Ripped off by the Used Ship Guy - Space Engineers Economy Only #4

[@crinklethebear]

10:45 "Asteroids are big, but theyre not as big as space..." I bet you could even fit every asteroid that has ever existed, into space!

[@gazehound]

That's ridiculous, I don't think that's true at all!

[@markbooth3066]

“Space is big. You just won't believe how vastly, hugely, mind-bogglingly big it is. I mean, you may think it's a long way down the road to the chemist's, but that's just peanuts to space.” - Douglas Adams, The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy

[@aurumworks]

The Tusk may not be able to deal with losing directional thrust but it can deal perfectly with something floating directly in front of its turret. lol

[@hippyhappyhippo]

Yeah, that was a "smile and wait for the flash" kind of moment.

[@My_initials_are_O.G.cuz_I_am]

I've just remembered about that one time I wanted to spice up a save by moving a planet and/or exchanging it for a modded one(I can't quite remember), after I had already gotten to a surface trade station on it. I removed it and placed the new one next to another planet. The surface trade station was now 2k+ km away from the nearest planet. Search contracts vary the pay based on the distance from the station. As a result, the Search contracts for this station were way more difficult, but paid into the billions of credits.

[@Splitsie]

Interesting, I wonder what might be possible with the other missions with that e.g. move a few bases closer together to enable non-jump drive hauling missions etc

[@warriorsabe1792]

That little beacon, I bet the button was already pressed by whoever owned that ship previously, and that's why there were pirate drones. Bit of environmental storytelling, basically

[@tobefrank4040]

NEVER sell platinum to the store. Wait till you get an acquisition contract for it then complete that contract. You missed out on like 4-5 mil because of that

[@phoenixx5092]

Yup, thats how I stonks my way to wealth in space engineers. Visit some stations, grab some supply contracts for stuff i know i can get, then sell it and profit..

[@tomsterbg8130]

10:50 very good habit, applicable to many things in life, i remember one creator said "you don't take action until the pain of inaction becomes too great to handle" and oh boy isn't that true

[@Molly-ey6lq]

SPLITSIE, We’ve Been Trying to Reach You About Your Car’s Extended Warranty

[@zranite2898]

GD 12 minutes in and still not an original thought lmao WP sir/maam

[@talscorner3696]

Once I got an email about my car's extended warranty. Note: I don't have a driving license. It was a funny 5 minutes

[@Zenas521]

Acquisition missions are good if you decide to go salvaging the "mayday" signals. Acquisition missions have the added benefit of not expiring, furthermore, they don't care how you acquired the components.

[@dhruel]

This is how I make most money on my economy save.

[@Splitsie]

Oh, I hadn't checked to see if they didn't expire, that'll be good to know as I become a 'legitimate' salvager :D

[@Zenas521]

@@Splitsie I can easily make over 400K per mission and I tend to complete many missions at once. Pay attention to how much space is required in your cargo hold per mission, for best results. :)

[@JonathanBlack]

@@Splitsie I decided to try my hand at a bankrupt scenario as well and am up to 500 million after a couple weeks. Most of it gained from gravity comp acquisition contracts. Got the comps from pirate bases on the moon.

[@mandyspence1599]

Unfortunately, it looks like to manage the escort mission, you'd need to hire a Capac... Which would cost you a lot more in terms of sandwiches and headaches, than you would earn... And thats if you could stop him from running off for long enough to help you... So yeah, jump drive is definitely the way to go...

[@Splitsie]

Yup, get the jump drive and hopefully then I can test some other cheeky ways to do the escort missions ;)

[@abraxis260482]

It might be an idea to have an independent survival kit that you can drop off at a safe distance (with a battery, beacon & ions in each direction) and bring your fighter or scout in closer to a potential ambush. That way if something goes wrong (like being cockpit sniped) your chances of recovering it are a little better since you're not risking the survival kit in combat too. I doubt it'd make a huge difference, but it might've been handy for the escort missions to set up the fighter with AI blocks so it can follow you at a set distance while you're out with your grinder. Getting back into it might be a little bit of a palaver as it may attempt to run away from you, but you can probably outpace it easily, and failing that; an action relay to switch off follow mode is always an option. Really though, I think escort missions are probably intended for LG ships, and even then the profitability with the ammo and repair cost is still pretty dubious.

[@1953dan]

You know things are not going to plan when you're asking yourself the question "Now, which body location is it?"

[@whitneyengelhaupt2610]

I have found that the fastest and easiest way to make money is to sell steel plates until you can get established. Also, acquisition contracts with uranium.

