Space Engineers

Well we gave it three weeks. Waited for word of their return, but none came. Hoped to wake up each morning and find our old friends back, but hey never returned. Nope, sadly the asteroids were gone.

We were hit by the mid November bug that caused all asteroids to vanish mysteriously. After three weeks fingers uncrossed as word was confirmed that the asteroids would indeed be in all new asteroid belts, but those who lost theirs, would never see them again. We spent the following week after this news puttering around, working on little things here and there, both my sister and I highly bummed that our homes since mid august were now skeletons open and bear to space, no asteroid to protect them anymore.

Eventually the sister started poking and prodding me until I caved in and went to work. I launched a new save file, max asteroid population, fast everything and made it creative / open to friends multiplayer. After the sister and I confirmed that we liked what we saw I then flipped the old server to creative. I copy /made blue prints of every single ship on the server as well as all three bases. Went back to the new copy, pasted it all in. Again we looked around, made sure we missed nothing and finally two thumbs up, server files swapped around and set up. Good to go.

Still miss the old home.

The above photos are simply shots of everything we brought with us. Literally turned the starting platform on the new server in to a refugee camp heheh. 2.0, 1.0, miner's mk8, 9 and 10, scv mk3 were everything I brought. The sister brought all sorts of small ships and afew of our captures from npc patrols. Not in the screenshots but present near by are all our base structures.

Little sister is still mourning her old base so has stuck to random building the starting platform in to something that reminds me of a truck stop. Me? I found the exact same asteroid I lived in previously and looked it over. Initially I decided to trim the odd protruding bits from the tunnel by driving mk10 miner down it. But then I decided a more rectangular design could be really cool and spent the next day tearing up the asteroid. The above photos are the result. Large rectangular, completely sealed up. Command center is top dead center, accessed by the two doors on the left in the final photo. Lighting is still a frame rate nightmare so The bases lighting is kept off for now.

Ive also started working on docks for all my smaller ships. Piston powered, the piston has several blocks on its head that extend outside the dock and are controlled by the four button panel down on the ground in the above photo. All my ships have landing gear built on to their tail end that they use to clamp on to the piston block. The ships have to be powered down otherwise retracting them in to their bed the ships thrusters will fight the piston, this is why I didn't have the ships use base connectors. Now, wondering why the ships in the above photo are all outside their beds and the pistons look damaged? New bug today, piston heads seem to be randomly vanishing.

Introducing the missile boat. Small frigate class, four launchers, four engines for forward, two engines for everything else. Very good at killing anything civilian. Not so good at killing anything military. Camera on the front in between the headlights is there in case I feel like cockpit view but obviously need to see beyond the heavy armor plating that completely blocks view (and protects the pilot). Already planning a mk3 (mk1 got blown up when I learned the above fact about this ship vs military npcs), the design of which came bout in an unusual fashion.

I took mk2 out for a spin, we got exploration and endless worlds today. I got about 25km away from base when I clipped an asteroid wall. Knocked out pilots seat, right launcher, conveyor connections, engines on that side, headlight and all armor plating. Nerve wracking because small ships only broadcast 5km their location, and I was about 25km away from home base. I used several points in the current skybox to remember where missile boat mk2 was, went back and got the scv and then after repairing what I could I powered down the missileboat and attached landing gear. The above photo is of the trip back to base with scv acting as tow truck. And that photo is the moment I got the idea for the mk3 missile boat. Look neat when they are both attached like that. Gonna be fun...

Last photo before I wrap this up, someone asked the other day how 2.0 compares size wise to other ships. There you go. 1.0 on the right and on the left is the starter blue ship on easy map fresh games, ship made by Keen themselves.