Space Engineers Testing: Ion Thrusters in Atmosphere (tips, testing and tutorials for survival)

In this video I investigate just how much platinum is required to get an atmospheric thruster powered ship into space in Space Engineers. Then make a failed attempt at coming up with a simple rule of thumb that will work for upgrading your existing ships to make them space capable with a few ion thrusters.
I also say slingshot... a lot!
If you've ever wanted to reach space on the cheap and you happen to like playing with meteor storms enabled then this is the video for you - particularly if you like flying deck chairs ;)
As always, don't forget to enjoy this awesome (if at times buggy) game!
For those of you kind enough to want to support me in making more videos: / splitsie
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www.spaceengineersgame.com
Space Engineers is used pursuant to the terms laid out in their video policy, found at www.keenswh.com/press.html
Music and Sound Effects by:
Space Engineers

[@mingime]

These thrusters need a lift per kg value in game. This makes building better

[@Splitsie]

But then what would I make videos on? :P Unfortunately though such a simple measure wouldn't work, the maximum amount of force the thrusters can generate is known but it varies dependent on environment and altitude. The amount in kg that can be lifted depends on local gravity, atmosphere, altitude and thruster type. These change so much that you can't get a simple rule that covers them all - as much as I might try to do exactly that :)

[@reahs4815]

You could use the build info mod steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=514062285 It shows power in N, integrity and a lot of other things

[@mingime]

And another good idea, maybe. If the reactors and batteries are used in the their limit and over, these maybe should get damaged and worst case explode😃

[@Splitsie]

Do you mean something like this: steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=1158445010

[@tomchch]

There is, 1 newton is the weight of 1 apple (approximate). Which is 0.1 of a kg. An easy way of doing it is just dividing the maximum thrust by 10. Every thrusters shows it's max force if you put the power to the max. A small ship small ion thruster have a maxiumum thrust of 12000 newtons (1200 kg ca), and ion thrusters operate at 30% in atmoshphere, so they can lift around 380 kg each if pointed straight down. Also worth mentioning that all thrusters in the game are 25% more powerful when inertia damping.

[@SolidAtom]

The fact that you give us the numbers with the safety margin included just shows how much you care! Keep up the great work Splitsie.

[@Splitsie]

Thanks! Hopefully the safety margin is large enough :P

[@Xenro66]

Who needs ion? *Laughs in hydrogen*

[@Splitsie]

Just don't light a match!

[@AngelboyVR]

true, but its about that Platinum m8 :D

[@KillFrenzy96]

The cheapest and easiest way to get to space is to carry a hydrogen bottle and fly up in a suit. If you're lucky, you might be able to find some platinum and bring it back to your base too.

[@Xenro66]

KillFrenzy96 That's very true... It's even easier with speed mods since you gain so much momentum with the planets being so tiny. However, where's the fun in that? Me and my friend play survival and keep to the rule that you can't just fly to space (or back from space) with jetpack alone, since that just ruins the challenge aspect. I challenge myself with hydrogen, hence my original conment

[@tabnk2]

*Laughs in Hindenburg*

[@Gottaculat]

Would be neat to see this video revisited with all the new stuff we have in the game since, as well as the big changes they made to meteors and planets since this video.

[@TD2007]

Again with another useful tutorial. Well done.

[@Splitsie]

Thanks! 😃

[@seanmcdonald5859]

Another informative vid from Splitsie. 😊

[@Splitsie]

Thanks Sean! :)

[@hoobisha9256]

Amazing information, great job!

[@stanpollard]

Another great video splitsie

[@Splitsie]

Thanks!

[@swiftbow2110]

You help a ton with these. Thanks bro.

[@Splitsie]

You're very welcome, glad they've been useful :)

[@macroshaft5517]

18:59 all i can hear from here onwards is that benny hill tune. Those are some gold bloopers, bro... :P the rest of the vid's great as well (as always), really informative on my idea to place some tiny satellite stations up there, maybe using solar panels and the stargate mod to do a slightly cheaty thing.

[@Splitsie]

Yep, that would have worked perfectly! Now that's an interesting thought, if you can use atmospherics to lift the satellite off the ground then switch to ions for the holding position, can you get it to hold position permanently... I think I might have to look into this a little bit :)

[@jdejong9570]

YOU ARE THE BEST! I asked for this video and you did it!

