Space Engineers

[Blaine]

Holy shit.

http://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=1166494146&searchtext=

It's a fucking carrier that launches programmed automining drones.

 

[ERYFKRAD]

Holy shit.

http://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=1166494146&searchtext=

It's a fucking carrier that launches programmed automining drones.

Damn.

 

[Blaine]

Hopefully they'll turn it into a game one of these days.

Although it's slightly tempting to call you unflattering names at this juncture and question your tastes in gaming, perhaps accompanied by suggestions that there aren't enough action sequences, linear corridors with treasure nooks/quick exits, good/neutral/bad dialog options, numbers-get-bigger progreshun, romance-able NPCs, or cover shooting mechanics in the game for your tastes, I'll refrain and be reasonable.

The sense of discovery of the depth of this game's mechanics and the engineering challenges that inevitably and continuously crop up constitute a sort of undirected emergent puzzle game, not unlike Factorio for example. As with real-life engineering (but certainly far easier and simplified; it is a game, after all, though full-on programming and scripting can be utilized), you must figure out how to solve various problems as they emerge, and the game's bones and mechanics are complex and sophisticated enough to support a feeling of glee at finding innovative approaches or solutions to engineering challenges and other obstacles. There's the building aspect too, of course, in the sense of say building a fairly mundane base, or a fancy-looking capital ship; that can be a creative outlet. Mainly though, figuring out how to do cool automated shit and make things do stuff is the gameplay here, and so far it's looking absolutely fantastic to me.

It's not a game-y game in the usual sense, but it IS a game. Puzzles and challenges do constitute a game. In fact, they're some of the oldest and most prestigious types of games.

There are some enemies to shoot though, and very challenging vessels to board and take over.

 

[Raapys]

I struggle calling something where you have to make all the puzzles and challenges yourself a game. It's like calling a programming language or a map editor a game. Either can be fun to mess around with, in many cases more fun than actually playing a game, but if you want an actual purpose to what you're doing you have to make it yourself.

True, SE has some basic enemies and random events that could, with luck, create interesting situations. But it's extremely basic. Either make some challenging hand-crafted scenarios with limited time/resources and specific objectives and problems to solve, or start doing a much more dynamic and emergent world system to dynamically create those challenges on the fly.

 

[Blaine]

It's not as if you're doing ALL of the work to design the puzzles and create the challenges, though. I don't have a calculator, a pen, and a pad of Clairefontaine's finest in front of me, ready to design some pattern recognition challenges and inductive reasoning puzles completely from scratch. The sand, the plastic buckets and shovels, all of it's already there, and more besides.

True, in macro, the tough nut SPRT capital ships, drone waves, and spiders and wolves (haven't even seen those yet) are little more than glorified ways to test the mettle of your creations. Still, I'm rarely attracted by pure building and messing-about games with nothing much else going for them. There's something more here than just sand and buckets, a bit of Factorio perhaps.

I agree they need to step up their game outside of technical widgets and pure mechanical/physics/programming functionality. The mining ship in the easy start was clearly designed long before cargo added mass to ships, for example. In fact, I'm pretty sure I remember it from when I last played 2-3 years ago, and many of the other starts, too.

A game has to have really, really solid substance to be worth finding your own fun though, and this one has it. I was truly pleasantly surprised at what I discovered and still am discovering, and that's not really in my cynical nature these days.

 

[Raapys]

I've always liked the general idea of the gameplay(though the UI was tedious last I checked), but that's why I'm annoyed that they haven't spent more time on giving me a purpose for using all these neat tools that they've spent years creating. It's been 4 years of early access and it can't go on forever; they'll run out of cash and/or interest eventually. The potential is huge, but I don't think they can reach it unless they start locking gameplay features and start working full-time on the challenge aspect of the game. There's always room for a sequel for expanding the gameplay further, should it be desired, and the potential for modding is already as good as it can be(being open-source and all).

