Space Engineers – Space Engineers: Automatons – Steam News

Hello, Engineers! The time to “build your friends” is now! Explore a future full of automated and animated allies and enemies. For this Major update we have provided you with the tools you need to define a new era in automation. These new blocks empower your creativity like never before.

A little late on this one but I’ve been busy getting familiar with everything in the update+DLC. It’s mostly been work on the Admiral Hipper, but I’ve been testing some things along the way and for the most part, it’s pretty good. Anyway, let’s get right to it.

Automatons

Now we can build our friends! That sounds a bit weird, actually.

New Features Include:

• Event Controller & AI Blocks are here! (Grid AI Guide)
• Locked Landing Gear no longer takes control of the grids they are attached to
• Added Sun Tracking option to Custom Turret Controller
• Small grid “Ejector” block has been changed to Small Connector (including Connector functionality)
• Intel Arc GPUs Supported, minimal version of driver .4146
• Combat Improvements: (Combat Guide)
  • Target Lock Improvement
  • Turrets will now automatically engage a locked target if it is within the turret’s max range and Line of Sight (and the turret is not already engaging another target)
  • The “Forget Target” and “Copy Target” actions have been removed
  • New action: Focus Locked Target (replacing Copy target)
  • When triggering this action, turrets will prioritize the target that is currently fully target locked by the player
  • Added Grey Lead Indicator + “Out of weapon range” text indicator when you are out of range for the selected weapon
  • Increased Target Locking distance by 500m, totaling 2500m
  • Turrets: cycle subsystem in toolbar now shows the name of currently selected subsystem
• UI Improvements:
  • New overlay when manually controlling Turrets

We also got a good number of new blocks. Here are my favorites overall:

Event Controller

The Event Controller practically stole the show on this one. It’s useful on its own, but combining it with scripts (PC users), timer blocks, and sensors, I can’t even imagine what the average space engineer will be able to pull off soon, provided they’ve got the patience and the drive to make it.

In a nutshell, the Event Controller is a conditional ‘if then’ statement in a large box. Now it’s not perfect. My testing showed me a few things I’d like it to be able to monitor for that it simply doesn’t at the moment, but this is one of those foundational mechanics that Keen can add to over time, so hopefully community feedback will get some other things added.

Full Block Air Vent

Every time we get a block like this, that’s one more old mod we no longer have to rely on in our builds. That’s a good thing, and always will be. Once it’s vanilla, it’s forever. Perfect.

Emotion Controller (DLC)

This one I haven’t had time to do any serious testing with yet, but the concept is awesome, with plenty of room for expansion, both by Keen themselves, and modders.

Piping (DLC)

These are just fun. They can really make a ship look like a ship, whether they’re on the inside or the outside. It just gives everything that complex, interconnected look. Also add in redundant and incomprehensible to non-engineers. I love them.

The Admiral Hipper Update

So here’s the progress so far.

I’ve been trimming things down where possible, upgrading whatever I can, streamlining and simplifying any programs I can, and even getting rid of some I don’t need anymore. Easy Automation and Autopillock remain core programs for the ship, along with supporting scripts, but as an example, Aeyos’ lighting script was removed because I found a quick and easy way to get the mode change result I wanted using Easy Automation. I’ll be doing that with any script or ship parts I can.

Hopefully, if I just hunker down and focus on this, I should have the updated Hipper finished and ready for the workshop in a week, two if work is hitting me harder than usual.

We shall see ….