[@Splitsie]

Thanks :) Glad you enjoyed it! Hopefully the info is about what you were after

[@jdejong9570]

It was clear and with great quality as always! I am now working on a large grid ship that works with your ''slingshot'' maneuver

[@Splitsie]

I feel like I said that a lot during the video, I even tried to cut some out during editing :P

[@jdejong9570]

I think its fine. Maybe next you could make a drone/remote control tutorial (how to use it and useful ways to use it in survival, like bringing cargo between 2 bases)

[@Joe-vl5jo]

Great video, very informative. Definitely using this in my own ships. Just finished a ship myself using primarily atmos and ion but w/ hydrogen as a backup, being in survival and all. They should have smaller hydrogen tanks in vanilla, there are mods but not everyone likes them and it would make hydrogen a much better looking option. If you're building a large ship you'll have conveyors and probably room somewhere for an oxygen tank sized hydrogen tank, lower capacity but at least it's available and doesn't need it's own wing in the ship

[@Splitsie]

I completely agree that some sort of smaller tank should be available, having to fit around the hydrogen tank, particularly on small ships is really difficult. Even if they made it 2x3x1 or another smaller yet still odd shape it would make for much more varied designs :)

[@eloryosnak4100]

The Space Chair is my favorite thing in the world

[@Splitsie]

It was a stupid amount of fun to mess with :)

[@indigocactus3089]

Just pull a NASA and attach a big thruster, or in this case 1 or more large atmo thrusters, and attatch that to a merge block. Detatch said blocks at the cutoff point and let the ion ones fly. If you'd like to be creative, attach grinders too, to simply grind away the large thrusters for extra efficiency.

[@Splitsie]

To take that a step further you could make a platform to stand on while you grind down the thruster yourself since your personal inventory doesn't add weight ;)

[@indigocactus3089]

Even better yet, grind the atmospheric thruster with your hand tools, then weld on the ion thruster midflight.

[@Splitsie]

I feel like this could be a challenge ;)

[@PatrixBest]

It may have been updated since then but it's actually quite easy to get from the surface to space on a single large ion engine. I had built a tiny ship with six small nuclear reactors and the main thrust to get it going was two ( maybe four, don't quite remember ) small atmospheric thrusters and one large ion thruster. It got to space no problem.

[@Splitsie]

Large ion thrusters need quite a few thruster components though which means much more platinum. If you've got access to platinum they are absolutely the best way to go if you want something that's a space atmosphere hybrid but I was looking to minimise my platinum requirements to silly proportions - that's why I took the lawn chair up to space :P

[@mindlessdarklings5640]

This is a great video and these videos are very helpful.

[@Splitsie]

Thank you! 😊

[@JohnDoe-hc7jf]

Hi Splitsie, Regarding tests on planets with atmosphere I recommend to not use hight over ground but rather hight over center (of the planet.) Resonable behind this is that some lakes actually are higher than 'sea level' and there are even places in the desert below that. In Vanilla Star system Earth has the center at 0.5 for X, Y, and Z. The atmosphere also is calculated relative to this center and may deliver way more reliable results. Thank you for your really good test videos and keep it up! :)

[@Splitsie]

I could have used something like MMaster's lcd to show height above sea level, but that's why I went with the launches from the ice lakes (I mostly stayed above it) as they are at sea level the altitude marker is mostly accurate to the center of the planet :)

[@Shaostoul]

Quality video.

[@Splitsie]

Thanks Shao! Some times it feels like we might be the only two people making tutorials for Space Engineers, your modding tutorials are on much more difficult topics than I cover though

[@Shaostoul]

Yours affect anyone that plays SE. Mine only affect modders. Both of which are useful.

[@Splitsie]

Absolutely, especially since most people play with mods :)

[@seanmcdonald5859]

You can use Ion in atmospher ?? Yes you can and now i can avoid having to pipe bloody hydrogen everywhere; this is a fantastic video and once again Splitsie has opened up the hood of the game and said "Well, here's your problem AND here's the solution".

[@Splitsie]

That piping can be a real pain in the butt ;) I do what I can with the solutions, I don't like just pointing out problems - I'd feel like I was becoming a whiney KZbinr. Although my latest video got released after keen fixed the problem it was meant to solve, got my timing slightly wrong on that one :P

[@mikewhitaker2880]

piping hydrogen is also less pain if the hydro-thrusters are clustered... ie.. use ion's and atmo's on extraneous positions... and place hydro's centralized....

[@spigot993]

Looks like a lav'; Captain's log, Space-Dunny is a GO!

[@Splitsie]

I think I want to build a giant space capable dunny now... complete with outdoor shack and crescent moon shaped hole :P depositphotos.com/180966220/stock-illustration-cartoon-traditional-outdoor-toilet-crescent.html

[@machintrucGaming]

Usefull. Thanks

[@Splitsie]

You're very welcome :)

[@GarryGabriel]

seems like a nice consistent 12:1 small >> large thrusters. good to know, especially the weights, really need to turn down storage capacity, as weight doesn't scale down, only volume.

[@Splitsie]

It's pretty close to that - I couldn't establish an absolute ratio as it started falling apart at the extremes but for most applications is worked :)

[@de_mon2084]

Great Video again. One question... 😆 Why did your ship explode?