[@Splitsie]

I should have a look at selling steel plates as I do have a lot of them now

[@MrMighty147]

I feel like the easiest way to make the economy system matter more to the average player would be to make specific components only available by purchase from stations. They already scratched the surface of that by making prototech components only available by raiding factorum stations. I hope they expand on that concept and implement it in SE2.

[@Splitsie]

Yep, wouldn't even need those components to actually be useful tbh. Having to haul, acquire or otherwise move around large amounts of novelty items would still be a step up from what we currently do

[@ultmateragnarok8376]

Escort missions feel like something that might not pay well (according to the description this is a part of corporate conflict, which makes the drones being space pirate faction craft interesting) but would give a ton of reputation - which would be helpful if, y'know, the reputation system was easy to see anywhere. If anything gets fully reworked with the coming cargo ship update, I would hope part of it is that - and, as well, possibly some physical hauling contracts with the standardized containers, would be nice. And just hauling at all - a 'some stations produce, some stations demand, per resource' system would be cool. Make some things super valuable but rare, other things pay more in bulk, make it specific items that aren't always necessarily useful so you have to engage with the economy rather than producing them yourself. Easy-ish enough.

[@Splitsie]

Yeah, the whole balance is just a bit off everywhere I look

[@GhostOfSnuffles]

That first PONOS encounter ship is a really old design and you can find the original projection on the steam workshop. It's a great little ship if you gut out the conveyor line that goes from the hydro tanks in the back to the hydro generators towards the front and replace it with a row of small cargo containers, it also provides plenty of conveyor branches. I think the original blueprint is called the Ponos-F1. When they first changed the random encounters for the survival update i'd often look for that ship in specific because half the time there's no drones protecting it so you can basically jetpack right in side and take it over as if it's yours.

[@Splitsie]

I'm kinda glad I didn't get it without any fight, feels more 'fair' for me to get it after taking out the drones :D

[@glabifrons]

I found the Ponos Encounter both with and without the drones. It's definitely a fun one to fix up. I ended up restoring one and liked the design enough to do something vaguely similar to yours. I gutted the interior and filled it with a full refinery with 4 yield modules and an assembler with 4 efficiency modules, a full med-room, small reactor (I think two, actually), a couple ball-turrets, hidden welders to do real-time repairs when getting attacked (in range of the fuel tanks, engines, and turrets), absolute gobs of storage, 3 O2/H2 generators, an airlock, additional thrusters, more gyros, kept the gravity generator and upgraded to real stairs, and tons more without changing the exterior style much. It's in the workshop called Ponos-G1 if you're interested. I'm tempted to revisit it using some of the newer blocks. I might actually be able to fit the new smaller antenna somewhere.

[@Kakiro_Miro]

kinda wish the video's were longer, but it's nice to be able to watch another series. Miss the old one with capac.

[@ColinRichardson]

Used car salesman are the same EVERYWHERE!

[@zranite2898]

I'd like to talk to you about your extended ship warranty

[@ladylunah22]

I am loving this series! This made me a fan, and after watching this, I started chewing through your Assertive Acquisitions series while I wait for your next episode and AA made my wife a fan and now she's excited to rewatch this one with me. Thank-you so much for the great content!

[@Splitsie]

That's awesome, I'm glad you're both enjoying it - maybe one day I'll be able to get my other half to like this stuff too :D

[@peem]

Love the series but it bugs the heck out of me that your main ship (the yellow hydrohauler) has a big hole in its cockpit and smoke coming from somewhere.

[@Splitsie]

lol I do plan to fix that... probably :D

[@glenmcgillivray4707]

It's atmospheric. And reminds us of the guy who died in here before us. Because he clearly didn't benefit from closing that hole nor fixing the smoking thing, cos he's dead

[@montro2220]

29:10 MAYDAY, MAYDAY ... Oh well 41:16 Turret goes: Hello there my little friend!

[@trivalentclan]

So many people complaining about nothing to do in SE, aka once you launch a ship in space you have done everything. Only true if you don’t go looking for space pirate bases, wrecks, and ships, never mind the new Factorium bases. Splitsie demonstrates this very well, nothing to do if you play it safe, but go after the Maydays and you got to learn combat. Imagine the fun of collecting all the different pirate ships/bases via combat.

[@Splitsie]

It's true, there's a good deal out there, it's terribly balanced and a bit broken, but there's plenty of it if you've got the right mindset :)

[@kerbalairforce8802]

One of my favorite grade school teachers said to my class, "if you're bored, it's because you aren't exercising your creativity".

