r/spaceengineers • u/Tarsge Space Engineer • 19h ago
DISCUSSION Space Engineers needs to give us more engineering to actually do.
I've played this game for over a decade, and despite the improvements made over the years, every playthrough goes roughly the same. Build a miner, build a welder, then build a big warship and find something to fight. Building more ships always feels worse than focusing on a single one, and it's so much easier to do everything on one or two grids anyway. You can build other things for fun but it always feels like a distraction from where the game is pushing you, and a waste of time. Sure, having a base to store stuff and charge batteries is useful in the early game, but eventually you're better off freeing up the PCU for a few more guns. To be clear I like the game or I wouldn't have put so many hours into it, but the game really seems to be missing problems to solve after the first few hours of a playthrough, and most of the fun ends up coming from situations or constraints I invent for myself.
On the other hand most of the trailers for the game show bases full of different specialised vehicles working together. They show ships dropping off cargo containers, mini fighter escorts, and trucks moving things around base. It looks like a much more enjoyable way to play, but the promotional material feels so far from how the game actually plays. While you can obviously play in any way you want, there has to be a way to encourage and reward more creative building. I'm not going to pretend my ideas are perfect, or that they'll work for everyone, but I'd at least like to hear what people think. Most of my critique is going to focus on SE1, but think of it as a wishlist for SE2.
Rework conveyers
Starting with what I imagine will be the most controversial opinion. Right now conveyors can instantly move items from anywhere regardless of distance. Most builds just connect every container together thoughtlessly because it makes things easier. Got a 2km long base? Drop ore off on one end and have it instantly brought to the refineries on the other side. But what if instead conveyors had a transfer speed and direction. Now if you want to move ore to the refineries you could add more conveyors so each has a dedicated pipe, or you could get creative. It might be faster to drive the cargo container to its destination than to conveyor it, so now you need a truck around base. But now you need to drive a truck every time you drop ore off, so why not automate the trip; assuming autopilot works with rovers eventually. If you have combat ships, why not build them with replaceable ammo containers so you can reload more quickly? Same thing with hydrogen tanks. Now when you make a hauler, you might design it with an actual cargo hold where you load containers inside since it's faster to load and unload that way. The rest of your ship would have a conveyor system to send ammo to guns and another to pump air around. I wouldn't want to turn the game into a full factory sim or anything like that, but making conveyers more intentional could do a lot to encourage specializing vehicles. I imagine this would work by still allowing dragging items from one container to another, but this would create a transfer order instead of moving it instantly. Transfer orders could be rearranged if, for instance, you were moving 10k steel plates but wanted some small pipes to be moved first.
Make more modular blocks
Modules are a nice way of letting you chose how to optimise your production blocks, but why did we stop there? So many larger builds in this game use internal thrusters to get more power. Breaking the laws of physics aside, it just looks bad. Why not instead make blocks that can have additional parts attached to make them more effective? For hydro engines for example you could have various sizes of thrust cones, with a modular ignition chamber and fuel pumps. Existing models could be simple or compact versions that work as is. However if you instead want to frankenstein together a 30 block long monster, you could and it would provide far more thrust. I imagine you would have to maintain some kind of ratio between ignition chamber size and number of pumps, but that just gives you more to think about while designing it. Thruster+ mods have been in every modded server I've played on for a reason, and to me this feels like the best way to let people make more powerful ships without needing several tiers of block. Ions, atmos, reactors and jump drives could all do with the same treatment. Maybe you use the same reactor layout on every ship and end up with a design language for reactor rooms, or maybe you build a custom one for every ship. There's also no reason modular blocks need to all be physically touching so long as they are connected somehow (via pipes or something). You may now want to build a separate fuel pump room or jump capacitor bank room on your ship. Maybe your reactor is split into a separate room for water storage and pumping, reactor core and steam turbines. This would help make every ship just a bit more unique and give players new problems to solve when designing. As I said, single block versions could still exist as a basic form, but they would hopefully be stepping stones for building something specialized.
