Space Engineers – Space Engineers: Warfare Evolution & Decorative Pack #3 – Steam News
Hello, Engineers! It’s an exciting moment as we introduce you to the latest evolution in the world of Space Engineers – the Warfare Evolution update. Our first update that is released simultaneously on 3 different platforms – Steam, Xbox and now also on PlayStation!
I meant to cover this sooner, but I’ve been several kinds of busy. Anyway, here goes!
The Scenario
I’ll be honest, I couldn’t care less about a new scenario. I spend the overwhelming majority of my time in this game in my own private creative games. I can’t remember the last time I hopped on a server or tried out a base game scenario. That said, the new blocks are really good.
LCD Panels
One of the biggest standouts to me are the new LCD panels. These are going to eliminate a couple of old mods that I stopped using a while ago in favor of placing monitors on subgrids. Now even that won’t be strictly necessary on all my capital ship builds. Chef’s kiss for the new LCD blocks. Hell, you can actually combine them with small block subgrids for some interesting AV devices, too. It’s going to be interesting to see what people come up with.
LCD (?)
The holo LCD (kind of a misnomer) will be fun to work into some older builds. You can fly through the projection, so it makes great warning and guiding signage for freighters and carriers and the like. Definitely going to need to experiment with that one.
New Wheels and Thrusters
I’m also glad we’ve got some better wheel suspension and the new flat atmospheric thrusters. I rarely use atmospheric thrusters and I build rovers so rarely that I can’t remember the last time I tried that either, but blocks like these are definitely an incentive to give those kinds of builds another try sometime.
Scaffold Set
The scaffold set, while a welcome addition to the game, feels weirdly incomplete, and I’m not just talking about missing shapes and the like. I feel like we could use a few more variants, but I haven’t tested these extensively yet, and I might just not be making the best use of them. I’ll put a pin in this one and do a follow-up in a few days.
Solar Panels
The solar panels need some testing, because I don’t want to gush over them before I know what their limitations are. I’m mainly interested to see if they’re actually double-sided. If they are, they’re close to perfect. Otherwise, they’re seriously flawed, but from what I can tell, they’re probably like normal solar panels, just thicker, but they should work on both sides, which means you can have them flush with the surface paneling of a ship if you want to use them that way, which I do.
New Cockpit
Likewise, the cab cockpit is going to need some experimentation, but from what I’ve seen, it’s perfect for rovers. I want to find some fitting spaceship designs for it too, but at the very least the rovers and ‘truck builds’ are going to look a bit better going forward.
Furnishings
The last thing I want to specifically touch on are the inset blocks and decorative blocks. The entertainment corner and the inset bets are my favorites. I’m almost willing to go back and replace all the fake beds on my Union carrier with these, even at the ridiculous jump in PCU cost.
Closing
Anyway, that’s all I’ve got for initial impressions, but I’ll try to do a more thorough follow-up in a few days. Lately I’ve been focused on polishing up the Union carrier Yorktown, and building out the Adamant inspired Union light cruiser template, so that’s why things like the wheel suspension, atmospheric thrusters, and a few other things haven’t gotten much if any attention from me, yet.
M.A.S.S. Builder – WIP 0.10.0 Development Progress – Steam News
It’s the start of September now, where’s the 0.10.0 update? It’s been a long time and all that’s been posted are WIP. Those phrases are something that we’d like to talk about this week!
It looks like we’re finally closing in on the release of 0.10.0, but as yet, no release date. I’m guessing three to four weeks … I mean they’ve got to be running out of WIPs to stall for time with, right? There’s also the fact that they’ve apparently come down to ‘polishing,’ which usually means what it means for most creative endeavors: You’re done, you’re just not ready to pull the trigger yet.
Either way, I’ll make time for it when it releases.
I took a break from the Seydlitz to try and work on a few ships from some other factions. So far things are looking decent, but with ships like these, the PCU count is going to be a whole lot harder to deal with.
USS Yorktown WIP
The main one I’m focusing on is the Yorktown. Each carrier of this type is going to have some kind of niche, and Yorktown’s full fighter support. The port flight pod is the standard kind, but the starboard one was converted into a ‘fighter factory’ for spinning up and fielding new fighters as needed. It’s still a long way from finished, but I like the ship and how she’s coming along.
I had no idea it was going to be so hard to find the time and energy to post about it after actually playing Armored Core 6. I was pretty much going through the first chapter in the campaign right up until I went to sleep.
Anyway, here’s how it started.
And here’s how it’s going.
It’s funny how the doom chopper from the start of the game gave me way more trouble than the ‘super fast siege tank’, or the Juggernaut as they call it. Even once my backup bailed on me, staying on that thing’s flank wasn’t hard. The doom chopper always had the option to fly out past the mission area boundary and keep me stuck directly in front of it.
So far I’m really liking the game. The controls are definitely a point of praise. I picked them up in about twenty seconds and aside from the expected slipperiness that comes with piloting a mech with a lot of momentum behind its movements, the handling is excellent. The only thing I needed to change was the y-axis camera settings. Most people tilt the stick up to look up and down to look down, but I learned how to play nearly all 1st and 3rd person games with that reversed.
This isn’t a review or anything like that; I haven’t gotten nearly far enough to even consider judging the game as a whole. I already made that mistake with Code Fairy and there won’t be any repeats. Instead, until I feel like I’ve got the full scope of the game, its strengths and weaknesses as a game figured out, I’ll just be posting occasionally about my progress through the game and my AC customizations. It’s the same thing I wanted to do with M.A.S.S. Builder. I probably still will for that game, too.
While we’re reviewing the feedback of last week’s simple parts update, here are some new teasers from the upcoming missions in version 0.10.0!
You’d think 0.10.0 would be really close with how many posts I’ve made about it, but hey, however long it takes VD, as long as all this content drops with the update, I’ll be satisfied. I still have to do a bit of catching up since I lose my save with my old computer. Once Armored Core 6 releases I’ll be focusing on that for a time, but after that I’ll see about rebuilding my M.A.S.S. file and documenting the process.
As for the gameplay, it looks intense and hilarious as always. It’s kind of cartoonish how easily you can dodge most attacks by just hastily jogging to the left or the right. Still this kind of stuff will never not be fun. Hopefully VD’s ready to put out 0.10.0 soon, though hopefully not too soon now that AC6 is right around the corner.
