The Exploration Continues: Blueprint Projector, Theodore Begins, Captured Ship

Given that I plan to build a great number of small satellites within close proximity to Ms. Frizzle, I decided to attach a projector block to the side of the ship. Normally, you can't attach small ship blocks to large ships or stations outside of careful placement of landing gear. The "rotor trick," as the community likes to call it, is currently an effective work-around that also allows your ship's energy to flow through the connection.

Ms. Frizzle's very own blueprint projector.

The trick itself sounds deceptively simple. You build a large ship rotor - the standard kind, not the advanced rotor - wherever you want to make the connection. Once the base is completed, you go into the console and tell the rotor to release its head, which you're now safe to grind away. Start constructing a small ship nearby - preferably in a direct vertical line over where you built the rotor. Attach a small ship rotor to the unfinished landing gear and weld its head to completion. Remove the bottom and the landing gear and give the cap the gentlest nudge. When it's in range of the large rotor's base, get back into the console and tell it to attach.

Now you're free to place small ship blocks on the head of this new hybrid rotor. Once I had oriented the projector block correctly, and got the rotor itself to lock into place and stop spinning, I was set. The keypad I added to the side was simply for convenience's sake, as it allows quick access so I can adjust the blueprint schematic being constructed. I simply build a line of small ship blocks out from the projector and I'm good to go.

With this I was able to construct the front half of my Theodore ship. I decided to hold off on construction the auxiliary engine pod primarily because the first asteroid, which I named Palmer's End, is primarily made of iron and stone. The smaller asteroids that accompanied it - the "fingers" to the "palm" - were where the more valuable ore was located, and I feared those would run dry before I finished. My new plan was to build a second satellite marker and fly it over to another asteroid in the hopes of finding some of the more rare ores, or perhaps something more interesting.

My first captured ship since I started this map!

With the newly updated zoom function that camera blocks were given, I had spent a bit of time peering out into the distance in the hopes of finding any hint of something that wasn't another asteroid. Picking a likely direction, I throttled up.. but within a few thousand meters I realized that it was just a distant chunk of rock. While trying to find a more interesting target, a mining carriage drifted over. By the time I noticed it was there, the ship had skirted within a hundred meters of the turret's kill-zone.

At first I was content to count my blessings and watch it slip away. Then I remembered that mining carriages only have a single turret, and that it was placed in such a way that offered gaping blind spots. Deciding the risk was worth it, I cut my inertial dampeners and gave chase. After a great deal of grinding, I was able to cut the power, disable the turret and assume control of the vessel. By then I was nearly 20km away from Palmer's End, and I was sorely glad I had installed the safety beacon on my ship.

The contents of my new haul were fairly standard - a handful of different kinds of ore and a few extra mining drills and handheld grinders. An extra twenty uranium ingots got stuffed into my ship's reactor, which helped give me some peace of mind - every time I had the ship's refinery, arc furnace, assembler, collector and gravity generator running at once, I would get nervous that I was going to run low on power.

Perhaps the best part of the capture was that I now have a great deal of extra large ship components for my own designs. I've already popped back into my creative world to throw some designs together for a long-haul cargo ship, as the storage space on Ms. Frizzle was getting a bit low.

Updated Transmissions: Damage Particle Effects, Ship Tool Shaking and Camera Zoom

Once again it's Thursday, and the developers of Space Engineers have given us an interesting update. Some features that players have been asking for, some that change previously removed aspects of the game and yet another that, as far as I can tell, wasn't asked for but is ultimately an unexpected bonus to those of us who enjoy some of the more immersive aspects of realistic gameplay. As always, the full list of features and bugfixes for the version 1.068 update can be found here.

Parts of your ship, excluding armor, now show particle effects when significantly damaged.

For those of you who try to play Space Engineers in a more realistic and immersive way, the unexpected part of this update might intrigue you. All parts of a ship can normally be damaged by gunfire or through contact with other ships or asteroids while moving at speed. Now, once any non-armor blocks are damaged below the red line that marks their completed state, they'll start to emit different particle effects. These effects are determined by what kind of block it is: thrusters and  turrets spew flames whereas gravity generators, lights, antennas and most other ship blocks will give off crackles of electricity. Reactors instead emit a harmless but radioactive-looking green gas. These effects coincide with the point at which a block stops functioning until repaired.

