Space Engineers vs Empyrion - Galactic Survival: Cobra Edition

Darkfyre99 · Nov 4, 2021

Empyrion - Galactic Survival: Cobra Edition!
Round Seven
A Proper Base

When last we logged off, I'd arrived back at base from a scouting run, and I was expecting a Zirax attack any minute. Nether the less, I started working on my base's living quarters. Naturally, they waited until the next morning to show up!

By that time, I’d already gotten the basics set up. I’d chosen a 6m x 6m space, because I really didn’t need any extra room, and it had nothing to do with not wanting to move the NE defensive tower at all…

I’d chosen a “battered armor” look. To make it a bit more visually interesting, I used the occasional “window” block, and put a glowing pattern behind it. This is why I frequently more time into decorating in EGS than I do SE: I can do this kind of layering to get the effect I want.

After moving the food processor indoors, I finished my living quarters.

Unlike unmodded SE (especially in single player), some of decorative furniture can serve actual in-game functions. The shower can remove radioactive contamination, and the toilet can ease nausea. Even couches and chairs can restore lost stamina, without consuming food. Frustratingly, in my bathroom, the only available sink is 4 meters wide. A 2m wide sink would’ve been perfect. I put a l wardrobe in there instead, but I’m not satisfied with how it looks.

I was getting short of certain kinds of ore, so I hopped into my iFighter and finished my scouting run. I was hoping to find some nearby deposits of the basic ores. If I didn’t, I’d return to start and excavate what little remained. After seeing nothing but the Talon, I finally spotted some Zirax facilities.

I ended up returning to start after all. I’d really hoped to run into new deposits of iron and copper, or even silicon, first. What was left would’ve last too long. I returned to base just as the sun set.

The next morning, I was a bit surprised that the Zirax didn’t attack. Not needing to rush through my “launch sequence,” I decided to start working on my proverbial workshop. It was a little after noon when the alert sounded. They came from the north this time!

Since I had to wait for the next part of my order to process, I took the iFighter out for a brief scouting run to the Northwest. It was the middle of the night when I returned to base, so I guess it wasn’t as brief as I’d intended.

The next day was spent actually building and decorating my “workshop.” I also took the time to make a few minor tweaks to the base. Once night fully set in, I slept in my new proper bed. Naturally, I woke up to a Zirax raid.

A fog bank rolled in by the time I got the iFighter into the air. It took me a while to spot them visually.

After dispatching my foes, I made the final tweaks to my workshop.

I’m not entirely satisfied by the workshop, but it is a temporary structure. I’ll move everything in there to my Cobra’s hanger… once I’ve built said hanger, naturally . Which is going to have to wait for next round. There’s more work I need to do in Space Engjneers!

Darkfyre99 · Nov 9, 2021

Space Engineers: Cobra Edition!
Round Seven
More Construction

This round took longer, in sheer terms of days, than it should've. Part of the problem was switching to my Winter schedule in a timely manner. Part of that the Holidays in Retail funstravaganza. Much of that was the fault of Keen's CA2, which took a nose dive again.

I had a brief window to play on Thursday, briefer than I'd like because I got home late and had to start early on Friday. I had just enough time to construct another two layers of the dorsal hull of the Cobra Mk III

Friday was a complete wash, went to work early, got home late, and I wasn't in much of a mood to do anything but prepare and eat supper, and turn in for the night.

Saturday, I got home, and when I tried to log in, the server was down.

I decided to do some space engineering offline instead:

I booted up Kerbal Space Program! I've been playing a "hard-mode-minus" career game occasionally for the last four months, usually a mission a session, and I'd finally upgraded my research center to tier 2, allowing me to unlock some better "probe cores" and solar panels. It had pretty much cost me most of the money I had, so I took a lucrative satellite repair mission in a polar orbit around the Mun. Note the word polar... this would become important later.

Not only would it give me a badly needed Mun communications satellite for free, but it also gave me a 50k kerbuck advance, and bonus of nearly 300k kerbucks upon completion.