 

[toroid]

annoyed that they haven't spent more time on giving me a purpose for using all these neat tools that they've spent years creating

It's all simple placeholder content. What an enormous unfulfilling waste it is to have this much potential without any structured gameplay system to challenge you. Even a series of standalone objectives like in Besiege would be fairly acceptable.

 

[Blaine]

Raapys toroid

I don't necessarily disagree with you guys and I'll say my piece in a while, but first check me out installing this sweet roof with the power of inertia.

 

[Mark.L.Joy]

I have a soft spot for the nerdy arms race every time there's an update.

 

[Ranselknulf]

Looks interesting,

I'm looking at space survival games right now. Considering space engineers, empyrion, and elite dangerous right now.

How's the combat and danger in the vanilla version of space engineers?

This game might be worth getting if there are any decent mods for it.

I found an article here that describes some of the mods, and I think the mod where you can be a space pirate seems like fun.

https://www.thegamer.com/best-space-engineers-mods/

 

[Magitex]

Looks interesting,

I'm looking at space survival games right now. Considering space engineers, empyrion, and elite dangerous right now.

How's the combat and danger in the vanilla version of space engineers?

This game might be worth getting if there are any decent mods for it.

I found an article here that describes some of the mods, and I think the mod where you can be a space pirate seems like fun.

https://www.thegamer.com/best-space-engineers-mods/

Space Engineers is quite good nowadays, provided you enjoy building things, but the combat and challenge is non-existent, even after years of development. There's nothing there as far as I can tell and even mods struggle to provide anything substantial.
I'm not sure if the military DLC made it any better, but PVP is probably okay if that's your thing. SE just comes down to bolting a bunch of guns to a brick and that is the extent of the depth this game provides. From The Depths is a far better choice for combat and gameplay loop, but lacks the polish and easy building system of SE (while obviously not much of a space game either).

Empyrion is also good, but it's quite low budget, and is particularly hard to get into initially. It probably has better combat than Space Engineers out of the box, at least once you progress beyond personal combat (which is nasty). It's not really inferior to SE in any respect honestly (except polish/UI) and features a much larger universe. I can't say any more about it, because I haven't been able to get back into the game for quite some time.

Avorion might be a better choice, at least for consistent combat challenge and combat design. It's theoretically simplistic, but you're always putting time into your ships to make them more powerful and efficient and it just doesn't get bogged down with pointless systems that have no effect in combat anyway.

Elite Dangerous is your go to if you want a game with flight mechanics and mastery of combat. It has actual good combat where systems matter, although these are really space planes and feel nothing at all like space combat. The combat scenarios in this game are however, hilariously limited for some reason, so it can feel repetitive after 60 or so hours if you're not good at diversifying what you do in the game.

Pick up which ever because you can't really go wrong with any at the end of the day, provided you understand SE/Empyrion are games where you spend the majority your time building and mining. SE in particular is build focused, but as you said there's a few cool mods to pad out combat but these don't strike at fundamental problems with combat. I wouldn't go into SE expecting great combat, but maybe salvaging aspects after combat appeal to you (or the explosions), that and the high level of polish SE has (at least compared to Empyrion).

 

[Ranselknulf]

Thanks for the comparison of games.

I enjoy building things and crafting, but I find that without an existential threat, a pure crafting game becomes boring faster than it should.

I did a quick search and didn't see any in-depth story/battle campaign mods which is a shame.

I think I'll try out one of the other games and keep an eye on space engineers to see if something more develops from it.

 

[Magitex]

Thanks for the comparison of games.

I enjoy building things and crafting, but I find that without an existential threat, a pure crafting game becomes boring faster than it should.

I did a quick search and didn't see any in-depth story/battle campaign mods which is a shame.

I think I'll try out one of the other games and keep an eye on space engineers to see if something more develops from it.

Yeah I have a similar problem. There are so many games out there where you create solutions to problems that just don't exist. You should still give SE a shot, I got at least 90 hours out of it and I was #1 hater of Space Engineers due to the lack of direction.

 

[Ranselknulf]

I put it on my steam wishlist. I'll wait for a sale to pick it up.