First, some personal history. One of the first things I thought of, when I became aware of Space Engineers, was to try to make a (mostly) working, full scale Cobra Mark III. Unfortunately, my earlier attempts to make one ran into two problems: the large scale blocks were too large to make such a small ship that was functional, and the small scale blocks lacked certain critical components, especially doors, to make it flight worthy. Its block selection was rather lacking as well. The sheer amount of resources I'd need to gather to build such a large ship didn't help much either. 
Then I discovered Empyrion: Galactic Survival. Space Engineers is a fine as a ship construction game, but very much lacking in survival elements. EGS, on the other hand, is a survival game first and most. That being said, while EGS is definitely lacking the attention to many of the technical details that SE has, its flight model is more detailed IMO, and its selection of blocks is fantastic. It also had the critical small scale blocks, especially doors, that SE lacked. I figured once I got used to the controls, I'd try to build my Cobra Mark III in EGS instead.
And then SE released "Sparks of the Future," which also included those critical components, including the small scale doors. The Cobra Mk III was possible once again. And of course, I was enjoying the heck out of EGS as well. What to do... what to do... what to do? Why, play both head to head, of course! But the Cobra Mk III was a bit ambitious, so I decided to build Sidewinders instead... or more accurately, ships vaguely Sidewinder shaped. I tried to create a plan that would get as close to the Elite: Dangerous version as possible, but after a few tests, I decided to go with "close enough."
So, a few of my personal rules for this little adventure:
1) Dead is dead. Once I've in a game died, it's time to start a new one.
2) I'm playing default settings, with no mods. I want to play the game as the developers "intended" it to be. Normally, I'd max out survival settings, and maybe even add a few mods to up the ante, but I think I'll have my hands full playing these two games in parallel.
3) I'll be playing one "day" in Space Engineers through before posting, which is about two hours long. On the Empyrion side of things, I'll be playing about six days between posts. Time's a bit wonky in EGS, due to not only being able to sleep, but the in-game clock doesn't actually display in minutes:seconds like I originally thought. It's a 24 hour clock based on a planet's rotation, so it can vary. Hopefully, six days will be about two hours, but I'm not planning on setting a timer or anything.
4) No guarantees about my posting schedule. I'm also planning on squeezing in Elite: Dangerous when I got a window of opportunity, and Surviving Mars keeps whispering its siren song (I love the music in that game...), and like always some days are far busier than others.
So let the fun begin!!!
First up, Space Engineers! It's technically my third attempt at this. During my first attempt, the escape pod hit a mountainside as the chute was deploying, destroying the survival kit. No survival kit, no way to survive! A thunderstorm brought my second attempt to a premature end, thanks to lightning destroying much of my standard starting platform, and then killing me when I went for a closer look!
After a quick bit of reading, I discovered two ways of protecting myself from lightning in the future. One was to build underground. The second was to build a decoy. Any blocks above it would act as a lightning rod, protecting critical components from damage. Since a decoy is fairly high up the proverbial tech tree, I found myself facing underground life once again. For someone who tended to play elves, I find myself diggy diggy holes to live in far too often in survival games.
Armed with an initial strategy, Attempt #3 began with my escape pod dropping into a valley between two rocky hills.
It turned out that this valley is extremely rich in minerals. The game must be apologizing for wasting my time earlier. I landed right on top of iron, and within a kilometer there are deposits of iron, nickel, and cobalt. All I need is to find a nearby silicon deposit, as well as silver and gold, and I can get this play through up and running! And, of course, I chased the odd drop pod, primarily to salvage its parts, but sometimes good stuff is in there as well.
Second drop pod appeared near sunset, and landed behind the mountain to the west.
About midnight, I finished the only above ground portion of my base: the solar arrays and the wind turbine. Normally I wouldn't bother with solar, but thanks to what I read about the effects of weather, I knew I'd need multiple sources to keep things running. I'm hoping the blocks above the turbine will be sufficient to protect them during a thunderstorm. If not, the battery I installed below ground is currently set to recharge, so it'll be available to rebuild afterwards.
As dawn approached, I finished moving the last of the functional components of the escape pod under ground. Normally, I'd move these components to a base closer to my main mining site, but redundancy is going to be the name of this game. Without a working survival kit, or a basic assembler/refiner pair, there's no way to start over after a catastrophe.
Finally, the long night was over, the sun peaking over the edge of the valley at one end. Naturally, it turns out that I hadn't built my base along the cardinal directions. Thankfully, this is a fall back location, not my intended main base, so I'm not going to dwell on this... brain, I told you not to dwell on this! Stop that!
Okay, once I've unlocked the rotor, I'll rebuild the solar panels to face the right way. Powercells are way too expensive at this stage move the whole base around.