The rocket: Mun Repair Mission I. Crew: Engineer Bill Kerman. Pilot: A probe core controlled by mission control. Cost: 20,305 kerbucks. If I was getting nearly 350k for this mission, I wanted to pocket as much of that as I could. Government contracts at their finest!!! What could possibly go wrong?

this screenshot was taken after the mission was completed

Estimated Delta-V cost of the mission:

launch into orbit: 3400 m/s
Mun transit burn: 860 m/s
Mun capture burn: 310 m/s
Mun escape burn: 310 m/s

That gave me over 281 m/s to perform any necessary rendezvous maneuvers. Which should've been plenty, since this game was unmodded, and Kerbals didn't need food, water, or air. They could afford to wait for long periods of time. It's not like they're paid by the hour!

This less than realistic aspect of the game turned out to be a good thing. I think I spent half an hour, trying to find a transit window that would allow Bill Kerman to minimize the delta-V necessary to the rendezvous with the target satellite. This required Bill to remain in orbit of Kerbin for three days, but by the time MRM1 arrived at the Mun, it's orbit was only three degrees off inclination from the target satellite.

The rendezvous and repair went almost as planned. Sadly, I'd slightly underestimated how much delta-V I'd need, and I only had 287 m/s of delta-V remaining. Had that satellite been in a equatorial orbit, that would've been plenty. Polar orbits are more expensive... unfortunately. A return to Kerbit at that time cost about 350 m/s!!!

Thankfully, Bill was an engineer, and the update before the last one to KSP included the ability for him to install and uninstall parts. He could lighten the ship if he needed to! But would he actually need to? Could a little patience minimize the delta-V cost?

As it so happened, at the beginning of the seventh day of the mission, there was a return window that could bring Bill (plus his capsule full of expensive equipment) back to Kerbin for less than that. And so, Bill Kerman's capsule performed the return burn that would plunge him (and over 5400 kerbucks of equipment I also wanted to recover) into Kerbin's atmosphere, and hopefully land close enough to Kerbal Space Center that I wouldn't lose too much money on recovery. Ideally, I'd want a return window that would drop the capsule very close to KSC, but this polar orbit, I'd have to take what I could get.

Moments before entering the atmosphere of Kerbin, the return capsule, including the cargo bay full of expensive equipment, detached from rocket that had taken it to and from the Mun. For maximum safety, I could've left behind the electronics bay, but what was in that bay cost a lot of money! Nearly 1/6th of the cost of the entire mission! I'm on a budget, dang it!!!

The capsule plunged into Kerbin's atmosphere, surrounded by the fiery plasma created the compressed air in front of it. The high-tech probe core, supplied power by extra batteries, automatically kept the capsule oriented so that the heat shield protected the rest of the craft. Bill Kerman, not having to clumsily keep the capsule oriented himself, enjoyed the fireworks display of his descent.

The capsule splashed down in the ocean to the north-west of KSC, which allowed me to recover nearly 70% of the value of the capsule... or about 3k kerbucks of the 20k kerbuck mission. In retrospect, I should've included at least another 200 m/s delta-V, to account for the inevitable inefficiencies during the launch phase, since I don't use mech-Jeb or other mods that obviate manual control, and another 200 m/s delta-V just to be on the safe side, but I got greedy this mission. At least it succeeded without killing a kerbal... this time.

Sunday afternoon, I had an opportunity to play, and started at the cockpit. The initial design wasn't quite right, and needed a bit of tweeking...

Once that was done, I started another layer of the dorsal hull. As I worked, I began second guessing myself on my decision to use half-blocks to make a smoother slope. Empyrion: Galactic Survival has a much better selection of blocks than Space Engineers does, so maybe I won't have to look at my compromise in that game... assuming I build the Cobra in small grid in EGS.

Since I was working around the cockpit anyways, I completed the cockpit interior, including testing its ability to be pressurized.

I was working on the next layer, when once again, CA2 decided to act up...

The game started freezing due to lag

@Old Duck joined soon afterwards, and was having similar problems. At least I finally remembered to give him my coordinates.

I had plans on Monday, so despite the conditions on the server, I soldiered on...

Sadly, it was night by the time I finished the top.

Next time on SE: Cobra Edition: It's time to work on the bottom of my ship... which means I need a better way of supporting the weight!!! Maybe I should've started by adding a landing gear, rather than the connector.... as always, hindsight is 20/20!!!

But first, it's time to construct my future Cobra III's hanger in EGS!

Old Duck · Nov 10, 2021

Your ability to keep three similar but different complex games straight (SE, EGS, KSP) amazes me. It's one thing when games are radically different, like me switching between SE, RDO, and Overwatch, but your games are similar enough that the minute differences would likely mess with me. I'd be pressing SE buttons in EGS and EGS buttons in KSP

Darkfyre99 · Nov 10, 2021

It’s four when you consider I’m still dipping my toes into EDO when the mood takes me.

