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 This is my unfiltered dev journal, so please keep in mind that what I write here are my thoughts and will be outdated by the time you read this, as so many things change quickly.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
Today in our SE2 playtest, we focused on VS 2.2 and VS3 progress: planets (new Byblos biomes), the first drive-able wheels prototype, and a few early encounter scenarios. Later, we did a longer sound review session for VS 2.2 with our sound designers.
VS3 – Planet Byblos Biomes & Rocks
We now have Byblos in multiple looks: snow, volcanic, desert, and a mossy/green biome. We also tested a new set of rock types and sizes – from small (~0.5 m) up to large formations (5 m, and even 15 m).
We decided not to use the biggest rock formations for now. Our rock tech is designed for smaller rocks (up to ~5 m), which fracture and break apart at their own granularity. Very large formations are better handled as voxel terrain or voxel boulders, which are built from voxels and can be drilled and destroyed at voxel-level detail. Mixing those two systems at large scales doesn’t make sense yet, so we’re sticking to voxel terrain for big formations for now.
One of the most striking Byblos biomes is the Volcanic Biome. The team is building massive volcanoes that can reach up to 2 km in height, and the scale is impressive. This is a hostile environment – dry, unstable, and almost completely devoid of life. There is no vegetation here, the conditions are simply too harsh.
These regions are placed mostly in tropical to subtropical areas, and in some places they break into arid, savanna-like islands with yellowish rock formations. I really like this contrast. It feels raw and alien, yet still grounded. There is also the possibility to find sulphur in these areas, which opens up some interesting gameplay questions for later.
The same volcanic structures take on a very different character in the Snow & Ice Biome. Here, the volcanos are covered in snow and ice, with no vegetation at all. These regions are found closer to the poles, where temperatures drop dramatically. Because Byblos has a very high water level, the shoreline can sometimes form small lakes that freeze over. I find this especially interesting visually – familiar volcanic shapes, but transformed into something cold, quiet, and almost lifeless.
Then there is the Moss Biome, which might be my personal favorite so far. It uses the same volcanic base shapes, but they are partially covered with moss. Vegetation here is minimal – just small patches of moss clinging to the surface – but it completely changes the mood.
These areas appear in temperate regions, roughly between the 45° and 65° parallels. Sulphur can also be found here, and visually we’re taking inspiration from places like Iceland and Greenland. I think this biome hits a really nice balance between harshness and subtle life, and I’m curious to see how players will feel exploring and building in these areas.
I also want to share a bit more about the Underwater Biomes on Byblos, because this is one of the areas that keeps surprising me every time I look at it. The scale alone is something we don’t usually get to explore in games like this. The underwater terrain goes down to roughly -20 km of altitude, which creates a strong sense of depth and pressure the deeper you go.
What I find interesting is how the team is splitting this space. Roughly 60% of the underwater areas are relatively shallow water, while the rest drops into a deep abyss. There are also so-called blue holes – vertical shafts that connect shallow water directly to the abyss below. These transitions create moments where you suddenly realize how far down the world really goes, and I think they have a lot of potential for exploration and future gameplay.
Shallow water areas are full of underwater flora, which helps the environment feel alive and readable. Deeper down, things change. Vegetation disappears, the terrain becomes more barren, and the space starts to feel empty and quiet in a very different way. There are also many underwater caves. In theory, these caves should connect to cracks leading into the abyss, but right now we are hitting few technical limitations there. This is something we’re aware of and want to improve over time.
We are also toying with the idea of adding crystals in the deep underwater areas. When there is no vegetation at all, the environment can start to feel unfinished, even if it is “technically correct”. Completely empty terrain just looks strange. The crystals can give us visual anchors – points of interest that break the monotony, add scale, and make the deep ocean feel intentional rather than empty.
I really like how they subtly guide your eye and make even the darkest depths feel worth exploring.
VS2 Update
Wheels (VS 2.2 → VS 2.3 direction)
The goal for VS 2.2 was simple: get the first playable wheels prototype into the game, then learn what works, what feels wrong, and what’s missing – and only then decide how far we push it in VS 2.3.
The good news: driving already feels surprisingly solid. Steering works, suspension feels good, and you can feel the weight and grounding of the vehicle.
What’s still missing / needs improvement:
- Wheel visuals are not finished yet (including shadows).
- Braking is not implemented properly yet.
- Acceleration needs tuning (stronger / more responsive).
- No particle effects yet (dust, skid, etc.).
- No wheel/vehicle sounds yet.
- Camera needs improvement: add some “spring” so it reacts with the vehicle and feels more dynamic.
Cargo Ship Encounters
We also looked at early cargo ship encounter situations. Still very early, but the direction is: make these encounters feel like real “events” in the world, not just spawning a thing. More on this once we have them in better shape.
