Originally posted by Captain Canard:

... space stations that clearly "cheat" and would never work if not for dev magic. ...

How about safe zones without the safe zone block? Years ago I couldn't find a NPC grid safe zone block, so up and deleted the entire grid. Safe zone still present.
One of the many reasons I don't enable factions in my games.

Edit : I just want keen to put the safe zone block in the station, it can work by magic and doesn't even have to be powered or set up. Not having the block breaks my immersion.

Originally posted by ShadedMJ:

How about safe zones without the safe zone block? Years ago I couldn't find a NPC grid safe zone block, so up and deleted the entire grid. Safe zone still present.

Edit : I just want keen to put the safe zone block in the station, it can work by magic and doesn't even have to be powered or set up. Not having the block breaks my immersion.

Yes that bothers me too, though I can overlook something that could, in theory, be hidden away behind a locked door that I cannot see (a safezone generator, for example). The problem with the missing conveyor piping in the new stations is that it is painfully obvious and cannot be "not seen" once noticed.

One of the many reasons I don't enable factions in my games.

I would be very tempted to build my own NPC stations for single-player to replace Keen's, but the problem with that is I would rob myself the thrill of exploration and discovery. Add this to the list of reasons I play almost entirely online with other people these days, because a player cannot cheat like "Lazy Devs" can - we players have to follow the rules of the game!

Does anyone know if Keen's NPC ships also cheat? I'm guessing not, since they are designed to be claimable, which would disable any "dev magic" and break a cheat-built ship.

Like I said, with any sample from Keen, what you see is exactly what you get.

In this case, NPC stations that distribute goods. No one said they distributed those goods the way we have to.

Originally posted by Captain Canard:

It drives me nuts when people throw around "The devs are lazy!" in almost every game forum I belong to, usually because the game lacks a feature said people want desperately and feel the devs should be able to give them over the weekend. Of course, more times than not whatever they want is nowhere near that simple.

However.... I am very disappointed in what I see as a "lazy dev approach" in Space Engineers since the last major update - specifically, NPC space stations that clearly "cheat" and would never work if not for dev magic. Take a close look at these new stations - connectors are not connected to anything (no conveyors, no cargo containers, no H2 tanks), and yet they can transfer goods to and from your ship and top off your fuel. Stations have air but no O2 tanks, etc. This, my friends, is LAZY. Worse, it's a terrible example for the "children" (new players to SE), because they look at how these stations are built, learn from that, and then wonder why their own grids don't work. The reason is their grids are lacking dev magic!

The old stations may have been a bit more boring thanks to the lack of cosmetic blocks, but at least they designed to be functional. I could follow the piping from connectors to various tanks and cargo storage, for example. Of course I always knew that these stations still relied on dev magic instead of actual inventory, but the construction was believable. Now, Keen isn't even trying to pretend to be realistic anymore! And in case you haven't figured it out yet, it bothers me.

Not sure about that myself. Cause I never seen a new station in the game. And this is playing a NEW game or solar system map after the update. My old saves have trade stations. My custom solar system that uses workshop planets and a few of my own I edit has trade stations. But since this Econ update I havent seen squat for trade stations. Unless I pull up a old save file, then I am good to go. I have to agree lazy dev or dont care devs..

Originally posted by Oparator Stalker:

Not sure about that myself. Cause I never seen a new station in the game. And this is playing a NEW game or solar system map after the update.

There was something I had to do to trigger stations to spawn. I believe it was a game save file edit (setting some flag from True to False), but I don't remember the details. Whatever it was, I found it online (the solution), so there is hope!

I think KSH's different teams are working at cross purposes, and that the modelling team consistently favors appearance over functionality. I've complained often how their designs are bad models for players to follow, and given how brittle they are, I don't think the idea was to design them for players to improve upon. (The small grid ships are usually better than the large grid ships, though.) And I think from what I've seen of Space Engineers 2, they want to get farther away from the concept of a game about engineers, and closer to just a shooter with some base-building.

