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Space Engineers survival mode turns the astral void deadly

Space Engineers Keen Software

The “‘survival mode’ update is the biggest since Space Engineers launched on Early Access,” writes Keen Software House’s Marek Rosa. “Even the multi-player update didn’t bring so many changes.”

Before, in creative mode, you couldn’t be harmed, you couldn’t die. Now your space suit can run out of energy, you can be crushed, exploded, shot – all manner of horrors. It’s not just you that can run down, though, your ships, too, can drift lifeless if you run out of fuel.

After which you’ll die.

Medical rooms now act as respawn points and locations to refuel your space suit, and nuclear reactors are used to power all the sections of your creations. Including the medical rooms. So you have to maintain a steady supply of uranium ingots to stay ahead of a cold death.

Building, too, has become more complex. Now you have to gather ore by drilling asteroids, refine that ore into ingots, process the ingots into components in an assembler, and transport the components to the construction site.

Your grinder can be used to construct blocks and access the internal components. These can then be repaired or replaced.

All round, it’s a more involving process. Keen Software have released a tutorial to walk you through it all:

You can read the full development blog on Keen Software’s site, where Rosa provides much more detailed information on the update. And here are the full patch notes

Features

– survival mode (manual building, death, re-spawn)

– new game scenarios: Crashed Red Ship, Two Platforms, Lone Survivor, Asteroids

– ore detector block

– ore detector in hand drill

– new custom world screen

– new assembler screen

– world generator change: most asteroids have iron core

– assembler can be switched to disassembling mode

– new assembler production queue hotkeys: Ctrl+click (adds stack of 10) and Shift+click (adds stack of 100)

– placing new ship block – now you can place a landing gear which can be attached to any surface instead of a light armor block cube

– reduced electricity production and consumption

– reduced uranium consumption

– reduced available uranium after starting a new game

– block info in Cube Builder screen and when placing a new block in Survival

– explosives component

– new music and sounds

– changed tools animations

– floating objects can be destroyed

– HUD is now more legible

– balanced materials required for assembling components

– changed mass and volume of some components and tools

– changed ore and ingot display unit from volume to mass

– Join game screen (contains a list of games which the player can join)

– game runs in window mode when it is unable to run in full screen

– character can now walk on a ship when it’s flying in max speed

– inventory names now show the name of the block

Fixes

– improved explosion performance

– improved 3rd person camera performance

– fixed symmetry mode

– fixed few sounds

– fixed friend games in join game screen

– fixed ore movement

– fixed crash when creating particle effect

– fixed crash when using symmetry mode

– fixed few typing errors

– fixed chat and gravity window overlapping

– fixed crashes in landing gears

– fixed color/texture of ore

– fixed copy/paste issues

– fixed small ship drill blind spot

– fixed doors spinning on rotors

– fixed passage collision model

– fixed asteroid collision shape in large worlds

– fixed landing gear synchronization in MP

– reduced number of additional asteroids in Easy Start 2

– fixed character’s backpack in MP

New sounds

– assembler (idle, processing)

– door

– gravity generator

– medical room (idle, healing)

– refinery (idle, processing)

– reactor

– rotor

– landing gear

– grinder and welder

– construction and deconstruction sounds for survival

– HUD failure (inventory full, not enough material)