What is this
Every Thursday, I will share a dev diary about what we’ve been working on over the past few weeks. I’ll focus on the interesting challenges and solutions that I encountered. I won’t be able to cover everything, but I’ll share what caught my interest.
Why am I doing it
I want to bring our community along on this journey, and I simply love writing about things I’m passionate about! This is my unfiltered dev journal, so please keep in mind that what I write here are my thoughts and will be outdated by the time you read this, as so many things change quickly. Any plans I mention aren’t set in stone and everything is subject to change. Also, if you don’t like spoilers, then don’t read this.
Space Engineers 2
Construction Stages & Construction Particles are coming together nicely for the VS2 Planets and Survival update. It’s one of those features that really makes the game feel alive – watching a block grow step by step, with sparks and dust flying as you weld it into existence.
It’s still work in progress, but I can already imagine how much more immersive survival will feel once this is in your hands.
Verdure’s landscape is also constantly improving. The version we have now is almost unrecognizable compared to what it looked like just six months ago. Terrain shapes, colors, vegetation density – all of it has been improved on again and again. Every time I load into Verdure, I notice something new: a ridge line that feels more natural, a valley that catches the morning light just right, or a forest that feels alive instead of just “placed.”
It’s amazing to watch a planet go from a rough concept to something that feels like a real place you could explore and call home.
And here is the planet Verdure, with its amazing cloud formations and the glowing sunset line as seen from space.
Reactor destruction particles are shaping up nicely:
VS3 Water Update
Most of the SE2 team is currently focused on VS2: Planets and Survival, but a smaller group – our Water team – is already deep into VS3: Water, which we aim to release a few months after VS2 launches. Fingers crossed.
I want to share a bit about how planning works in our team.
Before we start work on any update, we create a high-level vision document. This outlines:
- The goals for the update
- Key performance indicators (KPIs) – such as target retention, meaningful playtime, and session length
- The audience we want to reach
For VS2, the focus is on players who enjoy real gameplay challenges and rewards, while also being clear internally whether we’re designing primarily for SE1 veterans or also bringing in new mainstream players.
For VS3: Water, our KPI is to introduce a completely new medium – water – that opens new gameplay possibilities in engineering, exploration, and mining, along with fresh challenges and rewards.
Once the vision is set, we break down the required tasks for each discipline:
- Designers – Documentation, level design, gameplay tuning
- Programmers – Gameplay features, engine changes
- Art – New blocks, particles, animations, environment assets
- Sound – New audio effects, underwater sound behavior
Each team lead estimates the man-days needed for their tasks. This often triggers back-and-forth discussions to clarify scope and cut low-value work, so we invest time in high-impact features – things that are fun, novel, essential, or improve performance. We then check if we have the manpower to meet the deadline and lock the plan.
The VS2 project plan has been locked for about nine months, with only small additions two months ago – such as the Colonization Map, Colonization Progress, Contracts, and Encounters – to extend meaningful gameplay beyond the first minutes and give players long-term goals.
The VS3 plan was recently updated and is now being finalized. Much of the Water team’s work was scoped long ago, but we’ve refined the details and adding tasks for the other teams:
- Swimming animations
- Submarines – fully sealed against water both visually and physically
- Byblos – a new water-rich planet
- Pressure simulation at certain depths
- New blocks – pumps, ballast tanks, turbines, etc.
- Water audio – splashes, underwater muffling, walking in water
- Water-specific missions
- Ore distribution in aquatic environments
- Buoyancy and boat movement on the surface
- Water system optimizations to ensure good performance
We’re also adding non-water features to make VS3 even more exciting. While water itself is a huge addition – a completely new environment to interact with – we’re also working on:
- Survival improvements (production system, oxygen, block wrappers, area welding)
- New welder and grinder blocks
- Weather effects
- And more (I actually can’t share everything, because we are working on the plan as we speak)
Important disclaimer: The above is a snapshot of my current thinking, not a promise. Plans can change right up until release. I share this to keep communication open – not to “sell” you something in advance.
Let me know what you think about any of this.
I read all your comments – it’s one of the best parts of my life.
First off: You plan regarding VS3 sounds amazing and the construction stages are looking great!
