Space Engineers revisited

[LupusExMachina]

A couple days back I had a new look into Space Engineers.

Well, what to say, Keen still didn't make a real game out of it. Still more or less Sandbox.
But now comes the but.
It seems the games blocks and systems are engineery enough, that some people actually were able to make sort of a game out of it.

Take a look at the "Modular Encounters Collection" in the steam workshop.
You'll find a collection of ships that plug into the current encounter mechanic, with the little addition, that these ships are actually dangerous and offer a variety of combat behaviours with so much as a basic AI.

Esepcially the corrupted and reaver sets offer some interesting challenges and spice things up considerably.
So yeah, you can have multiship space battles against an AI now.
Things seem nowhere near balanced and I am not sure how to deal with different things at different times, but I havn't tried a lot of tactics by now.
What I know is, starting your game with a station as your main base might not be the best idea, or I havn't found proper tactics to deal with the particular things that shot me to pieces.

Best moment so far: dealing with an enemy capital ship "star wars III, return of the jedi" style.
Pros: Quite effective for the moment and super cool when it actually works.
Cons: You need a spare ship lying around to pilot it at full speed into the enemy carriers bridge.
Ugly: Seeing that massive, now defunct hulk of materials drift by your base without having any real chance to salvage it, waving it goodbye as it silently starts it endless voyage into the darkness.
Bonus: Finding one of it's drones crashed into your base, hit nothing important but left over all of it's juicy interior parts. At least enough rare components to start a new mining ship.....

In any case, Space Engineers has a lot of systems in place and by now there are mods that make you want to use them. At least enough to spend a couple days to grind, defend and build that ludicrous powerful self repairing capital ship.

[DaveYanakov]

I've seen a couple videos recently and they seem to have the multiplayer down pretty well for groups up to 12. Seems like with the right mods it would be worth playing.

But in the meantime the niche has filled with things more like games without all the effort, like Interstellar Rift or Pulsar: Lost Colony

[LupusExMachina]

I've had a look at those two and sadly the ship simulation of both of them is not even closely comparable. Interstellar rift has only rudamentary ship damage (Healthbars for systems) and Pulsar doesn't have any ship building at all. So no, that particular niche seems uncontested. You really had my hopes up :)

It's true though, Space Engineers Shipbuilding is a hassle. There are ways around it, but sadly finding them is a hassle.
And it is true, without mods the game is still limited in some key aspects. Building ships isn't easy when you don't have one of the mods that makes it easier (Combine Laser-Welders mod with the maglev-rail-system mod to build automated shipyards) or trivial (Nanobot construction cloud mod).

But generally in the end there is still no other goal than pitching your own creations against other ships. That part is pretty fun though, as a well build ship is clearly superior to one with the same components which is just build in a worse way.

I still have hopes for the game though, as there basically is everything in the "game" which could make it a game in the end. The systems are just completly incoherent. Thgings like certain components that only produce scrap when deconstructed or ressources that are only available at certain locations.
But as I said, those are just systems are only in there as code and are ultimately meaningless at the moment.

I hope they make a good game out of it in the end though. Or someone does it for them at some point. Modders are the best :)

[FlowerChild]

What's the modding like for it now? Is it still just limited script files, or did they open up the code eventually?

[jorgebonafe]

What's the modding like for it now? Is it still just limited script files, or did they open up the code eventually?

Apparently they did:
https://www.spaceengineersgame.com/spac ... -fund.html

https://github.com/KeenSoftwareHouse/SpaceEngineers

[FlowerChild]

Interesting. I don't think I want to start getting involved in multiple modding projects myself, but there's definitely a lot of potential in SE.