Barotrauma has SP and MP. It very much lives from the "workshop" subs that players have built. I too, have started over so often that I don't feel the need to grind the basics, yet I like to have a clea slate to start from again.
Space Engineers - "Open" Changes Everything
- Thread starter Old Duck
- Start date
I've begun experimenting with creating my own offline scenarios, which is a good thing to do when my internet goes to rubbish like it did yesterday. To create my "Subnautica" scenario, I imported a random ship from the workshop, placed it right outside the gravity well, attached a few warheads and a single gyro to the hull, turned off inertial dampeners, and set it flying toward a random spot on the planet. The gyro is used to place the ship in an "uncontrolled spin", which helps randomize how the ship crashes and also helps spreads debris. The warheads, set on a timer, simulate some sort of catastrophic failure. As the ship is free-falling, the warheads explode, ripping a big hole in the ship but still leaving much intact. Gravity does the rest.
In one test, the ship broke into two pieces and rolled down a hill a little bit before settling. Here are the images:
It's actually a very big ship, but like ED it's hard to judge scale until you get closer. In this crash, there wasn't much left that was valuable, though I do think a single reactor survived but was spewing radioactive steam.
In the above test I followed the ship down to watch it crash. In the next test, I allowed it to crash "off screen", to see if the game would run proper collision calculations when out of draw range. It also let me test actually searching for the wreckage, which is a fun project. I turn on the beacon before crashing the ship, but it never survives the impact. At least it gives a basic idea of where the ship is going down. In the final scenario, I can see having the ship fall at the same time I'm dropping in an escape pod, but at a decent (over the horizon) distance away. Here are the results of that next test:
In this case the ship nosed into the ground, which obliterated the front but left the aft section mainly intact. The hole it made was HUGE. It seems Space Engineers does indeed model collisions even for objects off-screen, as the damage is what I would have expected for an impact at this angle. You can really get the sense of scale from the couple of 3rd person pictures I took. Exploring this thing is a challenge because you can't walk down a hallway when the ship is at that angle!
All in all, I'd say the crashed ship scenario is well within reach. Finding shipwrecks is something I really enjoyed in EGS, so being able to replicate this in SE makes me very happy.
In one test, the ship broke into two pieces and rolled down a hill a little bit before settling. Here are the images:
It's actually a very big ship, but like ED it's hard to judge scale until you get closer. In this crash, there wasn't much left that was valuable, though I do think a single reactor survived but was spewing radioactive steam.
In the above test I followed the ship down to watch it crash. In the next test, I allowed it to crash "off screen", to see if the game would run proper collision calculations when out of draw range. It also let me test actually searching for the wreckage, which is a fun project. I turn on the beacon before crashing the ship, but it never survives the impact. At least it gives a basic idea of where the ship is going down. In the final scenario, I can see having the ship fall at the same time I'm dropping in an escape pod, but at a decent (over the horizon) distance away. Here are the results of that next test:
In this case the ship nosed into the ground, which obliterated the front but left the aft section mainly intact. The hole it made was HUGE. It seems Space Engineers does indeed model collisions even for objects off-screen, as the damage is what I would have expected for an impact at this angle. You can really get the sense of scale from the couple of 3rd person pictures I took. Exploring this thing is a challenge because you can't walk down a hallway when the ship is at that angle!
All in all, I'd say the crashed ship scenario is well within reach. Finding shipwrecks is something I really enjoyed in EGS, so being able to replicate this in SE makes me very happy.
What is EGS? Google keeps directing me to Epic Games Store and I doubt you'd find many shipwrecks there. Is their quality control that bad?
Empyrion: Galactic Survival
I "threw" a stopped cargo ship into an atmosphere once because it randomly stopped outside of my base because it flew too close. I was tired of seeing it sitting there and didnt want to get a bad rep with its faction. Some time later I landed on the planet and found it sitting about 60% intact and had a crater surounding it. So yeah it does render damage even out of range.
I like the turquoise tint. It kinda has some maritime, Boron flair.
I was able to print out most of the Valkyrie on the new server I've been experimenting with, but while basic ores are abundant, finding uranium has been a real challenge. Val was designed to run solely off a reactor with batteries as a backup. While I can recharge the batteries at a station, I didn't dare go far with my new jump drive on batteries alone, lest I get stranded out in deep space. So I improvised... Spoiler alert!!
Haha, pun intended
The two panels may not look like much, but it's enough to recharge my batteries after a jump and keep my ship running at a net positive energy flow in cruise. Thing is, I actually like the look, so I went and added the spoiler on my CA2 ship as well.