It helps that I remap my controls as much as possible to a standard template, regardless of the game. Where the fun really begins is when I start doing SE or ED maneuvers during atmospheric flight in KSP, assuming I forget to tweak the control authority of various control surfaces.

The phrase Rapid Unplanned Disassembly comes to mind…

Darkfyre99 · Nov 13, 2021

Empyrion - Galactic Survival: Cobra Edition!
Round Eight
Hanger Depths and Heights

I started the round by laying out boundaries of my future Cobra's hanger. I would've used the 3D view, but I couldn't capture the whole thing, so I used my drone instead.

I was initially planning a hanger that opened from the top, so I started digging along the inside edge of the "foundations." Along the way, I realized that I had build a little too close to the edge of the swamp.

This is one of EGS's bigger flaws: you can dig anywhere, and fluid dynamics aren't modeled at all. Granted, it isn't all that common for fluids to be modeled in a voxel game, but after playing games like Minecraft, Stonehearth, and Timber and Stone, where they are, seeing this kind of thing is annoying.

Since I didn't want one corner of my hanger to be "under water," I decided to move the hanger back a bit. This meant it would abut my living quarters and green house, but one must do as needs must.

Since the sun had already set, I turned in for the evening.

The next morning, an old friend showed up.

This is probably my favorite weather phenomenon on the temperate planets. It's dangerous enough that you can't ignore it, and it's particularly dangerous if you can't take shelter. I have shelter, though, so I moved back into my living quarters, and used my drone to do more work.

It's at this point that Real life decided to knock on my door, so I called it an evening. The next night, when I loaded the game, I got a bit of a surprise...

The good news is that my save is still playable. The bad news is that it may not stay that way. Here's hoping it remains for the former, and not the latter. Since I was stuck inside due to the radioactive storm, I used the drone to dig, funneling the resulting stone into my raw material container to be turned into concrete. I'd need a lot of it to build the hanger. Thankfully, the new furthest corner of the hanger was just within drone range.

At one point, I realized I needed to know exactly how deep I needed to dig, so I dug a trench to the appropriate depth.

Once the radiation storm passed, I moved outside to be closer to my drone.

And that's when another Zirax troop transport attacked. My defenses made short work of it.

Once I'd landed, I realized that I didn't have access to any shutters that would allow me to open and close the roof access of the hanger. So I decided to build the more traditional horizontal hanger opening instead. I also moved the northern defense towers to the corners of the hanger.

This proved to be a good thing. Less than a day after the last Zirax attack, three drones attacked my base. I'm seriously considering looking to see if there's a setting for base attack frequency. I'm on hard difficulty on all settings except bullet sponginess, and I'm getting a little tired of all these attacks. OTOH, they do occasionally drop some useful components, so...

I started blocking out the walls of the hanger, including the hanger doors. Naturally, now that I'm looking at this screen shot, I realize that I need to pair up shutters on the top and bottom in order to have an opening big enough for the Cobra to pass through. Hindsight, as always, 20/20.

The next morning another Zirax troop transports makes a run on my base.

It's only after doing a lot of excavating under the hanger, as well as erecting the hanger walls and installing the doors, did I realize that I wasn't sure if the roof could be supported. I turned on debug mode, and then built out a single span of roof, one block at a time. Once it started turning red, built it out from the opposite side. I was relieved to see that the roof could be self supporting.

Check out all the red on the floor of the hanger, though. I'd been using the underside as a quarry, and that meant large sections of the floor weren't supported.

At sunset, there was yet another Zirax attack!

It was at that point, that I decided I had had enough of the Zirax for the evening, and called it a night. The round had run long as it is.

My plans for this weekend is to work on the Space Engineers version of the Cobra Mk III's landing gear.

Assuming that CA2 is behaving, of course.

Old Duck · Nov 13, 2021

Darkfyre99 said:
My plans for this weekend is to work on the Space Engineers version of the Cobra Mk III's landing gear.

Assuming that CA2 is behaving, of course.

CA2 has been relatively empty of late. The "Alliance", which was very active a month ago, all seem to have left for some private server somewhere.