[@Sp3llmen]

That mayday ship my friends found in a world we have and they partially destroyed it and sent it off into space. Another friend came into our world and accidently spawned an a planet away from us, so he died and respawned and that same ship so we told him to fly it back. I now own it after fully rebuilding it and included a full refinery and assembler, and its my fighter ship with 2 artillery guns, and 5 total turrets, and entirely build of heavy armor now. So sad to see it being broken down for parts :( poor ponos

[@Kaboom-0623]

give that ship a sharp nose and call it the lawn dart

[@Bigrignohio]

I have $50 to bet that the moment he gets the jump drive operational he will find a space pirate ship with one on it.

[@Splitsie]

lol Seems likely :D

[@glabifrons]

I don't think any of the Encounters or even the Cargo Ships (referring to the game options) have them, but I'm hoping I'm wrong. I actually wonder if they were all designed before the Jump Drive was introduced to the game (I mean, they have hallways turned sideways for pretend beds, after all). It's fantastic that the next update will have redesigned and updated Cargo Ships... I'm extremely excited about that! I'm hoping that includes Encounters too.

[@danielrobinson7799]

The solar panels you put on the big ship make it look like a dart

[@FishyFelix]

I found that space ship on a suit only run and I fully rebuilt it. Manage to fit an industrial refinery inside of it and currently using it as mobile mining factory.

[@timmyisme22]

Looking forward to more of this series. Keep at the economic grind!

[@SpikePeace]

Not spoilers, just a remark on Splitsie saying "space is big and asteroids are big, but asteroids are smaller than space - I take that chance" (paraphrased): Either I got really really lucky so far, or asteroids that are generated in proximity to your ship (most likely player-, not grid- based) are never in your direct path. I like to travel without a jumpdrive between planets from time to time and newly generated asteroids have not appeared directly in my path until now. I find it relaxing, just listening to the engines and thrusters and ambience sounds and slooowly watch a planet come close over hours. My best guess is either luck or gameplay tweak: calculated path is a no-go-zone for asteroids generation. But its just a guess. Anyone got different experiences?

[@pembrokeisland9954]

All the asteroids are in their "pre-determined" locations. The algorithm generates them using a static non-changing seed and the location. The reason why it's not random, is that using procedural generation gets rid of the need to save any data for the asteroids. They appear persistent between your visits because the algorithm always generates them the same way. A neat trick, that. However, that then also means that you not having *yet* crashed into any of them, is just because of luck. 🙂

[@SpikePeace]

@@pembrokeisland9954 Lucky me then :D Was just an observation

[@user-cz6us7ok2j]

That's just luck. Splitsie did crash into one when he stopped paying attention in one of the previous series. I myself crashed into asteroids a couple times like that as well.

[@ultmateragnarok8376]

I've seen some videos of mods with like 3km/s speed limits, and they tend to miss most asteroids. I suppose it really is just 'space is large' coming into play, and possibly a helping of the asteroid locations maybe having some weird patterns of empty space to make travel easier.

[@trivalentclan]

Crashing into asteroids is very likely the more you fly without watching the direction you are going. In fact I crashed during first liftoff from earthlike at least once, straight up into an asteroid I was not watching for because of my ship design and I liked to be able to see the horizon marker to control my liftoff. This is like saying you don’t see pirate drones when starting from earthlike, not true as two of my earthlike starts encountered pirate drones on the first liftoff, nothing like getting shot out of your cockpit on your first liftoff in a vanilla SE game from the “easy” planet.

[@adrewadrew5860]

If i recall you need be close to ship to recive money. Little chunky LG ship with gatling turret is best way to do this cheap. Ammo is chep(well gatling at least) if avalible.

[@Splitsie]

Ammo is super expensive compared to the payout, my tiny fighter blew through more than 200k of ammo in the first tiny bit of a fight 😔

[@adrewadrew5860]

​@@Splitsie well you waste 2000+ shoots. You need LG or you need better aim. Small grid turrets are good for rovers not ships.

[@nonplayercharacter6478]

@@Splitsie Using a tornado of lead like you're hunting trailer parks in Arkansas isn't very effective either. 😉

[@diazinth]

@@Splitsie I think you might want to address wether aiming for weapons is the best approach. With unlimited magnesium, it kinda makes sense to avoiding too much damage to the various components. But weapons tends to be on the outside, and aiming for them will waste more bullets. In particular with the autocannon, you could target more core elements like batteries. Not sure how the math end up related to amount of magnesium needed to do enough damage though.

[@adrewadrew5860]

@@diazinth on paper you have more dps and alpha dmg but you need to hit. How Mg economy work I need to make excel spreadsheet.

[@corrigan88101]

You could have put a mag plate on the bottom of your fighter and just attached to the ship you're escorting. That way it can fight off the drones while you grind them down. However you do run a risk of loosing the fighter if the escort ship jumps away while the fighter is attached.