Then I discovered Empyrion: Galactic Survival. Space Engineers is a fine as a ship construction game, but very much lacking in survival elements. EGS, on the other hand, is a survival game first and most. That being said, while EGS is definitely lacking the attention to many of the technical details that SE has, its flight model is more detailed IMO, and its selection of blocks is fantastic. It also had the critical small scale blocks, especially doors, that SE lacked. I figured once I got used to the controls, I'd try to build my Cobra Mark III in EGS instead.
And then SE released "Sparks of the Future," which also included those critical components, including the small scale doors. The Cobra Mk III was possible once again. And of course, I was enjoying the heck out of EGS as well. What to do... what to do... what to do? Why, play both head to head, of course! But the Cobra Mk III was a bit ambitious, so I decided to build Sidewinders instead... or more accurately, ships vaguely Sidewinder shaped. I tried to create a plan that would get as close to the Elite: Dangerous version as possible, but after a few tests, I decided to go with "close enough."
So, a few of my personal rules for this little adventure:
1) Dead is dead. Once I've in a game died, it's time to start a new one.
2) I'm playing default settings, with no mods. I want to play the game as the developers "intended" it to be. Normally, I'd max out survival settings, and maybe even add a few mods to up the ante, but I think I'll have my hands full playing these two games in parallel.
3) I'll be playing one "day" in Space Engineers through before posting, which is about two hours long. On the Empyrion side of things, I'll be playing about six days between posts. Time's a bit wonky in EGS, due to not only being able to sleep, but the in-game clock doesn't actually display in minutes:seconds like I originally thought. It's a 24 hour clock based on a planet's rotation, so it can vary. Hopefully, six days will be about two hours, but I'm not planning on setting a timer or anything.
4) No guarantees about my posting schedule. I'm also planning on squeezing in Elite: Dangerous when I got a window of opportunity, and Surviving Mars keeps whispering its siren song (I love the music in that game...), and like always some days are far busier than others.
So let the fun begin!!!
First up, Space Engineers! It's technically my third attempt at this. During my first attempt, the escape pod hit a mountainside as the chute was deploying, destroying the survival kit. No survival kit, no way to survive!
A thunderstorm brought my second attempt to a premature end, thanks to lightning destroying much of my standard starting platform, and then killing me when I went for a closer look!After a quick bit of reading, I discovered two ways of protecting myself from lightning in the future. One was to build underground. The second was to build a decoy. Any blocks above it would act as a lightning rod, protecting critical components from damage. Since a decoy is fairly high up the proverbial tech tree, I found myself facing underground life once again. For someone who tended to play elves, I find myself diggy diggy holes to live in far too often in survival games.
Armed with an initial strategy, Attempt #3 began with my escape pod dropping into a valley between two rocky hills.
It turned out that this valley is extremely rich in minerals. The game must be apologizing for wasting my time earlier.
I landed right on top of iron, and within a kilometer there are deposits of iron, nickel, and cobalt. All I need is to find a nearby silicon deposit, as well as silver and gold, and I can get this play through up and running! And, of course, I chased the odd drop pod, primarily to salvage its parts, but sometimes good stuff is in there as well.Second drop pod appeared near sunset, and landed behind the mountain to the west.
About midnight, I finished the only above ground portion of my base: the solar arrays and the wind turbine. Normally I wouldn't bother with solar, but thanks to what I read about the effects of weather, I knew I'd need multiple sources to keep things running. I'm hoping the blocks above the turbine will be sufficient to protect them during a thunderstorm. If not, the battery I installed below ground is currently set to recharge, so it'll be available to rebuild afterwards.
As dawn approached, I finished moving the last of the functional components of the escape pod under ground. Normally, I'd move these components to a base closer to my main mining site, but redundancy is going to be the name of this game. Without a working survival kit, or a basic assembler/refiner pair, there's no way to start over after a catastrophe.
Finally, the long night was over, the sun peaking over the edge of the valley at one end. Naturally, it turns out that I hadn't built my base along the cardinal directions.
Thankfully, this is a fall back location, not my intended main base, so I'm not going to dwell on this... brain, I told you not to dwell on this! Stop that!Okay, once I've unlocked the rotor, I'll rebuild the solar panels to face the right way. Powercells are way too expensive at this stage move the whole base around.
At least I had six large solar panels to collect energy with. 
I hurriedly backed away from the doorway, ready to replace that block, only to discover that the radioactivity drops as you get farther from the doorway. Good to know!
I find it eventually, and start digging a downward shaft towards the cobalt. And run into a deposit of iron??? I started to dig through it, but at the rate I was gathering iron, the Ladybug would be full of iron ore by the time I got there. So I violated the first rule of Minecraft, and dug a vertical shaft instead. Soon enough I had filled up the Ladybug and my pockets with cobalt ore.