[@Splitsie]

I think I accidentally right clicked on the cargo container causing its contents to spawn in where the blocks already were - that is always rectified by destruction :P

[@DariusT32]

I enjoy building a vehicle that has the sole purpose of taking lifting things into space or taking things down to planets. It is a great engineering challenge

[@Splitsie]

Agreed, I need to set up more situations in my playthroughs to make something like that necessary :)

[@AngelboyVR]

i,ve noticed that almost every time you drill into the ground, half of the rock spawn outside the walls falling into the abys. most noticeable after drilling a Flat/horizontal cave and looking onto the ceiling, you will notice them sticking out a bit. so there might be a bit more ore than we think there is ^^

[@Splitsie]

It was quite surprising to me how much you can get from a single meteor strike, I'm not a fan of playing with them on as I think they add more grind than fun, but since I know some people like them I tested and was impressed that you can theoretically get to space from a single lucky platinum strike

[@AngelboyVR]

i usualy turn them off for several obvious reasons, but yeah they can give you enough neccessary stuff ... for a price tho ;)

[@ClimberD-tn3xl]

Can you do a video with ion thrusters on the moon?? With only 1/4 of 1G I'm curious how many per x number of kg I'd need to land safely or take off

[@Splitsie]

I'm going to be restarting my tutorials and testing videos when the survival patch comes out as I think there are going to be quite a few things like this that would be handy to know when we're stuck mining stone by hand and resources are scarce :)

[@Lemonz1989]

I just stopped trying to build an atmospheric/ion hybrid ship. I failed so many times to get a decent looking ship - they always ended looking like flying bathtubs. :P In my current game I just ended up with a giant atmospheric ice miner, a giant ice processing plant with connected hydrogen tanks, an atmospheric hydrogen refuelling ship, a giant hydrogen "mothership" with 4 warp drives (which mostly only lives in space) that carries smaller surveying ships with ion thrusters, an asteroid landing/refuelling station just outside Earth's gravity and a high powered and lightweight hydrogen carrying rocket to transport materials and hydrogen to the asteroid station from the Earth base. The rocket only needs one tank for its own fuel and can deliver 10 tanks of hydrogen at a time and millions of kg of materials, and the asteroid station has 15 tanks and the "mothership" has 12. To build all of this, I needed a giant refinery and assembler setup, of course. :P All this in survival mode, because I just wanted to get into space easily without having to live with hybrid ships! xD I think I've used over half a million iron ingots in that game alone. xD And yes, it took many hours - even when we were two building it.

[@Splitsie]

I've had mixed experiences with hybrid ships, sometimes I find them easier to design with, but others they just look like a thruster covered ball... Sometimes it really is just easier to build with a single thruster type. I like the idea of having a rough idea of how many ions I'd have to add to make something space worthy though

[@kerbalairforce8802]

Have a space carrier and a drop ship, Star Trek style.

[@Lemonz1989]

Kerbal, that's actually a good idea! I think I will try it. :)

[@uberkatt8223]

How do you play with that fov? Im impressed you havent puked during this lets plau from motion sickness

[@Splitsie]

It is very, very rare that I get motion sickness and got used to playing with a 40degree FOV due to recording footage for machinima (I hate the fisheye distortion in footage so dropped the FOV). I forgot when I was recording the start of this video that I hadn't reset it, but reset it for the rest. Since it was the part where I found the platinum from a meteor it would have taken too long to re-record that part :(

[@BsrlinMAZ]

FOV looks fine to me.

[@dustinfrank7907]

The question is how do you figure out how big the deadzone is. You can have atmosphere from 13km high all the way to 48km high

[@Splitsie]

It's certainly not the most reliable way to exit atmosphere, but at least with adequate atmospheric thrust you'll never crash during an attempt as it'll be able to catch you safely before you return to earth

[@TheJpf79]

I needed this a week ago lol Really good info as always. I've been changing out different types of thrusters, I've pulled it down to 8 small ion facing down(on a large ship) is lifting 700,000 kg at roughly 0.40g more than enough to launch from moons. The 4 large atmos hold it from 0.80g roughly Well technically it's more, I have two large ion and four large on a small ship attached with a connector, I noticed that if I had the engines on this switched off, I was getting a movement slip of 0.25 m/s, with the small ships engines on I can hover and travel anywhere except between 0.80g/0.40g give or take a couple of points. This should give me a better idea of how to get rid of the hydrogen tank on it. I've not played long but thanks to videos like this I've had a lot of fun with the game. steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=1158213488

[@Splitsie]

I'm glad they've been useful :) Those numbers seem about right from what I experienced, there are just so many variables with this sort of thing it's really hard to come up with a simple but safe rule for the thrusters - I kept thinking I had a rule only to test it on more designs and find that it failed

[@TheJpf79]

I've got an obscene amount of ours in 7 days to die another voxel game, Throwing the blocks together is second nature to me now, getting the blocks moving properly is what I've been trying to figure out, then when I look around the workshop there are a lot of very cool ships, not to many that a new player can build and use to explore which is what I was trying to figure out, some of the big ships can look daunting to make and be off putting, it's good that you test the actual thrusters and give new folk like me an idea.

