Setting up a planetary communications network

Hi there ! With some Space Engineers fans met on a gaming forum, we are planning to start a co-op PVE oriented game on our own private server, and we decided to start the game each guy on his own, with or own seperated factions, without excluding the option to join in a single faction in the future. So, depending on how far from each other will be our respective starting positions, we may have to establish an adapted ingame communications network with relays. We are planning to start on the Earth-like planet in a Star System game.

So I'd like to know if somebody has already experimented such a thing ? What is the best solution to establish a network of relay antennas on a planet, taking the planet's curvature into account ?

 

On Earth and big planets, probably easiest to put a satellite with a Laser Antenna in orbit and have everyone connect with Laser Antennas through them.

You might struggle to provide enough power for a laser antenna in the early game though. Connecting 200km away for example would take a constant drain of 2mW. It also takes 100 superconductors to build so you'll need to find lots of gold to build them for everyone.

On small moons like Earth's moon the 50km radius of a regular Antenna should cover pretty much the whole planet.

I'd go with building regular Antennas until you find lots of gold.

 

Well given the fact that we will probably try to establish this network before going to space, I was asking for a solution about a ground based network, in fact.

 

Then you need just regular antennas for each base. You don't need to account for curvature since they don't need line of sight. Just build them less than 50km apart so they can communicate with each other.

 

Thanks you for the answer. Do you know if different factions can communicate with each other through antennas ?

 

I'm pretty sure you can if you set the Antennas to "Share with all" as well as the Remote Controllers. I've used some mining scripts [PAM] with connecting to a laser antenna owned by another faction. I haven't tried regular antennas though.

Are you trying to communicate with for example writing stuff on LCD's in other bases or what's the idea?

 

Mainly for ingame tchat.

 

Yeah, I have no idea if it works for that. My guess would be no.
--- Automerge ---
I take my last post back. I just realized there is a "comms" tab in the game. 1000+ hours and never used that one. I think your antenna chat might actually work. I'm not sure how practical it is though.

 

Just use teamspeak/discord/mumble/irc or any similar system, the ingame chat is clunky and awkward at best. Even creating a steam group chat and using that via the overlay or separately is better.