Gender Choice

Hello Devs, and my thanks for your awesome work!

I know there are lots of skins at the Workshop and, technically, male/female spacesuits have no difference. But I ask if there's a possibility to include a suit that is clearly a female (breasts/slim body), enabling character's sex choice to the user? Of course that the suit would have the same amount of clothing/equipments, and wouldn't be sexist (too curvy, exaggerated breasts and/or exposed hair/skin).

Source: https://www.nasa.gov/audience/foreducators/spacesuits/facts/facts-index_prt.htm

 

In my experience, "female" Space Engineers wear pink or purple suits. (Not that they have to, just that they tend to.)

That said, I have considered making skins that invoke the Latex Space Suits trope. Unfortunately I'm more an engineer than an artist, so that's been a nonstarter so far.

 

It is very likely that mechanical pressure space suits would be commonplace in the near future. I would very much like to see form fitting space suits which would go well with a gender selection option (maybe down the line also adjustable height and girth etc). I have never liked the idea of going out into space inside an inflated condom.

What bugs me immensely about the current space suit design, is how the heck can they carry around 400 L of cargo... (being able to carry much less would not be playable I must admit)

"Is that an asteroid in your pocket, or are you just glad to see me?" - Mae West

 

this is very low on the keen priority list and has been discussed at great length however you may have much better luck asking the modding community to design a female hard-suit they will probably be coming out in a few weeks if you ask

 

Generally speaking, your avatar is completely genderless. If anything, the gender is defined by the voice on the radio. And since our avatars don't have vocal noises(grunts, sighs, etc), that is entirely up to the user.
As for the "Latex Space Suit" concept, consider that our suits have to be able to handle prolonged space walks(Seriously, we're on a constant one), block out radiation, withstand tearing and micrometeor impacts, and somehow be shot and not immediately kill us in one hit. While the latex suit would make a good under-suit, it wouldn't quite work for the full suit.
I imagine gendering will be easier to discern if we ever get OUT of the space suit. So if we ever see environment controls and the like.
As for why we can carry 400L of cargo? It's a gameplay decision. Gameplay trumps "Realism", 100% of the time.

 

The fanservicey pressure suit is fine and all but it won't protect you from meteors or gunfire.
Which is what the bulky outer suit is for.

There's no need for genders in this game. Our astronaut is completely androgynous. Totally up to you what gender they are.
Sandra Bullock in Gravity didn't get a suit with boobs on it just because she was a woman.

-1
inb4 this turns into some social justice bullcrap

 

I don't see a point you cant tell the sex of a astronaut on a space walk unless you hear their voice so why should you in space engineers

 

my experience tells me this is going to be fun
personelly I'm all for character customization (albeit only in the long run).

 

Leonhardt, The OP specifically stated against the sexism to which you have just referred, no one had asked for boobs.

'Boobs' are not the defining characteristic that makes one female. Sandra bullock has a modest chest size, which wouldn't have been noticeable on a tight fitting space suit. Also, a different suit would not have worked in Gravity, as the film was set in the past.
In Prometheus, none of the female characters had noticeable breasts protruding out of their suits. Though, if you look at a series of photos of the suits with the faces covered over, you will be able to tell quite easily which is male, and which is female.


Tight fitting suits could be made with an under-suit which would provide sweat wicking, and thermal control, and the outer suit layers of a soft elastic padding which firmly presses against the body, then cross-weaved high tensile polymers, with an outer layer of nano-fibres which give a repellent outer surface. The suit would stay clean for a long period of time, and would have a decent service life. It certainly wouldn't be as good as 2 1/2 meters of steel though.

The small layer of air in the suit doesn't provide additional protection. The 'bulky' suit used by the Space Engineer is not that thick. A meteor or bullet would mortally wound a space engineer whether or not their condom is partially inflated.
Tearing would be more common with loose saggy space suits that would catch on the sharp unfinished metal corners while welding (which is why duct-tape is a common necessity in space), small cuts in a tight fit suit would leave a small superficial wound at the point of de-pressurisation, and would not de-pressurise the entire suit.

Radiation is a serious issue no matter what you wear with the sustained EVA (we have to assume that the medical station gives a high dose of 'magiconium' anti-radiation treatment).
Radiation protection from space suits is minimal, and there are other controls in place such as limiting time outside the space craft. If we want fun gameplay, then we will have ignore radiation for now.

There are pretty big varieties in size and shape within the genders, but relative shoulder, waist, hip ratios (among other things) are typically quite different between the two genders. The shape of our astronaut tends towards a masculine physique.


I doubt that there will be removal of space suits, or gender specific suits in the foreseeable future, there are far too many other things to focus on. But I would very much like to see these suits added in the game at some point, as a mod or anything.

 

More than that I would also like full control over the look of my space engineer, decals, armor, pirate stuff, navy stuff, ect.
+10 for more customization

 

Totally agree. The game must become more stable, and have less bugs/inconsistencies.

I'm not asking for boobs or a Barbarella-esque suit, just a suit that is noticeable by gender other than choosing pink/purple suits. Women is a growing public in gaming community and deserve special attention, otherwise we keep on the "by boys, for boys" mentality. But as stated above, this has a low priority considering all bugs/slowdown/crashes that the game still has.

 

Right, because as we know; it is impossible to play a game as a character that is a different gender than you.

Please go away troll. (You're not even an original troll; this has already been discussed in at least 2 threads I remember)

 

shouldn't men wear pink? after all pink is the colour of war and as we all know from our games, movies and other things war is manly

 

No, all of our suits should have an extra pair of oxygen tanks on the chest [SIZE= 13.3333330154419px]and wider hips for battery slots[/SIZE], regardless of gender.

 

No, but she did get a ridiculously long and unnecessary suit strip down scene that pretty much made up for the fact. *rolls eyes* Gotta love Hollywood...