[@1953dan]

I can't remember which video it was but someone tried that because he wondered where the escort ship was jumping to. They attached their ship to it but in the end, only the escort ship jumped, leaving his ship behind. He was using a landing gear. That was a long time ago, so things could have changed since then. I wonder if it is possible to use a merge block and make the two ships into one?

[@Splitsie]

I've had ships get deleted when attached to MES cargo ships at the ends of their run, so I assumed that the vanilla ones would do the same, making me quite nervous to attach anything too expensive to them

[@kerbalairforce8802]

​@@Splitsiea "ship" that is just a panel of cheap armor with a landing gear on it to reduce damage from enemies.

[@dracicidasempronius4754]

I remember watching your videos to learn how to play many many years ago. The first two steam games I got were Kerbal Space programs and Space Engineers. After that, I can recall that you took a break from uploading and I stopped watching. I am so happy that I gave this series a shot! And I look forward to your other ones. I started playing SE again so that is why I got back into your videos

[@Splitsie]

I think you've got me mixed up with someone else as I haven't taken any significant breaks (more than 2 weeks) over the past 7 years 🤔

[@thax-r5u]

38:39 complaining there is no way escort missions are sustainable 43:53 finding 50 platinum 46:48 worth 4 mil. Platinum was probably dropped by Insinuator drone which also have 50 gold, 10 uranium and 100 Gatling ammo You don't have to win the escort mission, the reward is pathetic, but the penalty is just 7 reputation. Just need to figure out how loot those drones that don't self destruct (Molar, Tusk, Insinuator) before they de-spawn at the end of the mission. This can be an interesting "engineering challenge" :)

[@Splitsie]

It's a challenge, but not all that interesting to me tbh. The drones are easy enough to split apart, ensuring the smaller part remains when the rest gets deleted, but the thing that mostly puts me off about just wearing the loss is that it feels way too 'meta' and 'cheesy' for me to really enjoy doing it. Most of the time I'm pushed into playing that way I've stopped having fun, or am just about to stop having fun :/

[@thax-r5u]

@@Splitsie I was thinking more towards a ship with big mouth full of grinders that would just eat the disarmed drones. I was afraid of Clang's wrath, so I went with drones that follow you around and grind whats left of the drones. Unfortunately I thinks it is not possible to make the drones work with AI modules and event controller so I went into the rabbit hole of scripting. I had fun with that, but that is not idea of fun for others :)

[@ukaszanioowski9722]

​@@thax-r5u it is possible grinder drone that is effectively a slow missile with turrets

[@dirgesheverish]

you should consider building a decoy and surrounding it with heavy armor. It draws the majority of AI guns. You could give it a battery and a connector and release it at the start of a fight, giving the drones 2 things to target and reducing the amount of fire you take.

[@Splitsie]

Sadly I tested this in creative mode after all my frustrations and it just did not work, the drones fixed guns don't care about decoys and still didn't target my ship first :(

[@dirgesheverish]

@Splitsie Dang. I know it helps with turrets, so I hoped it would snag their fixed guns too...

[@kerbalairforce8802]

Unfortunately, decoys just don't seem to work as advertised. Which sucks, because we don't have any other ECM options by default. Although, I do like mounting the fireworks launchers and pretending they are flared.

[@src6339]

That mayday ships actually ok. I salvaged and refit one for use as my main ship once. It wasn't recognisable by the end, but still... 🤔

[@MordutheBerserker]

Can't wait for what you have in stored for Space Engineers 2!

[@Gottaculat]

A proper escort ship needs to tank the hits, acting like a shield. You need mobility to reposition as needed. Don't forget to periodically check the station residential sections for free tools, guns, ammo, and space credits. The ammo can be broken down and remade to help cut material costs. These escort missions also assume you are mining magnesium and whatnot, as that's part of normal gameplay, so repairs and ammo are typically cheaper, as your ammo cost is trivial if you're mining and refining. I'd recommend avoiding escorts with your self-imposed limitations to gameplay. What's way more lucrative is salvaging wrecks for platinum, and fulfilling Pt acquisition contracts, which pay silly-stupid payouts. Saw one in either this video or the last one where I think 168 Pt ingots were requested for just shy of 20M SC. Platinum is king in SE economy. It's how I made over 1B SC on a public server in a couple months. Well, I was mining and refining the Pt, but the point still stands that Pt is insanely valuable in SE.

[@Magine_]

34:59 That moment you realize you're paying for the ammo and the fuel and have $2 to spare

[@_Kitetsu]

Looking forward to seeing you haul some actual blocks via hauling missions! Let's do it.

