Space Engineers

GasBandit · Jul 8, 2014

Only the large ship rocket launchers have cargo doors for conveyors. The antenna currently serves no purpose, but eventually it will do.. something.[DOUBLEPOST=1404828330,1404828172][/DOUBLEPOST]Turns out the game's sysadmin has been looking at our stuff in a level editor, which is kind of cheap since he's on the "anti pirate coalition." He hasn't done anything to us per se, but after seeing the George Dub, he's said he's started building "grav shields." Kinda shady, these things would serve no purpose other than to mess with ships/missiles using gravity based propulsion, which our nukes do (and to my knowledge we're the only ones who've thought of it). We'll have to go in and take out his gravity generators or power generators the old fashioned way before we send the nukes.

Tinwhistler · Jul 8, 2014

absolute power corrupts...

And that's why I won't ever play on a server where the admin has skin in the game.

GasBandit · Jul 8, 2014

Tinwhistler said:
absolute power corrupts...

And that's why I won't ever play on a server where the admin has skin in the game.

I'm not sure there will ever be a server in this game that the admin doesn't play on himself. Why would he run it, otherwise? And there are no "official" servers from the dev.

Tinwhistler · Jul 8, 2014

GasBandit said:
I'm not sure there will ever be a server in this game that the admin doesn't play on himself. Why would he run it, otherwise? And there are no "official" servers from the dev.

It's a catch-22, for sure.

Though, I admit that there have been times I've looked at all of the free server software that steam offers for various games, and been tempted to run one, just because.

GasBandit · Jul 8, 2014

AshburnerX said:
- Quad Chain guns. They still sucked though. Chain guns might only be good as turrets because it's impossible to focus fire with the straight shooting ones.

- Excessive storage capacity for ammo and fuel, tied into conveyor system. This is great for the chain guns but it hardly helps. Even with 7k rounds I barely scratched the target.

Oh, and pertaining to this part... gatling guns are practically useless against armor, as you've discovered (though with sustained fire they can eventually deform an armor block enough to shoot through the hole, but it's not cost effective), and like the turrets they're bugged to not damage unmounted astronauts, but in a dogfight they're you're only option unless you're on a really powerful server with no lag, because leading an erratic target with rockets is difficult as hell. But what you want to do is not worry about the armor, but rather aim for the cockpit/engines. If you can take out the cockpit, you've instantly killed him. If the dumbass puts his gyro(s) on the outside of the armor and you take that out, he's lost attitude control. If you start taking out engines, his maneuverability really starts to suffer, which can especially disable him if you get all the engines on one side. This makes it easier to subsequently go for the cockpit or start hitting the now slower target with rockets. You'll also need them if attacking a target with gat turrets, as they can very handily shoot down incoming rockets.

But right now all that is moot because an astronaut with an angle grinder trumps everything but ramming. And don't underestimate ramming... I've gotten some excellent kills ramming.

Also, vis a vis wheels - in multiplayer they don't work, because rotors don't work in multiplayer - they lag and rubberband out of their housing, causing spontaneous explosions.

LordRendar · Jul 9, 2014

Second server I play on went down yesterday. Still not up. This is really frustrating. I want a persistent server.

LordRendar · Jul 10, 2014

Another server I play on went down. I am getting quite pissed. I dont want to keep starting over.

GasBandit · Jul 10, 2014

They fixed beacons in multiplayer Space Engineers. Also fixed turrets. If that fix had come a week earlier it'd have saved my asteroid base

AshburnerX · Jul 10, 2014

GasBandit said:
They fixed beacons in multiplayer Space Engineers. Also fixed turrets. If that fix had come a week earlier it'd have saved my asteroid base

Good to hear! I should have some free time eventually... *goes back to his book reports and sighs*

AshburnerX · Jul 13, 2014

More Space Engineers experiments! This time, I tried using wheels!

Alright... 4 wheels with suspension. Two Artificial masses to keep me on the ground. Let's GO! Except it doesn't work that way. Wheels don't move on their own, they have to be acted on by an outside force to make it roll. Some thrusters and now it rolls back and forth pretty good. Maybe it needs rotors to turn?

That's not helping things at all. Rotors slowly rotate one of two ways... but you can't control them quickly enough to make this work as an axle. Buggys are a no go. About the only thing I can think of using wheels for right now are as landing gear (but requiring an artificial mass to keep you on your landing spot) or as rollers... like if you wanted opening doors for your base, you could make some large ships on rollers and just run them up and down a trench to slide the doors open (but you could do it much easier with a rotor). Oh and Gas? They fixed rotors for multi-player. I've seen someone make a giant ship eater using drills and a rotor. It was great.