Sound Reviews for VS 2.2
We reviewed a lot of sounds today: gatling gun, pistons, rotors, and especially wheels rolling. The main theme of the feedback was: make things feel heavier and more physical – you should feel tire contact, weight transfer, and the “mass” of the vehicle. We also reviewed weather sounds (rain), the area welder (hand tool and block tool), and UX sounds for trading (buy/sell, sector progress) and looting.
It’s funny how often my feedback ends up being: “It’s good… but please make it more bad / evil.” 🙂
I also spent some time reviewing our latest drilling animations, and this is one of those details where feel really matters to me. Operating a heavy drill should not look or feel effortless. I want more umpf in it – more weight, more resistance, and more believable body movement. The character should clearly react to the tool, not just hold it.
The team is pushing toward more logical physicality in the animation – stronger stance, clearer shifts in balance, and movements that reflect the force and vibration of heavy equipment. Even small changes in posture and timing make a big difference here.
Question to you: What kinds of biomes would you personally love to explore in Space Engineers 2?
If you’re also interested in what we’re doing outside SE2, in GoodAI Swarm Robotics: our Prometheus drone
Prometheus is our autonomous drone project: a drone that can explore unknown environments and build a 3D map on its own. It’s designed to work without GPS and without a human pilot – using LiDAR for navigation and mapping, and LLM for intelligence and vision.
Right now we’re working on robustness and reliability, and we implemented a new autonomous exploration approach: you launch the drone into a new space, and it expands the “frontier” of what it knows. It continuously scans with LiDAR, finds unexplored areas, and goes where it hasn’t been before.
This already works in simulation. The next step is heavy stress testing in real environments, and improving the planning so it moves faster and more smoothly (less stopping, more continuous motion).
Our north star test is ambitious: in ~5 minutes, explore and scan the entire Oranžerie (about 1200 m², 3 floors, lots of staircases and doors, and even LiDAR traps like glass walls). Let’s see.
I really believe in this project – it’s insanely fun. Long-term, I want a fully autonomous drone with an LLM on board, operating indoors and outdoors, and collaborating in a heterogeneous swarm.
Share your thoughts in the comments below – I read them all, and they’re one of my favorite parts of making our games.
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im loving the direction the planets are going, all i hope for is that we can have way bigger planets.
Of course things might have changed. but I remember asking Jan about the theoretical maximum size and he said it’s far larger than the planned in-game maximum size. So maybe moddeds will have the ability to create giant planets? I understand the argument that the cost/benefit of realistically-size planets is very unfavorable for the majority of SE gameplay. But, some of my favorite self-made scenarios in SE1 were entirely planet-bound and focused on a dangerous journey across a hostile planet or resolving the logistical challenges imposed by massive distances. So I’m with you, I hope the system can support very large worlds. even if they don’t make sense in vanilla.
I agree. Love the game, love the direction (except the removal of Ingots). It would be nice if the could make the planets large as I like travelling long distances.
For me, as example, a way bigger planet would be something in the range of 180km in diameter for teluric planets, currently we have 120km.This size would increase the surface area by more than 2x. For gasous planets we allready have Delfos which is very very large ( 500 something km in diameter) so we will have large gasous planets later
A few biom thoughts. My understanding is Europa has massive oceans under the ice. It would be cool for such a place, or even water under ice shelves like in the arctic and antarctica.
Glaciers and some glacier tunnels could also be pretty cool. Ice looks a lot different and you might have eroded ground at the bottom of a tunnel.
With water now how about cenotes or other water caves. Springs, waterfalls, rivers like white water for rafting. Fjords like the Nordic countries, England, Ireland, Iceland.
How about rain forests bioms. It is a different kind of forest when you can’t see more than a couple feet. It would be interesting if clearing forest could be a need, and who knows what is in the forest watching you.
Add simple aerodynamics please.
It could be something that only applies to a grid if it’s turned on for that grid.
I remember seeing aerodynamics support when they were picking the physics engine (I believe it was havok 2023 they settled on) and they showcased aerodynamics. Not sure of they’re going to add it. It does affect ship design, and I assume that’s why you suggested it as a toggle.
In SE 1 I always played with the aerodynamics mod cause I loved the added challenge. It would be interesting with hydronamics ss well.
Yet again I approve the incorporation of aerodynamics as part of vanilla experience.
people need to realise it would actually be more beneficial to the player than an obstacle, purely on a game design perspective, I am not talking about realism here.
– lift helps to reduce significantly the amount of thrusters and therefore fuel consumption to take off. extremely useful in early survival
– drag is a natural and intuitive way to loose speed when falling into atmosphere or releasing thrust, so it can also help in fuel economy as much as it creates a challenge for the player.