[@trivalentclan]

Found a station at the moon, but I did enough missions at the first two stations around earthlike that my reputation was roughly -460, so I almost locked myself out of missions at this moon orbit station. 5000+ hours in SE and playing with economy and I am still learning things about economy missions that I didn’t notice previously. The repair missions might not pay off as much as search missions but they are fun to try out, so far only the 80k and 100k ones so only solar cells and radio components.

[@d9phoenix115]

i was going to suggest just finding a trader that sells ore, but you figured that out yourself. Their is atleast one faction that sells ores. It is the best way to make ammo instead of buying it completed.

[@Splitsie]

Hopefully I can find one that's not so far away, I should go back to buying the data pads I guess

[@random6434]

In this episode: Splitie manges to do what the Keen QA department failed to do by completing an escort mission.

[@jamestaylor9887]

Certainly use acquisition contracts more. You've been avoiding them up till now, but they largely pay the most. I also believe you should have kept the mayday ship. Having a small fleet of useful ships that have niche uses is very good. Additionally, you should be able to put a remote control on your fighter and I believe you can have it follow a beacon/waypoint. Meaning you can set it up once you get to the ship you need to escort and you don't have to waste time flying back to grab it. Lastly, connectors have a set up action button based on if its connected or not. You can use that instead of using an event controller to set your batteries to recharge.

[@mechawatt7844]

Escort mission can be lucrative only if you are losing cheap steel plate and not having to buy a lot of ammunition. To do that you need a large enough ship to swallow the cargo ship into a hangar surrounded by armor. So it is safe while you grind the drones. Then you just repair your armored hangar.

[@TheMalT75]

Love the series, it feels more like what the devs had in mind with the different starting scenarios provided. I never really enjoyed the fighting aspect of SE, myself, and I empathize with your cost-benefit-fun analysis of escort missions. Do drones "circle" their prey, or keep following from behind? In the latter case, maybe a large, armored "umbrella" would soak the drone bullets until they run out of ammo and allow you to finish contracts for better payout...

[@Black-vo2tv]

Great series, i like this one.

[@ShadowWolf-sy5vj]

The Ponos is great ship, what I have been using on my current play thru. Also their should be 4 cryopods.

[@Splitsie]

There might have been, I ground down the whole thing :D

[@lordsherifftakari4127]

I detect an Agglomeration Space Hulk style

[@Splitsie]

Definitely not, I'm grinding down everything I find to sell the parts or use them :)

[@mattd5857]

The thing about autocannons vs gatlings is that gatlings are waaay more ammo effecient for longer engagements. A gatling ammo box has a cargo volume of 16L and a single ammo box can let a gatling gun fire continuously for around 15 seconds while an autocannon magazine has a cargo volume of 24L and can let an autocannon fire continuously for about 7 seconds. So while Autocannons can hit harder they're not very economical in the long run.

[@Splitsie]

That's a good point, I hadn't thought about the volume of the ammo box and the impact that would have

[@kerbalairforce8802]

If you're planning on flying around with a hand grinder for escort missions, set up your small ship with a "follow me" mode to give yourself cover fire.

[@robert_the_great2842]

wow, nice, that's a good fight won. Cool Splitsie.

[@Splitsie]

Wish they'd have paid me though :D

[@robert_the_great2842]

@@Splitsie yeah, that will teach them not to miss around with Splitise.

[@kerbalairforce8802]

If you're concerned about losing a ship, I've put a Remote Control as autopilot and a timer on mine. I set a really long countdown to trigger a "fly home" command. If i ever hop out to hand drill or whatever, i trigger the timer just in case

[@Clowreed48]

Some advice, if you want to try escort missions again, build a spherical gravity device and a collector, as things get destroyed they can get sucked up into your inventory, including gattling ammo

[@Splitsie]

Hmm... interesting idea, though I'm not sure I'm ready to put an expensive ship with a grav gen that close to the enemy ships. A single gravity generator has about 2million credits worth of stuff in it :/

[@hippyhappyhippo]