BREAKING NEWS

Even more people are quitting CA2 because "Harry" is back. A lot of folk got complacent with the "Let's all meet around the campfire and sing songs" atmosphere that CA2 has had lately. Harry comes back, starts destroying things, and people are stomping off in outrage. It's funny, because chat this morning mirrors a typical "gankers" debate in the DD forum, with all the stereotypical labels and insults.

Me personally, I welcome "Harry's" return. It makes things more challenging, and hopefully he'll free up some PCU and render the server more responsive. I was actually growing a bit bored on CA2, as there was no challenge. I also find the abuse of some players using a dozen alts to build ridiculously inefficient machines (the kind that bring a server to its knees) to be a bit offensive, so a culling of grids is a good thing IMO. As long as it's not my grids being culled, LOL

Old Duck · Nov 15, 2021

Harry is back and he's heading to your planet!

Darkfyre99 · Nov 15, 2021

Darkfyre99 said:
My plans for this weekend is to work on the Space Engineers version of the Cobra Mk III's landing gear.

You'd think by now I'd know not to tempt fate like this...

Darkfyre99 · Nov 15, 2021

Well... things are going to get interesting...

edit: I just finished a marathon (for me) session. ~~Will write it up tomorrow at work!~~

Old Duck · Nov 15, 2021

Darkfyre99 said:
Well... things are going to get interesting...

I'm a bit shocked... Not that he found your base, but that he's lying about other players (especially considering how nice I've been to him in the chat).

He's definitely on my KOS list now!

Actually, I'm also surprised that he found your base. It doesn't have any of the telltale markers from orbit.

Darkfyre99 · Nov 16, 2021

edit: I decided to write it up before bed.

Space Engineers: Cobra Edition!
Round Nine
A Thief in the Night...

Naturally, after having a made definitive plans for my "weekend," Sunday turned out to be a complete wash. Sunday morning was the weekly cleaning, an early birthday celebration for my brother-in-law in the afternoon, and my niece's play in the evening. With a doctor's appointment Monday morning, by the time the afternoon finally arrived, I was really hoping for some server stability to do some work on my Cobra. What I got was a surprise instead!

The first inkling that something was amiss was waking up at my survival kit.

This happens occasionally, because CA2's server hasn't been all that stable, and if the server resets to a time before I'm safely logged out in bed, here's where I wind up. I've lost several sets of advanced tools to this phenomenon, and I was worried that I'd lost my Elite set. But don't you dare criticize this game, because it's in alpha!

Oh, wait... wrong game.

Needless to say, I immediately checked my container, only to find something very unusual.

After "hacking" my way into the container, I discovered that it was empty! Someone had found my base, and looted it while I was offline! They'd cut their way through one of the window panels. I immediately checked on the rest of my base, and discovered that my mystery thief had left some messages...

Needless to say, I didn't believe a word of it. I hadn't made any effort to hide my base, and when you get within 5 km of any structure, you know it. I've gone looking for "mystery" structures myself. There was this giant silver wedge just sitting there, I had spotlights lighting up the place, and I'd probably left the antenna on.

And of course, it's not like I don't use Darkfyre99 everywhere on the Web! I was well aware that @Old Duck was one of the few people on this server willing to antagonize him, and I was a part of his faction. If my thief had googled my user name , he might've found the exact coordinates of my base from my imgur album, or in this very thread!

I did, however, believe the other note he left:

With the server restarting, I decided to see if he'd fiddled around with any of my Dragonfly's other systems.

Thankfully, everything else was still in place. I'll give him this: he may be a thief, but he could've completely crippled me if he'd wanted to. I had everything I needed to start over at a new location... after refining some silver, gold, cobalt, silicon, and nickel, of course. I still had plenty of iron, though...

As I was returning with a load of ore, I noticed that my thief wasn't the only visitor.

I learned later that the ancient mallard had stopped by my base, hoping I'd log in. Naturally, we missed each other. With more valuable ores being processed, I loaded up what few ingots remained, and set off in a random direction, searching for a temporary camp. When next I'd play, I'd start scouting for a more suitable base of operations. There's some ideal locations, of course, but with a local antagonist, I'd have to avoid them. No sense making it easy for them to be found again!!!

I traveled until my Dragonfly's battery started getting low, so I chose to settle in the mountains, where it would be easier to go unseen... I hoped. Naturally, I gave my Dragonfly a new camouflage pattern.