[@kludgekraft2579]

Jp Fitzpatrick my suggestion, retrofit easy start big blue to be a carrier ship for 2 modified atmo-landers. The geometry fits up nice with big blue's mid-upper support struts. Not super easy but less time intensive than a total remodel on easy start station I can tell you that.

[@RadekZielinski.]

I have basic rules to my ships. After hundreds of hours of testing ships I can give a solution to how I create a ship. My testing: Your ship can go up and back down from space if your ship can: 1. Stop from 5km fall in less than 12 ish second, alternatively 8 seconds, which is very good, this shows it does have incredible power. 2. Don't do the 1st if your ship cannot reach around 100m/s in under 6 ish seconds, above 6 is getting risky. 3. Even if both of the points are true, make sure you have at least 20 minutes of battery or uranium at full speed up, and make sure you can go perfectly up at all times without leaning.

[@mikewhitaker2880]

lets not forget its always easier to come down than it is to go up.. coming down in one piece is the trick.. this is where parachutes help....

[@RadekZielinski.]

@@mikewhitaker2880 IT does somewhat makes sense what you said.... because in fact when you fall down without inertia dampers on, you fall at 107 ish meters per second on 1g planet with atmosphere, not 100m/s when going up... however weight is the biggest issue... what sort of a load will your ship carry. Lets say you ship is perfect going up and down without a scratch, when you fill it up to full with items/ore/ingots it will weigh it down that it will in fact never make it up from the ground at all, or land, it's best to test ships while they are filled cargo, then you will never have a problem, and possibly won't need parachutes.

[@marcoowskyy]

When I start and i didn't know how to start hydrohen thr, i used only atmo and ion thrusters

[@worum_4472]

When you were in space it looked really cool, it looked blue n stuff do you know what that mod is called?

[@Splitsie]

That's not a mod, that was what the vanilla sky box looked like back then, I think it had that blue look for about 3 months before they changed it. I think you might be able to find it on the workshop if you search for something like blue vanilla skybox

[@gloop3621]

A large grid large ion thruster can lift itself, a large reactor, and some other stuff in pertam gravity

[@Splitsie]

Pertam's a little different with regard to ion as there's less atmosphere so they'll be more effective :)

[@gloop3621]

@@Splitsie ah, didn’t know that nice videos btw

[@BassBiest]

Nice video, one question though. Going to space with just a chair won't allow you to do much there, will it? What's the minimum of thrusters you need to actually be able to do everything in space. I imagine one would need at least one refinery, an assembler and an oxygen generator with one or two bottles. A medbay is propably optional, since the chair could provide your suit with energy.

[@Splitsie]

Yeah, travelling by chair like that would leave you with very limited capabilities, but if you were really committed you could go up there a few times and store things up there :P Realistically you're going to need a few more thrusters to get the minimum set of equipment, which would be enough for an arc furnace and an assembler, with those you should be able to construct everything you need :)

[@mikewhitaker2880]

if your trying to minimize things i think carrying the parts in cargo is less weight for key items... depends on what your doing though.. if your only mining then you only need an O2 gen and enough fuel for the trip.. dont forget parachutes either..... if you want to pack up and start a base elsewhere then its conceivable that you want a refinery and assembler as well and a medbay since you'll need a respawn point while your building the new base...

[@illustratum42]

this is really helpful for the people who stick with vanilla, but as in the real world you are't capped at going 100 m/s, and having played kerbal space program for so long... i can't help but use speed mods... can you do tests to find out out what you need to escape with the speed uncapped?

[@Splitsie]

I prefer to avoid speed mods as they break a lot of the physics interactions in the game. In theory if you have no speed limit all you would need is enough atmospheric thrusters and you'd be able to go ballistic into space - you'd need some ions to stop once you got there, but you could get there on atmospheric alone.

[@mikewhitaker2880]

i agree MOST speed mods break things especially on planets... but the vanilla limits are still ridiculous.. i mean the suit can go to 150... soo what stops the ships both large and small from going past 104...... thats what i thought too.. so i do run speed mods too but i do limit to the 200/250 ones.. gives more flex without the break of the unlimited speed mods... also even in current condition.. ive seen any movement break physics in game.. granted its better than it used to be in most cases... except rotors and pistons.. i dont think Keen will ever get them to work right... and IMO they actually are worse than prior versions....

[@fakshen1973]

You don't want to max out your atmospheric thrusters. They are dead weight once you're out of atmosphere and still in the gravity well.

