Expanding the Survival Game

I've been following the space engineers development for a long time now. Back before planets, and even before gatling turrets actually worked. I've seen a lot of progress get done on this game, many new blocks were added, etc. Very cool and very impressive. But I just can't seem to bring myself to really delve into this game for several reasons. The downright silly bugs that come and go and usually stay for long times (landing gear bug, things falling through the ground, etc), and the atrocious survival game, which is the topic of this thread.

Also, please keep in mind that I'm a solitary type of player. I tend to play alone in singleplayer with AI bots to shoot at. This thread is mostly about the singleplayer survival experience.


(1) "Acid Rain":
It all started with creative mode. You could build ships and crash them into each other. A spaceship crash simulator. But eventually they started adding an actual game; ores to mine, block welding, guns, etc. Players started having fun shooting and crashing into each other for a while.
But in order to actually have a survival game, there needs to be an environment to actually survive against. Meteors were added at some point...

Boy, let me tell you what I think about METEORS! They're terrible. From top to bottom, not one little iota of it is good. There is no counterplay with them, no player interaction or game here, just weathering attack after attack. Guns can protect you for some time, but that just ends up being a magnesium drain. Not to mention the endless craters accumulating around your base like the sun freaking hates you in particular. The reason I call it "acid raid" is because it's like having a sweet ass sports car and wanting to drive it, but every 5 minutes you got ACID RAIN ruining everything. You got to wax it up good and proper to protect it before you could have some actual fun...

Sure, you might easily be able to mine a sizable bunch of magnesium and make enough ammo to not have to worry about it for a long time, but that is just a chore and it puts you on a CLOCK. Just knowing that my base is only safe from damage for a limited time bothers me. I don't know about you guys, but I like to take my sweet time in video games, I like to smell the e-flowers, to breath in the atmosphere without having the thought of my ammo supply eventually running out breathing down my neck. Sure, meteorites can be dealt with, but at that point how is it FUN? It's an annoying CHORE that you have to deal with before anything else, or else you get random, unavoidable holes appearing on your base and builds.

THANKFULLY there is an option to turn off meteors completely, and I make sure to vehemently smash the "OFF" option as hard as my poor mouse button can handle every time a start a new world. Though, I truly believe that the best and easiest thing to do for this game is to just delete all the code involving meteors for the sake of new players trying out the game for the first time. I'm 100% sure that it would do nothing but good for this game, and I don't say that often. Or just make the default be OFF I guess. I know, I know, it may feel wrong deleting large chunks of code, I'm sure it's setting off a bunch of alarm bells in your head, Mr.Dev. If it would put your mind at ease, you could always just move it to a flash drive, and then you could place it in a nearby trash can. That way you'll always know that the code still exists somewhere in the world and you could always go back to it in the event that you lose all your marbles.


(2) Monsters and Enemies:
And MOBS. There's 2 types in this game, the AI pirate drones and the cyberdogs/spiders. In a way, they're a bit like meteors as well but a bit more fun; still a constant stream of piss that drains your magnesium, but not as bad. There's combat and explosions and dead drones and satisfying wrecks (preferably the other guys' wrecks). With the drones, there's actual counterplay; you can attack the base that they're coming from and destroy the antenna, or move out of its range. Bam, no more drones. Cyberdogs/spiders, less so.

Let's look at Minecraft for a quick minute.
1) A monster will only spawn in dark areas. So usually outside during the night, in dark forests, and in unlit caves. There is predictability in where danger will be. - In SE, the dogs spawn all the damn time from all angles, day or night.
2) When a monster spawns in minecraft, it doesn't immediately charge the player. There are conditions that must be met first. An AGGRO RANGE. The player can avoid danger before it spots them. - In SE, dogs spawn and charge the nearest player, regardless of line of sight, range or whatever. They all see you and they're comin for ya right now.
3) In minecraft, safe areas can be made by placing tons of torches down in an area. A safety zone, peace of mind. - In SE, there is no way to make safe areas other than leaving the planet.
4) In minecraft, there is only one monster that can blast a hole in your fortress of solitude, and it's the infamous creeper (duh). But even then it will only explode when near a player. - In SE, everything can eat through whatever walls you put up.