The sun had already set, so once the blizzard passed, I took a second to admire the view. Then I returned to building a wind powered charging platform, as well as an assembler. Once everything was built, I took a quick fifteen minute break to allow the Dragonfly to fully charge.

Once it was charged, I returned to my old base. Once it was loaded, I could easily see it in the darkness.

The Dragonfly needed charging again, so I made a couple more ore runs. I'd need to find new sources eventually, but there was no sense in letting everything I'd built go to waste.

As soon as the sun was up, I made the first evacuation trip to my temporary base with the first load of refined ingots. Old Duck had logged in, and I had an opportunity to interact with him. I happened to complain about the lack of a throttle, and I was reminded about thruster overrides. I'd tried them once, but at the time, I found that they weren't worth the trouble. I'd learned quite a bit since then, so this attempt went a lot smoother.

Travelling is a lot more enjoyable when you don't have to wedge a penny into your keyboard to keep your ship flying. Plus, it had other advantages, like increasing battery life, and being able to type and fly at the same time!

By the time I returned to my new base camp, I realized I hadn't been interrupted yet, and wasn't likely to be in the next hour. So I decided to go get the last of the ingots that were currently being refined. But that definitely going to be the last trip there.

After gathering up my remaining ingots, I tried to decide what I wanted to do with this base, and the half-finished Cobra Mark III. I had no need of the PCU currently, and should that thief return, it would probably be destroyed. If he didn't make good on his threat, it at least would make an interesting POI for others to find.

During the trip back, it started to get dark again. With Duck's dark skybox, flying at night is a bit of an adventure. The only thing I could do was make sure I was aiming at the stars to avoid crashing into cliffs and things. Much less interesting than flying low to the ground through canyons and such.

As I got close to my new camp, I flew into a blizzard.

This is my new home, which I decided to name Hoth Base. Even during the day, it's surprising hard to spot until you're practically on top of it. It's strictly utilitarian: a place to charge my Dragonfly, survival kit, a cryopod to log out in, and a basic assembler to make the stuff I'll need.

There's nothing like a good antagonist to break up the monotony, isn't there.

Thankfully, my thief seems to understand that there's a fine line between being a good antagonist, and being a griefer. I've been playing online games for over 30 years, and it's refreshingly rare to find one like that.

And speaking of the line between a good antagonist and a griefer... next up is going to be EGS, where I get to dial the Zirax back to a point where they're more... tolerable as antagonists. If only I could do that with players, I'd probably play more online games...

Darkfyre99 · Nov 16, 2021

Old Duck said:
I'm a bit shocked... Not that he found your base, but that he's lying about other players (especially considering how nice I've been to him in the chat).

He's definitely on my KOS list now!

Actually, I'm also surprised that he found your base. It doesn't have any of the telltale markers from orbit.

How did I miss this post?

Anyway, as I wrote above, I'm attributing it to two possibilities:

1) He just stumbled upon it, and since I wasn't trying to hide it, it was very easy to find, especially at night. I've stumbled upon player bases before, the whole "streaming assets" message the gave provides is a dead giveaway that there's something within 5km, and likely along your travel vector.

2) He got a bit meta, and just searched the web for my user name. There's a screenshot with my base's GPS location a couple of posts above. I've actually done something similar in the past, before I started viewing this kind of meta-gaming as unsporting.

Either way, it's time to take security for my base more seriously than I have been so far this playthrough, both in the game and online. Which makes my attempt to build a Cobra Mk III a lot more interesting. As I said, there's nothing like a good antagonist to spice up a game, which gives me an incentive to build and design more stuff!

If only there wasn't that pesky PCU limit...

Navigare Necesse Est · Nov 17, 2021

Old Duck said:
I'm a bit shocked... Not that he found your base, but that he's lying about other players (especially considering how nice I've been to him in the chat).

He's definitely on my KOS list now!

Actually, I'm also surprised that he found your base. It doesn't have any of the telltale markers from orbit.

View attachment 275324

I doubt he'd refrain from cheating. He rolled the doubles in engineer duplucation too. He's addicted to get attention.

Darkfyre99 · Nov 18, 2021

Empyrion Galactic Survival: Cobra Edition!
Round Ten
You keep me hangar on!

My EGS round was a short one. I started the round with a quick redesign of the hangar. I decided to use the 6m x 6m variants, and that necessitated moving the east wall two meters east, so that the doors would be 54m wide. I also had to raise the walls, to accommodate the new, 12m tall doors. I burned through two multi-tool batteries in the process. Thankfully, I now have plenty of promethium to make new ones.

