The Praedian Records

J.G. Phoenix

M.A.S.S. Builder: WIP 0.10.0 New Photo Mode Backgrounds

Short and sweet. New photo mode backgrounds.

M.A.S.S. Builder: WIP 0.10.0 Melee Attack Speed Ramping

Melee has never really been my thing in this game, and while it might never factor heavily into my gameplay, I’m still intrigued by the improvements. Maybe we’ll actually reach a point where melee’s comfortable enough for me to make well rounded builds instead of just pure gunners.

I grew up with Gundam though, so even a dedicated melee build designed by me would just be dual beam sabers and the like.

Space Engineers: Warfare Evolution Update + Dec#3 DLC

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

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.

Space Engineers: Union Carriers WIP

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.