Is there a real use for Stone yet?

[EmberStar]

I haven't played Space Engineers in a while. I recently reinstalled it. I know that there is a big Survival Overhaul coming to the live build soon. Does it happen to include an actual use for Stone yet? At the moment, the only things I seem to be able to do with it are

A) Crush some into gravel for making Reactor components. It has no other use in construction.

B) Fit every mining ship with ejectors to poop it out as I dig, so that my Refinery isn't constantly trying to crush all the stone I don't need into gravel I won't use.

C) Stuff it into a Large Cargo suicide ship, which I position directly in line with a Pirate Base before dropping / flying straight at it. When the station's auto-turrets rip the cargo hold apart, surprise! Giant flying boulder! Enjoy! (This assumes I don't want to take the pirate station/ship even slightly intact, because it's probably going to be completely ruined.)

I always hoped they would add some kind of concrete tool - basically a survival friendly version of the Voxel Hands creative mode tool. That uses stone as ammunition. This would do things like allow me to use a mining ship to roughly hollow out an asteroid to make a base, then replace terrain around the edges to seal holes. And also to sculpt terrain to form natural ramps, or fill in small ravines/craters/holes without needing to build armor-plate bridges everywhere. (Assuming you even can, since I guess the game also now tries to delete unpowered grids?)

[Karmaterrorᵁᴷ]

I think in the new survival update you can get trace ammounts of ore from stone via the new survival kit.

Id defo be all for a concrete block or tool. Be cool for making roads and such.

You can set up the trash cleanup however you like so just be sure its right and your bridges should stay :)

[Tom7i]

Originally posted by EmberStar:

I haven't played Space Engineers in a while. I recently reinstalled it. I know that there is a big Survival Overhaul coming to the live build soon. Does it happen to include an actual use for Stone yet?

Yes, it does

The basic survival kits now require raw stone to turn in to basic metal ingots, which you can then use to build other stuff. Here's a video overview of the upcoming new blocks, he starts the process at 2:30:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=W_NHupa-lMo

[Malkuth]

Just a quick note the survival kit can only refine stone.

But both the basic refinery and refinery can also do stone at a little better rate than the survival kit. So stone can be processed through your game.

The issue is you get a massive amount of gravel from it. Good for reactors. But way to much to be of use.

[EmberStar]

Interesting. If you can construct more of them, I can see keeping a couple hooked up (with conveyor sorters and their own storage blocks.) Instead of ejecting stone and waiting for it to despawn, build a Small Miner to gather everything and get at least some value from the energy spent to dig it up.

I'd still like to be able to make concrete eventually though. Having the ability to seal around a cave or asteroid base would be nice.

[EmberStar]

Originally posted by Malkuth:

Just a quick note the survival kit can only refine stone.

But both the basic refinery and refinery can also do stone at a little better rate than the survival kit. So stone can be processed through your game.

The issue is you get a massive amount of gravel from it. Good for reactors. But way to much to be of use.

I know. You could always crush stone into gravel. The problem was that literally the only thing that needed it was Reactor components. And once you had any kind of mining ship you could just fill it up once and probably have more stone than you'd ever need. Reactor components don't need much gravel.

Like I said, if you can keep using Survival Kits for processing, I can see a use to build arrays of them to grind stone into usable ingots. Even if they don't make very much, you get absolute mountains of stone while doing nearly anything else.

It would also help with the somewhat irritating problem of Refineries and Arc Furnaces getting gummed up on one of the slower minerals. Cobalt and nickel take ages to process, and everything else can grind to a halt if they pull a chunk of something like that when what you really need is just a bazillion Iron. Yes you can sort it by hand, but if you've got a trickle of random metals coming from all the stone you're digging up anyway it would help.

[Skippy The Magnificent]

the problem with using survival kits and stone tho is that the effort/power cost put into it to process stone and they payout is really poor. Even the devs stated that the point of this feature was to help out early game starts but once your built up, using stone to get base materials is very poor.

Your better off, when you get to that point, to put sorters/ejectors on your mining ship and dump the stone as your mining.

edit: with that said, I would still keep a survival kit around just in case you really get in a fubared position, but other then that, once your advanced enough, I wouldnt bother.

[EmberStar]

Sure, once I'm to the point that I'm building Great Maw mining ships that can strip-mine entire asteroids. At the moment, I've got a tiny little atmospheric thruster type mining ship that will stall out and crash if I carry more than 50,000kg of anything. I've been struggling for about three days now to reach a point where I don't have to mine for three minutes then dock for up to fifteen to recharge the battery. (And that's using the giant Planetary Lander, covered in solar panels and with an extra Small Reactor.)

I've only *just* managed to build a landing pad for the mining ship, with a bunch of solar panels. Which I play with Realistic inventory and production settings, so every time I have to process more Uranium everything else comes to a near complete stop. And that all won't even be an option with the new patch, because I guess the Giant Lander ships are completely going away. Possibly along with uranium existing on planets at all.