– control surfaces would weight and cost less than gyros, adding to the early survival engineering blocs line up.
– beloved flying brick ships would just need a little more “brick volume” to keep their performance and stability in atmosphere. as gyros and thrusters would simply drain more power to keep the brick in the air, necessitating more power supply. That’s not what I call a game changer for the flying bricks enthousiasts but, for the players who care about interesting mechanics in a game about engineering your way around planets, it would be a greatly appreciated.
yes please
Aerodynamics – yes, a must, eventually. I could guess there are problems getting it balanced right so it plays smoothly. Is it Bernoulli’s equation for drag that relates, where the drag force is proportional to the square of the velocity (and the effective frontal area & air density). What would happen in extreme drag, as in high-speed re-entry? In the aero mod in SE1 there’s a lot of heat and grids can fall apart. It would be great to get that done right in SE2.
Would love some form of planet or biome which kinda promotes the usage of rovers over flying around. Perhaps a mostly cave system biome?
Though would also love an actual artic scene to see how things move
I agree, there needs to be more incentives for using rovers over atmospheric craft for operations, like maybe a very high energy cost for atmospheric thrust, or more expensive material cost, for example. In the first game the only use I have for rovers is to serve as a mobile storage system until I get enough materials to make an atmospheric ship.
Honestly a simple mode increasing the cost of flying on a planete with gravity would do just that. Especially takeoff and landings, if you make that expensive you get a reason to just pick a ground vehicle for smaller distances.
That said they could use weather to prohibit ships on a specific planete for a ground only theme.
love this idea. wheels should be stronger this time too. In SE1 you can only build a rover so big before you need to add thrusters to keep it moving.
Using rovers should of course be the most viable solution in early survival game, but Keen Must absolutely provide us with tools to pave a way and engineer smooth roads for a better land infrastructure.
planets in the first game are basically smooth as a ball and you can cheese your way all around them with big enough wheels for the small amount of obstacle they offer, but now that the planets environments look like proper wilderness, we need a way to civilise it other than limited blocky armor.
“incentives for using rovers” – this is something I am still thinking about. I think that in some older dev diary I even wrote about it, and few options. I think the best idea is to reward players for using rovers over ships, e.g. extending ore scanner distance, or things in that direction.
Otherwise ships are always more comfortable + if you get enough energy resources, it stops being motivation.
I have to agree here and I’ve mentioned it before as well. Flight should be EARNED through hard work. Early game survival to me, is the use of rovers and ground units for a good part of the game before you earn flight. This is why I didn’t like the game/story giving players a ship in the early part of the game as it felt like a cheat. Don’t mind early game story allowing us to get a taste of flying but ultimately the game-given ship should forcibly crash/break and you then have to work your way up to flight again.
I think aerodynamics would be a good solution to make rovers useful.
In real life trucking accounts for a large amount of freight transportation, because obviously aircraft are unable to carry the weight and/or volume that trucks can carry.
If aerodynamics was added along with jet fuel, thrusters could be rebalanced to be less powerful, giving small aircraft a distinct role of scouting/fighting/light transport, leaving the role of heavy transport to ground vehicles.
Of course you could still build flying bricks and flying aircraft carriers etc, but the addition of jet fuel would mean that although lighter aircraft will be able to fly for a long time before refueling, larger ships will be forced to refuel a lot quicker. This would force you to think about strategic deployment of larger craft in atmosphere and give a reason to build fuel depots across the planet.
A built in autopilot mode/script would also be great so that you could set up logistics routes and forget about them, e.g. a tanker taking oil from an oil field to a refining station, then one taking the refined products to your base. Other changes that would make this route of gameplay more fun and sustainable would be the ability to construct roads, as well as richer resource nodes (would allow for more permanent bases rather than the nomad style in SE1).
Another incentive to use rovers could be carrying capacity. In the support forum one guy complained about the aerodynamic thrusters being too weak for his minimg ship. I say “leave it like that and make wheels quite strong instead.”
Comparing the 100 cm wheel to real life truck wheels, 5 metric tons under Earth gravity seems a load it could realistically carry. For the 150 cm wheel, maybe 10 tons? Build an eight wheeler with those, and you get something that looks like real competition for a flier when it comes to hauling stuff.
Please add a free camera setting to the cockpit so that you don’t have to hold alt to control the camera.
It doesn’t make sense if there are no gyroscopes on the car, but hold alt forever, the finger falls off.
This is sorely lacking in the first space engineers, and it’s not difficult at all.
Ideally, so that it can be taken out to hotkey 1-9 and it is possible to change the camera/gyroscope control, turn it to alt, and switch the mode to hotkey.
I love the drill new animation 😍
Be careful on lighting inside the water, is easy to get it wrong and give “fog” feeling instead of water
great job keen! keep it up we’re proud of you!