An aspect of the game that had been removed in a previous update was the shaking effect that came from using the spinning mining drill on a ship. Depending on the mass of your vessel, this shaking could be quite disorienting and was one of the leading causes for parts of a mining ship breaking away from bumping against the wall of a tunnel system. Although many players quite liked its removal, it could also be seen as a loss of game immersion for some. Today's update brings it back, as well as a similar shaking sensation for ship welders, as a single setting you can toggle for each game world you own.

In my time spent perusing the Space Engineers subreddit, I've seen many players ask for some way to zoom in the view either of their space suits or the ships themselves, theorizing that such an effect could be commonplace in a time and place where lone astronauts could build and pilot their own craft amongst asteroid fields in deep space. Just such a function has now been added to the camera blocks that can be placed on your ships and stations. Although the standard engineering space suit currently lacks such ability, this still opens up some interesting possibilities for reconnaissance satellites or spy drones.

Despite being outside of my realm of knowledge, I'm sure the modders and programmers of the Space Engineers community will enjoy the final aspect of this update. Modding API and programming documentation can now be found in a folder located within the installation point of the game itself. Simply accessing it through the game properties tab inside Steam, and navigate to the Tools folder.

See you next Thursday, fellow engineers!

The Shipyard: Asteroid Marker Satellite, Theodore's Flight Pod and Engine Pod.

When I decided I wanted to get back into playing Space Engineers, I knew my main focus would once again be playing in survival mode, but this time with a world filled with procedurally generated asteroids. But with little in the way of landmarks, it could be easy to get myself turned around and forgetting where it was I had been, or was trying to return to.

Asteroid Marker Satellite Mk.1

In order to combat this, I looked into beacons and antennas, ultimately deciding upon the latter option. The design I wanted would be rather simple and cheap, and something that wouldn't run out of energy if I were to leave it to its own devices. And if it were being produced in great numbers, I wanted some way to be able to transport a number of them at the same time.

The Asteroid Marker Satellite Mk.1 came out better than I had expected. It hits all the points I had wanted for its design while still looking like an actual satellite. With an effective antenna radius of 5km, I should be able to set up a network of them stretching from asteroid to asteroid across my game world. Currently, my only qualms is that a single solar panel isn't enough to power a remote control block, and thus I won't be able to access the information panel on the underside. This means that I'll have to jot down the local ores or abandoned spacecraft or stations in a notepad file before deciding where to fly.

Theodore Flight-Pod Mk.1

Without that remote control access, and lacking any thrusters, I would have to come up with some other way to position these satellites at each asteroid. For that I decided upon a two-stage craft, which I later named Theodore after the titular character in the children's show Theodore Tugboat. Perhaps I'm setting up something of a theme here..

I made sure to set the engines somewhat far to either side; this gives it enough clearance to not damage the satellite while it's being positioned with the help of the front landing gear. An ore detector helps me better scan the asteroid itself to determine what valuable ore it contains, and a beacon for safety. A single small reactor wasn't powerful enough to not overload while the ship was simply performing maneuvers, so I added a second on the other side. Finally, a spotlight is set between the landing gear at the nose - this may seem like a poor choice, but it helps a pilot gauge just how close they are to a target. Once the beam of light starts to be blanked out, you're close enough that you should prepare to lock the gear.

Theodore Engine-Pod Mk.1

The design of the flight pod was purposefully small. It's made to grab one of the marker satellites and nestle it into an innocuous place with its solar panel correctly oriented for maximum energy. But I knew from the start that such a design wouldn't have the power to drag a group of these satellites around the cosmos on its lonesome. So I designed an extension of the flight pod. It sports a large reactor of its own, along with a medium cargo container to keep necessities in case of emergency, or in case I find something too valuable to leave behind. Unlike the front section, the engine pod was designed with the idea of eventually landing it on a station or in a larger ship's hangar for travel.

The idea is fairly simple. Keep the flight pod connected to the engine pod, and attach a number of satellite markers to the rear of that. Fly the whole thing around from asteroid to asteroid, dropping off a marker as I go at each new discovery. Although I've yet to try it outside the confines of my creative testing facility, I'm quite pleased with the look of it. And as with all of my designs, I will upload a sort of "interactive museum" to the Steam Workshop in the near future.

