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Beyond that you build, fly, mine, build better, fly better, mine - visit planets, build more, fly more, mine. If you feel you lack inspiration watch a couple of the SE youtoube channels. There is also the odd derelict/abandoned ship or station that you can find in space which ads a bit o mystery. "How did this get here, who left it, and why did they leave. Goals you make them, but mostly it's build, fly, salvage, or mine.
Space engineers is basically game about engineering and building things. Survival is player-demanded content, which you can easily enchance by thousands of mods (game code is open-source so mods pops every day in vast numbers)
There is saying about engineers:
"if engineer dont have problem to solve at hand, he will create problem to solve for himself"
i keep with this principle, and so far i hit 400 hours and im still didnt finished any of my large projects
in playing KSP there's always some new moon or planet further away that requires more delta-v and ever more complex multi-launch missions to get to. so far I am not seeing that kind of carrot in SE, since I'll soon have a mobile base and I'll go from rock to rock, but the only thing to do on the next rock is doing the same thing as on the last rock. that's a dead end for me...
But ususally I get to the point where I have my earth base situated and am living comfortably and I think "Well I've survived survival, I'm alright".. then I promptly delete game and start a new one because I get bored or I just go mess around in creative mode. Then I take a break for a month or 2 come back, rinse and repeat...
Then again I don't play multiplayer.
"Thing is..." if you need to be handed ideas and content then in it's current state this might not be the game for you. Multiplayer IMHO is fun, even the odd bug or two, or three can be fun and adds an unexpected element to the game. But you have to want to and like to build things, build better things (more form than function), or find better ways of mining, better ways of taking down a pirate base, etc... Single Player is much the same it just take longer to build things. My setup, I have a consistent world that myself and a few friends play in. Mostly it's just me and they pop in from time to time, we work on builds, take down a couple of pirate bases, and then head to the pub.
As far a mods go, that's a personal thing. Personally I play with mods, but only use a few (less than 12) really good ones. Some folks love to load up their world with mods but that has performance impact. I say go with mods, but stick to the ones that have the highest ratings, read the comments to find out if they work, are being supported (big plus), and fit into what it is that you need.
Too fast to become self sufficient. Bland empty world with nothing to overcome through engineering.
I bought this game for the survival and was pretty dissapointed. However once i got into creative mode amd just messing around with concepts i started having a lot of fun.
Thats where the game shines. A 3d design studio with physics to mess around in and build crazy stuff :)
One of my recent large builds was an orbital tether located on the moon with a 3D ship printer setup on one top side and a ship-eater hangar on the other one. After that i've built a small space fighter and started to attack & disable the less-weaponized pirate ships (like private sail and miner), then towed them back to the ship-eating hangar and ground them down to their parts, which i then used to print stuff.
It's not really a "problem", but it was a fun project in any case :)
As for the problem part, i've just recently ran in to one when planning to make a base on Mars: it has almost no ice on it, so in order to have enough hydrogen and oxygen, i first had to set up an ice mining station on Europa. But Europa has no iron or any other material besides ice, so in order to build the ice-mining station, i had to bring all the material for it from the moon base. Still working on it, looks like it will be another lenghty project ;)
i'd like to have my base on a planet, but i use too much hydrogen to haul my favourite metric ton of uranium up and down, so a solar powered space elevator should do the trick.
so far i haven't come up with a vanilla-only solution. also, it's quite expensive. i'd suggest you try that out if you feel like you have nothing to do.
to build a space elevator, once you know how, you need tons of materials for the elevator shaft. that meeans you have to expand your ressource production. that means you have to start building large printer halls. that means you have to start building large construction ships. that means you have to start building medium printer halls. that means... you get the general idea.
also, when you're building the gondola. you need more ressources, because your gondola will occasionally fall off and explode (if build imperfect).
once i have a space elevator, i'll try to make a ressource pipeline to drain the planet of it's materials, maybe a large everminer. mabye add a mod to convert stone into any ressource. then i would need a giant storage station to store that in, so that i have enough materials to build somethign that can print space elevators on any planet.
then you would need a jump station at the end of each elevator, so if you jump to the planet, you can dock there and exit your spacecraft and enter the elevator, without needing to put on a helmet.
maybe building an orbital ring around my home planet / home moon later on to generate oxygen, so i don't have to haul it up in tanks from the surface, maybe make a giant orbital shipyard so that i can print those huge workshop ships without a problem.
maybe even later on develop planet worms, huge drills which are dropped from orbit to bore into the ground, then leaving a giant borehole and bringing up huge amounts of stone.
then maybe i'll have enough ressources to convert an entire moon into a metal shell, effectively turning it into a death star, or maybe covering an entire green planet in glass panes and stoplights so that it's never raining nor nighttime. perfect for my summer vacation spot^^
actually, now that i think about it... my giant summer house isn't at the best location. maybe i should strap on some wheels and ferry it over to my (now ludicrously sized) space elevator and bring it to a moon or something like that?