So after that, I got fed up with how long it took to make stuff and made this.

MAKE ONE OF THESE. The welders on the front build stuff much faster. It should be one of the first things you do, after building a mining ship.

LordRendar · Jul 13, 2014

So I finaly found a stable server. Have been building on a large ship. All heavy steel armor.

3 Gatling Turrets on each side, 3 missle turrets on top. gonna add 2 gatling and 1 missle turret at the bottom.

It is quite large and will be the first module of a 3 part ship.

Using mergeblocks and connectors i am gonna build a mining and a hangar module which can be attached/detached from the mothership and function on its own.
It aint pretty, but I am on a survival server and building all of that on my own.

GasBandit · Jul 13, 2014

I've mostly been helping my pirate faction get rearmed and back on its feet since the loss of our asteroid base. Our space base is mighty and large, but we expended a lot of ammunition in the fight and lost a lot of fighting vehicles. But we're back up to strength now, and have started raiding other bases again.

I did want to show @AshburnerX this though: "Bob the Builder." Our one-stop build/tear down machine. Very useful.

And @LordRendar just a quick tip, when you use merge blocks to combine two ship segements into one, you can then reaffirm the connection by building more armor somewhere else, then grind down the merge blocks and replace them with armor if you want the ship to look seamless.

AshburnerX · Jul 13, 2014

Bob the Builder there is actually a bit inefficient. The welders don't all need to be connected to the conveyor network because you instantly set down all the components the second the first connected welder hits the block to be built. But it just doesn't look quite right without them, doesn't it?

GasBandit · Jul 13, 2014

AshburnerX said:
Bob the Builder there is actually a bit inefficient. The welders don't all need to be connected to the conveyor network because you instantly set down all the components the second the first connected welder hits the block to be built. But it just doesn't look quite right without them, doesn't it?

Having them all connected by conveyor ensures you can weld the widest swaths of armor simultaneously possible.

ThatNickGuy · Jul 13, 2014

I'm starting to think there should be a separate Space Engineers thread. Not many people are posting anything else, but I think there's enough discussion going on to spin it off.

GasBandit · Jul 13, 2014

My fellow pirates and I went on a mineral run today to restock. Here's my small utility warship towing the drilling rig. Below that, I keep overwatch while a fellow pirate drills. Funnily enough, this is an entirely different donut-shaped asteroid from the one we tried to build a base at.

[DOUBLEPOST=1405280043,1405280009][/DOUBLEPOST]

ThatNickGuy said:
I'm starting to think there should be a separate Space Engineers thread. Not many people are posting anything else, but I think there's enough discussion going on to spin it off.

You're probably right. I'll make up a list of posts and send em to dave to get moved.

GasBandit · Jul 13, 2014

This will be the new space engineers thread. Stand by for transfer of posts.

GasBandit · Jul 13, 2014

GasBandit · Jul 13, 2014

I've made a list of all the pertinent Space Engineers posts, and started a new thread. Hopefully at some point Dave can get them moved over.

ThatNickGuy · Jul 13, 2014

Cool. Just to be clear, I wasn't trying to be a jerk about the idea.

Hailey Knight · Jul 13, 2014

GasBandit said:
I've made a list of all the pertinent Space Engineers posts, and started a new thread. Hopefully at some point Dave can get them moved over.

Holy fuck, that's a list.

ThatNickGuy said:
Cool. Just to be clear, I wasn't trying to be a jerk about the idea.

I doubt anyone thought you were being a jerk; the length of Gas's list makes it clear that it merits its own thread. I probably should've made a new thread when I started up the Mega Man stuff in April.

PatrThom · Jul 13, 2014

Yargh! My eyes!
(also possibly my free time)

--Patrick

LordRendar · Jul 13, 2014

If you will take a look at the front of my ship,that is where my Hangermodule will be located. It will be two blocks smaller then the protuding arms,so when it docks, it will all look like a seamless ship. Imagine a tunnel where the hangarship backs into.

GasBandit · Jul 14, 2014

This is enemy number one right now... the Anti-Piracy Coalition's Battlecube.

It'd be dicey for my ship to take it on in a dogfight, but if I can sneak up to it, I think I can overwhelm it with missiles.[DOUBLEPOST=1405399381,1405399213][/DOUBLEPOST]My newly rebuilt and refitted ship, the Infernvm III.