Thanks! I personally pay a lot of attention to our animations.
for the drill animation, I’m never a fan of extremely exaggerated movements in any repetitive task. It just becomes straining to look at after in this case drilling for an hour. Also, this animation specifically makes drilling feel like its literally exploding the rock rather than slowly drilling in with just the voxels themselves being technically updated every second or so. In a real case you wouldn’t jolt ur arm as if it instantly deleted, you’d just move at a constant rate as you loosen more and more rock. So I’m not a fan that the animation feeds into the fact that the scene of it is that the rock actually gets destroyed in an area at once.
I never even had an issue with the drill personally, and I feel positive that no one else really did either. It felt like enough weight especially for a game. The problems really lie in the gameplay aspect of it 😂 mining straight down is still really hard and finnicky and takes u out of crouch to add.
I actually would prefer if even the animation we have right now doesnt jolt the character’s arm back whenever it loses collision hitbox of voxel. I always make sure to mine super close just so it stays connecting because it just irks me so much when it jolts back and I just wanna stay in the mining stance. If it can be changed so that the arm resets only when letting go of mining button, and holding mining button puts it out in front as if hes already colliding with hitbox, that would be great. Even if as a setting. I hope others understand my pain 😆
Agree 100%.
Honestly, who even cares that much about hand drilling animations? Who asked for this in the first place? Hand drilling is something you use briefly in early game, and then barely touch again once you have mining ships or other tools.
I want a game to play, not a game to watch. A fancy mining animation doesn’t add much, especially when it’s something you’ll rarely use long-term anyway.
If effort is going into mining, it would be much better spent on ship-based mining, which is currently in a pretty rough state on planets. Or even better—show us a sneak peek of how we could build custom mining arms using new mechanical blocks.
The new animation is true to the experience of mining though. At the moment, you stick your drill into a wall of voxels and hold it until it magically deletes a section of it in one fell swoop. At least this animation now matches the in-game behavior
I agree. I like where it is currently but don’t mind some subtle changes. One thing about drilling that gets me is the shaking and I hope that maybe it would be possible to add a setting to minimize or even turn of the “shaking” for those who might have motion sickness issues (like me). When you have to drill a lot then the constant jittering just shakes my brain as well lol. I hope that someday there could be an actual “motion sickness” setting in the game. Keep up the awesome work Keen!
well as someone who has drilled a lot of rock for a living the animation looks and feels perfect. once you get your bit in a few inches chunks of stone break off, and when you are holding a 50 pound drill, you are more likely to fall over and land on your butt than smoothly remove earth as if it was made out of beach sand.
I’m mostly concerned about performance these days. I hope you guys get to optimize stuff early on so that the game runs decently. I have quite a beefy machine but so far SE2 runs terribly. I worry what happens once new details get added, not to mention water.
I have a bad feeling about the new game you are making.
On one hand, many features are being copied directly from the original game as-is, even where they clearly could be improved. On the other hand, several solid, fundamental systems that worked well in SE1 are being changed or removed, and replaced with mechanics that feel more shallow, limited, and less engaging.
Resource and Production Design
In SE1, we were able to extract multiple resources from stone. Instead of expanding on that idea—by introducing more voxel materials that yield different combinations of resources—you added more unique ores. As a result, we now need to grind even more, making countless mining trips just to collect everything we need.
This completely misses several opportunities:
* Better use of voxel materials already present in the world
* More realistic and interesting gameplay around waste management
* More varied and flexible resource acquisition
On top of that, you removed a fundamental step in the production chain: “ingots”. Ingots are essential for many gameplay mechanics and are especially important for modding support. Without ingots, concepts like compound ores—which yield multiple resources, like generic stone did in SE1—are no longer possible.
Instead, we are now forced into repetitive, boring mining of isolated resource pockets. This could have been avoided by, for example, adding silicon to sand-like voxels—something both realistic and far more interesting.
Mechanical Blocks and Design Freedom
I also hope you won’t blindly copy other systems from SE1, such as suspensions being strictly limited to wheels. Suspensions should be a separate block to which anything can be attached, not just wheels. You could even go further and make suspensions function purely as “springs”, with rotors added separately to handle wheel rotation. This would greatly expand creative and engineering possibilities.
Core Vision of Space Engineers 2
So far, I haven’t really seen the “survival and sandbox fundamentals” that were promised in VS2.
The general expectation for a sequel is a better space sandbox and engineering experience—not a worse one. You promised to deliver the ultimate space sandbox (with SE3 being real life, right?), but I don’t see that vision being pursued strongly enough.
Yes, character animations, water, visuals, and a campaign are all cool. But if achieving those means sacrificing the core nature of Space Engineers in favor of a different focus, then SE2 risks becoming a huge disappointment for many of us.