What space engineers NEEDS is a way to truly make a safe, no-combat area for your base, and times that are safe for exploring, and ways to hide from the enemy. There needs to be wildlife and monsters, but let players be able to avoid them within reason. Give the option of giving a wide birth around the danger or something, a stealth module of some sort. The behavior and spawning conditions of monsters need to be elaborated on. Constant unavoidable combat gets old FAST, and "magnesium drains" are NOT FUN or ENGAGING gameplay mechanics.


(3) Progression:
First, I want you all to take a look at a game that I think does progression PERFECTLY: Terraria! In that game, you start out as a dinky little slow guy digging around in the world. But at the end game, you're a flying, teleporting, super-wizard fighting literal terrifying celestial GODS. The whole game plays like the dragonball series, where your character gets progressively stronger and stronger while at the same time your enemies get just as strong as well. TLDR: You start weak fighting weak stuff and end up REALLY STRONG fighting RIDICULOUSLY STRONG enemies.

And most importantly, there are MILE STONES. Bosses need to be fought one by one, mostly in a certain order, before getting stronger and progressing further into the game. There's always another GOAL for the player to work towards. More power yet to be gained.

In Space Engineers, there simply is no progression. You are thrust into the hostile world, weathering the constant stream of piss that is meteorites or dogs or spiders or drones. Most of which are only stopped by changing server settings... Where's the goal for the player to work towards? Explore some Easter egg on mars? visit the alien planet? And do what there? There is no real goal here, just endless survival in the piss-filled environment. Once you make yourself a base, mine a bunch of various types of ore, and make yourself some ships and stuff, what next?

SE needs goals, milestones. Something to direct the player towards something. The most obvious way would be to limit access to certain blocks and have the player unlock them as they play. For instance, a player could start out with only knowledge of light armor blocks, atmospheric thrusters, no access to large ship building, no turrets, no programmable blocks, no jump drive, ETC. All of these would have to be unlocked or discovered by fighting and destroying "bosses" (so to speak, not quite literally) or invading certain facilities, or through whatever other means required. The point is, there is some engineering or (hopefully) combat related CHALLENGE that the player has to face in order to progress and become more powerful. And it doesn't necessarily need to be ONE way to progress, there could be multiple ways of unlocking your parts based on how you like to play.

This would do a number of things:
1) Newer players wont be overwhelmed by all the blocks they have access to, and as they play they slowly learn what each thing does as they unlock it. This would act as a sort of tutorial for new players.
2) It would make for unique challenges and problems to be overcome at every stage of play while not having access to everything. Unlocking blocks would create easy solutions to current problems and invoke new design ideas, all while giving the player a new tangible goal to work towards. Fun is being had.

ALL IN ALL, I think this big area is where Space Engineers can really make some much needed progress towards their game. It seems like right now the dev team doesn't really have a big project that they're working on and are at a loss of what to focus on right now. They've released planets (my mind was blown when this happened, btw), and they made all the models GORGEOUS. And now they're giving us... cut-scene editors? ...Alright. How about we elaborate on the survival/progression game now? That's definitely a place that could use a lot of work.

 

About the meteor rain, I never use it in a survival game. Because they are not set correctly, it comes too often and I heard that turrets don't stop them anymore or they do a pretty bad job. in my opinion they should be very rare event to happen, and perhaps for a specific type of planet. I also agree that spiders/wolf should have to spawn with a criteria, condition, instead of a random clock and in whatever place.
There is a progression in the game, kinda. But I agree that it needs more game mechanics and fun factor. The idea of blocked blocks/tech that you have to research or discover was suggested 100000 of times and it is already in the game, I mean, it was done already a few years ago in a sample mission made by Keen, and also as a mod. But it was never implemented again, even that mod didn't have much impact or popularity. It is more like slowing down even more the progression. And anyways, once you have everything you are in the same situation, nothing to research/find/learn, so...
Maybe adding rare materials to build specific tools, upgrades, or parts for very high tech blocks. And this materials are only find in planets with acid rain, meteor rain, hostile creatures, environmental hazards. Or even in an asteroid belt where solar flares are very common, pirates, etc. And here you have your goals, your challenge. But only if you want those upgrades or special blocks, and not by forcing you to have

 

Well said @Alb.

