About This Dev Diary
Every Thursday, I share some of what we’ve been working on – the challenges, solutions, and ideas that caught my attention. This is my unfiltered dev journal, so my thoughts and plans may change quickly, and nothing here is set in stone. And if you don’t like spoilers, don’t read further!
Competition Results Livestream
Please join us Friday, September 4th, for the “Masters of Motion” – Mechanical Engineering Video Competition Livestream!
Celebrate the creativity of the Space Engineers 1 & 2 communities with us and watch the best mechanical engineering videos from both games!
📅 Friday, September 4th, 5 PM UTC
Livestream:
🛰️ Twitch: https://twitch.tv/keencommunitynetwork
🛰️ YouTube: https://youtube.com/user/SpaceEngineersGame
Space Engineers 2
We are tuning NPC behavior more and more, and I am really starting to like how the different systems work together. NPCs can now share alerts with their group – if one of them spots you or takes damage, nearby allies can be alerted even if they never saw you themselves.
They are also learning to recognize hostile grids and fight them directly, which is important because combat in Space Engineers is rarely just character against character. Your ship, rover, or base can become part of the fight as well.
Navigation is another area we are pushing further. We are testing NPCs in increasingly complicated interiors with corridors, rooms, doors, and maze-like layouts.
We are also working on more situational behavior – NPCs can retreat depending on their health, and if the cover they are using gets destroyed, they can look for a new position instead of simply staying exposed.
For me, this is where NPC combat starts becoming interesting. It is not just about making enemies aim and shoot better, but about giving them enough awareness to react to what you build and what happens during the fight. We are also polishing combat feedback, including player damage indicators, and for those asking about immersion – enemy health bars will be optional, so you will be able to turn them off.
We are also polishing the player damage indicators. This is still work in progress, but it should already give you an idea of where we are heading and how we want combat feedback to feel.
Cables! Yes – we will be adding cables to Space Engineers 2. You will be able to use them to decorate ships, corridors, and bases, but they are not just decorative. Cables also transfer electricity (as any other grid block), so they are functional as well.
And because this is Space Engineers 2, you can attach buttons, lights, and other parts to the cable system however you like. The 25 cm unified grid system gives you a lot of freedom here, and I think players will do some really creative things with it.
We are also adding more decorative interior parts. Here you can see examples like the Coffee Machine, Recycle Bin, Generic Lab Equipment, Laptop, and Fire Extinguisher.
These blocks should give you a better starting point for decorating the inside of your rooms and bases, so your interiors no longer feel so empty.
Also check out our spotlight of Space Engineers 2 Racing League!
Question to you: What decorative elements are you missing in Space Engineers 2?
Share your thoughts in the comments below – I read them all, and they’re one of my favorite parts of making our games.
Subscribe and get an email whenever I publish a new post!
i’m still waiting those decorative interior panels shown on blog april 11, 2025. Are they coming or were they just prototypes or building blocks for 2,5m corridor blocks we have now?
Hello, yes, block set from post of 11.4.2025 woudl by awesome, it looks like suport beam 50cm x 2,5m and 1m x 2,5m and wall 1,25m x 2,5m are from this block set so those will probably by added as time goes on. I really hope other blocks from this set will by added coz they look amazing.
Interesting, I would love maybe some homey kind of things like maybe bookshelves, desklamps, trinkets, and maybe also like a pedestal console if that makes sense. Similar shape to the trash can but taller and with a computer interface on top.
right now i just want dlss or a newer version of fsr. but dlss would be so much better 🙏
i’d like to see functional chairs and desks added as well as more lighting options. it would be cool if we could get open sided versions of the passageway blocks so we have the option to create wider passages.
i wanted to ask when we might see some of the other blocks youve previewed like the cockpit, light panels, joining blocks.
excited for the decorative blocks youve previewed above. love having kore options for decoration ❤️
Simple shelf. Grated Shelf. A place I can put my golden ingots on 🙂
I always welcome more decorative elements, especially if they are given a function either now or the future. Thank you for the update/work you have put into the game.
As far as what is missing?
• I’d like “wooden” floor panels, walls, window frames, stairs. Wood works in sci-fi, but is often overlooked.
• Working ladders
• Comfy seating. Sofas, loveseats, sectionals, chairs, etc in a “sci-fi” aesthetic, and a “cozy” aesthetic. Don’t discount the intimate feeling of a cozy ship interior.