The Exploration Continues: Building a Safety Beacon, So Much Mining

The first thing I decided to do today was to fit Ms. Frizzle with what I call a "safety beacon." Set to the maximum range of 50km, this beacon will show where my ship is regardless of whether it has an antenna or not. I find this helpful for when I get lost while surveying an asteroid to see what valuable ores it contains. The trick is finding a way to utilize this without letting the beacon's information constantly clutter up my screen.

Safety beacon activated. Let's get messy!

Actually, the first trick was trying to keep myself sane while I ferried forty communication components from a cargo container inside of the ship out to the beacon I was constructing, as I could only carry a pair of them at any one time.

I had recently watched a few videos on YouTube where other players had used sensors for some interesting effects - torpedoes designed to home in on enemy ships, for example. But my idea was a fair bit simpler.

Any time the sensor detected a player - myself - within its effective radius, it would turn the beacon off. This would save a small amount of energy while making sure that its green glow and title weren't obstructing me view. But when I got far enough away the beacon would switch back on, making sure I knew where I'd left the ship. So far it's worked beautifully; the only snag being that it fails to detect a player sitting in a control seat within its radius. This means that the beacon is constantly active while I'm flying the ship from place to place in my search for the mysterious of the universe (or when I'm hunting down an elusive type of ore).

Speaking of mining, I've taken a closer look at the cluster of asteroids nearest to where I had started my game. The larger of them was fairly boring, save for a few hollows on the inside: iron and stone, along with a small patch of gold. The real finds have been on the handful of smaller rocks. Nearly every one them has had one of the ore types I had been needing. The only vein of uranium in the lot of them had already run dry, but my refinery still hasn't chewed through all I had collected of it. Every possible type of ore in the game is represented amongst these small asteroids, and all of it is sorely needed.

The Friz decides to photobomb my asteroid snapshot.

In order to retrofit Ms. Frizzle in the ways I've described, I had to cannibalize some other parts of her. As you can see from yesterday's post, the front of the ship is just a grid of crisscrossing girders. The only door, on the right side of the craft, is just an empty frame. Even with replacing the single conveyer block with an extra small cargo container - they have the same functionality, while the latter offers storage space for less components overall - I've run out of things like motors, displays and bulletproof glass. Before I leave this cluster, I should have more than enough material to finish building my ship, and hopefully be able to get started on the next part of my plan.

In every open-world sandbox survival game I play, I have this odd need to record my progress as I explore. For Space Engineers, this means I'm going to build what I call a satellite network. Each cluster of asteroids I visit, I'll drop off a small satellite equipped with an antenna, powered by a solar panel angled toward the sun. A text panel on the back will record what kinds of ore I'll find if I decide to return there in the future. Each one should be close enough to the others that I would be able to switch my own ship's antenna on and be able to find my way. This also ensures that I won't accidentally visit the same cluster multiple times just by getting myself turned around.

Although I have future plans to construct a small scout tug to drag a number of these satellites around as I explore, for the moment I'm not sure if this first cluster will have enough material for that. I should have enough to begin the network, however. I've already got a design in mind, too, after spending some time playing in my creative world.

The Exploration Continues: Retrofitting The Friz, Searching for Fuel, Black Gold

Now that the ship is named and some of its systems shut down to conserve energy, it's time to deal with our first obstacle: finding and harvesting uranium for use as fuel. To this end, and thanks once again to the good people over at the Space Engineers subreddit (a link to which is at the right), I already had a plan for easy collection.

Ore collection scoop and spherical gravity generator.

Before I started this blog, the last time I had played Space Engineers was about five months ago. At the time, my best idea for successfully mining was to park a ship with a massive funnel underneath the patch of surface ore I had planned to break into. The funnel led down to a collector, which in turn fed into either an on-board refinery or a set of cargo containers. Because I preferred to mine with my hand drill rather than with a small mining ship, this meant that nearly all of the ore I chipped away would be pulled into this funnel by a gravity generator inside the ship.

The problem with this tactic was that chunks of ore would sometimes rebound along the rim of the funnel and spill out over the side, and the gravity generator would then launch them out into space. Trying to combat this involved trying to create a sort of seal between the funnel and the surface of the asteroid itself, which often led to warped or broken sections of the funnel or endless time lost checking and double-checking the ship's placement. And some areas simply weren't large enough to fit my entire ship right up against.