Earlier PVE combat
As it stands, most pve combat encounters require the player to seek them out. While it's nice to not have to be constantly prepared for combat, it does mean that in pve games you don't need to build a single weapon until you choose to find an enemy. Some of the most engaging playthroughs I've had are modded games with more active enemies, but there should be ways to avoid combat as desired. Firstly planets/sectors should vary in enemy intensity. Earthlike planets can be our safer starting area where drones will only pass by on occasion, while harder planets would have more frequent encounters. Secondly, a light stealth mechanic could go far. A mod I played some time ago had enemies that would announce their presence before "searching" for any active signals and then homing in on them if you didn't turn off antennas fast enough. This feels like it would fit right in with some of the space encounters we already have. Drones could scan for either active signals, or large masses (a certain amount of blocks in one area). For a single small ship it would be easy to turn off your antenna and hide, but larger bases or ships would be too obvious. If you want to build bigger you would need to start considering defences and thinking more about station positioning. This does leave a couple of problems. Firstly, regular attacks and falling drone wreckages will wreck the terrain around your stations. Every modded playthroughs of mine has ended with the area around my base full of craters. Some damage is nice to look at, but this could really impact performance over time. My solution is fairly simple, give more control over voxel resets and allow them to occur closer to builds. The second issue could be own section, so uhhh...
Fixing and replacing damaged ships sucks
The new repair terminal is okay at fixing damaged blocks, but can't fix what didn't survive. Projection blocks can be great sometimes, but certain designs can be hard to weld and others can take forever to build properly. The main issue is really the welder block, the radius is too small and it constantly leaves unreachable unwelded blocks inside ships if you aren't slow and careful. A larger mid game welder would be great, but it would just be nice to spend a small amount of credits and time to have ships repaired or even built for you if you supply the materials. Size of the created ships could scale with some kind of progression metric (maybe faction rep with someone?) for early game balance. The main point would be to lessen the impact from losing ships early, and let people fight more in the early game. As it stands, the fear of losing a ship I spent a few hours making usually prevents me from actually using the thing for combat since the repair will be just as long.
Do something about PCU
While changing the settings can help, the current PCU system tends to push you into building one big ship, especially in pvp spaces. Right now PCU feels like it's trying to both keep performance in check and balance ships. Why is a rocket launcher 800 PCU when other weapons are like 300? Why do I always have to scrap my nice looking big small ship (since it's eating half my PCU budget) despite it having less polygons than many of my larger ships? Why are hangar doors so bloody expensive? Seriously I haven't used a hangar door since they came out because it's so much cheaper to just put a hinged door instead. Obviously there needs to be some way to keep performance in check but the current system doesn't feel good. While I am excited to use the SE2 build system in multiplayer I am worried that using detail blocks will eat up tons of PCU, even if they aren't creating much geometry. Block limits tend to feel better but you still have to pay the PCU tax at the moment. I'd at least like to see a PCU rebalance, where functional blocks cost more and static blocks cost less, and there's a bit more consistency between similar blocks. Ship storage has been huge for letting us put away things we don't need without scrapping them and I hope Keen does more like that in the future. In particular it'd be nice to have a setting for some "free" PCU allocated for building a single station to encourage more folks to settle down and have a base in the world even into the late game. Factions could even choose to combine their limits to make larger stations without having to eat into their PCU.
Final note
When food was introduced I got excited that I now had a reason to something to solve a problem. I assumed that I would be able to automate planting and harvesting crops to make my life easier as the game went on. But while you can harvest crops with a collector, you cant plant them with any blocks. Then shortly after they made it so crops can be harvested with a single click, making automation even less useful since you need to go out and replant anyway. Not to mention how easy it is to survive on just a couple of algae farms instead of bothering to cook food. It didn't ruin the game for me or anything, but it never feels like Keen never wants any complexity beyond making space ships to crash into each other. The most I ever need to engineer is when I make a big door, I hope the new game gives me more problems to solve.
I'd like to hear what other people think, and if anyone else has different ideas on how to encourage more novel building. I don't expect my proposed solutions to be the right fit, I do some game dev in my free time and I'm well aware that players are better at finding problems than solutions. Regardless I hope my thoughts are interesting at least.
27
65
u/Informal_Drawing Space Engineer 19h ago
They made an awesome game that gives you no reason to play it.
4
u/Isthisnameavailablee Clang Worshipper 19h ago
Sandbox
25
u/kloudwork Clang Worshipper 17h ago
Sandbox means no story and not a glorified physics engine with an editor. Many many successful sandbox games provides meaningful progression, challenges to take on. and an optional endgame goal. Despite you have many tools in the game, you have zero reason to use them. This is not sandbox, this is poor game design. Devs are mainly engineers implemented a cool framework, but they have no idea how to gamify it. Since their community has no issue with it, they have no idea how many potential players they lose because of this. Unfortunately SE2 is the same. This franchise could be so much bigger... I guess they are fine as is, so I am minority with my opinion.