I started a "Far from Home" scenario by Wellington6012 a few weeks ago. That was a suit only start at a space station 26000km from Earth and the other planets. Getting started there just doing search contracts and waiting for pirate signals to spawn in and attempting them in just my suit to see if there was a chance of beating the thing was painful. You're supposed to (in the spirit of the mod) not resort to piracy, but I have just thrown that out of the window. The Economy contracts are awful, truly. The search contracts can be done and you can build up some money and buy tools and components, enough to build a small vehicle and eventually a survival kit. The acquisition contracts are stupid if you don't have any resources and not really worth it when you do. The escort contracts, as you demonstrated just aren't worth it, with damage and ammunition cost usually worth more than the resulting reward, you're never going to make a profit unless you have some kind of killer ship, but then why are you doing the contract? The hauling contracts are only ever doable with a jump drive, and again, if you have all the resources and ship for a jump drive why are you doing these contracts? The repair contracts are probably my least favourite contracts out of all of them, as you get informed of a grid that needs repairs but not what is needed for repair. You have to make you way to it, find all the damaged blocks with no help or pointers and then have all the available components to repair it, which I'm sure are probably worth more than the reward. And if you fail the mission, you don't get any of those components back, that's just gone, so I hate that mission. I've never seen a bounty mission despite activating it in the settings, they've just never appeared when I've checked in a station, but when you're broke, they'd be pretty much useless. If the stations offered better deals the more missions you did or the better your reputation with them, maybe you could work economy into a normal playthrough and doing those missions and dealing with them would be worth it, but I don't think it is. If the missions were tailored to how much PCU and credits your player currently had, scaling with your progression and helping you out when you're broke and giving more tactical missions later on, going to attack a nearby pirate base or something, then that might be worth dealing with, but by and large it's just a feature of the game that get's overlooked because you don't need it or get rewarded enough for it. Maybe you could use the mission system and reputation as a way to unlock some 'progression', unlocking blocks as a way to make it function better?

[@TerribleResults]

21:33 That's not the thing I was asking, I was asking "Agglominate?"

[@kelemvour]

The RBLF would consider paying the Splitsie if only he would acknowledge the Superiority of Red Batteries… 😂😂😂😂😂

[@aramagon7011]

SHOULD HAVE KEPT THAT PANOS SHIP. I love getting that ship I've modded that ship so many time made it bigger its actually a very cool ship to use.

[@Splitsie]

Nah, I only need one ship and it had so many goodies to use and sell :)

[@aramagon7011]

@@Splitsie yeah i know it was just to irresistible lol but yeah i understand after watching through the eps what you want to do. but yeah. have a awesome new years.

[@thesneak536]

Space is big, asteroids are smaller, I remember some one face planting a rock in their first series because they took their eyes off, Just after they left the moon.

[@Splitsie]

I've faceplanted into an asteroid when I launched off Pertam in a gigantic Teal coloured rover, just after Capac said something snarky about me running into an asteroid while I wasn't looking :P

[@thesneak536]

@@Splitsie Sounds like you should listen to him more

[@grandfremdling3841]

Last time I tried trade stations, you could also sell ships. Not sure how much it will bring you, but I sold some random mayday for a good price...

[@bojik2616]

Space engineers. Hey look a squirrel

[@targetdreamer257]

Different question. What about a "gun ship" that can dock to the ship escorting via landing pad that you grind or turn it off at the last minute? That way the base ship would have guns but can be undocked.

[@kerbalairforce8802]

And then it warps out with your expensive turret barnacle.

[@andrewmurray2062]

Might be worth having a flight ai block on the big ship set it to the GPS you want to head too and set it to go

[@Ediros1]

I was hoping you would post another episode, before the year's end. Fun series. Let's see where that 'salvaged' sprt ship will take you. Also, I don't know if the name for the ship is still valid, but I vote: "Solar Surfer" from the Treasure Planet movie.

[@JamesAlexanderMartin]

This space credit balance issue has always bugged me. The services payout is either WAY too low or the prices for goods are WAY too high. One or the other needs to be changed. And we absolutely need delivery gigs that don't require jump drives. By the time you have jump drives you have all kinds of stuff to sell for way better return. But again, that issue could be solved with a services/goods price rebalance. Also, I thought drones had unlimited ammo? I'm not 100% sure but I've always assumed because they just keep firing and they have a sizable manoeuvrability and speed advantage over player fighters because they don't need to carry all that weight of ammo in cargo.

[@jeckjeck6943]

yes, npcs have infinite ammo.

[@Splitsie]

MES NPCs have unlimited ammo, vanilla ones do not :) Vanilla ones in a save with MES, will probably have unlimited ammo

[@jeckjeck6943]

@@Splitsie Ok,Thank you, usefull info. As i play most of the time on servers with MES.

[@BlackRainEntertain]

very relaxing gameplay

[@riddytmeed5694]

Autocannons destroy light armour with a single hit, whereas gats need to land 2 hits on the same small grid block to destroy it. so to me the autocannon seems more apealing.

[@blackhorse-wm6oc]

ROFL. Try to troll the drones into wasting all their ammo shooting at you. Trigger first wave, all four drones immediately shoot at you as they all proceed to fly straight at the cargo ship you're escorting and kamikaze it to death within 20 seconds of mission start.

[@Splitsie]

lol Yup, that was the epitome of a plan not surviving contact with the enemy :D

[@shahbazfawbush]

In space any smoke generated by your ship would stay with your ship instead of making a plume behind your ship....