Eventually I found uranium, but it's nice to be able to park the ship and not have a constant drain on the reactor while I'm offline.
My only complaint is that solar panels are way too blue in SE. I own panels IRL, and they are much closer to black with just a tint of blue, which would match my paint scheme better. I might go in an edit the texture so at least I see my ship with more color-accurate panels.
ps - There is an entirely separate story on the actual printing of this ship, but I'll save that for another post, as it's pretty complex. I will say that it's nice not having PCU and welder limits.
Haha, pun intended
The two panels may not look like much, but it's enough to recharge my batteries after a jump and keep my ship running at a net positive energy flow in cruise. Thing is, I actually like the look, so I went and added the spoiler on my CA2 ship as well.
Eventually I found uranium, but it's nice to be able to park the ship and not have a constant drain on the reactor while I'm offline.
My only complaint is that solar panels are way too blue in SE. I own panels IRL, and they are much closer to black with just a tint of blue, which would match my paint scheme better. I might go in an edit the texture so at least I see my ship with more color-accurate panels.
ps - There is an entirely separate story on the actual printing of this ship, but I'll save that for another post, as it's pretty complex. I will say that it's nice not having PCU and welder limits.
The danger of playing on an unknown private server is that you just don't know how things will go. The private server I've been enjoying just disappeared... Last I heard from the admin, he was running out of memory. Who knows if it will ever come back.. 
Meanwhile I continue to experiment with 3D printer designs in creative mode. It's easy to do when throwing unlimited pistons and welders at the problem, but I'm working on a system to minimize my reliance on these while also allowing me to print ships (and someday bases) of almost any size. I'm purposefully NOT looking for suggestions or howtos, because I want to figure this out for myself. I will probably test this on CA1, where I just started building a temporary base, and where we are limited to 5 welders (10 if I use my alt) and 20k PCU.
Meanwhile I continue to experiment with 3D printer designs in creative mode. It's easy to do when throwing unlimited pistons and welders at the problem, but I'm working on a system to minimize my reliance on these while also allowing me to print ships (and someday bases) of almost any size. I'm purposefully NOT looking for suggestions or howtos, because I want to figure this out for myself. I will probably test this on CA1, where I just started building a temporary base, and where we are limited to 5 welders (10 if I use my alt) and 20k PCU.
Dang... and just when I was tempted to ask you about it, because I'm really getting sick of CA2's continuing performance issues, to the point where I'm starting to regret continuing my SE: Cobra Edition on it.The danger of playing on an unknown private server is that you just don't know how things will go. The private server I've been enjoying just disappeared... Last I heard from the admin, he was running out of memory. Who knows if it will ever come back..
Meanwhile I continue to experiment with 3D printer designs in creative mode. It's easy to do when throwing unlimited pistons and welders at the problem, but I'm working on a system to minimize my reliance on these while also allowing me to print ships (and someday bases) of almost any size. I'm purposefully NOT looking for suggestions or howtos, because I want to figure this out for myself. I will probably test this on CA1, where I just started building a temporary base, and where we are limited to 5 welders (10 if I use my alt) and 20k PCU.
It sounded like the admin was looking into the problems he's having and is serious about making something work. I'm hoping it's just a couple day outage until he figures things out, as he was gaining traction with other players while it was running.Dang... and just when I was tempted to ask you about it, because I'm really getting sick of CA2's continuing performance issues, to the point where I'm starting to regret continuing my SE: Cobra Edition on it.
Give me a heads up if it does. I have no issues of starting over again, especially since I can blueprint my current progress with my Cobra III. I really want a stable server once I start to work on the landing gear!!!
Back on CA1, I found a location close to essential ores (iron, cobalt, nickel, silicon) to erect a basic shipyard. Since I'm in the middle on nowhere with no NPC pirates to worry about, my first ship to construct was my dedicated mining vessel, the HMS Fortune. I whipped together a quick "git'r'done" printer, using all 5 welders at my disposal, but I also used this opportunity to test out a new printing system that would allow me to print ships of any length without the need to constantly modify the printer. The details are below in the spoiler tag, in case you're like me and rather figure these things out for yourself. Disclaimer - this is a "function over form" build, designed on-the-fly in survival mode, not the final product. My final printer will ideally use just one welder to print ships as big as my Krait 2 (freeing up the other welders for things like AMFUs).
