Space Engineers

GasBandit

Staff member
The Damocles, in progress...

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Interior of Untitled Capital Ship's torpedo bay




View from the bow



From the side

 

GasBandit

Staff member
What is all the artificial mass for?

As for the torpedo bay... is it designed so you guys can just set the blocks, turn on the grinders, and then fire?
Yep.

The artificial mass is for the gravity drive. The center of gravity is right in the open cavity.

The gravity drive takes it from 0 to 100m/s in less than 2 seconds, despite it weighing over 7000 tons.

It gets a little... tempermental.. though.
 
Well... here's the SPD SWAT on it's Maiden voyage. It's over-sized and over engineered.

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Went up against a Military Transport. The devs are sneaky as hell... they have it set to fire missiles at a range your turrets ether can't or won't lock onto them at. This means I got shot down 6 times before I threw in the towel.
 

GasBandit

Staff member
I really need more footage for my next video... but the lag is getting so bad on the server I play on, it's practically unplayable again. I'm worried we may be in store for another total wipe :/
 
More for builds, or for durability testing. Also a bit of MythBusting.

"That design held up pretty well under gatling fire, but let's see how it does against...missiles! [PUM] [PUM] [PUM]"
This will probably be easier with the new blueprint system allowing you to save/load builds for the internal walkthroughs and test flights.

--Patrick
 

GasBandit

Staff member
More for builds, or for durability testing. Also a bit of MythBusting.

"That design held up pretty well under gatling fire, but let's see how it does against...missiles! [PUM] [PUM] [PUM]"
This will probably be easier with the new blueprint system allowing you to save/load builds for the internal walkthroughs and test flights.

--Patrick
That's never really been an issue. There was always copy/paste capabilities in creative mode, so as long as you kept a "master copy" of the ship somewhere in the level, you could just make a copy of it and go do your thing in that. The blueprint system seems more about sharing with others.

I hope they follow through and implement what they were talking about for blueprints in survival mode. It'd be really handy to be able to feed a schematic into a welder that you designed in creative mode.
 

GasBandit

Staff member
I've improved on the ghetto bird's design... Meet Ghetto Bird Mk II



Only 5 tons more weight, double the thrust from the second mass block, and now with a missile turret. This is now a full on gunship capable of taking on capital ships with super maneuverability and enough firepower to whittle them down.
 

GasBandit

Staff member
Thursday is patch day.

Summary
Adding new asteroids in creative mode is now possible in Space Engineer. Players can select the asteroid type, materials and then place it into the world. Another new addition is the scrap metal items. When a component, either floating object or in block, is damaged, it is turned into scrap metal (the percentage of scrap metal is random). Scrap metal can be melted in the refineries to create iron ingots. Also, remote turret control has been added; players are now able to control turrets directly



Features
- adding new asteroids in creative mode (SHIFT+F10)
- scrap metal item (can be processed in refinery into iron)
- remote turret control

Fixes
- fixed hand animation during the block placement
- fixed issue with transparent asteroid
- fixed ore detector info persisting between sessions
- fixed wrongly scaled model of large reactor
- fixed G-screen automatically closing when another player died
- fixed ModAPI IMyInventory.TransferItemTo freezing the game
- fixed ModAPI CustomNameChanged crash
- fixed ModAPI ConfigDedicated.Load exception




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Ok, manual turret control is kinda neat, but scrap metal? Really? Because that's what multiplayer needs, more floating objects to hurt server performance (most servers I know have to crank max floating objects WAY down, so that mining by hand is incredibly wasteful)

Oh, another source of iron, be still my freakin heart.



No blueprint support for survival mode yet, but let's throw creative another toy.
 
There. I bought it while it was on sale. I hope you're happy.

I might even get the chance to play before year's end.

--Patrick
 

GasBandit

Staff member
What do you think went wrong? It wasn't going fast enough to destroy it like that.
Well, if you think about it, 20 meters per second isn't THAT slow.

I have a couple theories but nothing concrete. Most go to the effect of -

Initial impact destroys grinder
Heavy armor block behind grinder ruptures refinery
Refinery full of magnesium
kapow.
 
Well, if you think about it, 20 meters per second isn't THAT slow.

I have a couple theories but nothing concrete. Most go to the effect of -

Initial impact destroys grinder
Heavy armor block behind grinder ruptures refinery
Refinery full of magnesium
kapow.
Yeah, the mag charges may have done it, especially if he was making explosives or something.
 

GasBandit

Staff member
Yeah, the mag charges may have done it, especially if he was making explosives or something.
It could also have simply been that the refinery was the main structural hub of the ship, and destroying it let loose all 16,000 liters of whatever was being processed as one giant boulder, which then threw every other piece of the ship into the cave walls.

You'll notice an approximately 8-12 meter diameter rock come spinning out of the explosion in the lower left for a few seconds before the server deletes it (it was set to only allow 20 floating objects at once, and there was probably a lot from that explosion).
 

GasBandit

Staff member
Thursday is patch day.

Update 01.052 – Assembler Cooperation, Volumetric Explosions

Summary
Assemblers can now cooperate with each other (when enabled in terminal) by taking items from other assembler’s queue and help with transferring materials. Volumetric explosions have been also added; things hidden behind armor (or other blocks) will not get destroyed when the armor survives from the explosion. Additionally, players can now help each other with the new “welder option: help others” - welded blocks will not belong automatically to the player who is helping but to the owner of the ship.





