Help a noob out

[Jon.Topps]

I'm quite good with complicated games, I play a lot of heavily modded minecraft, but I'm having a terrible time getting the hang of this game, haha. Here's some problems I'm having, if you can help me out.

1. Once I create a vehicle, it might flip, or just sink if I take off a wheel, so, how do you actually edit vehicles once they're made and in a weird position? Like, how do I edit a land vehicle's wheels without it tipping? How do I flip a vehicle that's stuck? I want to do survival eventually, so I can't just copy and paste the vehicle. I've heard you can use pistons, but I have no idea how that works. I tried doing that, and my car just absolutely spazzed out, and wouldn't stop doing flips... it was actually really ridiculous, lol (ps. the physics of this whole game feels really off).

2. I got a ship working, with a jump drive, but couldn't figure the drive out in any way except blind jumps. How do you enter coordinates for a jump? And how do you determine what coordinates you want? If I want to fly to mars, I can SEE mars, but how do I find the coords for it?

3. Can I not connect large and small blocks? Like if I use large armor blocks, I cannot use small armor blocks, or anything else small now? So my ships have to be made entirely of large OR small, but not both? and bases cannot ever have small pieces? Or is there a way to conenct the two?

4. When creating a new game, I can't choose how many planets, moons, etc there are in the star system? I thought there were more options for what kind of a system you could play in? Can I also not pick my starting planet type? I'm always starting on an earth like planet, and I'd like to start on something else if possible.

5. Another question about new games. When I start I don't have an ore detector (even if I use a starting ship), so how do I find ores so I can begin mining? Am I really supposed to just dig and randomly find them? I dug in the game for like 20 minutes and found nothing. Just assuming I'm doing something wrong.

6. Also, as for starting equipment, when I start a game I have nothing, and I'm standing on an ice field. Then if I die, I get to start in different ships... What? Also, how do I process it if I don't have a refinery or an assembler yet? Whole thing is very confusing. In videos it looks like they start with a ship in space coming in for a landing. Should I be starting like that? I have to die for that to happen, and when I do die, I get a few options for free ships and stuff I can use, which seems cheap. Do you really just start with literally everything you need without working for it?

7.. My land vehicles never seem to work. I've watched numerous guides, and built many vehicles. I've adjusted all sorts of things, but my land vehicles are just totally not able to be driven at all. I've tried riding on plates, grass, and ice. Tried multiple settings on all, and nothing works. I have super simple designs, just to get the hang of it, and nothing works.
I've tried messing with friction a lot, and making my car front wheel drive and what not.

[casualsailor]

The dreaded FAQ spam is back....


Gasbandit's tutorials are very good at teaching the basics. The early ones are a bit old (before O2 and Waypoints) but still very good.

https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLTyd0tLdukI_TMN73wwfJWwG-UJh7kmJM

Once you've got the basics down, W4stedSpace has a really good planetary tutorial.

https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLTlpO3Ief-8GHJp8qtRWzXas10nC6-v_U

Finally, Sage has sagely advice for everything SE.

https://www.youtube.com/user/SleepArtGameEat

Oh and don't forget the wiki

http://www.spaceengineerswiki.com/Main_Page

[Energy]

Hmm I can help you out here.

[Jon.Topps]

Originally posted by casualsailor:

The dreaded FAQ spam is back....

Thanks for the info! I've been able to solve a few of my problems thanks to those videos, and just trying a few different things myself. However, the problems I've left in the OP are still problems for me, no matter what I look into.
Any help with them? Most of them aren't too complicated and likely have a simple answer.

[casualsailor]

1) Wastedspace has a video for creating ground cars and adjusting them to be more stable.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xlUj12Hn2Fc

In the descrip is a link to advance techinques.

2) Jump drives need coordianates from your gps. In other words you must go there put a gps point and then you have a point you can return to. To get a coordinate for Mars you just have to do blind jumps. But there is a zone around planets that will not allow you to jump into so the Jump drive should drop you back out before you crash into the planet. It should. If the JD is charged and you can't jump you're probably in a gravity zone or exclusion zone around a planet.

3) Nope. Small blocks for small ships, large blocks for stations and large ships.

4) Nope. The starting scenarios are set with the number of planets and moons. There is a way to use Space Master to spawn in additional ones but this can be very hard on performance.

5) Some respawn ships that don't have ore detectors have either components or unneeded blocks that you can deconstruct to create one. The exception is the Yellow Respawn Ship. You need a small amount of nickel (i think) to create an ore detector on it. See gasbanits video for starting in space with the yellow ship. His PvP video is basically a Yellow Ship start (formerly known as the Asteroid Start.

6) The Lander has everything you need to start a planet base. The other respawn ships are for other Scenarios or multiplayer.

7) See #1.

[McShafty]

Q1. incoperate pistons into you you car design to work like a set of jacks to lift the vehicle to do wheel repairs. fliping a overturned vehicle in survival takes a bit of work using pistons to push it back over.

q2. to do navigate jumps you need to creat gps coordinates. under you 'k' menue there is a section for creating gps coordinates. you kan make one from current position or you can creat new and add the x y z pos manually. as a personal rule i create a 0 0 0 coord gps point as a base referance for navigation in survival games(optional). aslo coord sent via ingame chat will automatically be added to this list. go to the jump drive under your 'k' menue and add the coords there and you will jump to the set location. lastly you cannot jump in a planet gravity well .

q3 combineing large and small grid is refered to as compound blocks here in the forums and is not a feature of SE even though its a feature of ME. the devs have no intention of adding it either. there is some tricks with rotor parts to combine grids(very clangy) or there is a mod that alows connection of the two grids called electronics panel

q4 in creative mod or through space master in survival you can manually add plaents and moons to your game world. Alt-f10 to access space master, shift-f10 to paste planets ect. f10 to paste blueprints

q5 this is a part of the chalenges of survival, the hand drill has a limited ore detection range(50m i think) and ofcoures visual identifing, in space you can see most of the ore types in a roid by donig a close flyby. ie black spots for uranium redish brown for iron. on planet surfaces the dark discolourations patches on the ground indicate ore deposits below ground( generally 15 to 50m below surface)

q6 that is currently a bug. the default is to spawn in a planetary lander in the earth like gravity well. until fixed just backspace to suicide and spawn in a ship

q7 wheeled vehicles are still very tricky to get set up right and should improve in future updates. a common trick its to use gyros to help stablise the vehicle and in my experince set a low limit to top speed (100m/s = 360KM/H)

lastly it helps to hop ingame with someone to work with you