Despite turning down the drone rate in the game’s settings, the Zirax continued their morning attacks.

Granted, they’re not much of a threat, but constant attacks do get tiring. At least they drop mid-game components as loot… occasionally.

I had both assemblers working full time during the day to churn out the components I needed. Soon enough, the last of the shutter doors were installed. I linked them all together with a single sensor, so that they’d open what the same time.

Of course, all this concrete block production necessitated gathering raw stone. I’d periodically send my drone under the hangar to get it. I had to remind myself not to mine from the middle of the quarry, since it was helping to support the hangar floor.

Every night, before bed, I’d harvest the day’s crops. One of these days, I’m going to sit down and figure out what, exactly, is the optimal crop layout to maximize my nutrition.

The Zirax attacked at dawn again, naturally.

My turrets were a bit slow to react this time, so they managed to get a few hits in before they got destroyed.

I’d also recently noticed that the assemblers weren’t working as fast as I’d expected them to, so I checked my base’s status screen. I’d exceeded my base’s computing capacity, so that explained that.

Expanding the base’s computer core would require flux coils, which required gold, and I’d only found a tiny bit. The good news was that Zirax Drones occasionally dropped flux coils. The bad news was that I’d only gotten three so far, and I needed four for the additional computer bank. The worst news was that I also needed 30 more to build the other critical components I wanted.

At any rate, with both assemblers churning out concrete blocks, I eventually finished the roof.

I then moved the iFighter to its new staging area: the roof. This necessitated building an elevator to reach it.

I turned in for the evening, and once again the Zirax attacked with the rising sun. I know there’s something wrong with my save, so maybe it’s the rate of attack that’s bugged?

At last boring concrete brick was complete. It doesn’t look like much currently, but I’m planning on blingjng it out next session. At the very least, a little bit of interior reinforcement of the roof would be in order.

~~Given my current CPU bottleneck, I’m thinking of making the perimeter defense towers independent.~~ Never mind, that would just increase the rate of attacks by the Zirax. Maybe it’s time to do some adventuring…

But first, it’s time for my character in SE to get back on her feet! I’m currently debating on merits of staying planetside, or building a hidden asteroid base. Both have their advantages and disadvantages. Planetside power is abundant, and resources are easy to get, but you’re at the bottom of a gravity well. Moving to space would make me harder to find, and could (potentially) give me access to platinum and uranium.

Decisions, decisions…

Old Duck · Nov 19, 2021

Darkfyre99 said:
But first, it’s time for my character in SE to get back on her feet! I’m currently debating on merits of staying planetside, or building a hidden asteroid base. Both have their advantages and disadvantages. Planetside power is abundant, and resources are easy to get, but you’re at the bottom of a gravity well. Moving to space would make me harder to find, and could (potentially) give me access to platinum and uranium.

Decisions, decisions…

I'm guessing your next post will detail how rubbish Keen's server was. Not sure what's going on tonight to make it so bad, but it's bad..

Darkfyre99 · Nov 19, 2021

Old Duck said:
I'm guessing your next post will detail how rubbish Keen's server was. Not sure what's going on tonight to make it so bad, but it's bad..

Ding ding ding, you’re a winner!

SystematicChaos · Nov 19, 2021

Flux coils require:
Titanium
Neodymium
Cobalt

Gold is only required for optronics which are T3 & 4 CPU

Darkfyre99 · Nov 21, 2021

The next round of Space Engineers: Cobra Edition, is going to be massive. The events of last week currently has me in "emergency mode," meaning I'm playing at every opportunity to get my remaining stuff to a secure location, so it's going to effectively be a triple-length round. Expect the write-up on Tuesday evening at the latest. Free time's at a premium Thanksgiving week, unfortunately, and it's being funneled mostly into long trips with Keen's servers hovering around 60% simulation speed.

Darkfyre99 · Nov 22, 2021

And here it is, the round exciting round of Space Engineers you've all been waiting for!

Space Engineers: Cobra Edition!
An extra-long Round Ten!

Strategic Repositioning!

Or

Next time, I'll just delete the grid and start from scratch, it'll be more interesting!

Or

That moment when you realize you might’ve been outmaneuvered!