[@Splitsie]

It's a bit of a balancing act, you can boost yourself higher if you have enough allowing you to need fewer ion thrusters but then as you say you have more dead weight for your ions to carry. For me the sweet spot seemed to be enough atmo thrusters to boost me to ~8500m then somewhere about 1.5 times as many ion thrusters. I tested a fair number of setups but there are so many more I could have done that I would not be surprised if there is a more efficient setup than what I found

[@ClimberD-tn3xl]

You could also just put all of your atmo thrusters on a section of your ship attached by a merge block. Then once you leave atmosphere just eject them. Put a chute and be becan to retrieve later. Or...load GPS cords and have it fly back to base

[@StyxAnnihilator]

One conclusion might be: Assume large ship weight 200Kkg. Then need 1 large atmospheric thruster to get to 6Km up. Then 1 large ion rest of the way, or 15 small. But if calculate what resources that are needed, the large one requires much less resources and takes less space than the small ones. But this is borderline, and will take long time to get to orbit. But what is the lift ratio between large and small atmospheric thrusters? The graph at the end seems to suggest try to get to 9-10Km with atmospheric thrust (slingshot)?

[@Splitsie]

From my testing somewhere in the 8-9km range for the atmospheric boost is usually enough so what you worked out is about the same. I completely agree with you about the large ion thrusters, they're much easier to get to fit into your ship when using the large ones. With atmospheric thrusters the small to large stuff is quite messed up, with small ships the small atmospheric thrusters are more efficient in most ways than the large, really the only reason to use the large ones is style :P

[@StyxAnnihilator]

Thanks, maybe wait for a game patch then that adjusts the workings of thrusters. Just got an idea, but do not know if any point, depends on the weight of thrusters and main vessel: Make 2 separate thruster modules as a separate vessel/drone, that have the minimum components to be a vessel, one atmospheric and one ion. Attachment to main vessel not sure, but the modules have good capacity to get it into orbit. Then from planet start only the atmos module is connected, the ion follows as a second vessel. When reached max altitude, then switch modules and to orbit. In orbit weight should be of less importance and can have both modules attached.

[@Splitsie]

That might work, leave the extra weight so you don't need as many atmos. You would want to make sure the ion modules can stay flying for a long time if they're hanging about waiting for you

[@sellsword3388]

Without the speed limit, you can get to space even without ionic thrusters. The only problem is that you will never come back. It's a one-way travel.

[@OGZelgadisGraywords]

The Ion Thrusters work both in atmo and space? , i mean , can you go to space with ion thrusters exclusively

[@Splitsie]

Yep, you just need to have a light ship with lots of them, since ions have substantially reduced power when in atmosphere :)

[@danielberrett2179]

Sooo. I've been watching your newer stuff.. Come to check this vid out. WHAT The Hell is this Fov of 50????

[@Splitsie]

It's only at the start, there were a few videos I recorded that way before I realised it might be a problem. I'd been recording machinima videos where I didn't want the edge distortion you get with high FOV and got used to moving around with it and on this video I forgot to change it back at the beginning :P

[@danielberrett2179]

Just a little Nag your content is great in general. :-) waiting for the next survival unlikely with Capac.

[@Techischannel]

Technicaly all you'd need is a Flying Launch Platform and a Gravity Acceletator ontop of it. Technicaly if the Gravity is low enugth you can turn it upside down and via artificial mass blocks send yourself flying.

[@Splitsie]

That's certainly another alternative, but I'd doubt it's as cheap as the seat on a thruster :P

[@Techischannel]

True, but it certainly is a interesting solution none the less.

[@Splitsie]

Completely agree, I can't recall the altitude you need to have above the earthlike for grav gens to function though, I have a vague memory that you probably won't be able to get there without ions or hydrogen though - I hope I'm wrong on that because it'd be fun to attempt :)

[@dndhatcher]

Splitsie - have you ever looked at damage done by small ship turrets vs large ship turrets? The wiki info indicates they are the same damage, but I have heard talk that the large turrets are much better than the small turrets. Is the damage taken before they are destroyed the only difference, or do large gatling turrets do more damage than small gatling turrets also?

[@Splitsie]

Oooh, that sounds interesting... I have not previously thought about testing that, but it just went high on my list :) If the large ones are noticeably better I can see myself using a lot of rotors to get large turrets onto my small ships

[@kludgekraft2579]

Splitsie alright new question for you, even the devs might have missed this one. How fast can a rotor spin with a turret on it without reducing the turret's ability to track and aim? I would investigate but my computer is down.

[@lowrads3653]

Ions always provide at least 30% of their small thrust. Interestingly, their power demand scales down to meet their current capability. The downside is that you'll be giving over a lot more surface area to thrusters than you would with a sensible hydrogen based system. 6-21x as much for equivalent performance on an Earthlike planet.

