Space Engineers

For those who dont know what Space engineers is:
It's an infinitely large sandbox game, similar to Minecraft, but voxel based and with somewhat realistic physics. The point is to mine ressources, and build vehicles to fly around or fight with, while everything, including terrain, is destructable and shape-able. Basically, you build a ship, and do whatever you want, and however you want it. the games only limit is the capability of your computer to keep up with processing everything.



This new update which introduced planets, brightened up my day. :3 Sorry for the low quality pictures, but I had to set everything to lowest settings so my computer would even run the game (it crashed several times before).

Just wanted to share that moment (*cough*, about 2 or more hours) with someone. ^_^

What are your experiences with that game? What have you built so far? I wanna see your creations! If theres an interest, ill post some pictures of ships I built in the past. :3

Spoiler:

Oh sweet! Where can I get it and how much is it? It looks alot like Robocraft!

That's low quality to you? Oh man, Just opening that spoiler made my computer sweat. But on the topic, that looks super interesting.

You can get it on steam, for I think 20 bucks, BUT i warn you that you need a very beefy PC to run it properly. Or, at least, you know, anything better than an I5 processor and 6GB RAM and an NVIDIA G-Force GT520-M because thats what I am running and I can barely play it.

Anyways. Since people actually seem interested in it, here are some ships that I built ^_^

I will start with the larger ships, next time i will show the smaller fighters. :3

Large Ships:

Woooow! I usually don't like 3D sandbox games like that but I got to admit it looks very interesting! Also when posting about a cool game it's customary to post a link like this: http://store.steampowered.com/app/244850/ <-- Helps and shows the price is 24$....Meaning I may have to wait cause I'm very interested in trying Undertale after many nice reviews and seeing some shots of it....Nevermind Undertale is really, really cheap! =D May try this out after all!

Amaroq wrote:

You can get it on steam, for I think 20 bucks, BUT i warn you that you need a very beefy PC to run it properly. Or, at least, you know, anything better than an I5 processor and 6GB RAM and an NVIDIA G-Force GT520-M because thats what I am running and I can barely play it.

Anyways. Since people actually seem interested in it, here are some ships that I built ^_^

I will start with the larger ships, next time i will show the smaller fighters. :3

Large Ships:

Well, damn it! My Pc can't even run freaking Strider for more than 5 minuites on the lowest possible quality without crashing! (Seriously, anyone have a fix besides a graphics card? I can run Gmod for hours as well as most games of a similar graphic caliber. Goat sim and TOny hawk used to run fine, but now quickly crash).

Ah well, I still have MAME.

i might actually go post something later, once i've gotten around to update the game. last time i played were with some friends and the game was glitching about, teleporting people backwards in an infinite loop.

dragon808tr wrote:

Amaroq wrote:

You can get it on steam, for I think 20 bucks, BUT i warn you that you need a very beefy PC to run it properly. Or, at least, you know, anything better than an I5 processor and 6GB RAM and an NVIDIA G-Force GT520-M because thats what I am running and I can barely play it.

Anyways. Since people actually seem interested in it, here are some ships that I built ^_^

I will start with the larger ships, next time i will show the smaller fighters. :3

Large Ships:

Well, damn it! My Pc can't even run freaking Strider for more than 5 minuites on the lowest possible quality without crashing! (Seriously, anyone have a fix besides a graphics card? I can run Gmod for hours as well as most games of a similar graphic caliber. Goat sim and TOny hawk used to run fine, but now quickly crash).

Ah well, I still have MAME.

Le gasp! My favorite YT model of all time is able to be built and look very original in this game? I'll have DL it for sure now. X3 I adore that ship. Tis one of the few things about my ascended version of my indie game series I will not forsake.

Today i invented a new fighter I thought was worth sharing.

The Testudo.
It is named after the roman "turtle" battle formation known from asterix comics and diverse historical movies. Why, you will see a little further down.
It is a mediocre sized fighter, that was build for maximum combat efficiency while defending larger spacecraft and works best in large numbers, even though building it is rather expensive.



as you can see, it is a symmetrical build ship, containing 2 cockpits, as well as a total of 4 wings. 16 Landing gears are located on the upper and lower side of the wings, allowing to easily stack these ships on top of each other and next to each other due to its boxy design. If thats not enough, it is easily possible to "sandwich" these ships by lifting the floor using pistons, to press them into the ceilling, allowing them to lock both to floor and ceilling at once, keeping the ship in place at even the  most severe carrier movements. The two cockpits (black windows at the front) allow for easy entrance to the ship, and further help in either providing space for a second pilot, or to confuse foes into which cockpit to shoot on.