The key to printing an infinitely long ship is the "inch worm" consisting of two pistons and two magnetic plates (landing gear will also work). The projector is part of a small mobile "sled" which is positioned to start printing the end of the ship. After the first layer is printed, the bottom magnetic plate raises to attach to the ship, and then the horizontal piston moves it forward to pull it through the welding plane. Once the piston is fully extended, the vertical piston pushes the ship upward to the stationary magnetic plate, which grabs and holds the ship in place while the lower pistons retract back to the start position, then raise and reattach to the ship again to repeat the forward motion, over and over until the ship is fully printed.
I've experimented with some other movement systems in creative, like using wheels to grip the ship or guide rail to move it forward, but these have had limited success and require extra complexity, along with a greater risk for a clang explosion. The piston system gives me very fine control of how fast and far to position the ship. The only downside is that pistons tend to be "wobbly", but so far that's not been a serious problem. I'm going to try to add a stabilizing track parallel to the piston head which hopefully will keep it steady and stop the wobbling.
Another thing to note is that this printer was build specifically for this ship, so there's not a lot of room vertically for anything bigger. My final design will likely use four pistons, mirroring the bottom piston arrangement up top, which would give me more vertical room as well as allow one set of pistons to continue to forward the ship while the other set returns to the start position (think of hand-over-hand rope climbing). I'll experiment with this more in creative mode.
ATTENTION - I'm sure there are tons of better printers out there on Youtube and the workshop, but please don't tell me about them. I want to figure this out on my own. Thanks!!!
The key to printing an infinitely long ship is the "inch worm" consisting of two pistons and two magnetic plates (landing gear will also work). The projector is part of a small mobile "sled" which is positioned to start printing the end of the ship. After the first layer is printed, the bottom magnetic plate raises to attach to the ship, and then the horizontal piston moves it forward to pull it through the welding plane. Once the piston is fully extended, the vertical piston pushes the ship upward to the stationary magnetic plate, which grabs and holds the ship in place while the lower pistons retract back to the start position, then raise and reattach to the ship again to repeat the forward motion, over and over until the ship is fully printed.
I've experimented with some other movement systems in creative, like using wheels to grip the ship or guide rail to move it forward, but these have had limited success and require extra complexity, along with a greater risk for a clang explosion. The piston system gives me very fine control of how fast and far to position the ship. The only downside is that pistons tend to be "wobbly", but so far that's not been a serious problem. I'm going to try to add a stabilizing track parallel to the piston head which hopefully will keep it steady and stop the wobbling.
Another thing to note is that this printer was build specifically for this ship, so there's not a lot of room vertically for anything bigger. My final design will likely use four pistons, mirroring the bottom piston arrangement up top, which would give me more vertical room as well as allow one set of pistons to continue to forward the ship while the other set returns to the start position (think of hand-over-hand rope climbing). I'll experiment with this more in creative mode.
ATTENTION - I'm sure there are tons of better printers out there on Youtube and the workshop, but please don't tell me about them. I want to figure this out on my own. Thanks!!!
I really need to start experimenting with printers.
That said I used to have an idea for a drone mining ship. I have a small mining drone detach and automatically drill through an asteroid while spitting ore out of the back and use a gravity generator to pull them into a collector. I sort of gave up/ got bored with drones so I never made it
That said I used to have an idea for a drone mining ship. I have a small mining drone detach and automatically drill through an asteroid while spitting ore out of the back and use a gravity generator to pull them into a collector. I sort of gave up/ got bored with drones so I never made it
Do gravity generators work on ore?
Yes they do.
Hmmmm..... Well this has me thinking! I haven't really used gravity generators outside of the typical AG for ships. Speaking of, I've yet to find gold on CA1, so no gravity generators or FTL for me. While printing out my miner, I had to fill in the spot where the jump drive goes with blocks because I don't even have it unlocked yet. I'm very tempted to make CA1 a no-FTL save, just for the challenge of it. Space is REALLY big when you have to traverse it at slow sublight speeds. Getting to Earth on CA1 might be like going to Beagle Point in ED!Yes they do.
Yeah they work on any small object that's not in a grid like parts/tools. Back in the old days people used to build rail guns using multiple gravity generators to immediately accelerate an object to the maximum speed out of a tube. You could shoot something like a chunk of stone or metal plate thousands of meters away and cause massive amounts of damage even through military grade armor. I've been told they patched out the damage objects can do.
As previously mentioned, I have no FTL capability, so I modified my mining ship with long sublight trips in mind. I had filled the location where the large jump drive goes with light steel blocks, but I realized this would make a great little "bunkhouse" for my engineer to sleep on long journeys. My FTL miner on CA2 has no such facilities, as I usually just jump to an asteroid of interest, quickly mine what I need, and jump back to my base, all within a single game session. Now that I need to travel great distances "the old fashioned way", I need a place to sleep (ie - save my CMDR so I can log out) since it can take multiple game sessions to make these journeys.