Personally, I think that SE should look to Kerbal Space Program for guidance, more so than Terraria, Minecraft, etc, as KSP is all about building vehicles to overcome progressively harder obstacles. Of course, in stock KSP, there is no fighting, and I know I like that part in SE. So the pirates can stay...

 

a reason to explore would be a great thing.......

or some sort of machine that gives you random missions based around engineering....... go build X on/at planet/XYZ and it has to have XYZ

 

@beelzerob, I've never played kerble space program so I have no idea. My idea of progression for SE would give the player multiple ways of unlocking parts or progressing. You could do it through combat or through doing some puzzle-like thing, or through some sort of research system. Then for the next unlock you could change it up if you wanted. If combat is proving too dificult, you could try other ways...

@Forcedminer, I really don't think randomly generated tasks would be fun. There needs to be two things: 1) a challenge, and 2) a tangible reward. Something that the player didn't have before. Something that makes them better or allows for more complex builds.

Well you're definitely not wrong there. Terraria absolutely has that "problem." After destroying the moonlord a few times and getting the top tier god-toys, there is suddenly nothing more to do or progress towards. The game has been beat.

But that doesn't make it a bad game. That doesn't mean the progression is flawed. There's only so much that you can do, only so much power and toys you can give the player before there's just nothing left to give.

Any progression system will always have this problem of being finite. There will always be an end, or repetitivness, no matter what anyone can come up with. But again, it's not really a bad thing.

It's about the journey. The path to success. Terraria's journey is LONG and intense, and yes, finite. Space engineer's journey is incredibly short and could be expanded upon. I think a proper progression system would do this game a lot of good.

 

Ya, this had been said lots of times (mainly by me)...every survival game had a point where survival is assured, and thus the challenge is largely gone. Like @Alb said, it just comes too easily in SE.

 

While I agree with you in what you wrote about enemies on the ground, the need for a possibility to avoid them completely if you chose so, and some safe area where you can feel secure and they can't eat through to, I oppose the need of goals. I like that I am not continuously pushed to do this or that for the sake of 'progress' but can decide for myself what I do (I am the single player type as you). For those who need always instructions and getting kicked in the rear for finding a way of advancing, missions will be fine. They take them and follow the premises. Others don't take the missions and should be left in peace, just building stuff to their heart's content.

Yeah, that's it. I scetched something similar somewhere else in this forum weeks ago. Once you feel ready you set out on exploration, you steer your spaceship or a fleet into deep space and the program generates encounters and planets on the way as you proceed, partly using material published in steam workshop. There is a huge potential not tried yet in alien species modders could design for use in the game - as opponents. Or you in their role. Up to now all we did and saw was earth-like or sort of.

But if you don't want to explore, you stay where you are and ... see above... however, you still could be visited in return by some other ship in the way pirate ships enter your area right now. If you chose so in game settings.

 

I am a 62 year old gamer that started way back in 1984 (geez, has it really been that long) with the genre of RPGs that entailed fighting dragons, fighting super-villains, and even adventuring in space -- D&D, Champions, and Traveller. When Bioware came out with Neverwinter Nights, gamers were presented with a 'toolset' that enabled a program strong enough to create mods big enough to imagine whole worlds that could be built, all at your fingertips.
But my biggest love has been (and always will be) the sci-fi genre that I was amazed by when I first saw "2001, A Space Odyssey". I was 12ish. Since then movies and books have fueled that fire over the years.
So last February I come across this program at a Goodwill store, and I thought I had found a goldmine. I could build SPACESHIPS!!
I have not had the opportunity to witness the development of the program to be disappointed with anything.
So let me ask one question, when everyone else got this, were you thinking that it was going to evolve into an RPG at some point?
I have been reading a lot of posts that make me think that people would love nothing more than for Keen to gravitate in this direction.