(Mine's the blue one in on the left, obviously). More powerful engines, 9 turrets instead of 4, more power generators, all the amenities to serve as a base (Medbay, assembler, refinery, gravity, chairs, etc etc etc), tons more cargo capacity, and all for only a 100,000 kg increase in mass (from 750 to 850).

Dave · Jul 15, 2014

Is this as tedious as it looks?

GasBandit · Jul 15, 2014

Dave said:
Is this as tedious as it looks?

It's basically minecraft in space, dude. Except you can build actual functioning vehicles/spaceships, and those ships can dig your materials/build/tear down faster than you can by hand. Last night I went on a pirate cruise in my above pictured ship, and raided 4 bases, 2 of which were defended at the time.

Here's a rudimentary let's play of single player survival. You can also open up your single player world to your steam friends pretty much at will, as well.

Also, this guy's playing on the hardest, slowest settings. Most people's survival modes have 10 times the inventory, refining speed, etc. So there'd have been no need for "offscreen refining."

Dave · Jul 15, 2014

It just seems that this is a mix of EVE (mining) and Minecraft (building). But it looks like things go boom frequently, which says to me it's difficult to keep your builds very long, which seems to me to be frustrating.

GasBandit · Jul 15, 2014

Dave said:
It just seems that this is a mix of EVE (mining) and Minecraft (building). But it looks like things go boom frequently, which says to me it's difficult to keep your builds very long, which seems to me to be frustrating.

The mining is much, much faster than Eve. It's really comperable to minecraft's dig/smelt/build paradigm, as far as time investment goes. At least when you're on 10x speed, which everybody (except that guy in the let's play) is.

Things going boom doesn't happen all that often in single player or on more cooperative servers. I play on probably one of the most cutthroat pvp servers where everyone is actively trying to kill/rob everyone else. But Minecraft and Space Engineers have different "endgames," where the former is about epic builds that are impressive to look at, and the latter is about designing ships and engaging in combat with other players using them.

That being said, it's still very alpha. Especially multiplayer.

GasBandit · Jul 15, 2014

Hah, let me also put it this way, it's so tedious, since I got it in the last days of the steam sale, I've put 115 hours in on it.

This game broke the stranglehold War Thunder had on my gaming time. I feel guilty I'm not getting my daily double exp/research rewards in War Thunder, but no time for that, I gotta engineer some space!

I'm not playing Saints Row IV (which I never played until I just got it during the steam sale) because of this game.

Dave · Jul 15, 2014

Okay, okay. I'll buy it on the 1st when I get paid again. (I had to buy my daughter a washing machine this weekend, so I gots nothing until then.)

GasBandit · Jul 15, 2014

Dave said:
Okay, okay. I'll buy it on the 1st when I get paid again. (I had to buy my daughter a washing machine this weekend, so I gots nothing until then.)

Well, you got nothing to lose waiting for the next sale. It's very, VERY alpha.

It's just not tedious. But it can only get better with time.

Ravenpoe · Jul 15, 2014

GasBandit said:
It's very, VERY alpha.

AshburnerX · Jul 15, 2014

Looking at the BattleCube, the obvious solution is you need more than one ship: one to draw fire, one to attack.

GasBandit · Jul 15, 2014

AshburnerX said:
Looking at the BattleCube, the obvious solution is you need more than one ship: one to draw fire, one to attack.

It's got 4 turrets on every side, so attacking from 2 sides is out.

But really what will be its downfall is its lack of acceleration. 8 large-scale small thrusters on each side will make it maneuver better than my ship (assuming similar mass, which I think he's heavier actually), but my rear thrusters are two Large-Large thrusters, each of which has the thrust of 12 lesser thrusters. I'd be able to outrun it no problem, and stay out of its 800m turret range, and pepper it with rockets.

I did some testing last night in creative single player... turns out turrets are almost completely ineffective at shooting down rockets, and have this bizarre one-turret-per-rocket logic. Manually aimed missile launchers from ~900m basically trump any automated defense. Watch this in 1080p full screen to see it in action.

[DOUBLEPOST=1405445907,1405445782][/DOUBLEPOST](it's vs a swarm of single turrets because my first test had 16 turrets on the platform, and I had to make sure the stupid 1-turret-per-missile logic wasn't just 1-turret-per-missile-per-grid).

AshburnerX · Jul 15, 2014

So... missile spam? The Borg are kind of a let down now.