Firstly, a lot more fun than vanilla. I've seen tons of changes to this mod/mods in the pack, and the game since starting the mod. Some changes I really liked such as assert ships not gunning me down in the first week and blowing up my drop pod lul. Some changes I really don't like such as reavers having their loot nearly destroyed so I question why I ever fight them (since when I'm at the game stage to wanna fight them, I already got iron/cobalt/nickel sorted).

Theres a lot of ways to play the mod. You can try to power through with stone and bigger and bigger drills. You can go boulder hunting all the time (Which is really effective) for your resources, you can zoom to space asap and try to space base (Its really hard to live on asteroids near the ice moon), you can zoom to the ice moon and base there (Observers get ungodly annoying if you do), you can spend 3-6 hours flying a small grid to mars to base there or on it's regular moon (Then you'll get observers all over, as well as have mars storms)

Ores are spread out pretty well.

Omi = iron, sil, cobalt, nickel, magnesium, organic matter
Ice moon = Gold, Uranium, mountains of magnesium, nickel, silver
Asteroids = Silver, iron, carbon, potassium, phosphorus
Mars = Platnium, and a few others (If I remember right, I only reached mars once)

The easiest way to fail in this pack imo, is rush off omni with the intention of not returning. You need cobalt, its really hard to come by in space. I've had playthroughs where I never found it anywhere off omni. Theres plenty of cobalt boulders on omni.

The biggest frustration in this pack is getting yourself into constant drone attacks. Your spawn on omni is like your "safe space". You will rarely get attacked here. You won't get observer spawns near here unless you go to flat areas like the ice lakes. If you do trigger an observer to spawn, hope its far from the base. Otherwise be ready for non-stop daily headaches as a drone will come each day from it.

If your really unlucky, it's drone will catch you away from base and make you crash/waste all your hydrogen fuel escaping home. I've had drones in this pack chase me like 300km. I've run to the trader above the ice moon many times to sit in the safe zone to get a break from the drones. And ponder mysteries of the universe, like how a small grid antenna is still working so far from its spawner. Learn what types of drones each thing spawns and if it can fly into space, or function in gravity.

To date I still think observers are the most deadly thing in this entire pack, as they take over areas you want to be in/mine at, and send constant drone attacks. Reavers almost never bother me. Space pirates are annoying but usually don't bother me on planets/moons, though on space bases they can be just as bad as observers.


If you play this pack, the space engineer thruster calculator is your best friend if you ask me. That ship you made might fly amazing, but load it up with iron bars from your space asteroid base and watch it crash like a rock on planet re-entry.

Parachutes are your other best friend. Both for amazing hydrogen fuel saving on omni landing, over weight loads your thrusters can't handle, but also emergency landings too.

Wheels in this pack can be pretty fun. Specially for mapping flat areas like the ice moon in the early game. They are great for your first boulder mining machines/unknown signal getters. But once observers enter the mix, you might wanna switch back to flying. Slow speed can = death as their drones rain fire from above. And if you do defeat one but at great cost, who cares? Tomorrow it'll spawn another. And observers are pretty much everywhere, moons, planets, everywhere but space and super high elevations.

The intention of this pack may be that you want enemy parts to build with, as making the parts yourself is "too expensive" but thats only my experience if you try to brute force via stone. If you boulder hunt you'll find tons upon tons of nickel, cobalt, and iron. Just be modest at first, just a medium cargo container, as light a hydrogen ship as you can make. Iron and cobalt boulders are both near spawn, its just the nickel boulder you gotta find to really get rolling. Or you can go light weight drones, but drones carry reaver risk.

A trip to the ice moon for some gold to make a 4x yield modded refinery back home and you'll be doing well. From there its building up bigger and bigger ships until you can get your jumpdrive and jumping to whatever planet you want. If your win goal was reaching x planet.

Some things in this pack I do wish were vanilla, Like the better cameras

Some things in this pack...are.. well questionable. Like industrial refineries able to smelt stone. Dispensers players can build selling all the crop seeds/selling foods/drinks, The daily needs ores on asteroids imo feel worthless since organic material is so common. Some things I am glad to see is daily needs meat cloning no longer leaves you with fractional metal grates.

I'm really glad economy got left on in this pack. Even though the trader at the ice moon is pretty ehhh. Its nice to be able to do some quests for them as a break. Or save up for the tier 3 tool if your getting really unlucky getting platnium. Or if you goal is just collect every npc ship, since its a ship seller trader.

The unknown signal + daily needs items in them gives you stuff to do all through the early game. If you care about making all the foods.

I kind wish the pack had more mod planets in tbh. Besides omni there is the big saturn like planet. Which while fun to land on. You can't do much with it as its ultra gravity and entirely ice or stone. (I forget which it was). I remember reading it had/has lots of cool mod moons that orbit it, but I never saw them in this pack.

If the pack gets remade one day, It'd be pretty nice having pertam since this pack is older than that update too.