I have two thoughts regarding this weeks blog post.
First: I really hope that a damaged reactor is actually a hazard, so if your reactor is damaged (while running), you need to wear a special hazmat suit in order to avoid contamination and degration of health.
Second: I know, the environment is still under development and you have shared some insights in experiments with new grass, but I think currently this is the main thing that needs to be improved in order to make the landscape feel natural and realistic. Trees are looking great, the voxel terrain is looking great, just the grass looks fake and boring. But I am sure, you will improve on that.
Yeah, I agree; the grass in the forest scenes has way too many flowers and since it is the same texture across different forests/meadows it looks kinda samey. This’ll probably be improved/changed later of course but there doesn’t need to be flowers everywhere.
I hope weather will impact waves, and that we’ll have bigger waves during storms and in general bigger waves in “open oceans”
https://youtube.com/shorts/ybvVgAAfFUQ?si=kv2SI1LsnTCgjAg6
I know it’s not tre focus, but that would be cool
Yeah it would be awesome to have some risk for a reactor considering how powerful it is, so that it’s not just free power after acquiring a steady uranium supply.
The truss feels too dense, but the other construction stages look good. Verdure looks great as always. I really like the way plants only grow on the top of those rocks. I don’t mean that I don’t like plants growing normally on the sides of mountains, but that type in particular feels cool. The damaged reactor effects look funny but scary.
The VS3 plan sounds solid. I can’t think of anything more. Have you considered making bubbles and steam from water when a hot ship touches it? I’m hopeful that the possible new grinder and welder (and maybe drill) will be made. I recommend the team to borrow a grinder from a friend and try to use it, maybe you will understand what I don’t like about the current design. It’s so scary to have both handles in the same axis in a way that makes it really easy for it to rotate in the normal plane to it.
My last complaint of the day is that area welding has a lot of potential to make welding too easy and remove the need for complex factory systems, so please don’t make it too powerful. Thanks for writing these blog posts and for bearing with me.
Area welding might be for the smaller/detail blocks, I doubt that area welding will be a complete cheat. I do hope that we do get something like laser mining/welding as the most advanced/power consuming and expensive endgame equipment. I quite enjoyed the concept in that one laser beam excavation mod for SE1.
Pressure simulation, does that mean that builds, submarines mainly, can be damaged by high depth or even destroyed?
Reminds me of Subnautica where you have to make pressure compensator so you can go even deeper.
What if I create a world in V2 and then the water update comes out? Will I have to create a new world?
I am imagining my engineer drilling a tunnel under a lake. One dig too many and the whole lake will pour in and flood the tunnel. Will there be any indicator of how close I am to the body of water in my tunnel?
You guys are working hard, much appreciated.
Honest and curious questions about SE2 volumetric water.
As a basis for these questions, I assume that water is:
– Finite and not fixed, since it occupies a volume (volumetric) and can be extracted through pipes or moved according to terrain cuts (voxels).
Therefore:
1. Water Consumption
Believing that the purpose of using pipes to transport water could lead to its consumption for hydration of engineers, crops, hydrogen and oxygen extraction, and aiding in the refining of some minerals, I imagine that these processes lead to the actual consumption of water, increasingly reducing its quantity. Is water truly consumable, decreasing its quantity with use?
2. Is there some kind of fixed water spawn that renews eternally (or periodically) from a certain point?
3. Is the game intented to implement part of the water cycle? Something like evaporation and precipitation, either to move water from one place to another by evaporating small bodies of water or in warmer biomes and carrying it to more humid biomes, or perhaps simply increasing the amount of water in a region with the help of rainfall (perhaps even generating small puddles =P)?
4. Bonus Question: Will there be a natural waterfall? Or will it only be implemented with pumps and plumbing? =P
*Note: Sorry for my English. It’s not my native language.*
While I can’t speak for the developers, I assume that water will be consumable (similar to stone) but either in such large amounts that it never fully drains, or that some systems — such as aquifers, rain collectors, or other atmospheric phenomena (rain, water condensers) — will gradually refill the water to be used again.
It is also likely that waterfalls will have to be artificial (unless they do some stuff behind the scenes), could be something that only happens during rainfall (or some time after).