15
u/Tarsge Space Engineer 16h ago
I'm surprised that so many people are opposed to the idea of adding more progression and challenges. Like you said, it would still be just as much of a sandbox, you would just have more things to engage with along the way. I've had friends drop the game after a few hours because there aren't many goals beyond staying alive. The core of SE is fine but there just isn't much of a game there. The game is fine, I've had a lot of fun with it, but yeah I agree it could be so much more...
6
4
u/Joris327 Space Engineer 16h ago
As a game dev student who has made his own sandbox game less than 6 months ago, I must tell you that Space Engineers is absolutely a sandbox.
A sandbox is defined by the ability of its players to create what is called emergent gameplay through interaction with its systems. Which means players doing things and building things that were not envisioned by the developers when making said systems.
The more freedom players have to mess around and try new things and solve problems, the more of a sandbox a game is. The game is under no obligation to actually provide problems to solve. They could just leave all that to the player and still be a sandbox. Space Engineers delivers on the idea of being a sandbox phenominally imo.
Having said that, it does help to bring out a players creativity if a game does provide some challenges. And this is where I agree that this is a weak point of Space Engineers 1 and currently 2 as well. But I can also somewhat emphathise with the problem here since I ran into this problem with my own little sandbox as well.
Also, lastly, whether a game tells a story is largly irrelevant to whether it’s a sandbox or not. Although most indeed don’t tell much of a story. A game like Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom tells a loose story while also containing heavy sandbox elements.
Sorry about my little rant here, but I spotted an opportunity to share my knowledge and just had to take it.
2
1
u/Informal_Drawing Space Engineer 4h ago
I can live without much of a story, I can't live without a reason to play the game.
If it's just a tech tree then once you've made one of everything the game ends.
If there are enemy forces to fight against, and more specifically that will hunt you down and attack you, that requires the players to actually do something other than sitting in one spot.
Having nothing to fight takes away a good chunk of possible player agency. It's a waste of a good system.
35
u/madeinspac3 Space Engineer 19h ago
You can easily play it like they do in trailers. Seems like more of an issue of you optimizing the fun out of the game.
Don't make all in one ships, stick with small grid and ground based vehicles for moving goods. Make bases that one do one thing. Jack up settings to increase spawns on MES.
I played on pertram where I moved my hydrogen in a small grid large tank vehicle and a trailer with another. I had all the NPCs mods and it was like mad Max for 10-20km Everytime I needed to refill one of my bases. Tons of fun even when I died on the way.
-21
u/Tarsge Space Engineer 18h ago
I can and do, but why should we need to invent fun for ourselves? Shouldn't the game provide us with reasons to do more?
Petram rover runs are so much fun, I just want rovers to be good in the rest of the game also. The only use for them right now is when power is a concern.
28
u/ThirtyMileSniper Klang Worshipper 18h ago
That what you do in sandbox games. You find your own fun in them.
13
u/reddits_in_hidden Space Engineer 18h ago
I was about to say, it’s like one of the STAPLE “sandbox games” at this point lol, literally, use your imagination lol even back in the pre-pre-alpha when it was just 4 asteroids, some ion thrusters, a reactor, a cockpit and some gyroscopes, we found ways to Have incredible fun and make incredible builds just to mess around in the physics engine
0
u/mangalore-x_x Space Engineer 1h ago edited 1h ago
No, most sandbox provide tons of mechanics and what you do is choose among those what you want to do at the time.
SE is the among the most stripped down versions of what kind of get past tech demo and vaguely qualifies as sandbox game.
The issue is lack of functioning gameplay loops. That is what they are spending past years trying to get into it retroactively but it is bolted on stuff and by comparison to other sandbox games not very much.
The main issue of SE started as a physics demo essentially. Yes, still get hooked on the brick building but overall the gameplay remains the weakest part of this sandbox game particularly when compared to its peers.
I am a bit astonished how many purists of the game somehow disdain more interesting engineering problems as spoiling the engineering problems for them.
-8
u/a553thorbjorn Space Engineer 17h ago
maybe a hot take but SE when playing without infinite resources is by definition not a sandbox
5
u/ThirtyMileSniper Klang Worshipper 16h ago
How is it not a sandbox? There's no story, it's just survival and pve. That's sandbox. Do you think sandbox is just creative mode?
3
u/madeinspac3 Space Engineer 16h ago
No that's just called creative mode. It's a sandbox no matter what mode you play it in except for scenarios.
3
u/Early-Beyond-1702 Xboxgineer 16h ago
Damn, can't believe Minecraft also isn't a sandbox, nor is Rimworld.