Agreed for sure. The game in most cases feels like an engine upgrade of SE1. Think about it, the main changes we had so far are graphics, and unifying grid. That’s all related to the engine.
New content to my mind only includes water, npcs, campaign, and QOL. Though would we have to cancel out this new content with the fact that things in se1 were taken away? (stone/ingots) 😂 jkjk
I agree with utilizing the voxel aspect more. For a game that is proud of being fully voxel-based, gameplay-wise it’s quite literally just about what the voxels generated for us, and barely anything about actually doing anything with it. Mining anything outside of ore is simply accidental from mining the ore, or clearing out space. A perfectly reasonable feature atleast would be to give full terraforming tools to us in survival included fully as gameplay and using materials. honestly i just wanna tidy up mainly, so hole filling or terrain flattening is more than enough as I’ve heard before.
the problem with voxel materials is that people hate stone, but without SOMETHING, all mining is is just pimple popping the world’s surface ore veins. finding some way to incentivize quarries again is my wish. more uses for stone is one thing like concrete since we got water too
so far by the end of the roadmap I see the game being like 3x better max, not the 10x promised but we will see past the roadmap
I’m sorry you don’t catch the vision of SE2. If you were expecting SE1 with water and NPCs, that was simply never the plan. Keen had fun the past decade+ making an interesting space physics playground but now it’s time to make an actual video game. That’s what SE2 will be.
Thankfully, there will be other die-hards in the community that will be creating more SE1-like modpacks for SE2 so you can get the experience you’re looking for. Just don’t expect KSH to reverse course on their plans for a video game because you wanted another 10 year tech showcase 😂
Sorry, but most of what you say is simply not true. Refining stone was one of the worst design decisions in SE1 that promoted mindless drilling into the ground for hours. I’m glad it’s gone. Ingots were likewise basically a speed bump. You don’t need to put much thought into it; just put ore into the refinery and wait for hours until it finishes. You could ease it by building a lot of refineries, but then you ran into the problem with server resources — refineries are very resource-heavy precisely because they have to run constantly for hours.
Excited to see the differences from SE1 to SE2 in all areas. The drill animation looks a little ‘violent’ and if someone in a suit moved that much with a drill that big in their hands they’d likely end up flat on their face every 2 minutes. Also something to bare in mind is that some of us suffer with “sim sickness” if the camera’s move too much or in certain ways… I’m one such person, I tend to turn drill shake off and motion blur off as well as a few other things that trigger it. If I can’t do that I can generally only last a few minutes before going green and feeling physically sick. Some games I can’t play at all (usually FPS games) because it gets that bad.
I like the little detail in the drilling animation where the character stumples forward when the rock is mined and suddenly there is no more resistance to push against.
i think a good source of inspiration for cargo ship encounters could be truckers and how they interact!
if you fly near one, they could do what they do in SE1 where they send messages over chat (or ideally various different voice lines that play over your own ship’s communications) where they say things like:
“(groggy) whuh… huh? proximity alert? (fully awake) oh damn! hey stranger! sorry, must’ve dozed off there for a second! keep your distance, would you kindly? i don’t want these defensive mechanisms starting up on their own!”
(when coming close to one) “hey pal, this old hunk of junk doesn’t have autopilot so i’ve been awake for 3 fucking days and i’m really fuckin pissed! don’t try anything stupid!”
“hey, what did the cargo hauler say to the businessman who was complaining about his copper shipment being delayed? Cu later! ahaha… ha… nah forreal i have a lot of copper on board so don’t bother raiding my ship it’s not worth it”
just some other funny voice lines or text dialogue that could play to add some humor and life to the game, treating them like truckers who fly endlessly across the void of space and are always tired and exhausted but the funniest people you’ll ever meet
I would like to see a cave biome with very large crystals added in. What makes Earth unique is the varring biome’s such as the redwood forest or the green spire mountains or volcanic pools/hot springs to the changing of the seasons. There are many national parks to inspire which are popular due to their uniquness maybe incorperate thease points of intrest spread out across the planet for the player to find and explore!
I think it can work.. The surface is Byblos is not something I’d consider building on unless there are some more interesting areas- or the volcanos erupt ocasionally or there are larger chunks of rock perhaps? Hard to tell but the mossy biome, although looks good, the surface overall feels empty still.
Underwater looks nice, missing the fishes though, or megafauna like whales.
For the very deep I’d imagine debris fields, the wreck of other ships and submarines where you can find new parts or old logs etc. Some oceanic regions might have strange creatures like crabs with long legs etc roaming down there, this would be a nice place to add some abyssal horrors that can fly into the submarine and damage it.