[@bubbawackgaming]

43:38But I don’t wanna be a pirate!

[@MichaelArlt]

Have a wonderful start into 2025, Mr. Splitsie. Stay healthy and safe Also counts for your partner, Son and doggo See you in the new year 🎉 🎈

[@Splitsie]

And you too, Hope you have a good start to the new year :)

[@Dragonorder18]

What might some people do with a big ship fine like Splitsy found? I kinda think I'd have wanted to turn one of them into a Drone to fly along with my main ship. So both would stick together and fly in formation!

[@kerbalairforce8802]

Easily done, if you aren't doing an economy only play through like this. Drones are also pretty fuel hungry because they don't normally fly as carefully as a player

[@trivalentclan]

Splitsie dismissed repair contacts to quickly, I started with the smallest ones and am working my way up. I haven’t done the math versus selling the components but a couple steel plates and 32 solar cells gets me 100k versus waiting around trying to sell components at one of the three widely spaced bases that I know of around the planet. At 20+ minutes travel time between bases I have to pick one as base of operations.

[@Splitsie]

I might have to take another look at them if I can find a simpler one, all the ones I looked at were valuable but that meant they needed special parts like reactor components, making them very expensive 😕

[@Stoney3K]

For defense purposes, would it pay off to add a few printable decoy drones and assault cannons so you can distract the drones and outrange them?

[@Splitsie]

Unfortunately things like that are too expensive to buy the parts for :/

[@Smilemore555]

ROFL Props for the GoldenEye whatever her name was when you were talking about escort missions sucking, universally.

[@Splitsie]

I'm so glad someone recognised Natalya :D

[@lordkandar]

@@SplitsieI laughed out loud when I saw her,

[@targetdreamer257]

I don't know if you could do this but could you make a "Turtle Shell" ship? Like build a hemispherical ship that fits around the protected ship and attaches to it by like landing gear. Turn off the thrusters so the ship would do the moving. Make sure it has guns and then you go around with your grinder?

[@Splitsie]

With lots of resources you probably could, would need some very serious armour and be ready to detach near the end of the run as I think there's a risk when the ship deletes itself it'll delete anything attached too (it works that way with modded ones, I've not tested vanilla)

[@thirtymilesniper]

Splitsie's cattle disease has interrupted the series.

[@Splitsie]

Lol 😂

[@tarab9081]

The cost of ammo is one of the big issues with the Escort missions. Just experimenting I've never found a way to make it worthwhile. There's a lot of potential with the Economy system but it needs a lot of balancing and more to do.

[@Splitsie]

Yeah, in retrospect I should have set this up a bit differently, where instead of playing 'economy only' I started with the production blocks removed from the G menu and then had to buy ships that had them so I could add them to my own base to gradually become more capable

[@aristatuisvandenberg2180]

nothing wrong with fixer her up with what you find then ______ send her flying in one direction forever ;)

[@Gh3ttoboy]

Oh god working on the ship when going 70 m/s im too much of a chicken to do it like that i always have to full stop before working on stuff

[@user-cz6us7ok2j]

Same. I only do it when I absolutely need to or the ship has AI flight on and can potentially dodge asteroids.

[@Splitsie]

Sometimes I like to live dangerously, and then I run into an asteroid :P

[@lowrads3653]

There must be some way to alter the station spawn seed values directly in an sbc file or similar.

[@Splitsie]

I've not looked into what's possible, I just know that a lot of the more interesting things like creating our own missions are blocked from the modAPI, which is just daft imo

[@matt.pinder]

Why does no one use grinders to grind down ships and would rather do it by hand?

[@malaficus]

More control. Ship grinders morely likely to push ships away or grind a thing you dont want too. Add to this needing to make it agile enough to get those anoying angels, getting it piped up to cargo. It can be done. But it is a lot of work for something you wont use often.

[@Splitsie]

Plus it's quicker by hand with an elite grinder

[@Punnikin1969]

Here's hoping you find a lot of Economy Only Fans.

[@joshuataylor516]

Would decoying the drones work better if you flew a light nimble ship with an actual decoy block on it? I still wonder if cheap limpet defenses would work for the escort missions since most of your ammo ends up missing because of your maneuvering. The drones seem much more static relative to the escorted ship and might have a higher success rate. Not getting paid for the mission is another story.

[@snafu2350]

Fixed guns on hostiles don't target decoys IIRC

[@Splitsie]

Yeah, sadly decoys just don't draw enough fire any more. I did a little creative mode test where I slapped an armoured decoy on the end of an arm which I'd attached to a rotor that was mag plated to the front of the friendly cargo ship, not a single drone targeted my spinner and the ship ended up destroyed :(

[@dhruel]

Does your ship have enough piping to put a block(s) grinder on it and then have it "eat" the salvaged ships?