The rear side of the ship. each wing features several maneuver engines, as well as one main engine facing backwards. Those ion engines are the ships main propulsion. The yellow engine in the back, thats running here, is actually the afterburner, or thruster for atmospheric flight.
While the exterior is symmetrical, the interior is not, allowing for an oxygen tank, large reactor, Hydrogen tank as well as Gyroscopes, timer blocks and other small stuff to fit in. One side also features built in atmosphere thrusters, allowing the ship to hover in atmospheres while the hydrogen engine allows it to fly into space. However, while the ship can fly "upside down" in space without issues, the atmospheric engines only allow for one top side facing upwards, ripping the ship of some of its flexibility.



The wings can be folded outward, to enter combat mode. As one can see, the wings now feature a solar array, allowing for recharging batteries when idle, but that is not the main purpose of the wings. With them facing outwards, the main engines now serve as maneuvering engines, granting the ship an excellent sideways movement, specifically up and down. The afterburner now serves as the ships main forward propulsion, granting it the much needed mobility and speed, though at the cost of valuable hydrogen. Considering the heavy armor of the fighter, it is very fast and nimble for its weight and armor.
In open wings mode, one can also see a connector on the top side, as well as a merge block on the bottom side being exposed, allowing to dock with other ships to resupply or even connect multiple testudos to a larger grid.



This picture shows very well the overall purpose of the folding wings - they now serve as a literal shield in front of the actual ship. The cockpit is recessed behind both the shield and its heavily armored nose, making it hard or impossible to hit unless someone is directly in front of the fighter. The large shield allows other ships to hide behind the Testudo, especially when several connect to a grid, or fly in formation, creating entire protective walls. Since each wing is well armored, yet expendable, the fighter can take a hefty beating without really loosing much, while the double cockpit in its hard to reach location increases the ships survivability greatly. The landing gears now also are all facing forward, allowing the ship to latch onto enemy stations or large ships, and then lock to them while firing away at their victim like a leech.



A total of 16 Miniguns in a spread out cross-pattern ensure that enemies are hit, the large surface allowing the Testudo to carry much more weaponry than is usual for a fighter of this size. The missiles in the center allow for pinpoint accuracy on large targets, with a timed firing cycle ensuring that the missiles dig a hole into the enemy ship rather than creating one large crater on the outter hull. (rather than all going off at the outter hull, they come in one after another, each one hitting the bottom of the crater the previous missile created, thus allowing for more penetation power). In this particular frame one can also see the difficuilty of making out - or aiming at - the fighters cockpit, as it is very hard to see and hit, especially while moving around and rotating, as the ships main engines are now facing outwards, granting it its superior mobility compared to traditional fighters.


all in all, the Testudo can serve as a ship of the line, creating a thick wall between the enemy and whatever they are supposed to protect, while able to dish out a large amount of damage themselves. It excels at protecting carrier ships and dogfighting with same sized spacecraft, while still able to hold its own against large ships for a decent while.

Tts main disadvantages are their high cost and akward controls. The ship contains a lot of heavy armor, as well as rotors and engines, as well as two cockpits and a total of 4 wings and many guns. Its costly and complicated to build, and one could easily get 2 or maybe even 3 normal fighters for the price of this one.
The next disadvantage is the fact that while the ship has an immense forward propulsion and, while in combat mode, very good sideways movement, it has very, very little forward facing thrusters, causing it to barely be able to break. In order to slow down, one has to rotate the entire ship and break with the other sides, making it very hard to slow down during an attack run. One has to rely on their dodging abilities to fly past the enemy ship and then turn, keeping the shield between themselves and the enemy - but still moving into the previous direction at a very high speed. This makes the ship unsuitable for high speed attack runs on large targets or in confined spaces such as an asteroid field, even though the minimal front facing thrusters do have the advantage of not having too many holes inside the ships defenses, and they arent much of an issue while defending a set location where speed (and breaking) are less important than maneuverability.

The next issue is the odd center of mass when the wings are folded out. Since the shield is in front of the actual ship, the main engines are off center, causing the ship to tilt into the direction of dodging. This may make it harder to aim, even thouth that disadvantage is somewhat offset by the large cross shaped spread of the weaponry.

Lastly, the ship lacks a large cargo container, as well as an oxygen generator. While featuring 4 small cargo containers and an oxygen tank, it can only carry so much ammunition, fuel and hydrogen before having to restock, causing the ship to not be entirely self sufficient, if stranded somewhere all alone. The solar wings also may help a little in regaining some energy, but arent nearly enough to provide the fighter with enough energy to work at full capacity, even while directly exposed to sunlight.


opinions? ^_^

I imagine you can chain these guys up with some energy-based chain to prevent them floating away and create a net to catch up anything trying to get through between them : P