On topic: I don't see any reason to make the space suit look different for males and females. That being said, I am a supporter of eventually adding atmospheres into the game (Please don't shoot me :eek). If that gets added, I would totally like a distinction to be made if suits can be removed. It's always irks me when games without lore or defined story lines require players to be ONLY male or ONLY female.

 

Genders are so not 2077, the era of absolute equality.

 

Well I certainly wouldn't complain. That's basically the whole point of form-fitting space suits in fiction, after all.

In interest of gender equality, though, I would request that anybody who does make sexy feminine Space Engineer skins also make sexy burly manly Space Engineer skins. Ladies need fanservice, too.

 

Looking at the character tag in the workshop mods, I can't help but notice... We have zombie character models, but not yet anything that resembles a feminine spacesuit.

Let me repeat this, so that future forum users posting from after modders have fixed this will know the truth: We embraced zombies in space before women in space. We are stuck here debating if feminine looking suits are too unrealistic while somehow animated space zombies just went right by.

 

To be fair, I haven't seen Space Engineers gain nearly the adoption rate among female players that I have with Minecraft. This makes some sense, as women tend to be exceptionally rare in Engineering schools, so I doubt a game called "Space Engineers" is likely to appeal to most women. You're not likely to get mods designed to appease a playerbase which is virtually invisible.

It turns out that in space, as on Earth, there just aren't enough female engineers.

 

We need to gather more data. A poll comparing & cross referencing the males/females & living/undead player bases.

 

To extend the parallel, more visible female representation can help that. The whole out of <em style="font-family: sans-serif; font-size: small; line-height: 15.6000003814697px;">Ageless-Faceless-Gender-Neutral-Culturally-Ambiguous-Adventure-Person</em> design is usually a fig leaf. People unconsciously gender in language and when you add a model to it (even one as supposedly androgynous as the Engineer) the problem only gets worse. You made a point earlier about colors, see again visibility. At least for me it's sort of an overcompensation, my normal mojo is a nice minty green.

The suit in SE is already likely a mechanical pressure suit, we can run in it for one thing. The suit cover (and don't be fooled by all the skin tight pictures of the MIT suit, etc. there will be a suit cover) has some flex to it and the jet pack therefore doesn't have the structural support of an EMU to work with. It's cinched down tight, so in other words the contours of the torso would be generally visible. There's far more relation to a modern flight suit than a modern space suit in it.

Of course there's also the elephant in the room, which is that the game isn't being developed in 2077 when the world is perfect blah blah blah. It's being made now. When the default of "gamer" is male, the character model is built on the bones of a legacy male soldier, and a female model topic on these boards is actually a matter of some contention.

 

That may have been true a few years ago, but the number of female engineers are greatly increasing. My firm has several female professional engineers, as well as even more women in engineering related positions. I'm also going back to school right now to get my own PE license, and there are a lot more women in my engineering classes than there were in the not-so-distant past. There are still more men, but that gap is definitely diminishing... at least in my area.

 

That is true, and once we start seeing more women playing Space Engineers, we're probably going to see an increase in appeal for women to play Space Engineers.

Well the one girl I've played with had a purple suit. I told her that we could both be red(We had both defaulted to choosing red. Because red is the best color, as everyone knows.), but she insisted on letting me have it.

Honestly, women engineers are my favorite women. There's something altogether more satisfying about a conversation with a woman who understands the math, science, and technical language than someone who just picked up a Liberal Arts degree.

 

How exactly have we determined that the engineer is a male? Last time I checked, it was impossible to remove the suit.

 

And here I was hoping the "social justice" virus would bypass Space Engineers.

 

But Leonhardt, if we don't allow woman models (which would look and sound the same, as they're completely androgynous and have no voice) then the terrorists win! Do you want the Russian Nazis to take over the world?!

 

Oh yes, because that is just so inconvenient. :rolleyes:

 

Ok, so we're taking this one seriously now....


Game development aspect:
The reason the vanilla game doesn't provide us with a female space suit model choice is very likely the same reason the vanilla game doesn't provide us with any model choice, for anything.
Recently Keen chose to introduced the ability to mod specialized material processors with the arc furnace. The base code to incorporate all the other ones was already there, modders have used it to release complete sets and individual versions of specialized material processors, but the dev's didn't - instead they incorporated the basic element, allowed the community to expand on it, and moved on to a next core feature. While this might not seem directly relevant, I think it provides for a good example of what to expect for the duration of the alpha: While they are building up the game's depth, the mod community is left to fill the game's breadth. Until there's some sort of character customization system (if that's even in the long term goals), the diversity of character models, and the diversity of any model, is going to be left for the modders. When (and if) they introduce an in-game character/suit customization systems (Something like this perhaps), gender variations can be expected.

Realism aspect:
You have being told that current astronaut suits are realistic, you've being lied too. While they might be realistic to survive, they can not be realistically mass produced or commercialized. Current space suits costs are huge, and only justifiable because most of the organizations using them aren't particularly economically oriented to began with. Economically, the idea of everyone wearing the space suits of the kind we have today is about as realistic as giving every farmer a full suit of armor would have being in the medieval period - you could physically do it, but you can't build a society to realistically support doing it. Form fitting space suits aren't a fashion statement, they are an attempt to make space suits affordable using established manufacturing techniques &amp; materials. If you have a better idea of how to do that, contact MIT (Seriously, I don't want to have to loose weight before going into space, go email them, I'm waiting).

 

>Form Fitting Space Suits aren't a fashion statement

They most certainly are. Don't make up nonsense just so you can dress like a girl.

 

Well, right now we're dressing like millionaires. And anyway - we were talking about SE. What me and your mom do in the privacy of her own bedroom is not up for discussion.