[@Splitsie]

Yeah, but sadly it's slower than just doing it by hand with an elite grinder, plus dealing with all the parts that I drained at the end like the tanks is more difficult that way

[@travisgilreath3818]

I wonder, as an "engineering exercise," what is the smallest, large-grid gunship you could make. And would making your own defensive drones violate the spirit of the series? Maybe decoy missles?

[@Splitsie]

All of that would be fine by me, the trouble with drones is that they're properly expensive to make and then end up using up even more ammunition, further adding to the cost for the escort missions :(

[@cameronmelbourne4702]

Hope you had a lovely festive period and hopefully a bit of time off 😄 🤣

[@Splitsie]

It was a bit of a mixed bag for me, thanks to getting a fun daycare disease, but that's life with a toddler :D

[@jamess405]

Damn bugs too. As if not wasn’t hard enough

[@Splitsie]

Yup, that was quite the painful moment for me :/

[@DmytroBogdan]

Escort missions are overtuned for what we get in return. Its like they were tested in Creative.

[@sodcactus]

Do the excavation base on the moon sell anything, like ores or ingots?

[@jeckjeck6943]

the base he saw was part of the new vanilla planetary spawns. It don't sell anything.

[@Splitsie]

Yup, they're more decorative than anything, unless you're a pirate :P

[@le0ger254]

would be nice to have a mod that adds buyable ship parts that u can use from ur inventory... so u dont need to build anything.

[@Trevinator1990]

you have almost 6500 hours into this game and your telling me your still learning about it??? dang splitsie!

[@Splitsie]

Yup, there's always so much more. I think it's why I've been able to get so many hours in the first place 😂

[@Eisen_Jaeger]

Could have stuck a grinder on the end of the large cargo

[@Splitsie]

I honestly think it's slower, would be interesting to do a proper test at some point I suppose

[@iamcrs5646]

Were the Warheads a definitive factor there?

[@TheRealPhantomWolf]

Why does the Yellow Large Grid look like a Lawn Dart?

[@malaficus]

I wonder how a ship would look like if you merge block multiple savages ship togather.

[@Splitsie]

If you take a look at what was built by Capac and I in my Survival Unlikely series, you might get a bit of an idea :D

[@owencomps]

Were you saying Capac is a more attractive target?

[@alexmoraru4288]

What if you put a shield on your small ship and then merge it to the big one. that combined with turrets should hold the drones away

[@Splitsie]

I think that can work, but I'm also worried anything attached to the cargo ship at the end of the run will get deleted as that's what happens with MES cargo ships :/

[@alexmoraru4288]

@@Splitsie Yea, that's true. You might need a ship with lots of guns in front, kinda like what you had on Walrus. I think for the SE2 a talk needs to be said about this. I think the system will work better if it doesn't start with 4 drones... Start with one and increase with each wave...

[@diazinth]

@@Splitsie have buttons that controls landing gears all over the shielding ship so its easier to reach in time ^,^

[@reedyjojje6291]

When do you get back to building the skyworp

[@Cam-p4j]

what dose the heat do to you in this game? dose any oun know?

[@Splitsie]

Temperature has a couple of fairly minor effects on the engineer. If it's very cold or very hot you'll get injured or if it's a bit less horrible you'll just use up your suit power more rapidly, that's about it :)

[@robertpisek24]

When will you make another episode of assertive acquisitions?

[@Splitsie]

As mentioned in the last episode that went out, AA with return after Wrong Way Out (which you can find on the live tab of my channel page) :)

[@cinespair]

I have a question is there a reason behind you not building a grinder on the main ship to grind down that big ship? doing it by hand seems tedious Now to the railgun sniper idea and you doubting yourself that you couldn't be the person to operate this. I just think if there's time for you to try to "learn" being a better pilot it would be now, there's really no pressure and you could explore challenging yourself at something new And it's really a shame contracts are so hard to do, and when you can do them you prob don't even need to anymore.

[@Splitsie]

Yup, ship grinders are a lot slower than hand grinding. There are a few reasons for this, the first one being that the elite grinder is just ridiculously quick, the second is that tool shake means that parts of the grid you're grinding will fly off randomly which you either ignore (losing their value) or chase (wasting a lot of time), the third reason here was that I was keeping the tanks intact to drain them once I'd cleared out all the other bits and that's much easier with a hand grinder :)

[@cinespair]

@@Splitsie ohhh thank you, that's a bit sad that big grinders are worse XD after posting the comment I thought you maybe you didn't want to push the bigger ship but turns out it's not that