I recall them mentioning in one of their blogs or teasers that water would be treated something like how it is in Minecraft, i.e. water exists in large sources which can be siphoned off to create new water, but to save on computation resources the main source remains largely unchanged regardless of how much water is taken from it.
That might have just been a snapshot in time, and it could end up being different, but I could easily see them doing something like that since otherwise the computational overhead of tracking so much water is going to be massive.
I really hope natural waterfalls are in the game! Would make for some beautiful scenes
I hope that finding ore doesn’t involve looking for subtly discolored patches of ground like it did in SE1. There should be a better way to know where ore will be located, whether it’s the presence of indicator rocks on the surface or some other mechanism, but colored patches of ground you have to turn off the grass rendering and fly up half a kilometer to see ain’t it.
Something like Taking soil samples that indicate levels of elements in the ground could be a good alternative. bonus for realism :p
Hi Marek. I have been playing space engineers since it first released over 10 years ago and I’m closely following the development of SE2.
I wanted to suggest that along side all these new systems you guys are adding, you consider adding another layer to the current building system. That being compute.
Assuming SE2 carries over the SE1 combat system, it’s very easy to place a billion turrets on a ship and create an ugly but effective doom crawler. I think that a good way to help reduce this behaviour and add another gameplay loop would be adding compute.
Make each block but particularly automated weapons require computer blocks. These blocks would need to be kept safe from damage and you may even have compute blocks for specific tasks.
Anyways I hope my suggestion is useful and thanks again for creating one of my favorite games of all time!
That is a great idea! It think that you would still need to have some basic functions without a compute block.
The way I would like to see this is: (no compute bloc ) 800m range and 60% accuracy. (Tier 1 compute block) 1000m range and 70% accuracy with the capability to change shell type. (Tier 2/prototec? compute block) 1200m range and 80% accuracy with the capability to change shell type and it can also work for multiple guns of the same kind (1 compute block for 2/4 guns)
Not definitive in any way but something like this would be a refreshing experience compared to SE1
And would severely nerf the weapon spam “tactics”.
I came up with two ideas that are adjacent to your idea. Every grid needs a physical Computer Core block for certain functions to work. They could tie into the hacking system. You hide your Core block or place it behind heavy armor, or it has a special heavy duty shroud around it that takes longer to grind than doors. If the Core is disabled by being ground down, then hacking the grid is very fast. If it’s still up, then you’ll have to hack into the system from another block to gain control of the grid, which could take minutes depending on how good your Core’s firewall is.
Here’s a balancing mechanism I thought of for automated turrets. Make them even heavier compared to their fixed counterparts with a high mass but low HP component for starters. Secondly, make them use a ton of power when they’re actively tracking a target without a player controlling them. That’s semi-realistic since AI targeting takes a lot of compute. The effect will be that you have to have very beefy power systems to run dozens of weapons on your ship. And if you lose a reactor or two, the issue gets compounded.
I have a feeling that any “rock paper scissors” balancing design for automated turrets versus missiles versus static weapons will easily be sidestepped by loading your ship up with automated turrets. That is unless there are engineering challenges that come with using so many automated turrets, like my balancing ideas above.
The problem with balance is that the solutions people raise to these issues become arbitrary as added by Keen.
To avoid this, add the engineering properties to the weapons. What do I mean?
Add heat, stability, and durability to your designed weapons. As you use them, it builds up. A logical system to prevent gamey solutions.
Stability (MOA on accuracy of impacts and controllability of the entire weapon), heat (ammo type and rate of fire), and durability (ability of the weapon to repeatedly handle the stresses imposed on it by your mounting type, barrel design, and ammo size and fire rate).
All of this sounds great, I’m looking forward to planets and water.
A bit of feedback for the water ore deposits: You could make certain rare ores appear in coral like structures under certain depths. That’s somewhat realistic considering real life deep sea minding, would give a good incentivise to explore the seas, and probably just look nice. It also would be a nice engineering challenge; you basically can just dive there (don’t have to mine deep), but your boat needs to stand against the pressure. You could pre-make interesting voxel structures and then place them under water like you placed boulders in SE1.
