Space Engineers

[GasBandit]

View attachment 15392

Also, is it possible to carry chaff? I assume that since asteroids are annoying, is it possible to open a door or something and dump a dozen or so loose armor cubes while fleeing, to slow pursuers?

--Patrick

Yes and no. If you're fleeing and drop something, in space it just keeps pace with you. However, there is a block called a "decoy" available for both large and small ships which distracts enemy turrets to shoot at them. I found that, on any ship with reasonable maneuverability, putting decoys surrounded by armor on 2 or 3 block pylons out to the sides and rear REALLY helps survivability when assaulting a larger vessel. I was testing a 800,000kg large-class gunship with 8 turrets vs a fellow pirate in a 72-turret cube... it ended in a draw because my decoy pylons were able keep his turrets aiming behind me. The missiles kept missing entirely, and the gatling turrets didn't do enough damage to pierce the heavy armor surrounding the decoys. As long as I kept further than 400m or so away, and my speed over 50m/s (so basically I was flying circles around the target at 500m and 50+m/s), his guns barely touched me. One by one my turrets took out his, until I made an error and turned too hard, causing me to drop below 40 m/s and get a bunch of rocket damage which knocked out some of my large thrusters. After that, I couldn't maneuver fast enough to stay ahead of his guns, so I lost my decoys and then my turrets one by one... when I was down to 2 turrets I made a break for it, and lost most of my other thrusters while fleeing because they're exposed (Thrusters are usually the weak spots of any large ship). Stopping was a bit of a challenge after that, but I made it. However, while my ship could techically maneuver enough to limp home, I got all but around 8 of his turrets and enough of his thrusters to classify him as unable to maneuver, and his cockpit. So we called it a draw.[DOUBLEPOST=1405982435,1405982358][/DOUBLEPOST]

Asteroids are your only source of minerals outside of piracy. Finding one that isn't hollowed out is a god send, not an annoyance.

That said, you could probably rig up a chaff launcher with an expeller. Connect some expellers to a container full of rocks or whatever and start dumping them if you have someone on your tail. I'd rather just spend the time dodging though.

Connectors/ejectors don't drop rocks in sufficient sizes to do damage, really. If you're trying to drop mines, you're better off dropping armor blocks, or warheads if your pursuer has no turrets.

 

[PatrThom]

Asteroids are your only source of minerals outside of piracy. Finding one that isn't hollowed out is a god send, not an annoyance.

I'm referring to the tiny ones that come in and ruin your exteriors.

--Patrick

 

[GasBandit]

I'm referring to the tiny ones that come in and ruin your exteriors.

--Patrick

Yeah, unfortunately the automated methods of dumping rock dump them in basketball-sized chunks, which bounce harmlessly off just about everything.

Now, if you could contrive to load 300,000kg of rock in a large cargo container, and jettison the container, and have the enemy destroy the container while they pursue you, it would spontaneously create a stationary 300,000kg rock boulder in front of him, which might actually smash a turret or something. But that's a lot of setup for less damage than a good rocket turret will give you.

 

[PatrThom]

on any ship with reasonable maneuverability, putting decoys surrounded by armor on 2 or 3 block pylons out to the sides and rear REALLY helps survivability when assaulting a larger vessel.

Hmm...that means there could be value to towing a decoy block waaaaay behind you, mother-in-law style, assuming you don't sacrifice too much mobility doing so.

--Patrick

 

[GasBandit]

Hmm...that means there could be value to towing a decoy block waaaaay behind you, mother-in-law style, assuming you don't sacrifice too much mobility doing so.
View attachment 15394

--Patrick

Yep, that's the balancing act. The further from your main ship the better for dodging fire, but the entire thing has to be built out of heavy armor, and every one of those blocks is 3000 more kg for your thrusters to strain against, and you're looking at at least 10 or 11 bare minimum for each decoy.

 

[PatrThom]

It sounds like, if you could strategically deploy heavily-armored decoy blocks in or around your vehicle, you might be able to get away with using light armor elsewhere, which might reduce your weight. This might result in the famous "glass ass," though.

Dammit, you're going to make me buy this game eventually, aren't you?

--Patrick

 

[GasBandit]

It sounds like, if you could strategically deploy heavily-armored decoy blocks in or around your vehicle, you might be able to get away with using light armor elsewhere, which might reduce your weight. This might result in the famous "glass ass," though.

Dammit, you're going to make me buy this game eventually, aren't you?

--Patrick

The decoys are not 100% effective. You still need to be able to soak the occasional stray missile/burst of gatling fire. And light armor definitely does not soak. Anything. one missile tears a 9-block hole, and 2 seconds of sustained gatling fire vaporized the light armor block.

Really, they shouldn't even call it armor. "Structural block" is what they should call it.
Interior Wall Block - 20 steel plates, construction components (for embedded lights)
"Light armor" block - 25 steel plates.
Heavy armor block - 125 steel plates.