... you see, there are enough ideas you can use to occupy yourself with^^
It's still valid to call it a defect or a lack of content that really ought to be there, because there's a difference between a need caused by game mechanics and a goal you set yourself.
For example, the game requires you to have power to run the devices of a grid. To get power you must either build solar panels or a reactor. To build those you need to mine ore and refine it. To get all these you need to solve an engineering problem by building a system that does all this. This is a game generated problem and it's something a player must solve.
"What do I want to do?" is a qualitatively different problem. An open sandbox doesn't restrict you and you can choose your own goals, and it's perfectly ok and fine if the game doesn't give you any long term goals or Big Issue problems to solve. That's something that's better handled by campaigns and scenarios, anyway.
But what the game ought to do is add more of those technical problems of the first kind. Not long term goals but those first-tier technical problems that say "if you want to do that you need to solve this" i.e. those little things that form the obstacles in your journey to your long-term goal, whatever it was. If you can simply pick a long-term goal and do it immediately without any thinking or problems preventing you from doing it until solved then that indeed causes you to seriously ask the "what's the point?" question.
Even though it's a sandbox, actually because it's a sandbox, it needs to have inbuilt things that generate those monkey wrenches that foil your plans unless you take care of them. Currently the game has three of these built in the game:
- You need energy
- You need oxygen
- You need raw materials
Unfortunately, that's all of them. You solve those and your way to whatever goal you've chosen, is clear. There should be more. We can tell the story ourselves using our imagination but to better do that the game needs to keep throwing problems at us and not stop. Easy gets boring.
That seems a bit harsh. Since everything in survival mode takes quite an investment of time I think it's only reasonable to ask for some suggestions for meaty projects.
As an engineer, and heading into middle age, I'm definitely better at solving immediate problems and improving the current situation, rather than coming up with visionary schemes. That's why I think the game just suddenly reached a plateau when I finally got all the ores into the refinary, and I'm suddenly self sufficient and can build all the blocks and components, but only finding myself thinking "ok, now what?". I can survive where I am, and no other place looks an different, so this can actually be difficult, especially if you are new and may not realise what the game engine is capable of.
The comment by gabgab01 above provides the kind of long-term project/inspiration that'd keep me going for ages, and was a very useful response, thanks. Except I don't have a planet in my current scenario, so now I know that.
Can I add a planet to my existing save game, or port my current vessel and contents to a new scenario/map?
For grids => use the ''Blueprint'' feature or the ''Save as'' to make a copy of your world.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=l0miB57itm4
For example:
Problem:Nearest Iron deposite was somewhat far on the other side of a hill, difficult to get the small wheeled miner there.
Solution: Build a tunnel! Oh, but the miner cannot drive on that mined terrain, build a ramp!
Problem: Going to need Alot of hydrogen to get to places.
Solution: Make refueling stations and refueling ships.
Also you can set goals that are not totally needed. Like make a 1km pipe line so that your launch site is away from your main base. Or make a Radio Base on top of a mountain, because it will increase the range into space by a Massive 3km.
From your game, consider what might happen. Say something goes badly wrong, your large base ship slams into an asteroid and is more or less totally destroyed. Then what? Do you have a means to survive? Any other base, escape pods? Do you have the infrustruce needed to support that base ship? If "make mobile base and fly around mining" does not seem an appealing goal, consider what it would really mean to be in that mobile base. You would need to be able to go home sometimes, you have to have radio coms back home, rescue possibilities, Crew rooms, entertainment, crew replacements, etc. The mining company you work for demands certain amounts of ores per day/week/month/year to be dropped off at a base, or you have to leave becons on asteriods to mark them for the company.
At the moment I'm not even sure what the "End Game" goal of my session is. Proberly getting to the Alien planet in the system. What I am getting at is basically that what keeps me comming back to this game are the everyday problems and goals that you can set for yourself. The "End Game" goals are not all that important. Sure some vague goal is good to have but mainly just expand the operation step by step and focus on the problems each step creates. For me Space engineers is less about the goal and more about the journey.