Originally posted by FoolishOwl:

I think KSH's different teams are working at cross purposes, and that the modelling team consistently favors appearance over functionality.

I wonder if it's so the destruction physics look cooler in trailers and demonstrations?

The kittens are getting all growed up and going their separate ways, but the sandbox, it'd have trouble keeping pace with even just one of them. No game has a prayer of keeping up with everybody.

I like logistics, tool use and construction puzzles. Find its strong points with those and SE1 in the niche they target can eclipse freaking Factorio.

Some people want endless combat, I'd guess there is no game ever with a logistics-and-industrial base and even comparably satisfying crunchy combat between peers, at least not any I've ever been able to approach. I'm guessing Toribash is as satisfying for people who can hack the UI and specificity, but that's going to be a deeep cut.

Anyway SE1's got a lot of love-the-combat players, I think they don't maintain and defend the logistics, mining and industrial base it'd actually take to keep a combat fleet fighting whether through preference or just the game not being able to serve both at the same time? Really don't have a clue there.

Some people want to do trading and exploration and basically fantasy base/shipbuilding with a little performative or just tame combat, that's me maybe half the time too, I think they might be happier with Empyrion which I have put hundreds of hours in to over the years, or maybe SE2 when it hits its stride, but Empyrion's jank makes SE1's jank look like, I don't know, hey AI what game manages to make deep complexity the most painless? …yeah, it likes CK3 and of course Factorio, for jank and UI obtuseness I'd say Empyrion is maybe to SE1 what SE1 is to Factorio.

There's a *lot* of that latter sort. I get Keen wanting to entice them and figuring out they maybe just aren't ready for a combat or logistics game yet so keep feeding them cosmetics while they figure it out?

Thing is, I don't think there's enough of a player base to feed enough dev horsepower to really do justice building SE1 in a direction that'd interest experienced players like me or the hard-combat crew happy.

There's fundamental limits in the game, anything with blueprints and mixed skill levels let alone a logistics/supply component is going to be susceptible to skilled boom-strat players who somehow can't see they've made griefers of themselves, and any new non-PvP puzzles have to get inserted at some point in the natural PvE progression but again, there will never be enough people get that far to fund endless development.

When I asked the AI for games with personally-played combat between user-designed combatants and a really satisfyingly crunchy feel, plus fleets or teams maybe, it said Armored Core VI, From the Depths, Sprocket, Space Engineers and Robocraft. I'd already bounced off of From the Depth's UI, it's a jankfest *and* it's crude as hell, it makes Empyrion look refined, and Robocraft is dead plus I didn't like what I saw when I tried it. Armored Core VI looks dead on target for the combat design and execution but that's really not where I live, I like building the bases to support the combat more than the combat itself.

Anyway, I dont' think the devs are lazy, I think they're doing everything they can while still getting paid enough to do it. I don't blame them for thinking any attempt to now push SE1 in X4's direction would not end well, much as I'd like to see a successful love child I don't think it could be built on the SE1 engine.

You know, the idea of logistics, bases, and so forth alongside combat is appealing. Seems part of the problem is the game is sparse and foes are very limited (in number and ability) without other players to supply all that and even then they're hamstrung by tight limitations on construction.

That's always been the issue: it's a huge sandbox and we seem encouraged to go nuts with it, but we very quickly run into very strict limitations that essentially say "just kidding." That their advertising always continues to imply a greater scope than is possible tells me they don't particularly care about this.

Meanwhile, all talk about a sequel says to me they're saying I should I get an engine upgrade via an entirely new game that might fix the problem, but also they're gonna feature creep all over again which kinda tells me they learned nothing and changed nothing about their approach, so even that solution I have no real confidence in.

I honestly get the feeling Keen is run by people who like to play with tech, but aren't actually that interested in developing a game.