I really want to be able to make a ship with a claw arm that picks up a whale and puts it in a tank. If there was some mission to transport a whale to some other planet or location while keeping it alive that would be the coolest thing ever.
Tropical rainforest biome (think Amazon) and tropical islands! Would be good to come across a tropical island that is 1-2km wide that I could turn into a home island.
I guess it depends how big Byblos ends up being. If it is 60km diameter radius like Verdure, then maybe some tropical islands that are 700m-800m in diameter. Just enough to be able to get lost/disorientated in the tropical forest of the island.
As for animations, viewing aside, engineer makes so much effort to push drill in this new animation. It’s easy when standing on foot. But in the last part of video he was flying on jetpack. And as for usual flight fuel is like infinite, wouldn’t it be more logical or realistic to use more fuel or spend a little hydrogen when drilling during flight? To compensate forces. Like in Expanse series, where space gatling turrets had inertia thrusters on their back, to prevent ship from spinning during shooting. And to preserve hydrogen fuel/energy, player should drill while standing on foot, or using magboots in space on asteroid surface.
About biomes:
in “Chronicles of Riddick” movie, there is Crematoria planet, which looks like one giant volcano. It’s close to the star and rotates fast. Night side is -180C and solid sharp molten rocks, peaks, and surface, day side comes like an exploding wall of fire, is +700C and everything burns and moltens. I imagine that on such planet during daytime player can survive only inside airtight spaceship or airtight base, even underground. But I don’t know if SE2 engine allows making voxel surface or outer blocks surface glow like hot.
Another interesting planet/biome might be in “Interstellar” movie, Mann’s planet. It’s all frozen, lower gravity, toxic atmosphere with lots of clouds, and some clouds are a hard frozen smooth surface which you can land on or crash in it accidentally. It seems that planet has no usual ground, it might be like a gas giant, or it’s ground is hidden in constant thick fog (hard to land there). So it’s like a bright half opened cave world.
Also, the drill will have some recoil. In the animation where the engineer is drilling while flying with his jet pack, his backpack should compansate by pushing him forward with the thrusters.
Regarding weather… please add weight and volume (size, not loudness) to thunderstorms. I want to feel the bass rumble when a thunderstorm rolls through. I also want visibility to drop to near zero in severe weather conditions like blizzards, heavy rain, dense fog, etc.
Weather should absolutely be an event you have to take into account when it happens. A weather station that predicts upcoming weather in the area would be pretty cool and allow you to plan ahead or change plans if the weather is going to turn foul.
Some other ideas…
* Cold weather that requires heater type blocks in order to run at full efficiency. Add a texture/shader that causes grids to slowly freeze over if they’re not heated.
* High temperatures causes overheating and reduces efficiency of the grid and gradually damages random components over time if not properly cooled.
* Sealed, pressurized environments to keep out abrasive volcanic grit that causes efficiency and wear and tear issues.
Reason for these kinds of durability wear and tear elements would be to increase the chance of “bad luck” and create emergent gameplay scenarios where you have to react to an event that happens. Obviously all those would need to be optional settings to keep people from whinging and crying about having to “repair” their grids.
On the note of what kind of biomes I want to see in SE2: clearly alien biomes. I always found it strange that we travelled 1000 years, and the first thing we see is an earthlike and a full water planet and not some alien goofy goober tentacles and glowing spores giant unexpected looking things. More alien looking things would be nice.
YES! YES! YES!
Biomes – Ayres rock, Eye of the Sahara, the Nazca lines, Zhangjiajie: floating mountains, Petra, rolling hills for rover battles, bayou swamp, cave maze like the inside of a sponge, fossilised mushroom platforms with bridges, cloud city, ancient ruined city, bamboo forests, plantations, land of fog, tar pits, and abandoned mega factories.
Something similiar to the drill sounds:
Id love to see a change to the high frequency of the WELDER TOOL. Because currently it really hurts my eyes, its similiar to those sounds old people use to get young people away from their property because only the young hear it. And currently … i hear it … and it hurts
For the deep underground water caves, additionally to crystals maybe add things like hydrothermal vents? It would be a bit sad to find those places but not be rewarded with something beautiful or valueable. Subnautica has shown how beautiful and full of variety underwater caves can be.
I think the crystals deep underwater should be minable for resources. Maybe not mandatory for progression but for making something you can’t make with normal resources.
Hello. I am hyped to see the result of all of this in-game ! Do you already have an idea about what engineers will search in the ocean ? Are the crystals a usefull ore ?
Could y’all please explain the steering mechanics? Is it similar to flying where the vehicle turns where you’re looking, or is it like in SE1 where you use keys to turn? I’d love a setting to toggle that, if that’s the case. Story wise, I’m not a fan of it and would like the ability to turn off the narrative.