My 2 cents worth, you can keep the change.

 

Wasn't SE involving role playing from the very first moment you started to build in ego perspective? Plus, in survival mode, having to deal with shortages and the need of ice/processed oxygen for life support, which is also a strong role playing thing?
It doesn't have to contradict the engineering focus.

 

Touché.

 

Yea, I actually encounter this "problem" playing Astroneer. Once you discover, research and build everything there is no need for me to go out and explore. And adding hundreds of more researching and buildings will not going to help the gameplay imo. Perhaps it will be fun while going through all this searching, researching, but, yea, there is nothing more to do after that, at least in Astroneer.
Although, the environmental hazards does add, more immersion at least, to the game. If you do it well, not like the meteorite rain every 5 minutes, or zombie wolves attack... I think the spiders are ok, because they come from under the ground.

 

I loved neverwinter nights 1 and had a ton of fun making crappy small maps that were horribly imbalanced or OP weapons that would on hit kill alignment: then i'd add all alignments.
enjoyed play a sorcerer because their spell state was charisma which meant they were awesome at talking looks awesome and everyone generally loved talking to them.

as for SE....
anything that gives the player a reason to go explore after making a base and station i would adore.
its great being able to build a ship and all....but once you're happy with your large ship/station....what then? its kinda like you reached the end of character creation.

if spawning random dungeon style stations or bases both in space and on planets that contain something of use would be great.
the planets are great...but they get boring fast because theres nothing really to do...no real reason to go explore other than get some ore.....make ship....get some more ore....make bigger ship....and also that fancy block update broke all those planets made before it...

 

Well, I still am new at this and just today read up on programming code - saw "void Main" at the beginning and thought that I could apply this in a similar way that I use when scripting NWN. Time to do some more delving into what's possible.

 

Not RPG, no. I was expecting a construction/engineering/survival game. The latter still very much pending but they're working on that apparently.

 

Well I've been doing a whole lot of thinking on the subject of a progression system for this game. I've decided to start working on a custom scenario with special, self-enforced rules!
Details in this thread I just made!:
https://forum.keenswh.com/threads/wip-survival-scenario-w-special-rules-unlocking-blocks.7394094/

Basically, I'm coming up with a scenario (using earth easy-start as a template) and custom designing a bunch of pirate bases, each with mostly-unique "win conditions". After defeating a base, you "unlock" some blocks. More details in that thread obv.

It's still heavily in the WIP stage. Head on over to that thread to help me with ideas and such.

 

Wonder how everybody seems to see a loss of perspective and motivation "after their big ship or station" (is completed). When you are not short of creativity, you will never stop developing alternative designs, special purpose vessels and what else. I don't get tired of it.
--
Right now I have an idea. Wonder if I should open a thread about that. Here it is, and it sure would add "end play motivation" to those who see an "end play" somewhere (I still don't) and lack motivation "after their big ship or station":

I propose a game feature which would allow you to build structures for your opponents. That is, pirates (or factions you will invent, alien races, whatever).
You would assign those stations and ships to them and determine where and how often they would spawn in your world. Needs an AI which can use a great variety of builts so it feels real. Not just sailing through the scene.
This way you assign yourself tasks tailored to your needs and capabilities.
No more "end game" feeling. this could go on for ever, especially when you can also invite human participants/factions into this world in multiplayer. The challenges were free to design.
--
However, I personally prefer my other idea which was about setting out into open space and having randomly generated encounters all the way with varying planets and ships spawn from steam workshop. Could be combined, though.

 

There are 2 types of game modes in this game. Creative and survival. In creative, you can do whatever you want, all your legos with no restrictions and all your imagination.

Survival adds restrictions, blocks require resources, and your character can die. There's a challenge, and a hint of progression thanks to the resource system, in that there's a shortage of platinum on planets and thus the goal is to leave into space to gain rare materials.