[@Splitsie]

Yeah, if you've got the space internally on your ship for hydrogen tanks, they'll certainly be more practical from that perspective. But what's life without options? Having now done these tests there are a few designs I've built that could be easily made space-worthy with the addition of only a few ion thrusters, but to do that with hydrogen would take a lot more work. Like with the oxygen generator vs hydrogen tanks, it felt like large ships benefit from hydrogen more than small ships, slap few large ion thrusters on a small ship and you've got a reasonable chance of making it to space :P

[@lowrads3653]

Tanks aren't especially useful on small grids except as a flow rate buffer.

[@Ghryst]

staying vertical in this situation is easy by using the gyrescope "override controls" with all the sliders set to zero

[@Splitsie]

Yeah it can help, more fun this way though :P

[@Ghryst]

@@Splitsie just putting it on the record for other viewers ;)

[@dylanisaac1017]

All this time

[@spaceteams1493]

This is good to know because you can put materials in the passenger seat

[@Splitsie]

That is true, and sometimes quite handy - when the survival update drops, don't forget to check you spawn ship's seat (it's got goodies) :)

[@spaceteams1493]

Good to know thx for helping the new empire you have a spot if your group goes bey up

[@sxygeekdn]

Are there bigger meteor stikes now? Every time I play with them they make a give very small amound of material, a couple kg of platinum, not a couple hundred... What am I missing ?

[@Splitsie]

I've never really played with meteor strikes so I've not actually been able to check this out. Whenever I want to test something that involves them I just put the game on armageddon mode so I wonder if the meteor strikes are larger with that?

[@kludgekraft2579]

Splitsie well they probably got feedback from players saying they want Armageddon mode to be playable so they upped the splash ore to make it worth the headache?

[@teresabooth312]

I am making a ship on my survival world and I’m trying to get to the moon to get platinum cuz I can’t get platinum on the “Earth” or cold earth cuz there is only ice and no water

[@systamatica]

The moon doesn't have platinum

[@dr.fredacted7470]

Just do density infinite dense and armageddon and more than engough platnium

[@SahasaV]

@@systamatica It does

[@itslikeable]

lol nice one)))

[@Splitsie]

Thanks Tim :)

[@EnSecure]

Now i know how i can return to the station so i can repair my dhip

[@ShadowHunter120]

But how much to haul the materials for a refinery assembler and a reactor? IE How much to start over in space.

[@Splitsie]

That is a very good question, I wish I'd thought of that before I finished this video :P

[@kludgekraft2579]

Splitsie do the build materials still weigh less than the built items? That'll change the answer.

[@tomickert8453]

why does a welder/constructor have an jump drive?

[@Splitsie]

I'm not sure what you mean, I don't remember playing with jump drives in this video and can't check since I'm at work :(

[@RedGallardo]

To get to the other side? XD

[@teresabooth312]

Can you launch a ship from the ground?

[@Splitsie]

If you're talking about something with ion thrusters, yes you can, but for anything larger than a seat with a parachute you'll need a lot of large ones to move it - small thrusters are almost pointless

[@RedGallardo]

Well actually H2 are very good. No point to not use them. Platinum is overrated. But yeah, it's fun to launch your guy into space on a shitter like that XD That was hilarious!

[@Splitsie]

H2 are awesome, best for anything that might get into a fight and need to run away - but as you say, launching to space on a lawn chair is too much fun to pass up ;)

[@angerymechanic661]

Where dose one find meteor strikes or platinum

[@Splitsie]

Meteors are an option in the game setup, it's in the environment hostility part :)

[@mechwarrior13]

Thats one awesome poop deck 👌

[@santiagosenoran1217]

but how do I make thrusters if I have asteroids disabled?

[@Splitsie]

You can use hydrogen to get yourself to an asteroid in space (I'm presuming you were talking about meteors in your question) or fly to a moon as they also have platinum. It's only the vanilla planets that don't have platinum :)

[@anotherconsumerslave]

Update, there is no platinum or uranium if you start on the vanilla earth like planet.

[@Splitsie]

There wasn't when I made this - I got the platinum from the meteor strikes

[@ehtommy4754]

how do u play with that FOV

[@Splitsie]

I honestly don't notice it any more. I think part of it might be that I have a triple monitor setup and have a number of games I play in 16x3 aspect ratio meaning that the screen in front of me is set to only about 40-50 degrees as that's what it occupies in my real field of view. I also use the tight FOV for recording machinima as it results in less fish eye distortions and more focused angles that I am often looking for. For the most part I've become a lot better at remembering to increase it for recording but I think I stuffed it up at the start of this video. A few people pointed out that it gives them a bit of motion sickness so I try really hard not to do it, but since I'm so accustomed to it I miss it occasionally, I'm sure I'll eventually get to the point where I no longer forget :)

[@RetroPlus]

I don't like how low your FOV is, it makes me a bit sick Edit: Never mind at 1:12 it fixes

[@Splitsie]

I used to have my FOV at 40 for recording some cinematic stuff and forgot to change it back for a little of the recording, this was the last video I ever made where I made that mistake :P

[@RetroPlus]

@@Splitsie That's good to hear

[@mikewhitaker2880]

and here i thought you found a way to use "ONLY" ions to launch from a planet.. wishful thinking... and no i haven't forgotten the plat issue on the earth like planet....