I’m a wee bit impatient for VS three so I don’t really like the idea of a Vs 2.3
Biblos looks good, but it doesn’t have much character, and I don’t really like volcanoes that just pop up out of the water and nothing else.
P.s. On the other hand, in my language, there is a proverb that literally translates to “don’t show half of your work to a fool.”)
its crazy to see what is going to be underneath the water surface in this game; when you take to account that water is actaully simulated and volumetric.
crazy, to think about, we can have Subnautica 2 (in SE2) before Subnautica 2
Amazing work!
Maybe add some fumeroles for the deep oceans, with appropriate heat? And maybe some rare resource that’s a mix of ores or something.
I would love to explore something that looks like Pandora in the Avatar movies. Wandering through glowing flora while watching for dangerous fauna would be awesome. I think a enhanced alien planet would be great and make the game capture a piece of sci fi that normally isn’t captured. I also think having a planet with high risk high reward vibes would be cool. When me and my wife watched Avatar recently we thought of playing helldivers with the naa’vi as a new faction. I think Space Engineers could have something like that too.
[ IDEA(s) ]
(0) I think the idea of different element/resource gathering such as breaking crystals is a great idea, i hope the team adds this to trees. an idea i had was that the player can use the grinder [both handheld and block] to cut down trees and build some sort of steam engine to produce power, so for new players who never played SE dont run out of power and can make a simple recharch tower. Not only does this provide early water usage and power production, but gives more effort to use rover based grids rather than using a hybrid flyer for everything.
(1) Possible water leaks before implosions can give the engineer a chance to fix what is wrong before loosing their hard-earned work. reminds me of the quote in SE 1 “A good engineer recognizes problems; a great engineer fixes them immediately”. A timer system with animation is an idea for the leaks. The deeper the grid goes undwerwater, the less time they have to fix something. structural blocks like caffolding could fix these issues while the player is underwater, or if they’re like me with nothing, an idea of a water leak sensor and grid glue can temporarly patch the leak for the grid to resurface or reach a less dense portion of water. i could go onfor pages for underwater shinanigans, but i will reduce it for now.
(2) [ MINING AND SURFACE THINGS ]
Geodes, or the large breakable rocks to have anything from water to crystals and ore, to abolutely nothing would be spectacular. this adds surface exploration, a cause to actually break those large rocks. a display for minerals would be amazing not just for display, but player interactions such as market prices changing between items would be amazing.
(3) Limmiting my idea presentations to 3 makes my writing less boring. lastly i think cable systems like how Besige works would be entirely game changing. damage from thrusters wouldn’t exist, becaue of the distance from the carry ship to the carried grid. not only that, but instead of ladders scrapping against terrain like biting on a fork, cables would act like a rope ladder. finally, cables can act like wenches if i ever roll over a vehicle without trashing a flyer because of a simple mistake. those are some ideas that would [personally] make the game less frustrating and stressful for small things. I do have one last idea and its simple: a magnetic hand thing (im imagining somthing that looks like the foot of an AT-AT) that goes limp over a grid so it has a better surface contact with other grids for hauling. in SE 1, i have observed with Mag Plates that when they have a totally flat connection to a seperate grid surface, the clang is reduced and the connection is firm.
[ LOOKING FORWARD TO: ]
(1) As a player who likes the industrial/ interplanetary factory playstytle (such as mobile mining rigs, mobile refinery, etc.) the idea of external design problems such as water pressure with the underwater crystals is super exciting. i do hope there is a little more do the deep dark, such as dangerous areas that have hostile plants/ creatures but have rare but good ore that powers vehicles/adds H2/O2, or simply unlocks other building items.
(2) The idea of breaking rocks, maybe finding the underwater crystals or another ore within like a geode would be amazing. I am itching for the use of wheels since thats like, a huge portion of “mobile” construction sites.
[ CONCLUSION ]
I would be more than willing to design things for my ideas, and share other ideas if Keen desires. If there is a Reddit or Thread or any social media where ideas are had, please let me know.
Hydro thermal vents and brine pools in the deep sea would add thr neccessary features
Perhaps a temprate rainforest like New Zealand could be cool even if just a small region just so there could be a place that feels like temprate land for like a land base to send expeditons to the abyss from
Don’t add so many biomes and places to go if there is no actual point in going there. That is my main feedback on biomes. When moving through a survival game and if there is no real point of going to these other biomes for some type of resource or mission (an enemy you need to kill is in a cave) then it is all just fluff and visuals with no real game play purpose. I’d rather at that point have 1 biome only packed full of interactable things to do and acquire.
For example, block the ability to earn flight, by first having to go into the abyss of the underwater biome and collect some type of material to process. Then you block being able to go underwater by needing some material found in another biome, etc. This creates barriers to being able to rush to the end game too soon and makes it feel like you are earning a reward for hard work each step of the way.