Originally posted by MekaDovah:

You know, the idea of logistics, bases, and so forth alongside combat is appealing.

Oh, yeah. But what I'm saying is, that's one of the fundamental limits I was talking about: what combat is destroying is what the bases, the logistics-and-basebuilding-and-such guys like me, are building. This isn't Keen's fault, it's an unresolvable conflict in any builder+combat game, the only thing they can do is very carefully steer clear of the least fun parts of that intersection. Most games go for mostly-basebuilding-with-some-combat, like Factorio, or mostly-combat-with-some-basebuilding, that's basically every RTS ever.

And I think any great game has to offer respite for the times you don't actually want a challenge, you just want toys to play with that make pleasing and gratifying things with juuuust enough challenge to distract you from your hindbrain's recalcitrance while it chews on whatever, but that adds yet another unresolvable conflict, the people want only that and complain endlessly about any challenge their first however many attempts fail to solve.

SE1 has been trying to keep all three crowds feeling loved, and the default settings bypass a lot of l&bb challenges so reaching the combat and exploration parts is super easy, but it's a damn tricky balance to try to find even if you think it's possible any game could be without glaring, obvious faults from the point of view of players who wish it was trying to find a different balance.

Keen have an awful long way to go to entice the majority of Empyrion players to come and play. Even Vanilla Empyrion has approx 10,000 star systems with multiple planets, and if you're looking at Reforged Eden 2 you're talking over 30,000 systems and numerous factions.
What most SE players forget is that the base engine for both games *is the same* both suffer with the same AI jank, and combat in SE is even worse than vanilla Empyrion. SE also has way less consistant block shapes than even Vanilla Empyrion so even doing some simple block building is impossible because there major connecting block and corner elements completely missing in SE.
Pretty much the only attraction for me with SE is wheeled rovers. If I want combat and space exploration, and ship building then I'll play Empyrion.

Originally posted by FoolishOwl:

And I think from what I've seen of Space Engineers 2, they want to get farther away from the concept of a game about engineers, and closer to just a shooter with some base-building.

Yeah, that's my fear too, ever since the magic "spray a ship into existance using rocks and magic backpack" mechanic was revealed in SE 2.

I think KSH's different teams are working at cross purposes, and that the modelling team consistently favors appearance over functionality.

Thing is, you can have BOTH. We players do it all the time! It's just plain laziness not to, hence this thread.

Originally posted by Captain Canard:

... Does anyone know if Keen's NPC ships also cheat? I'm guessing not, since they are designed to be claimable, which would disable any "dev magic" and break a cheat-built ship.

Yes and no and depending on your definitions. It isn't at a "bugging me" level.

Building underground to see NPC repeatedly take the shortest route to me, when a real player wouldn't know, and that's the game plotting a course and not a programmable block.

There's a couple of programmable block statements that only work if the block is pirate owned.

NPC ships do track ammunition and fuel but they used to have infinite fuel/ammo.

Factorum have that shield thing and fairly sure that isn't a block.

Edit: I kinda wish there were an alternative to the safe zone. Safe zones were put in, then players took them over too easy so Keen had to magic a solution.

Originally posted by Captain Canard:

Originally posted by Oparator Stalker:

Not sure about that myself. Cause I never seen a new station in the game. And this is playing a NEW game or solar system map after the update.

There was something I had to do to trigger stations to spawn. I believe it was a game save file edit (setting some flag from True to False), but I don't remember the details. Whatever it was, I found it online (the solution), so there is hope!

Oh? Well how about that. I will check into it, would be nice to have them again instead of running back to old saves all the time to have them.
They do all these changes for the stations, via the last DLC, then suddenly, you don't get them anymore, like that makes any sense to even mess with it to began with. Thanks for the info tho...

lol youre doing exactly what you just stated about other people 😂😂😂 ffs and I never looked at a npc trade station to learn how things work , POI’s yes but only looking is for inspiration.