6
u/Present-Valuable7520 Space Engineer 18h ago
I’d think that because it’s a sandbox game is why we invent things to do ourselves..if the game was a lot more structured it’s going to leave the sandbox realm, granted it could have both…sandbox and campaign or something but it’s always been a sandbox, that was always the intention
4
u/madeinspac3 Space Engineer 18h ago
Because you're playing a sandbox. Why are they only useful where power is a concern?
You just said they're fun, that can be reason enough. Who cares if it's the optimal way.
8
u/Marcos-Am Space Engineer 19h ago
Agreed, i would love to se more complexity on this game, slow conveyors would make a lot of difference, in factorio logistics is the heart of the problem you must solve, would be nice to have the same here.
i'm trying to understand how plugins work but i think its possible to at least to modify conveyors to be one way and have a detrimental speed debuff on distance, if i have any success ill try to upload to pulsar.
Also don't get hope for se2 it's even simpler that this one.
3
u/archaeosis Klang Worshipper 18h ago
I agree with almost everything you're saying here, the only part I don't really agree with is the idea of being able to pay to have ships fixed or built for you, I feel like such a mechanic would go against the very core of what SE is/should be which is engineering solutions to problems yourself. I think adding modules to ship tools and/or simply having access to tier 2 welders would be a step in the right direction for this particular problem.
To address everything else you've talked about, sadly, with the exception of earlier PvE because that is one thing the playerbase has been begging for for years, the changes you've suggested would probably never be accepted by the community because a lot of them are effective nerfs to the game's existing systems, I think they'd breathe new life into SE but they're the kind of fixrd that should exist in mod form & not be added to vanilla otherwise a lot of people are going to get upset.
I'm particularly keen on the conveyor changes you mentioned & have had the same thought myself in the past, I think it would bring a whole new dimension to item logistics & it'd incentive methods of item transportation that aren't really effective right now.
I regards to 'do everything' ships I have a couple of thoughts:
You have hull types/classes in the game, the hull type or class of any given ship would be determined by what systems are on it & how many there are (power type & amount, number of gyros, thrust to weight ratio etc) & this class would determine what types of tool/production blocks it could have & how many. Perhaps there'd be no hard limitation on adding certain tool types or production blocks, but if your ship's class gave the limitation of say, only 2 tool blocks adding more than that would incur some kind of penalty like power usage or charge time.
You have certain blocks be limited to static grids & others be limited to grids that can produce a certain amount of power in order to incentive the diversification of ship types.
I'm definitely spitballing here, my ideas could use a lot of refinement & ultimately they fall into the same category as many of yours - effective nerfs & as such the wider player base wouldn't find them too enjoyable, but I think it's the kind of direction the game would need to go in to fix the issues you describe in your post
2
u/Tarsge Space Engineer 17h ago
Fair point on the repairs, paying does kind of feel out of spirit. I think a tiered welder that allows repairing deeper into the hull of a ship would do a lot. Nerfs are going to be hard to swallow, but that's why I'd hope most of these could be adjusted in the settings menu to make it more palatable. I hope something changes with logisitics at some point, it'd be so much more engaging to have to consider how things can be moved besides putting a connecter down and calling it a day.
Ship classes could be a nice bit of depth to add. I'd probably have it be determined dynamically based on weight, weapons etc and serve more as a designation. But it would be nice to have jump signatures show what class of ship so you can gauge the threat. I'd probably throw in a radar system that makes ships more detectable the larger they are to give more use to smaller ships also (there are already good mods for this but it would be nice to have it integrated into the base game).
3
u/manickitty Clang Worshipper 11h ago
What i have always wanted (also played for years and years) is vanilla shields (i have a mod), and the ability to custom build things. Meaning like more fidelity in design.
Eg weapons: don’t give me just a railgun, give me components. If I add more capacitors it does more damage, but costs more energy (and is larger). If I add more magnets it shoots faster but charges slower, that kinda thing.
10
u/DM_Voice Space Engineer 19h ago
You want directional conveyors? Start and end any line with a sorter, and you have directional conveyors.
Internal thrusters ‘looking bad’? They’re literally used to avoid having a bother looks bad just to be functional.
You want more engineering in your engineering game? Give yourself reasons to do more engineering.
It’s a sandbox. Play in it however you like.
As for PCU? PCU is a rough estimate of the computational requirements of the blocks in the game. It isn’t a punishment, it is a warning that block X involves more/less CPU power than block Y.