I've found that even a single layer of Heavy armor is insufficient to protect internal systems mounted to it, as explosions transmit damage through and even sustained gatling fire can warp a block bad enough to detach something attached to the other side. I've taken to building double-hulled ships with a heavy armor exterior and light armor interior. It works out as a good balance between speed and survivability. Double layered heavy armor makes for a slow-ass ship... like that cube I literally flew rings around.[DOUBLEPOST=1405988981,1405988870][/DOUBLEPOST]Oh, and decoy blocks also have the unfortunate side effect of distracting the turrets of friendly ships as well, so you can pretty much only use them when you're alone, or your friend's turrets will shoot at them, too.

 

[GasBandit]

My server's still having crashing issues, but some other pirates elswhere are having a grand old time.

 

[PatrThom]

Yay for ContentID!

--Patrick

 

[GasBandit]

Update 01.040 - Pistons, Blast door blocks

Summary
Pistons have been added in Space Engineers - they can be used to build advanced machinery. Also, faction founders and leaders can now enable auto-approval for new members. Players will now be able to see a notification on HUD when somebody is hacking/grinding their ship (does not apply to armors). Thrusters can be used without cockpit - through the terminal - which enables the option to create missiles with warheads, turret countermeasures, small drones which grind enemy ships by using grinder and other. Blast door blocks has been also added in the game; it's similar to armor, but thinner, so it can slide between two layers of armor (very useful for airtight door and hangar bays).



Features
- pistons
- factions: enabled/disabled member auto-approval
- hacking/breach HUD notification
- thrusters can work without cockpit - through terminal
- blast door blocks (4 types, durability will be balanced in the next updates)
- rotor height adjustment
- semi-auto mode for battery

Fixes
- fixed issue when player could not leave respawn screen
- fixed large antenna texture bug
- fixed steering wheels losing sync
- fixed lags with batteries turned to charging mode
- fixed few instances of death-loop
- fixed multiplayer filter issues
- fixed visible aiming rectangle when turret is of after loading new world
- fixed issue when placing a new landing gear/station block without resources in survival mode was fully built
- fixed missing permanent death configuration when starting DS
- fixed issue with block preview when in 3rd person view
- optimized netcode for creating floating objects

EDIT:Corrected title to "Update 01.040"
People write they would like to see netcode updates...
I've just realized, we've optimized netcode for creating floating objects:
explosions in asteroids, throwing out items from inventories/ejectors/connectors, destroying cargo containers and possibly drilling
...this now uses much less network bandwidth

(multiple created objects are now batched into one network packet, information transferred per object was also reduced)

We're optimizing biggest network issues first and creating floating objects was one of them even though it may seem unimportant.


Nuh.. nuh... nuh... NETCODE OPTIMIZATION?!!

(now they need to optimize the movement of unpiloted ships/ships piloted by others).

 

[PatrThom]

Also that autotoggle for batteries looks like it would be useful.

--Patrick

 

[AshburnerX]

Update 01.040 - Pistons, Blast door blocks

Summary
Pistons have been added in Space Engineers - they can be used to build advanced machinery. Also, faction founders and leaders can now enable auto-approval for new members. Players will now be able to see a notification on HUD when somebody is hacking/grinding their ship (does not apply to armors). Thrusters can be used without cockpit - through the terminal - which enables the option to create missiles with warheads, turret countermeasures, small drones which grind enemy ships by using grinder and other. Blast door blocks has been also added in the game; it's similar to armor, but thinner, so it can slide between two layers of armor (very useful for airtight door and hangar bays).

Sounds like we got a lot of great stuff, plus the net code improvements. The Battery changes look good too, but I'd prefer if it was set to only use the battery if there was no other source of power, not to just fully charge and then drain. Also, we still need quick power transfers!

So now that we can use thrusters remotely, does that make your kinetic missiles easier to use?

 

[GasBandit]

Sounds like we got a lot of great stuff, plus the net code improvements. The Battery changes look good too, but I'd prefer if it was set to only use the battery if there was no other source of power, not to just fully charge and then drain. Also, we still need quick power transfers!

So now that we can use thrusters remotely, does that make your kinetic missiles easier to use?

... it makes pretty much all the devices I'd been designing (including a kinetic shotgun that got up to speed and then decoupled 25 of them at once, then stopped, letting them continue) largely obsolete. I'm thinking about using a tug to aim, then put the thruster to full, then decouple the merge block. It just needs a thruster, a battery, a merge block, and an armor block or two. Bada bing. You can mount the merge block sideways so the whole thing stays symmetrical around the center of mass, so you don't even need a gyro, probably.

 

[AshburnerX]

... it makes pretty much all the devices I'd been designing (including a kinetic shotgun that got up to speed and then decoupled 25 of them at once, then stopped, letting them continue) largely obsolete. I'm thinking about using a tug to aim, then put the thruster to full, then decouple the merge block. It just needs a thruster, a battery, a merge block, and an armor block or two. Bada bing. You can mount the merge block sideways so the whole thing stays symmetrical around the center of mass, so you don't even need a gyro, probably.