Part One... Poor Server Performance

or

Why did I bother wasting my time on doing THIS?

This round began with Keen's usual server problems: slow simulation speeds, connection problems, and rubber banding. Combined with @Old Duck's dark skybox, I decided I didn't want to risk scouting for a new base. I had at best an hour to play, travelling at half simulation speeds, at night, with frequent rubber banding, was an invitation to crash my little ship. So I decided to scout for ores in my immediate vicinity.

At one point, Old Duck logged in, and dropped an even more frightening bombshell, before deciding to log out again.

Another Keen server was even WORSE? Yikes!

At one point, the "false dawn" bug once again showed its ugly face...

Naturally, the real dawn showed up right at the end of my session...

I'd found all the planetside resources except gold. It was then when, out of curiosity, I looked at my info panel and discovered my planned POI (assuming "Harry" didn't destroy it), would cost nearly 8k PCU. That's almost half my total allotment! The half-finished Cobra alone cost over 5000, and I hadn't even done any of the moving parts yet!

It was at that point that I decided to return to my old base, and recycle the whole thing. I'd dug up all those ores, and I wasn't going to leave it for "Harry" to play around with!

And as I write this, I just realized that “Harry” might still be be able to track my little Dragonfly.

I guess this round’s going into triple overtime!

Part Two... Planned Slow Dissassembly!

The next opportunity to play, I logged in, and found it was night... again! Simulation speeds weren't particularly bad, so I built myself a "camp seed" (connector, wind turbine, and some plates to connect the two), and loaded things up. I then launched my ship, Keen's servers hiccuped, and something went "bang" after the server rebounded...

I was really hoping to get something accomplished that night, so I declared a "Buckyball Night," ordered a pizza, and asked not to be disturbed. There was much rejoicing at home... at least about the pizza.

By the time I had reassembled my Dragonfly and charged it, dawn was approaching.

It's much more fun to navigate mountain valleys when you can see, but as luck would have it, I outflew the sun, and it was dark again before I got close to base. I made camp a fair distance away, and then approached my base. I made sure to note the instant the server loaded my base into its memory.

Despite having checked my info tab, I was still relieved to see my old base intact.

Since I was nearby, I occasionally jetpacked to my gold mine, and gathered some gold. I could've used the Dragonfly, but I decided to gather it by hand, so should "Harry" return, I wouldn't leave him much, if anything. Besides, there's something satisfying about hand mining in this game.

The sun caught up with me soon enough, so I started cutting up my Cobra... by hand. What is it about this game that tempts me to do things the hard way, by hand? I could've added a grinder to my Dragonfly, and been done much quicker!!! Still, it was a lot of fun this way!

Of course, targeting small blocks in Space Engineers isn't very accurate, to the point where I kept accidentially grinding away the underlying platform, so I decided to remove the platform as well, and grind away the whole thing!

At one point, I cut the wrong thing, and the rest of the Cobra started to slide off what was left the platform.

When night started to approach in game, I brought all my valuable metals to my nearby camp.

Weirdly enough, the base took a lot less time to dismantle. It was all big equipment, instead of tiny armor pieces, so it isn't that surprising in hindsight. It was waiting for the Assembler to recycle everything into portable ingots that took so long. And then, of course, I had to use a basic assembler to recycle what remained, which took even longer. It was near sunrise by the time all that remained of my base was a basic assembler, and a half-dead battery.

I returned to my temporary camp in the dawn's early light.

I checked my info tab, expecting to see just three grids: My temporary "Hoth Base" camp, the camp near my old base I'd decided to call "Yavin Base" to fit with the Star Wars naming scheme, and of course my Dragonfly. There was a fourth, unknown static grid on my list.

I built a contract booth, and gave myself a mission to locate that grid. It turned out that it was the base I built on Titan, before deciding it was too easy a start, and restarted back on the Alien planet.

This is how I'll be disguising my Wind Turbines from now on. These above ground turbines are the most obvious sign that someone's nearby, and it really blends in with the nearby tree.

In fact, it's the glowing bits that'll probably give me away, and those can be disguised with better planning.

Part Three... The Villain Enters, Stage Right!

The next evening, I logged in, intent on moving my most valuable goods to somewhere less vulnerable: a new temporary camp roughly midway between "Hoth" base and "Yavin" base... or more accurately the newly dubbed "Dantooine" base. The new camp would become "Yavin."