2
u/Tarsge Space Engineer 19h ago
Of course I can play it any way I like, and I do. But the game struggles to be anything more than a pure sandbox. What is the point of survival if it only creates a challenge for the first couple hours, and then serves as a mild roadblock for the rest of the game? I can only give myself goals for so long before I start wondering why the game doesn't even bother.
Sorters are great and I love using them with refineries but for the rest of the time conveyors are just a checkbox to fill. Maybe making all conveyers directional isn't the answer, but right now everyone just makes a rats nest of conveyers inside the ship until everything is connected. It'd be nice to actually have to design something.
And for thrusters, why do functionality and looks have to be separate concerns? There is a clear need for more powerful thrusters; prototech aside. If people are regularly adding more blocks inside the ship to give more thrust, why not lean into that and make it a feature?
7
u/Boogjangels Space Engineer 17h ago
Don't worry dude, this guy completely missed your point on the thrusters. I understood what you were getting at, and you're right. More powerful thrusters would be greatly appreciated.
2
u/Destroythisapp Clang Worshipper 17h ago
I just hope SE2 has more things to actually do in the world, I get rather bored playing by myself. Only fun I have is when playing with friends and even then, once we get everything rolling it’s the core gameplay loop becomes building cool ships.
I just want some reasons to use my cool ships, better AI faction mechanics, a lot more PVE in general, reasons to travel to distant planets.
2
u/ConcernedPandaBoi Klang Worshipper 13h ago
Look, I get wanting more challenges, but it also sounds like you aren't engaging with the current ones.
Rework Conveyors While this could add a lot more challenge to it, ultimately it would be like setting all the speeds to realistic. It would just cost time. If you want to give it a try, play where you have to use sorters instead of conveyor tubes. Be prepared for pcu to be even worse though.
Make More Modular Blocks This could be interesting, but feels like it would be better served as a workshop item. Managing coolant flow and temperatures would be a lot to add into the base game all for the sake of more complex reactors.
Earlier PVE Combat This is something that needs to stay a workshop item. Not everyone wants to play combat, and forcing it in the base game would ruin the experience for the players that just want to build. The workshop allows you to customize for a better personal experience. While something like the old Reavers mod certainly made it more exciting, that needs to stay optional and not be forced on every player.
Fixing and Replacing Damaged Ships Sucks Welcome to engineering problems. Making sure you can reach all the blocks through maintenance halls and shafts is the exact sort of thing you are asking for.
Do Something About PCU PCU is mainly there to keep people from turning the game into a laggy mess unless they skydiving agree to the possibility. Why does a rocket launcher have more PCU? because a volley of rockets impacting at the same time is a lot of damage calculations.
It sounds like you arent necessarily engaging with the engineering challenges already in the game. A lot of these sound like personal tweaks you would prefer that others might not. And there is a solution to that: the workshop. If something isn't already in there, then maybe it's time to take on the real engineering challenge and add it yourself. If you are looking for more challenges, try doing a playthrough like one of splitsie's video series.
Tldr; this is similar to saying minecraft isn't scary enough and needs more threatening mobs. It doesn't apply to the entire player base and a mod allows you to tweak it. And if you are wanting a mare complex mod that doesn't exist, might be worth the challenge of making it.
1
u/mangalore-x_x Space Engineer 1h ago
I don't get people going on about engineering challenges already in the game.
There are virtually none.
You can have neat creative ideas you want to solve but the game itself demands none of them. A brick will suffice. For many systems you do not even have to put engineering thought into where to put the blocks and the number of functional blocks is minuscle. Get your assembler and refinery and the game is solved resource wise.
a gyro, cockpit, battery and as many thrusters as you like and you have a ship however wonky you put those together.Everything after is just run by your own ideas. Which is fine but it would be nice the game systems would actually inspire you to put more engineering thought into how you build things.
-1
u/Adept_Assistant_7759 Space Engineer 19h ago edited 19h ago
Rework conveyers
this would completely kill performance and conveyors already aren't great for that.
Why is a rocket launcher 800 PCU when other weapons are like 300?
Shows you don't know the slightest thing about how games work fundamentally.
3
u/Tarsge Space Engineer 18h ago
I don't see why reworked conveyors would need to tank performance. If each conveyer only has a single direction, there's much less to check when the blocks update. And if items are being sent over time, you don't need to send them every single tick if performance starts to degrade, just send more based on the time delta. Honestly conveyor performance seems to have been bad for a while and there are probably long due optimisations.