Gyros are so cheap to make that I really don't see the point in not including one, but it's possible. And using batteries means that you have more precious uranium to use for explosives. How are gravity shields going to affect these? I'm assuming curving away isn't an issue anymore, as artificial masses are out of the picture.

I'm thinking that pistons would be great for solar panels. Now you can make them retract in case of a meteor storm or a battle, giving them a lot of survivability. Might be good for landing gear too, if you don't want to ruin your lines. Doors and such are obvious uses as well.

 

[Dave]

God damn it. Okay. I have this game now. Going to play single player to get my bearings before I do something stupid like go multi-player.

 

[AshburnerX]

We're definitely going to need to figure out what we're going to do multiplayer wise.

So I tested pistons. They work great as umbilicals for connecting ships and pulling them in for docking... except in multiplayer anyway. However... don't attach a merge block to the end of one and fly it into another merge block.

... or it sheers off completely and you need to grind it off because it will no longer retract. So yeah... still some bugs to work out.

 

[Dave]

 

[AshburnerX]

Load up Last Survivor. Make sure you set your inventory/refine speed to 10x.

- Fly around until you see black rock on asteroids. This is Uranium. It powers your reactors. Get a decent amount with your jackhammer and then refine it back at your base. Move it to your reactor.
- Now that you have some time, you want to try and find sources of all the materials you can. Remember these areas.
- Build a small ship. You'll need to make parts at the assembler, using the resources you've mined by hand at first. Always make sure that you have at least 5-7 blocks clearance for your engine exhaust or you'll melt stuff.
- For your first ship, all you REALLY need is 6 thrusters (one in each direction), a gyroscope (to let you rotate), a generator (needs uranium), and cockpit.
- Attach drills to the ship. Learn how to use conveyors (Yellow doors means it's a conveyor port). Using conveyors, attach the drills to a Connector and maybe some small storage containers.
- Attach a connector to your refinery.
- Go mining in your ship. If you start seeing lots of floating rock chunks then you are full. Fly back to your refinery and line up the connector on your ship with the one on the refinery. When they are lined up and you are close enough, the white X will turn yellow. Press P and you will connect and you can start transferring cargo.

Once you can do all of that, you understand the basics of the game.

 

[Dave]

I started on easy. Had a bunch of vehicles. Jumped off the side & jetpacked to an asteroid. Used my jackhammer to mine iron and watched it fly off into space. I finally figured out how to catch it, but when jetpacking back to the space staion, I went too fast and went splat against the side of it.

The end.

 

[Gared]

Looks like that memory leak while minimized needs a little more work. Also, is it just me, or did the ability to Shift+LMB to drop 100 items into the assembler disappear?

 

[PatrThom]

I started on easy. Had a bunch of vehicles. Jumped off the side & jetpacked to an asteroid. Used my jackhammer to mine iron and watched it fly off into space. I finally figured out how to catch it, but when jetpacking back to the space staion, I went too fast and went splat against the side of it.

The end.

Can't wait for it to show up on Twitch.tv!

--Patrick

 

[GasBandit]

Looks like that memory leak while minimized needs a little more work. Also, is it just me, or did the ability to Shift+LMB to drop 100 items into the assembler disappear?

It got inexplicably changed to shift RIGHT click.

 

[Far]

You and me both man.

 

[Dave]

Can't wait for it to show up on Twitch.tv!

--Patrick

Fuck! I forgot to record it. Guess I'll do that tomorrow after Bananahands leaves and we get done killing the Ender Dragon in Minecraft.

 

[Gared]

It got inexplicably changed to shift RIGHT click.

Very, very alpha...

 

[GasBandit]

Very, very alpha...

 

[Dave]

[DOUBLEPOST=1406326473,1406326371][/DOUBLEPOST]Can't upload to Twitch.

 

[GasBandit]

You really should have watched a tutorial before you started to play. That first video was painful. I kept snarling at the screen "PUSH G!"[DOUBLEPOST=1406327430,1406326940][/DOUBLEPOST]I mean, shit, it was even on your screen when you went through the controls looking for it!

 

[Dave]

Quit your bitching. I found it.

 

[GasBandit]

Quit your bitching. I found it.

Yeah, after 10 minutes of old man flailing! The second video's almost as bad!

That's it, I've decided to make a small set of tutorials tonight for you and any other octagenarians who might consider playing Space Engineers.

 

[PatrThom]

That's it, I've decided to make a small set of tutorials tonight for you and any other octagenarians who might consider playing Space Engineers.

You plan is working, @Dave .

--Patrick

 

[GasBandit]

Alright, I've recorded 3 basic tutorials, and am converting them to upload to youtube now.

 

[GasBandit]

First tutorial up, more on the way -



Starting a world, movement, piloting, and energy.[DOUBLEPOST=1406338622,1406338458][/DOUBLEPOST]I went way long on tutorial 2, it's half an hour almost! It'll take an hour and a half to upload, plus processing time.

 

[evilmike]

 

[GasBandit]

Tutorial 2 -




Inventory, Control Panels, Mining