Personally I'm not super enthusiastic about them just deleting uranium deposits. If they want people to use the new power options then wind and hydrogen generators should offer some benefit. Not "Well, you HAVE to use them because we deleted all the other options." If they stick with that, it kind of makes planets all drawbacks with no real starting benefits at all. Except for the tiny advantage that on the Earth-type one you can run around with your helmet open and not have to worry about suffocating every three minutes if you didn't spawn next to an ice-ball asteroid.

[Malkuth]

Originally posted by EmberStar:

Originally posted by Malkuth:

Just a quick note the survival kit can only refine stone.

But both the basic refinery and refinery can also do stone at a little better rate than the survival kit. So stone can be processed through your game.

The issue is you get a massive amount of gravel from it. Good for reactors. But way to much to be of use.

I know. You could always crush stone into gravel. The problem was that literally the only thing that needed it was Reactor components. And once you had any kind of mining ship you could just fill it up once and probably have more stone than you'd ever need. Reactor components don't need much gravel.

Like I said, if you can keep using Survival Kits for processing, I can see a use to build arrays of them to grind stone into usable ingots. Even if they don't make very much, you get absolute mountains of stone while doing nearly anything else.

It would also help with the somewhat irritating problem of Refineries and Arc Furnaces getting gummed up on one of the slower minerals. Cobalt and nickel take ages to process, and everything else can grind to a halt if they pull a chunk of something like that when what you really need is just a bazillion Iron. Yes you can sort it by hand, but if you've got a trickle of random metals coming from all the stone you're digging up anyway it would help.

Hmmm maybe I’m just misreading what your saying, if so I’m sorry.

But what I meant is that both the basic and normal refinery can also turn stone into trace amounts of iron + nickel + silicon only they have a better rate of return + gravel.

So there is 0 need for survival kit after basics other than healing and spawning. In fact it doesn’t get used at all by your system once you have basics. Won’t even do stone. Unless you manually put it in.

[Defektiv]

https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=309015149
https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=303959338

[Darkaiser]

There is also a mod for a block called a Stone Duster that simply destroys the stone instead of ejecting it. Better for big servers so the waste stone doesn't add to lag.

[Wastefield]

Yes in fact stone refining changed in the survival overhaul (test/upcoming) so that stone always yields some amounts of basic ingots as well as gravel. And it didn't feel like "trace amounts with a flood of gravel" but instead reasonably balanced amounts even? Refinery and basic refinery also process stone just as well, with better yields too - even basic refinery that can't be upgraded. Survival Kit felt like a lot of micromanaging until I realised it works like an assembler: queue up a bunch of 'stone-to-ingot':s and it'll draw in stone automatically, no need to keep filling that tiny inventory manually...

[Pryor]

Stone to Gravel, Gravel to Thorium....... they parts per million is a little off, but it's a game.
https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=1307904047&searchtext=Thorium+

[Defektiv]

Originally posted by Wastefield:

Yes in fact stone refining changed in the survival overhaul (test/upcoming) so that stone always yields some amounts of basic ingots as well as gravel. And it didn't feel like "trace amounts with a flood of gravel" but instead reasonably balanced amounts even? Refinery and basic refinery also process stone just as well, with better yields too - even basic refinery that can't be upgraded. Survival Kit felt like a lot of micromanaging until I realised it works like an assembler: queue up a bunch of 'stone-to-ingot':s and it'll draw in stone automatically, no need to keep filling that tiny inventory manually...

Did they finally get rid of the arc furnace? That thing is kind of a waste of game budget now that we can build upgrades for the refinery.

[Malkuth]

Originally posted by Defektiv:

Originally posted by Wastefield:

Yes in fact stone refining changed in the survival overhaul (test/upcoming) so that stone always yields some amounts of basic ingots as well as gravel. And it didn't feel like "trace amounts with a flood of gravel" but instead reasonably balanced amounts even? Refinery and basic refinery also process stone just as well, with better yields too - even basic refinery that can't be upgraded. Survival Kit felt like a lot of micromanaging until I realised it works like an assembler: queue up a bunch of 'stone-to-ingot':s and it'll draw in stone automatically, no need to keep filling that tiny inventory manually...

Did they finally get rid of the arc furnace? That thing is kind of a waste of game budget now that we can build upgrades for the refinery.

The arc furnace was turned into the basic furnace. So the model still on game only it’s an actual furnace now. Just can’t do everything the high end furnace can. Namely ore like uranium, platinum etc.

[SolarScavenger]

I have to ask a dumb question. I have version 1.188.105 and I don't see the new drop pods. Was this a one time special deal? After I watched the video Tom7i put up I was reinvigorated and thought I might play and explore the new things. With over 1100 hours of game play, new would be nice. Alas,nothing new for me :(