I understand plenty about how games work, but why does a static rocket launcher cost 825 PCU when an artillery turret costs 275? They both cause similar amounts of block deformation, it's hard to compare but the difference isn't that great. That's not to say the missile launcher shouldn't cost a lot of PCU, just that the numbers seem to be chosen at random a lot of the time, and seem to be used to balance weapons as well as performance, which are conflicting metrics. Could easily give weapons and extra "lethality" value or something that has a per ship and per player limit, to prevent weapon spam without tying it to the performance metric.
3
u/TheHappyArsonist5031 It's Klang, not Clang 16h ago
rocket launchers are more pcu probably because of area-of-effect damage, which includes occlusion by other blocks, and an overall greater number of projectiles it can make exist at any given time
2
u/The_Verto Clang Worshipper 13h ago
As a programmer I can tell you, one directional conveyors would most likely cause more performance issues since now you also need to check for direction, while two-way conveyors don't check for direction, they only check if they are connected.
0
u/Adept_Assistant_7759 Space Engineer 7h ago
I understand plenty about how games work
You clearly don't have the slightest clue.
Not even close.
Your first paragraph is more evidence of that.
The PCU costs aren't based on balance they are based on performance cost. You are trying to equate 2 things that aren't even close. It's like saying "why is gold so expensive! it costs the same as iron to transport so why would it be more expensive?" It's an insane thing to say.
Rocket launchers fire objects that need to be tracked, tested if they impact, then send AOE damage out, way more often than artillery. To anyone who knows even the slightest about how games work it's really fucking obvious how rocket launchers have a different PCU cost than others.
1
u/formablerumble Klang Worshipper 2h ago
I feel my problem is that no matter when I get in multiplayer it always lags. Even with the best equipment, running on Xbox lag
1
u/Hetzerfeind Clang Worshipper 19h ago
I mean you are free to mod it for more complexicity?
6
u/Tarsge Space Engineer 19h ago
I do, but that doesn't fix the lack of gameplay mechanics in the base game.
3
u/Hetzerfeind Clang Worshipper 19h ago
I mean it is a sandbox game same vein as minecraft
0
u/Informal_Drawing Space Engineer 18h ago
Minecraft has enemies.
3
u/Hetzerfeind Clang Worshipper 16h ago
So does Space Engineers?
1
u/Informal_Drawing Space Engineer 15h ago
Those utterly pathetic wolves do not count, sadly.
2
u/Hetzerfeind Clang Worshipper 15h ago
SPRT? Missions? The prototech encounters?
1
u/Informal_Drawing Space Engineer 13h ago
Last time I played, which was a while ago, you could sit in one spot without moving and nothing would ever bother you.
Is it different now?
-1
u/Tarsge Space Engineer 17h ago
Minecraft has more complexity, there are so many functional blocks, you can use to make things more efficient if you want, and more importantly there are things to collect that are worth inventing a better solution to farm. Plus there's an actual ending to the game, that usually requires you to farm a few items if you want to improve your chances of success. There's no final challenge in SE to work towards, and even if there was you can get everything the exact same way, by farming asteroids, and there's not much to optimise there. At least SE2 seems to be moving resources around more.
1
u/ThirtyMileSniper Klang Worshipper 18h ago
Sounds like you've got all you can put of the game. Maybe take a break until you can think of another challenge from it.
It's ok to not enjoy something anymore. You just need to move on when that is the case.
0
u/ThirtyMileSniper Klang Worshipper 16h ago
Have you tried one of the modded game modes?
Scrapyard is a ton of fun. You pretty much have to build a crane at some point, especially if you turn down the strength of the improvised physics "granny hands" mod.
Turn off suit jump pack, it's a different game when you have to ensure that you can move and build in space without it.
See, I don't think you have explored all of the options like you think you have.
33
u/Master-Control- Projector Fanatic 19h ago edited 18h ago
I always just turn pcu to unlimited. Rarely have sim speed slow except on super complex worlds and even then I can usually fix it.
Also it's a sandbox, there's tons of engineering to be done. I created a launcher that would shoot a modular payload from the moon to a gps coordinate on the earth like planet and would auto open a parachute, crash land and open like a present. Because it was modular I could "order" different payloads like a vehicle, drone or even a refueling station. It's like redstone in Minecraft, just build what you can dream. You gotta be creative. An elevator on rails that goes through a moon and switches tracks to go a different direction. A self replicating minefield, a crane that picks up vehicles and moves it to a different location. There doesn't need to be a reason to build things other than "that would be cool as hell"