after having put the hours in, this game still feels a very crude tech demo
ship building is very limited. rotors and pistons have loads of issues, phantom forces dominate the simulation and anything moveable is a liability on any build. no wonder the workshop lacks interesting mechanical things! that and of course the fact that projectors still can't understand pistons and rotors, making testing stuff and porting it into survival an exercise in frustration, and even when something looks like it should work there are the dozen unimplemented things or odd bugs to hamper your progress (like, wheel sidewall has no friction, so if you are in a v that's more than 10 degree per side you have zero traction to move forward)
nothing says more "engineering" than having to build stuff out of trial and error!
there are odd design choices everywhere - 1x1 wheel don't reach ground, 3x3 wheel have 0.5 meter ground clearance, 5x5 wheel? still 0.5m clearance because the suspension is twice as big. there's no way to automate the simplest thing, like having a rotor increase at specific increments or rotate at a specific speed on command, without having to write programs in their clunky editor; everyone max speed is the same, making the jetpack the most convenient mode of transport.
and then there's stuff that's so simplified you'd expect to get it into some cheap arcade space shooter, like off center thrusters not giving torque to the ship, mass placement being irrelevant and capricious restrictions on which block can go where
I see the appeal of smashing large ship one into another and maybe of large multiplayer combat, but the survival experience has been quite underwhelming, even after putting in some mods to make the planets more alive and interesting, you have no reason to build advanced vehicles unless for shit and giggles.
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Topic: Spacegineers... Spengineers... Space-Genners... SPACE ENGINEERS! (Read 236372 times)