Definitely need FISH and other underwater life, even if only visual and not interactable but it would be cool to make fish steaks to eat!
I agree on the gameplay / biome / resource point.
FIsh, yes, how about… giant squid? Whales? Or will we have to build some mechs to fill that niche?
I am so thrilled for the next updates! This game is becoming everything U always wanted SE1 to be:)
The only key feature I am missing is aerodynamics. It always bogged me that SE1 didnt have proper support, the mods like aerodynamic physics and reentry were absolutely awesome, but not realistic enough. I really hope you add an (toggleable) option in the future of SE2, even if its just a rudimentary version!
Keep up the awesome work!
I like how you mention gameplay significance of different biomes. Resources spawning only (or even more abundantly) in a certain biome makes it more worthwhile to explore and expand. Some design choices could influence the design of our mining operations. Some ores could spawn in gigantic deposits that warrant permanent mining stations (iron is a good candidate; you use a lot of it). Some could only appear as a shallow layer, like Uranium in SE1. Some could spawn in long veins.
As for cargo ship encounters, what if every faction had designated sectors where the operate and in each, it had a network of outposts and cargo ships moved between them? Then encounters would give you useful information about what to expect in the area. Mining vessel? It’s either full of ores and going to a central refinery or empty and going to a mining station. Fighters? There’s a carrier nearby. Factions you’re allied with could give you contracts to harass enemy operations.
I’m genuinely stoked for potential underwater gameplay. I know it’ll never rise to the level of something like Subnautica, because underware exploration isn’t SE2’s main focus… but with Subnautica 2 sinking into the abyss of game development hell SE2 might just be the best thing out there to scratch that itch in the near future!
Please make sure the jet pack doesn’t have a flame underwater though! Little touches of differentiation like that go a long way in the (sub|im)mersion!
I would love to have more granular control of the walking speed, something alike ARMA: Reforger. Current walking speeds are ridiculously fast, specially while wearing a spacesuit (that I don’t know why we can’t take off.)
About that, please let us take off our spacesuits, it would make for a more interesting gameplay if you were heavy and slow with your spacesuit on, and light and agile without one, encouraging players to live inside pressurized environments and employ drones for exterior tasks.
Otherwise, congratulations for an amazing game!
Really enjoy the look of the game and have hight hopes for the future. One thing i would really like to see is that the biomes have some worth while materials like different ores/sulfur/food/animals/npcs/crashsites/stations/ etc or simply have them being more prevalent area dependent, especially the deep ocean otherwise you’ll rarely want to visit other than the one time to see what its like. It would also force more exploration of the planets youve put so much effort into. love the contiued updates keep up the work.
I’m really excited to see what the team does with the underwater biomes. Especially the deep stuff. I would like to also see a pass over many of the current biomes. There isn’t enough large flat expanses. It’s just endless hills leading into mountains.
Which biome?
For visuals, the moss (but would it resemble the green SE1 alien terrain?)
For novelty, diving into a volcano
For sheer enormity and strangeness, the deep ocean. There could be whole civilisations down there we don’t know about, factions battling it out, ruined cities, strange alien beings….
I think the sound design in SE2 is already a bit too heavy in places. Especially the feet.
It’s been my biggest disapointed. The quality of sound is excellent, of course, but I think much of it isn’t friendly to hours and HOURS of gameplay and will likely result in ear fatigue. But it’s honestly such a minor note. I can just turn it down.
Please give me the option for old SE1 controls! and Please add duels for wheels! I can’t make a proper Truck without them!
Please give me the option for old SE1 controls! and Please add duels for wheels! I can’t make a proper Truck without them! Things are looking so pretty in the future keep at it!
A Biome that looks like an ancient city that has been abandoned 1000 years ago would be fun to explore.
At this point the level of natural erosion that would have taken place could be so extreme that the buildings that once stood are mostly just rubble and rust piles or cyclopean monoliths. The This would mean that you don’t need to show off a geometry with crisp edges but more of a mound jutting out of the landscape. With this highly eroded look we could still use all the regular voxel technology to show these spots off. The advantage might be that when you mine the voxel you get some iron or other materials. For me this would raise fun questions. “Who were they”? “Why are they not here anymore”?
In Space Engineers 2, the planet Byblos is a water planet, but underwater everything looks quite poor. What immediately stands out is that it feels like a simple blue filter is applied to the voxels. This is especially noticeable because the sun is clearly visible from underwater, which breaks immersion.
Personally, I would really like to see the seabed designed more like in Subnautica. In my opinion, Subnautica represents an ideal approach to underwater visuals and atmosphere — their marine environments are exceptionally well thought out and executed. It would be great to see something closer to that level of detail and depth in Space Engineers 2.