[@Splitsie]

You can easily launch off with just ions but you have to use large ones for any decent ships which the meteors didn't quite provide enough platinum for :P

[@pinkster947]

So em I trapped on earth like planet then? Never seen a meteor yet in my game

[@nickdouglas736]

Make sure you got meteors turned on in the advanced options.

[@theunfunnygernan5446]

Hi

[@mwbgaming28]

i just use a whole heap of ion thrusters power efficiency is for chumps

[@Splitsie]

I dunno, I think there's some fun to be had with trying to eek every bit of performance out of what you've got :P

[@bumbarabun]

Sad thing is that survival gameplay in space is much much easier and boring at the same time. So I believe most effective strategy for survival game is to get couple of tanks of hydrogen probably one tank of oxygen and enough materials to build a battery and survival kit. That;s it. Then you fly only with costume and find nearest asteroid with ice. There are plenty of them around, so it would not be a problem. Boom planetary game is done. And it does not matter how hard initial mode is (you start on earth like planet or mars or moon) the end is the same. In my opinion this is a big problem in game mechanics for survival game.

[@Splitsie]

There's always a shortcut to easy survival in survival games, the thing for me is whether the game can still be fun once you've reached that level and Space Engineers for me can be :)

[@bumbarabun]

@@Splitsie I dont think there is always a shortcut. Anyway sad thing is that it would be so easy for them to fix it and that does not require much game change - just rebalance resource generation. Put unique one on different planets and very small amount on asteroids. But they do not seem to bother, instead they adding DLC after DLC and linear freaking campaign.

[@mindlessdarklings5640]

First

[@jontgreen]

Using slingshot in this context, planetary mechanics, is confusing.

[@harryqiddel1247]

uhhh, do ions need fuel? or am i having a brainfart?

[@Splitsie]

Ions only need power, no fuel

[@harryqiddel1247]

@@Splitsie okay, thanks! And especially big thanks for answering new comments on videos this old! :) Your videos are a great help to me!

[@TheNikotin33]

oh god what is this FOV??

[@Splitsie]

Sorry! It looks to only be present at the very beginning though. I honestly don't notice it until its pointed out, hopefully I'll start noticing it when playing so that I only use that FOV for machinima and screenshots :P

[@WoolyGriffin]

Please!!! The FOV. Change it plzzzz

[@Splitsie]

Apologies about that, I think it's only present at the very beginning though, hopefully I'll become less oblivious to it in the future :P

[@WoolyGriffin]

Yes I can notice that either thats our eyes getting used to it or its changing, love your vids Slipsite! :) Edit: How am I not subbed?!?!? Somethings wrong, better fix that!

[@Splitsie]

Thank you! :) I ended up recording this one in several sessions so I must have fixed it between recordings and forgot to go back and re-do the start. Time for a post-it note to remind me to reset my FOV when I start recording!

[@WoolyGriffin]

No problem, I get excited when you post because I've watched every episode in this Playlist! Stay strong

[@borsig4379]

BC I CREATIVE MODE LOL

[@emil17x36]

Second

[@emil17x36]

Thx for the heart buddy ^^

[@Splitsie]

I'm hopeless at remembering that those are a thing, I really should use them more :P It's normally when I'm looking through comments on my phone that I remember, that might be out of the challenge of writing comments on my phone when the autocorrect only works intermittently though

[@emil17x36]

Splitsie Yeah ^^ Its the first heart that I got from a youtuber :D

[@wishyourlife6861]

You´ll need Power, A refinery,An Assembler and a Medstation on that ship to start in space tho. Without these ur screwed

[@Splitsie]

It is definitely not a practical vehicle, trying to land is going to be all sorts of difficult, though a parachute would probably fix that issue (at least coming back down to earth). I suppose you could use it to get to an asteroid with platinum, fill your suit and then come back down? Not very useful, but an interesting experiment :P

[@Xeadriel]

I got into space without H2 first try. its easy really. H2 thrusters need way too much H2 and i dont want 3 tanks on one small ship. so what you do is basically build atmospheric thrusters AND Ion thrusters combined. you group them each on their own. you turn off the ions in the atmosphere and the atmospherics on and vice versa. around the end of the atmosphere you just leave both on and continue moving upward. done. no H2 thrusters used

[@Splitsie]

It's certainly better if you can manage without it, but if you start on a planet your first trip has to be with hydrogen due to the lack of platinum on the vanilla planets, so it's handy to know both :)

[@SarebanIntuneric]

Pt in ground? Imposible

[@Splitsie]

It's present if the meteor drops it - but only in tiny amounts (as the small bit at the start of the video) :)

[@Nolan_Hall]

or you can just use ur jetpack :P

[@Splitsie]

Why use a jetpack when you can use a jet powered lawn chair? ;)

[@kilroy7506]

@@Splitsie isn’t a jet powered lawn chair just a jet pack with more steps?