The amount of build stages in the blocks is amazing, it honestly makes me sad that I much prefer to play in sandbox. Maybe you could add a toggle option when placing things in sandbox where you can choose to place the full block/blueprint or place a version that still needs to be welded up?
The Soundtrack of SE2 tells a lot about the story, to all you lore diggers like me. Also, Marek, i love all the work you and your developers have put into both of the games! But, can you tune down screen shake from gunshots in SE1 and tune down the sound from getting hit by a gun, also tune down welding, grinding, and drilling sounds in SE1 so our eardrums don’t get blasted off. Thank you for all your amazing work on SE!
There are mods on the steam workshop for that, if you’re on console you could just try lowering the equipment volume
THE PROPHECY OF THE CABLE AWAITS IN SE2
When you say that VS3 will include “Survival Improvements (production system, oxygen, block wrappers, area welding)”, do you mean optimizations for features coming in VS2 or will these not be present until VS3? Production and Oxygen seem like some big pillars of survival so I’m hoping it’s just refining the existing systems…
In SE1 there is a problem: when you dig something on planets, even a small hole with an underground base, it becomes visible from almost space due to LOD glitches (it’s unrealistic). Does it work the same way in SE2 ?
Planetside looks really good. It could be improved with boulders and smaller trees, but overall I already can imagine the bases I build there. Nice work!
Nothing more on SE1 update? Im curious how soon that’s going to be cause if its too close to when you’re going to update se2 with survival i need to start rethinking a survival series i’ve been planning.
Hello Marek,
Could You please fix the price of the game on Steam for the Polish market?
It’s a very common issue for games on Steam to use it’s default outdated (2022) value conversion which places Polish market in a very unfavorable position, making us pay 2nd largest price in the world (right after Switzerland) for games on Steam while Poland really isn’t the second wealthiest country in the world.
Link to Steamdb Price conversion: https://steamdb.info/app/1133870/
There is also a whole movement related to this common issue: #PolishOurPrices
Please reconsider Polish pricing. Thank You in advance.
I am extremely excited for the release of VS2 and later VS3, based on recent posts these are looking very promising! I also felt the need to share an idea that I hope to one day exist;
With the addition of Water, Radiation and perhaps Pressurisation (both underwater and the existing oxygen pressure) I was thinking that it would be a great addition to be able to have sensors that detect presence of each of these within a ship.
These could be a great addition in my mind as for example, if a ship starts filling with water or radiation due to structural damage, or even before that if a ship is reaching pressures that is actively damaging the armour, players could create simple or complex warning systems that bring even more life into their creations. This also brings practical and RPG benefits as it enables single crew ships to have a more balanced understanding of their situation that multicrew ships currently have greater advantages in PVP and PVE combat. (though of course also benefits multicrew gameplay as-well allowing a fun experience for players who like roleplaying situational awareness scenarios).
As I have seen another user has also suggested, radiation and/or pressure suits would also make a great addition as well.
Apologies for the wall of text ;p
In SE1 you can cut down trees to clear them out but will wood actually be a useable resource in SE2 ?
Hello development engineers. I also want to ask a couple of questions. Will there be artificial intelligence, will there be NPCs at all? But what about the economy, trade and everything related to it is very interesting. And I hope that in this version the planets will revolve around the sun)))
Please tell me that we are not going to get blinded by welding/grinding or that at least there will be options to disable bright flashes or things that are too bright.
Would love to be able to finally introduce my light-sensitive girlfriend and her friends to space engineers.
It is not for fetched to think that it would be a setting, if not which I would be surprised it would be insanely easy to make a mod you could make it in less than a hour.
I hope we can use wood as a building material on planets. Other materials like concrete and plastics would really cool too.
The construction progression is not clear enough IMO, first stage should really be barebone.
I’m not sure at which level of development the FX are at. I can see there’s a lot of work remaining to make fire, lightning look good, they feel like placeholder implementations. Hope they will be greater in the future!
I hope for more realistic density in vegetations in the future, a bunch of tall trees isn’t looking very good, you’d need tall grass, bushes, younger trees, vines types, mushroom types, moss… Nature hates emptiness. I know the dream primitive forest will never be a thing for performance reasons though :). The geological landscape looks great, nice improvement from the SE1.