I am saying in this thread that the progression in survival mode is very short and lacking. Once you get yourself situated and stable, ie; a big ship and lots of guns, etc, there isn't much else to do other than wandering around blowing stuff up every now and then. There's next to zero progress from there. I suppose you could design more ships for various purposes. But the challenge quickly disappears.

I'm saying that the progression needs to be lengthened. An easy way to do that would be to unlock blocks through playing. This would do multiple things (if done well):
1) new players won't feel overwhelmed by the number of blocks
2) unlocking blocks could serve as a sort-of tutorial during play. No need for a separate tutorial mode.
3) unlocking blocks periodically would invoke new design ideas for every new "mission."
4) The player feels they are becoming stronger (more access to blocks) and progressing.
5) There is a fun and unique challenge every step of the way. Different from early game to late game.

In order to have progression in a game, you need two things: a challenge, and a reward that the player didn't have before (ie; not resources or other trash loot. something like unlocking new stuff!)

And finally, a progression system will always end at some point. Once you unlock everything and beat all the laid out challenges, you're right back to square one. But it's not a bad thing. It's about the journey, and right now it's really short.

Honestly, I don't understand how you don't understand this. But in any case, you have found a way to have tons of fun in SE in your own way, and that's fine. Some of us like the feeling of accomplishment and progression through challenge, and need to be told where to go next.

Please check out that thread I made and help me expand on it! I just posted it and now I'm fearing I posted it in a dead part of the forum. Just need to bounce some ideas with some other people.

 

Easily, and it wouldn't take much. Just stabilizing multiplayer to handle alot more players (allowing the DS software to use multiple cores) and giving DS's a ton more utilities or API hooks (more mods) for stuff like chats and protections for regions.

When I played Minecraft back in 2010-11, I didn't buy it for the building part or even survival. But a group of friends were playing on a RP server. That server had anywhere from 100 to 400 players on at one time. All playing different roles and apart of different city-states. Full fledged economy that ran on skills of individuals (farmers made food, smiths made weapons and armor, miners-lumberjacks gathered resources, and soldiers specialized in swords, axes, or bows) as well as a fully player controlled geo-political system.

I have no reason to believe that both Space and Medieval Engineers couldn't do the same thing. In fact the mods used on the MC RP server simply were grief protections, moderator/admin tools (to aid players with glitches or adjudicate disputes), limited skills, and a MMO style chat system (/say for local, /yell for small region, and /whisper to send private messages).

If we had tools or methods to make those tools into mods. The limits of SE and ME is on the players and those that host servers' imaginations. There really isn't a limit.

 

Well, I bought SE when it came out. It was just a Lego box that I knew would grow into something bigger. I have over the 1000 hour mark and will never complain that I didn't get my money's worth. SE is great in many areas. It is fantastic as a simple simulator for spaceships and as a Lego game.
It could be a good rpg.
It could be a good pvp game.

I know merak said he wanted a Lego game with physics just in the context that the player could predict what would happen if he did x. Things like rotors and pistons and planets were never part of that vision. The players have been the drive for all of these things. If enough players really want a rpg experience I think keen can do it. A simple system like KSP would work, goals unlock new larger or more efficient engines and parts. It really comes down to how many people want that. The game currently has surpassed what they set out to deliver imo.

I think a rpg mode could be added to the game in a few months of work. Of course then people would go nuts wanting food and other features to flush it out. It would certainly evolve to be a completely different game.

 

* Delete meteors.
* Give an agro-range for wolves so players can avoid them if they want. (And change them back to robos, why did they even)
* In general, somehow make it possible for the player to make a "safe" area, safe from constant spider/wolf attacks.

Then you can add some rpg elements. Unlocking blocks seems like a no-brainer. Maybe make it possible to craft cyberwolves or breed spiders or grow them in vats, so we could have some easy to produce companion(s) to protect us. Let us harvest wood for something. Wood blocks in space would be funny. And how about some other (cyber)animals? Cuber-deer and the like. Maybe some npc humans too...