During my time away from the game, I would occasionally visit the Space Engineers subreddit, mostly to look at the different pictures people had posted of their ship designs. One such design struck me as ingenious, and I felt simple for not having thought of it myself. Basically, a spherical gravity generator would draw the ore directly in toward itself, where it would bunch up against a set of inward-facing collectors. Having never tried it before, I only had the say-so of the ship's designer as proof that it worked beautifully. As you can see in the image above, this was the idea that I decided to bring to bear against my fuel problems.

Technically, I'm already in a space suit, so it's all right.

Now came the actual search for uranium. I knew from past experience that uranium ore is a sort of oily black color, which contrasts noticeably against the other ores that an asteroid could be made up of. I took Ms. Frizzle over to the nearest of the map's large asteroids, hopped out and began scouring it for dark patches. After checking its composition with my hand drill both inside and out, I moved on to the smaller rocks hanging meters away from its surface. I was about to get back into my ship to continue my search elsewhere when I caught sight of a single small field of untapped uranium hiding in the shadow of one of the smaller asteroids.

I had decided to stick to using first-person mode while piloting ships whenever possible. To this effect, I had torn away some of the front armor of Ms. Frizzle, replacing it with the unfinished latticework of glass windows. With a much more open view at front, and together with the camera I had installed on top of the collector, I carefully moved into position. Turning the generator to 0.20g, I got to work.

Let me tell you, the spherical collection method worked absolutely perfectly. Given that I have only the one collector, sometimes ore gets stuck on the wrong side of the generator, but that isn't such a problem. I also have to make sure I check all the nooks and crannies around the hull to make sure I don't have a fragment of ore lodged somewhere before I move the ship, as loose items have a way with tearing through an unprotected hull.

But for now, I've got some sweet, sweet uranium to dig up.

The Exploration Continues: Meet Ms. Frizzle - Seatbelts, Everyone!

After loading into the world I've generated for this series of articles, the first task is to assess my situation. All I've got to my name are the components that make up the ship I've started in, the basic engineering and mining tools, and a small amount of uranium ingots in the reactor - just 2kg worth of fuel to keep me alive and flying through space. Next up is to ensure that any systems not currently needed, such as the refinery, assembler and gravity generator, are switched off. This boosts me from twenty real-time hours worth of power at a drift up to twenty-five days. That reading will fluctuate heavily as I maneuver the ship, but the appearance of having extended my life expectancy still makes me feel better.

The Friz has seen some better days.

Speaking of my ship, its design is that of the Yellow Rescue Ship, a standard both for players starting the "Asteroids" scenario, and for those spawning in any world where there isn't a working medical bay available to them. Powered by a single small nuclear reactor, it comes equipped with its own medical bay and gravity generator, as well as the storage space offered by a single small cargo container. While lacking much in the way of creature comforts, it also comes with the machines necessary for any engineer taking his first steps into a new world: a refinery to process raw ores into usable material and an assembler to turn that material into the components needed for whatever construction project its owner decides to undertake.

Now, every ship needs a name. Perhaps taking after Aaron of LastStandGamers, I seem to name a great deal of my ships after people's names. After seeing a few people on the Space Engineers subreddit refer to this ship design as a big yellow bus, I decided to name my ship after Ms. Frizzle, the teacher from the children's show The Magic School Bus. Although other designs may be built in the future, this one will be my mainstay for a long while. As soon as my situation seems a bit less dire, and I have more resources on hand, I'll do what I can to smooth out the dents and make her more worthy of calling home.

Those dents will buff right out, don't you worry.

Ms. Frizzle is still considered a respawn ship, however. This means that if I enable the "Delete Respawn Ship" setting, the next time I save and quit out of the world I'd lose my ship. I've got a few options on how I can work around that. The more time-consuming option would be to grind away each and every block that makes up my ship, replacing and rebuilding each of them as I go. Although this would work for fixing this situation, it's not without its dangers and limitations. Moving the reactor could come at an inopportune moment, while my suit's energy levels are low. And, much more easily, I could simply lose track of where I was in the reconstruction and forget some key part that makes the ship what it currently is.

