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SE Tips and Tricks

By Guinevere

Welcome! This guide is a simple list of miscellaneous tips, tricks and shortcuts in Space Engineers, in no particular order, that new or intermediate players (or even veteran players) may not know. Some of this information can also be found in the game's loading screens, but I thought it would be nice to put it in one place. I will update it as I and people I play with think of things to add to it. If you've got something that deserves a bullet point, post it in the comments. Try not to post any misinformation, as I will have to delete it.

Lastly, if you find any information that's already here to be incorrect, please let me know so I can cover it up fix it. Thanks to everyone who has read, enjoyed and learned something!

Award

Created by

Guinevere
Offline

Category: Gameplay Basics

Languages: English

Posted

Updated

3 Dec, 2019 @ 2:30pm

13 Jan, 2020 @ 7:55pm

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145	Current Favorites

Guide Index

Overview

Building/Design

Day-to-Day Life

Comments

Building/Design

Using small containers in place of conveyors is an easy way to increase cargo capacity, especially on compact or early-game designs. However, containers are more expensive to build than conveyors, and are 100-200kg heavier on large grids.
To avoid having to repair your ship from memory, add a projector to your ship with a blueprint of that same ship, and line it up with the ship itself.
External air vents set to depressurize can provide oxygen for cockpits of grids in breathable atmospheres.
Turrets have roughly the same intelligence as the average flat-earther. Be sure to give them plenty of room to make sketchy shots right along your hull. Or turn off turret self-damage in world settings. :P
Place turrets (or other essential systems) atop welders to allow them to auto-repair, if components are available. Combine this with the projector setup mentioned above to allow them reconstruct themselves under fire.
Reducing a gravity generator's range to the dimensions of your build not only saves power, but prevents you from being unnecessarily yeeted away from your ship if you fat-finger X while working in space. However, leaving it at max range can provide a handy shield against gravity-propelled player-made weapons.
Speaking of gravgens, the range displayed for each axis shows the distance from one side of the gravity field to the other. In other words, if you want to know how far the field extends from the block itself, divide your setting by 2.
Ctrl+click on control panel sliders to enter exact values instead of hunting for the exact pixel that represents your desired setting.
When using rotors to build ramps, doors or similar contraptions, a rotor displacement of -20cm (entered after a ctrl+click as -0.2) will line up your subgrid with the maingrid blocks around it.
Block groups with identical names will merge across subgrids. Include your grid's name - or an abbreviation of it - in your block groups to prevent, for example, your fighters' *Thrusters* merging with your carrier's *Thrusters*.
Thruster damage collisions are almost exactly the size of visual thruster flames, which allows blocks like passageways and certain armor slopes to occupy the same block space. Experiment with what works and use this to protect your thrusters. Here's a table of thruster flame lengths:

Type

Small Grid Small

Small Grid Large

Large Grid Small

Large Grid Large

Hydrogen

2 blocks

7 blocks

2 blocks

7 blocks

Ion

2 blocks

4 blocks

3 blocks

5 blocks

Atmospheric

1 block

3 blocks

1 blocks

3 blocks
The edge of a large block is 2.5 meters and about 5 small blocks long, making small blocks 0.5 meters on each edge.

Day-to-Day Life

You can reduce the opacity of your HUD and menu backgrounds in Esc>Settings>Game in order to see behind them. This makes it easy to fiddle with block settings without having to leave the control panel repeatedly to see if your settings are working.
Rovers can jump! Hold your jetpack key down while driving one to charge a jump (you'll see the suspension compress all the way down), then release it to get some air. This can be useful for getting out of holes and the like.
For some reason, O2/H2 generators consume ice constantly even if they don't need to. When you're not using any H2 or O2 on your ship, and not filling any tanks, turn them off to avoid wasting precious ice. (Suggested by Commander Clone) Edit: This appears to be a bug. It doesn't always happen, but be sure to check.

30 Comments

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andersenman 10 Jun @ 11:02am

Gas generators consume ice in chunks, the consumption is by far not perfectly proportional to the milligram. That's likely why you noticed ice consumption you couldn't place. (Besides, you're likely to still be breathing and consuming from cockpit or interior atmo.) Also, even for the slowest consumption, they use full power. – The rotor displacement depends on grid size and rotor size. Use BuildInfo mod to see accurate values in the terminal for any selected rotor. (It's also not exactly 20 cm) Same for pistons, by the way. – The edge of a large block is exactly five small blocks long, not just "about".

BNett2001 28 Nov, 2022 @ 3:43pm

Instead of having 5 things on your ships hot bar for launch/docking you can use 2 timers in a 'relay panel' capacity. I typically have timer 1 setup to put tanks on refill, batteries on recharge, Thrusters off, etc. Opposite of it on timer 2. Then just put the timers on your hot bar and use the trigger now function. The timers will work from left to right in the actions menu. If you put connector lock/unlock in them and are controlling something on the other grid from the timer's location then make sure to put the connector to the right of the other items. Don't want to disconnect to early.

C.DEF 22 Jul, 2020 @ 9:30am

You can also control the values of the planet size using numpad arrows.

C.DEF 20 Jul, 2020 @ 7:22am

Here's a good tip I found out. You can have your own pirate drones protect your base by naming an antenna a pirate name as well as the grid itself. Then you can create a faction and if any player comes too close, lets just say they'll be in for a treat!

AIM-9X 21 Feb, 2020 @ 6:50pm

Here's a great tip I have learned myself, ALWAYS CHECK YOUR BATTERIES ON DOCKED SHIPS!!! Nothing is worse than having a docked fighter, setting batteries on recharge to recharge batteries faster, then forgetting to turn them to discharge/auto and having your fighter fall right out of the sky....

Bill The Turtle 29 Jan, 2020 @ 8:47pm

the guy on the cover looks like general grievous

YeahKinda 13 Jan, 2020 @ 4:15pm

Yeah it's most likely a bug then. My solo games never had an issue with ice dropping, at least from what I've noticed.

Sunburnt Dog Turd 13 Jan, 2020 @ 7:31am

@EkohTheTaur I can confirm that even in solo my ice levels creep down ever so slowly at like 0.0 something per second. No engines idling or anything. But it doesn't happen all the time, so perhaps a bug..

Guinevere [author] 12 Jan, 2020 @ 10:37pm

true

YeahKinda 12 Jan, 2020 @ 10:36pm

Yeah it's a bug, but it may be different based on the server. Seeing as all single-player games are hosted on the same "Server," it could be the same across all saves for the same user.

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