This isn't a "living space" in the strictest sense, more like the sleeping cabin found in long-haul trailer trucks. Still, it's kinda cozy!
This isn't a "living space" in the strictest sense, more like the sleeping cabin found in long-haul trailer trucks. Still, it's kinda cozy!
Well, it's back, but the owner completely changed it - from 4 basic mods I could ignore to 45 mods! No thanks. This is the problem with privately-run servers, we're at the whim of people who don't seem to know what they want half the time.
I'll keep looking. I'm very tempted to pop down some cash and rent my own server, at least for the winter months...
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I spent most of my weekend gaming time in creative mode, playing with my Krait design. I came up with something much closer to the actual Krait II in Elite Dangerous, but it's still "off". This is because the blocks in SE are somewhat limited in the angles and slopes you can create in relation to one another. To create many of the wedge-shaped ships of ED, I'd need a huge collection of various angled blocks, or I'd have to resort to Lego-like stair-stepping, which is not my cup of tea. I wish there was a tool where you could draw any plane and it would "slice through" solid blocks to dynamically create any block needed to achieve any angled slope.
However, even if I were able to create the perfect Krait, a game like SE shows me that the Krait is far from perfect. It's beautiful, no doubt, but not practical. There's a reason we live in square houses, not narrow wedge houses. Unless you're using that narrow, sloped space to store something like liquid fuel or 100 batteries, it's not really conducive to any sort of "floor plan". I also found that the amount of metal that goes into such a large, impractical hull makes for an incredibly slow and drifty ship. There are no "magic thrusters" in Space Engineers, so mimicking ED's Krait thruster layout comes nowhere near to reproducing ED's Krait flight profile. I end up with a big, heavy, impractical, slow, "slippery" ship that's just not fun to fly. It's pretty (and that's why I kept trying to make it), but not very "good".
So I will probably end up scratching the idea of reproducing ED ships in SE, and stick other sci-fi styles instead. SE is perfect for making ships found in The Expanse, which is probably one of the most accurate depictions of a potential real future in space. They may not be as "pretty" as ED's wedge ships or Star Trek's saucer ships, but they are incredibly practical, and they have their own type of beauty (like the T7).
There are other SE-friendly designs that I am found of as well. For example, the capital ships in Starship Troopers:
along with the carrier in Star Wars Rebels:
and then there's the kinda ugly but functional earth ships from SG-1:
My only problem with all these ships is that they are capital ships, and without a proper crew, they are too big for one person to manage. So instead of copying any of these ships directly, I'll focus on designing my own ships, using these and other ships for inspiration, focusing on ships that are highly practical in the Space Engineers ecosystem. This means that if I want to fly a Krait, I'll have to fire up Elite. If I want to walk around a Krait, well...
However, even if I were able to create the perfect Krait, a game like SE shows me that the Krait is far from perfect. It's beautiful, no doubt, but not practical. There's a reason we live in square houses, not narrow wedge houses. Unless you're using that narrow, sloped space to store something like liquid fuel or 100 batteries, it's not really conducive to any sort of "floor plan". I also found that the amount of metal that goes into such a large, impractical hull makes for an incredibly slow and drifty ship. There are no "magic thrusters" in Space Engineers, so mimicking ED's Krait thruster layout comes nowhere near to reproducing ED's Krait flight profile. I end up with a big, heavy, impractical, slow, "slippery" ship that's just not fun to fly. It's pretty (and that's why I kept trying to make it), but not very "good".
So I will probably end up scratching the idea of reproducing ED ships in SE, and stick other sci-fi styles instead. SE is perfect for making ships found in The Expanse, which is probably one of the most accurate depictions of a potential real future in space. They may not be as "pretty" as ED's wedge ships or Star Trek's saucer ships, but they are incredibly practical, and they have their own type of beauty (like the T7).
There are other SE-friendly designs that I am found of as well. For example, the capital ships in Starship Troopers:
along with the carrier in Star Wars Rebels:
and then there's the kinda ugly but functional earth ships from SG-1:
My only problem with all these ships is that they are capital ships, and without a proper crew, they are too big for one person to manage. So instead of copying any of these ships directly, I'll focus on designing my own ships, using these and other ships for inspiration, focusing on ships that are highly practical in the Space Engineers ecosystem. This means that if I want to fly a Krait, I'll have to fire up Elite. If I want to walk around a Krait, well...
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