[@unshackledjester]

A few things. A) This doesn't account for higher/lower grav planets. I know 1.3-1.5 can be a pain in the butt. B) The amount of thrusters may seem daunting but on larger ships is becomes easier to pack in with the empty core of the ship acting as a weight to volume reducer; almost like how real ships float from buoyancy due to lighter density in the core. Just for those out there that went "33 ion plus atmo!!!". C) It's NOT a slingshot. For the love of god I wanted to smack you when you kept saying slingshot across slingshot this slingshot that. What you're referring to is more like a skipping stone or a boost-glide manuever...Slingshot maneuvers are when you use a gravity well to add acceleration without engine use by going into an unstable orbit where you end up flying around the edge of the gravity well and then "slingshot" out of it with extra speed. I know it's nitpicking, but as a science buff and sci-fi nerd...this annoyed me greatly xD. Great video otherwise for new players. Gj!

[@Splitsie]

That would more specifically be a gravitational slingshot maneuver, I viewed what was being used here as pretty similar in that you will be basically ballistic after applying the initial force from the atmospheric thrusters and are then waiting for the ion thrusters to kick in again. In my head that was very similar to a gravitational slingshot where you use an unstable orbit to escape the gravitational influence of one body and enter that of another. But even that isn't super accurate as the thrusters probably continue to apply some force, just very little across the zone where gravity is more powerful than the thrusters. As you say boost-glide is probably closer to what I was thinking, sadly that term didn't pop into my head before this went up :P I'm very happy with people pointing out where I went wrong with physics, in terms of the core science subjects that's the one I've probably done the least of as I only did physics in first year at university, it was mainly chemistry and biology after that.

[@unshackledjester]

Splitsie, you're good man. It was just one of those irrational nitpicks. I think we all knew what you meant :3. It's like when someone says atm machine or irregardless; the point is made but it's gonna irk some people over the symantecs. I am a CompSci major, not a physics, but I am a sci-fi nerd; so I am at least passable with most concepts and terms when it comes to space and such. If it makes you feel better, I barely got out of chemistry with my sanity intact. Had to take general 1&2 and it was horrible xD. All in all I find you do a pretty spot on job for newbies to learn the mechanics of the game. I enjoy watching just incase you come across something I was unaware of/hadn't thought of in SE. 1000+ hours, so unlikely...but you never know! I personally tend to balance thrust to weight manually as I am building since you kind of get a feel for it intuitively after a while. Never bothered with the hard numbers, but seeing someone else experiment is always fun. Keep up the good work broski.

[@Splitsie]

Well played, cheeky! Using the company name instead of the word when talking about semantics :P I'm in the same boat as you, I've got 1000+ hours but in the process of making these videos my knowledge of the game has grown massively, but that's possibly more of the effect you get where teaching something tends to generate a much deeper knowledge of the content :)

[@WortexCZ]

One simple question: Where can you find uranium on the planet? Simple answer: Nowhere! More complex question: Is it possible to build a ship that gets into space without hydrogen propellers and is powered by batteries? More complicated answer: Because of the weight of the batteries - no! (more nozzles = more power consumption = more batteries = more weight = more nozzles required = more power consumption = more batteries = more weight = more nozzles = more power consumption ...) Question: Is this disabled by the game mechanics and the power / weight ratio of the small and large ion motors? Answer: Yes. Question: Is this solvable by large Ion Thrusters? Answer: No. Question: Is this tutorial really: A) Tutorial. B) unnecessary nonsense. Answer: B! But really now. In the survival, it is much easier to get megatons of ice (oxygen and hydrogen) and cobalt than a single microgram of uranium. No matter that platinum (for Ion Thrusters) is not found on Earth-like planets. This says absolutely everything ...

[@Splitsie]

When this video was made: uranium was everywhere. Yes, you can easily get to space on ion engines and atmospheric with batteries, I've got a ship that I've flown to and from the moon and earth several times with battery power alone. Large ion thrusters and an efficiently designed vehicle are very effective even in atmosphere. For people who've already made a trip to space ion engines are the way to go since you only ever need to recharge your batteries or mine some asteroids for uranium, you never need to mine ice again.

[@WortexCZ]

@@Splitsie Show me! link to the Steam Workshop is enough. And... I didn't notice how old The video is. Good point.

[@gary0228]

Hi