Few months after VS2 for water?!!! That’s a super cool bit of news.
I’m impatient to see the next iterations, keep the good work.
Greetings Marek,
A recently read a comment from a person who was talking about a potential improvement of the combat system. A big problem in SE1 pvp is turret spammed ships which I think we can agree on is not good for the game in any way. A potential way to combat this are compute blocks! This would a separate block you need to place to enhance a turret’s accuracy and targeting range. They could also add extra functionality like switching shells. It closely resembles the custom turret control block we have in SE1 but this would be used for normal turret’s. The way I would like to see this is: (no compute bloc ) 800m range and 60% accuracy. (Tier 1 compute block) 1000m range and 70% accuracy with the capability to change shell type. (Tier 2/prototec? compute block) 1200m range and 80% accuracy with the capability to change shell type and it can also work for multiple guns of the same kind (1 compute block for 2/4 guns)
A important memo for SE2 is: easy to use and hard to master. That’s why I think they shouldn’t be required since that would make the game complicated. It would however change the meta, because you now need to use extra space for your compute blocks if you want to get the maximum out of your cannons. You would need to place them somewhere on the ship and also need to protect these blocks. It’s an immersive way to balance having many guns.
Not definitive in any way but something like this would be a refreshing experience compared to SE1 And would severely nerf the weapon spam “tactics”.
Thank you for your time actually reading this!
Will it be possible to extinguish burning blocks with water?
+upvote, we need fire spreading across ships and people with water pistols to fight it XD
Last resort? Dump it into an ocean 🙂
Please consider adding MSAA or SMAA, its something modern games have stopped doing and i would be so happy if SE2 had it
I really do like seeing the screenshots of planets 🙂
Every time we get a new devlog with them included it always looks really good. When water and everything else is released I think that it’ll be really nice. One question that comes to mind while I’m writing this, though, is a question about generation.
Will we have other planets generated? We’ve seen a lot of generation on Verdure, but nothing much on any of the other planets. I assume it’s either due to not wanting to spoil anything or not being done yet, really hope it’s just because there’s some surprises awaiting 🙂
Things are looking great I can’t wait to see what the team comes up with next.
I have played SE1 since the early days and now i get to watch things being developed for SE2 i never thought possible.
When you say ballast tank blocks, are they planned to be the only thing influencing buoyancy? I was kinda hoping id had to design my own ballast tanks with pumps etc. Only a block supplying that function would mean that water breaches wouldnt really have an impact, which I would rather have otherwise. But besides that, what you already have is really cool. Keep up the good work!
Hell yes, my dream of building submarines with real water physics is coming true, I can’t wait to build under water bases and have epic underwater battles on the new planet. I can’t wait to see my sub flood from being hit by a torpedo.
Is it reasonable for the update to come out in 2 or 3 month?
Is oxygen coming in VS2 or VS3
I personally feel that water pressure simulation might cause unintended consequences for building and might be a bit overkill.
omg the planets look amazing and so dose the water, i seriously cant think of any game rn this ambitious 😀 cant wait to make a nice ship, land by the ocean and look at the view
Will it be possible to cause global warming on a planet?
As you mention muffled audio for underwater:
I’m possibly in the minority, but I’d absolutely love to see realistic (or maybe “realistic, but adapted for fun/gameplay) audio come to SE2. I played with realistic audio on SE1 and it was fantastic. It also gave a much bigger reason for actually pressurizing ships, beyond just saving on O2.
This makes me really wish we could get some native VR support in game. 😀 I could just imagine chilling on the beach looking over the ocean at sunset with my little submarine popping up in the distance. Any plans for VR support at all or will we have to rely on the modding community to implement it? I’m pretty sure i saw a plugin for it on SE1 but haven’t tried it out…
Hi, great to read the updates as always. With the point about pressure and submarines, I started thinking, will water be able to be harnessed to generate power? I think having the ability to create hydroelectric dams would be a great engineering challenge that could really add a lot to the game.
Hello Marek, I have a question. I was looking to buy some merch when I noticed there was a clang cola coffee mug but not a cosmic coffee mug? This is unacceptable! 🙂
Greetings and keep up the good work!
What about CABLE merch?