• Wall decor. Art with sci-fi and wood frames, mounted weapons/tools. Slain beasts mounted heads.
• DECOR BLOCK SIZED Hinges. rotors, pistons. These would help make hidden doors and better engineering in tight spaces. Not all of us like to build big.
• More cockpit options and a smaller “seat” cockpit for tiny craft.
I understand the benefit of allowing player to mod the game, but I generally will not use mods because mod authors do not always stick around to update the mods as there is no incentive. Because of this I prefer dev curated and implemented assets that all players can use. It ensure that workshop items are universal for anyone and ensure that if something breaks, it will get fixed.
Maybe not entirely decorative, but 3 are important blocks and the last is a nice to have.
Larger diameter pillar – There should be a round pillar that fits the base of the wind turbine correctly, so we can build a stack of round columns and place the wind turbine at the top.
The Truss block and Structural Supports should have slope corner pieces for smooth transitions down to the grid they are attached to.
1.5m gyroscope – my small ships need a lot of 0.5m gyroscopes to have the right feeling torque, but the next size is 2.5m and it’s often too big to fit in small ships. So a 1.5m gyro (similar to the 1.5m battery size) would be a great addition.
It would be great if we could place blocks on the inside corner (cut out section) of the “Catwalk Corner Base”, such as a “Light Armor Half Tall Slope”. Not sure if this is possible, but would add more freedom to building, and help with landing pads specifically (or at least in my case).
keep up up the great work, so excited for NPC’s and Water!
my bucket list for now
Desk Lamp
Coffe Table / low table that works with the seating in a louge area
rec room items
for example: A Dart board/Pool table/Arcade machine
just anything that would look good in those kinds of spaces.
maybe a Chess board of a Card game table.
Stretch goal: Maybe some placeable items like cups, padd’s tools
so you can detail an environments without it being loose items.
We could definitely use more Sci Fi elements, and decorations are the perfect ways to do that. Holographic tables that can display rotating holographic images, more lab/ scientific equipment, beakers and the like. Various flowering plants enclased in glass for decoration. I think small moving parts are what really bring decorations and therefore your builds as a whole to life
Honestly holograms would be great to let players project a decorative image of their blueprints, like a projector block but you can’t weld the grid, pretty much
I would love it if we could do resizable 3D images of any grid we blueprint and chose to display different glow colours to the hologram, other than the blocks default blue construction ghost
that would open up endless posibilities for decorating
Round blocks. I’ve been a long time fan of SE and while people do amazing jobs to make things not look so blocky, I’d love to see and have the ability to make more sleek designs.
In terms of decoration I’d like a wider variety of crates, a huge collection of lab equipment and a variety of computers and screens (for on desks, inset in walls, as standing consoles / console desks, etc.). I would also really love them to be functional in a way, because decoration is allways much more interesting if it’s not just decoration, but serves an actual purpose. There is this huge opportunity for a research system there. You could researche on advancements for blocks, discover new materials by analyzing rocks and clone NPCs.
Also blocks for decorating living cabins would be nice.
unrelated, but I think you should rework the bulk delivery contract to where in the earlier sectors it isn’t as much in the later sectors or straight up just remove them. they kinda suck
we saw early on in the dev blogs, ragdoll physics.
is there any chance or even game engine possiblity to have a soft body cable part?
some little floppy noodle that you atach in a similar manner as a connector at each end. usable as a refill line for ships/rovers. rather than only hard body pistons etc.
or even a connection block the modular battery and its “slot” accepts this “noodle” end.
if over extended it just detaches one or both sides.
is something like this even feasible in the game engine?
Hello, While watching the NPC pathfinding and Navigation video, a thought came to my mind that there will likely be scenarios where the player will want to hide from the NPC’S. And in that case the enemies should not always know how to exactly get to the player, maybe if the player is quiet and is out of direct sight then the enemies can lose track of the player. Although in reality it would not instantly mean the coast is clear, the enemies should spend time searching through many areas that the player can potentially be. This would be great for stealth gameplay too.
I would love that decorative trashcan, in my kitchen. but as an actual trashcan i could use 😀
Everything sounds great.
I would love to see some plants, bookshelves, or comfortable seating like the couch from SE1 🙂
A decorative, updated roadmap showing all the new fancy gameplay mechanics we can expect for the survival game in the future.😉