The faster option, and the one I plan to use, works due to something of an exploit in the game's mechanics. If I were to connect my yellow ship to a space station via a pair of merge blocks, Ms. Frizzle would stop being a free-floating large vessel and be part of that station. Afterwards, once I grind away the merge blocks, I simply change her back into a ship via the button in the Info tab of the ship's terminal. Generally I dislike abusing game mechanics for personal gain in any video game, especially an open-world survival sandbox. This time it would be used to help enforce the immersion to some degree - in realistic terms, your car wouldn't simply disappear after you had gone to bed for the night just because it was a rental (assuming the company hadn't decided to repossess it from you overnight - okay, perhaps this was a bad analogy).

The Exploration Begins: Choice of Settings, Personal Gameplay Goals

I know the post is labeled as "The Exploration Continues," but this is the introductory post, so I've taken a bit of creative license.

To start things off, I'd like to explain my gameplay goals. When game worlds in Space Engineers were infinite in distance but fairly limited in their scope of worthwhile destinations for travel, my only goal was simply to survive. Beyond that, I let my imagination and whims guide me toward building particular kinds of ships or working on the creation of stations as a more permanent base. With the addition of the exploration update, I have a much more defined goal set for myself: exploration itself.

I still may set up a somewhat more permanent home in the form of a space station, but the major goal for my gameplay is exploration. Visiting each asteroid I lay eyes on, and more importantly seeking out the abandoned ships and stations that were included from those submitted to the developers through the Steam Workshop. I've seen a few screenshots that the community has taken of what they've found out amongst the vast emptiness of space, and I'm excited to see just what I can find for myself. And each time I find something new, I'll be sure to record it here as part of my Exploration series.

The Game Settings

• "Asteroids" Scenario: When I first started playing Space Engineers, I had chosen the "Crashed Red Ship" scenario, and I loved that I had a great deal of basic resources like steel plates, but that other things - displays and computers, for instance - were much more rare. When the developers updated their ship designs to include new blocks they had added such as the connector and collector blocks as well as conveyer tubes, it felt like this start became too easy. Playing in the "Asteroids" scenario keeps me on my toes for the first few hours, ensuring that I conserve every ounce of energy I have while I scrounge for resources.
• Offline Survival: Although I might open the game up to allow friends to look at what I've built - after safely backing up my save, of course - I play to play the game entirely in single player, and with the rules put in place by survival mode: blocks take time to build, their components themselves requiring resources gained either from salvage or mining, and the ever-present threat of suit energy running out, as well as gunfire from hostile ships, keeping me even more careful about what I do and where.
• Safe Environment: Sort of an oxymoron considering I'm to be free-floating in the empty void of space. Instead, this means that there won't be any meteor showers coming at regular intervals. Although it would be another source of danger to contend with, experience has taught me that meteor showers mostly just make me do all of my work on the dark side of the asteroids, which tends to make for terrible screenshots. This setting may change in the future.
• Realistic x1 Speeds: Playing on the standard settings so far as inventory sizing and speeds go helps keep things.. well, realistic, in my eyes. Even in space an engineer can't hold a huge amount of components or tools. This setting will ensure that I think about building welding, grinding and mining ships for any project that will be of a decent size or that might take a long time to weld into place.
• Infinite Asteroids, High Density: Procedurally generated asteroids in an infinite map is what's gotten me so excited to play Space Engineers again. Although having it set to "high density" might seem like I'm playing on an easy setting, in-game the nearest asteroid is still nearly at the edge of my viewing distance. I like being able to see an unmoving point in the distance and wonder what I'll find when I get there.
• Auto-Healing - Off: Although I can understand the idea of a space suit being able to do some light work in helping to heal its occupant, I don't think it's very realistic to be able to heal from all damage. This setting ensures that I'll remember where my nearest medical room is located.
• Thruster Damage - On: This makes sure that any ships I build will realistically have to deal with the damage that comes from thruster exhaust, helping shape the designs I make. Also, any ship that I upload to the Steam Workshop will be sure to work in other worlds, whether they have the thruster damage setting on or not.
• Cargo Ships - On: The nine different kinds of abandoned cargo ships that occasionally show up to drift through the map are more dangerous than they once were, but are no less enticing. They can be a quick source of salvaged components.. if you're brave enough to try to catch them. It might take a while for me to feel confident enough to try myself, but it will happen sooner or later.
• Spectator Mode - On: This time around I plan to try and use only first-person mode whether inside of a ship or not. The only time I'll be taking advantage of spectator mode is when I want to take an interesting screenshot for this blog. Otherwise, if I want to see how my ship is oriented or whether it's got clearance to fly around a structure, I'll have to install a camera.