I brought parts for the assembler, a windmill, all my valuable ingots, and as much iron as it could lift.

As I navigated through the brightening sky, "Harry" showed up, in a chatty mood.

Since I was online, he was kind enough to explain to me, and everyone else, the "rules." Especially a way to get lifetime immunity from him.

Considering that all I was doing was traveling back and forth, I welcomed the distraction. The evening ended soon enough.

Part Four... The Heavy Hauler

The next morning I had an opportunity to play on an empty server before work. My health club doesn’t open early enough on the weekends, so I used this time well. Scratch that, I used that time to add additional cargo capacity to my Dragonfly. Sadly, it didn't occur to me that I should add additional forward and reverse thrusters as well.

The trip out there went well, because it was empty. I also thought of adding waypoints through the valleys, because night was fast approaching. With a heavy load of nearly 28 tons of iron ingots, nearly half my stash, it wasn't very nimble, and I wanted to avoid crashing into cliffs by accident.

Naturally, I crashed into a cliff, when I got distracted at the wrong moment.

I reset my Dragonfly back to its original configuration once I had it docked, and called it a night.

Part Six... Night Time Flying

I spent a considerable amount of time on Sunday simply flying iron from one camp to another. Mostly in small intervals of 40 minutes here, and maybe 30 minutes there, though I did have a three hour stretch of time in the afternoon.

I also dismantled Dantooine base once it was no longer needed. By some perverse quirk of timing, most of my flights looked like this:

Seriously, somehow I managed to log in at night every time. Even my three hour stretch managed to be mostly at night, thanks to the slow simulation speed and logging in right before sunset.

I’d expand upon yesterday’s events further, but I suspect that I may have a far more interesting tale to tell tomorrow! Especially if “Harry” is a clever as I think he may be. I swear, once I’m in a comfortable position in CA2, I’m going to start building my Cobra in EGS! I could use a break!

Darkfyre99 · Nov 23, 2021

Space Engineers
Round Ten, triple overtime
Strategic Repositioning

Part Seven... It's not paranoia if someone's actually out to get you!

After spending the day somewhat concerned about what I'd found, I finally got home and had an opportunity log in. I say somewhat concerned, because once that horrific idea had popped into my head, needless to say I researched it online to make sure that it wasn't, in fact, true. That left a second possibility that I thought I had already addressed, but the possiblity I'd missed something was still nagging at me. I braced myself for what I'd find at my Hoth base camp:

Not a thing. Everything was still there.

Still, despite having checked for this possibility already, I decided to demolish my Dragonfly and rebuild it. There were some tweaks I wanted to make to its design anyways, so better safe than sorry! Of course, I needed to make supper, so I just made the "core" of my new scout/light transport, and let it charge until that evening. Of course, I started to actually build the entire thing, before I realized I'd have hungry mouths to feed soon! So I fleshed it out enough to attach a vent and cryo-chamber to, and then logged out.

Once I logged back in, I finished my little ship, and prepared its controls. I was so eager to start scouting, I even forgot to take a picture of the new and improved Dragonfly!

Since there was daylight for a change, I flew along valleys whenever possible, looking for what I considered ideal conditions. I knew my most important one, but there was some question about the rest.

At one point, I flew along a valley that was likely candidate, but while it was close, it still wasn't exactly what I wanted. The terrain was much to rugged for the operations I had planned.

Soon afterwards, though, I stumbled upon a perfect region. A place where I could create my little ground surveyor, the Ladybug, and search for ores my favorite way: using wheeled vehicles. Have I mentioned I live the ground vehicle physics of this game? I do… only Kerbal Space Program does it better IMO.

I promptly set up camp on the hillside, and got ready to log out.

And then I realized the futility of actually trying to camouflage any base. Camouflage worked best when graphics settings were high, for maximum visual fidelity. I sincerely doubt "Harry" would cripple himself visually like I tend to do. So I decided to see the world how "Harry" quite likely sees it:

I just moved beyond the minimum tree draw distance...

Still, I had found a place I would enjoy exploring, as well as setting up my new "hidden" base of operations.

I still don’t have a good picture of the Dragonfly. It’s only 0.5 meters longer, which gives me a place to not only tuck in the engines I use under load, but also a place to add a timer block and parachute if I’m so inclined.

Now that I have room to breathe, my most precious metals secure for the time being, it's time to return Empyrion: Galactic Survival.