Features
- assembler cooperation
- volumetric explosions
- welder setting: help others
- antenna broadcasting on/off (including character - "O" key)
- default world size is now 20 km (size can still be changed to “unlimited” in world settings)
- arc furnace can now refine more metals

Fixes
- fixed missile explosions right after missile was launched
- fixed issue with objects not removed when leaving the world
- fixed respawning of character crossing the world limits
- fixed broken animations for custom skins
- fixed cases when components were duplicated by collectors
- fixed issue with more screens popping up at once
- fixed auto-save not saving the world regularly
- fixed view change while pasting modded blueprint
- fixed game is running before loading screen is closed
- fixed crash caused by camera view and exiting Remote control
- fixed custom respawn ship mods not working
- fixed world corrupted, refinery entity ID replaced
- fixed sensor triggering action on owned block
- fixed DS crashed on loading - steamSDK
- fixed client on DS is not able to join the faction
- fixed spawned as spectator when loading world


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Gas Bandit's thoughts:

Well, still no survival blueprints, but some good changes.

"Fixed missile explosions right after missile was launched" Ooooo!

Volumetric explosions! Very nice. Time to REDESIGN ALL MY SHIPS WHOSE ARMOR WAS BASED ON NON-VOLUMETRIC MISSILE EXPLOSIONS >_<

Assembler cooperation is good too. I like where it is going, but I worry about assembler lag in multiplayer. Right now, queueing up 1 item in an assembler on repeat, for example, is much slower/laggier than queueing up 10 because conveying the items is a low priority/occasional task for the server's processing. So a "cooperative" assembler only taking 1 item at a time to process will be very time inefficient.
 
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So the jist of this is basically that armor blocks are actually useful now against missiles? You don't need to have 3 fucking layers of protection just to ensure a single missile doesn't ruin your day? The good news is that you don't need to make million ton monsters anymore to make effective bases. The bad news is that this makes ship design so simple that even poorly designed ships can survive a few hits.

I'm working a small, simple raid support ship ATM. Nothing fancy but it gets the job done while still being able to protect itself.
 

GasBandit

Staff member
So the jist of this is basically that armor blocks are actually useful now against missiles? You don't need to have 3 fucking layers of protection just to ensure a single missile doesn't ruin your day? The good news is that you don't need to make million ton monsters anymore to make effective bases. The bad news is that this makes ship design so simple that even poorly designed ships can survive a few hits.

I'm working a small, simple raid support ship ATM. Nothing fancy but it gets the job done while still being able to protect itself.
I'm building a quarter scale starship enterprise (original series) as a gag.
 

GasBandit

Staff member
I will never understand the federation designs... putting your man engines on fragile struts is a DUMB idea.
Well, you're allowed more vulnerable structure in ships when you have deflector shields.

Actually, I have functional mockups in creative already, and so far as space engineers tech goes, it's a very good way to keep your thrusters away from the bits of the ship that enemy turrets target.

Also, when Dernabbit rammed me and his saucer section sheared through my port side nacelle pylon, I was actually still able to maneuver fairly well and it didn't make the gravity drive unusable either (the mass blocks for the gravity drive are in the nacelles and engineering hull because the center of mass is in empty space over the eng hull's spine). Just made it pull slightly up and to the left.

The design mounts pairs of gatling turrets where the upper and lower saucer phaser banks are in the old show (just ahead of the bridge on top, and the symmetrical lower bulge on bottom) and have missile turrets where the fore/aft torpedo bays would go. I built the whole thing using only light armor, and it's still surprisingly resilient, and the gravtiy drive makes it fast and entire nacelles made from thrusters make it maneuverable.
 

GasBandit

Staff member
FTFY

--Patrick
Well, that too.

Also I was going over the specs of the "real" enterprise on memory alpha. That sucker was only 289m long (115.6 large blocks in SE), but massed 600,000,000 kg. Six. hundred. million. Crew of 432. I've never seen a space engineers structure go over 110,000,000 kg, and that was an immense mobile space torus that caused the entire server to grind to a 10% speed whenever it would try to move.
 
Ashburner Industries is proud to unveil it's latest prototype in the war against Piracy: The SPD Meat Wagon!

2014-10-17_00001.jpg

Designed as a multi-role support ship, the Meat Wagon comes equipped with two anti-pirate gatling turrets to support APC assaults on pirate bases or to simple defend them against missile attacks! Once the battle is over, the Meat Wagon is ready to clean up with it's triple grinder!

2014-10-17_00003.jpg

Despite it's heavy anti-pirate hull, the Meat Wagon can accelerate at a reasonable rate thanks to it's TRIPLE GRAVITY DRIVE! Using new nacelle design, our team of engineers were able to save internal space, allowing them to make the ship as small as possible, while still having medical facilities and anti-pirate internal defenses! Design revisions are still in development, but the future is looking bleak for all freebooters!

(This is actually a decently tough ship. Sure, it won't stop a determined attack on it's own, but in concert with another, faster ship it can handle most assault jobs against non-dreadnauts and has plenty of room for the materials it grinds down. Even better, it has onboard medbay so you'll always have the advantage against mining ships and pirate frigates. Have your fighter pilots set spawn to the Meat Wagon and once they go down, you suddenly have a team of grinder wielding boarders to help fight!

Comes complete with beacon and connector... which COULD be replaced with another turret since it links into the conveyor system.)

2014-10-17_00002.jpg


(Only real design issue? The port and starboard gravity drives are hidden under catwalks. This is both an advantage and disadvantage. On one hand, a turret it just going to rip through it and then you have to switch to just the main, internal gravity drive (which cuts acceleration to 1/3rd). On the other hand, someone dumbfiring rockets isn't even going to think twice. They'll think it's just cosmetic. In the end, I'll probably armor them too but it's going to fuck with the center of gravity and making the ship longer won't work because of the added mass on the tail. I'm going to miss having a gravity drive that doesn't pull.)
 
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