER new save on yet another new server. A private server caught my eye - it has minimum, optional mods, unlimited PCU, 64 player cap, scripting enabled, and NPC encounters. It is also super fast and stable. It must be new, because I've not seen it before, and I've only encountered a few other players on it.
Once again I started in space, claiming my starter ship as my own (each iteration is better than the last), and set forth to find resources in the nearby asteroids. I got pretty lucky by having much of what I needed close by, including the elusive cobalt. While exploring, I caught a very brief mayday signal from a pirate station. I've not done much with these in the past, as the Keen servers don't provide this, and all my starts in single player have been planetside, where unfortunately NPC ships do not venture without mods. In fact, most of my experience with pirates has been in creative mode when designing and testing ships in space. My experience with these mayday signals in this setting are usually bullet-ridden, and unlike creative mode, bullets kill in survival mode!
With this in mind, I plotted a course that would circle around the damaged station far out of the range of any guns it might have. Thankfully I was able to put an asteroid between me and the station, allowing me to park my ship and perform recon in my suit. I was able to approach from the station's blind side, avoiding detection from its defenses. The station was a serious wreck, though that worked in my advantage because it was also in a state of low power, which deactivated the main guns. This may also had to do with the angle of the sun, as the station was reliant on solar. This allowed me to "hack" the three functional multicannon turrets and take control. Here's a look at the station from a distance (after I disabled those turrets):
While I had disarmed the defenses, I wasn't out of the woods yet. I had to disable the distress beacon, otherwise very dangerous pirate ships might show up to investigate. Using my handy grinder, I was able to disable both the transmitting antenna and the timers that broadcast the distress. Interestingly, when I did this a message popped up on one of the functioning screens - "DECOMMISSIONED". Huh, never seen that before! Hopefully this means pirates consider this station lost and won't bother me.
I then started scouring the station for valuables. Unfortunately there was nothing exotic to be had - no reactors, no gravity generators, not even a refinery or assembler. Still, there's a lot of good materials here, so I started cutting up everything that I don't have a use for. My plan is to keep the basic station for now, converting it to my own needs. I'll use it to house a large refinery and some large storage containers, along with some assemblers. This will allow me to build everything I need to make my own ships and stations.
Here's the station interior as I'm first scoping it out:
The station was nowhere near airtight, having suffered severe damage in some form of cataclysm, so I found an air vent and built a little "rest area" where I can go and sit, recharging both my energy and oxygen supplies:
This has been a very different experience for me - finding, exploring, and salvaging wreckage very early in the game. I guess on one hand it might be considered "easy mode", but I've done enough starts now that I'm glad for any assists like this. It also feels very boilerplate sci-fi, where a stranded crew finds some sort of wreckage and must work to get things operational so they can survive, hacking into systems and making the abandoned base / ship / station a temporary home. I'm quite enjoying experiencing this myself!
Once again I started in space, claiming my starter ship as my own (each iteration is better than the last), and set forth to find resources in the nearby asteroids. I got pretty lucky by having much of what I needed close by, including the elusive cobalt. While exploring, I caught a very brief mayday signal from a pirate station. I've not done much with these in the past, as the Keen servers don't provide this, and all my starts in single player have been planetside, where unfortunately NPC ships do not venture without mods. In fact, most of my experience with pirates has been in creative mode when designing and testing ships in space. My experience with these mayday signals in this setting are usually bullet-ridden, and unlike creative mode, bullets kill in survival mode!
With this in mind, I plotted a course that would circle around the damaged station far out of the range of any guns it might have. Thankfully I was able to put an asteroid between me and the station, allowing me to park my ship and perform recon in my suit. I was able to approach from the station's blind side, avoiding detection from its defenses. The station was a serious wreck, though that worked in my advantage because it was also in a state of low power, which deactivated the main guns. This may also had to do with the angle of the sun, as the station was reliant on solar. This allowed me to "hack" the three functional multicannon turrets and take control. Here's a look at the station from a distance (after I disabled those turrets):
While I had disarmed the defenses, I wasn't out of the woods yet. I had to disable the distress beacon, otherwise very dangerous pirate ships might show up to investigate. Using my handy grinder, I was able to disable both the transmitting antenna and the timers that broadcast the distress. Interestingly, when I did this a message popped up on one of the functioning screens - "DECOMMISSIONED". Huh, never seen that before! Hopefully this means pirates consider this station lost and won't bother me.
I then started scouring the station for valuables. Unfortunately there was nothing exotic to be had - no reactors, no gravity generators, not even a refinery or assembler. Still, there's a lot of good materials here, so I started cutting up everything that I don't have a use for. My plan is to keep the basic station for now, converting it to my own needs. I'll use it to house a large refinery and some large storage containers, along with some assemblers. This will allow me to build everything I need to make my own ships and stations.
Here's the station interior as I'm first scoping it out:
The station was nowhere near airtight, having suffered severe damage in some form of cataclysm, so I found an air vent and built a little "rest area" where I can go and sit, recharging both my energy and oxygen supplies:
This has been a very different experience for me - finding, exploring, and salvaging wreckage very early in the game. I guess on one hand it might be considered "easy mode", but I've done enough starts now that I'm glad for any assists like this. It also feels very boilerplate sci-fi, where a stranded crew finds some sort of wreckage and must work to get things operational so they can survive, hacking into systems and making the abandoned base / ship / station a temporary home. I'm quite enjoying experiencing this myself!
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