What am I supposed to do in survival?

[Brer]

Me and my friend love playing space engineers but we never really found a use for survival because we would build a ship, get into space, and then.... What are we supposed to do?
Is there ANYTHING we can do other than just fly around because there is no Danger, farming, interactions, there is literally nothing that isn't 9000 kilometers away? I heard people can get cargo but that's really it.

Point being, is there any reason to play survival at all? Or is it a useless gamemode in its entirety?
(Im new to the game so there probably is but I just can't figure it out)

[Xor fo xob]

try and make a fully automated base or something?
there's kinda no point to it.

[Spaceman Spiff]

Spice up your survival life with some hostile NPC mods. I guarantee you'll be hopping trying to survive with pesky pirates, rampaging reavers, and corruption drones wanting to kill and eat you. Those mods make playing the game interesting.

[Dan2D3D]

Hi, we build ships and stations to survive in space and on planets, that's it for the basic game so create a station with the needed ships to survive on all Planets/Moons/Space.

+ Find the working engineer solutions, here a lot can be done like creating a tiny scout ship to a automatic printer / airlock for examples ...

+ Destroy all SPRT stations on all planets, those are in the Premade easy starts where we spawn at a station.

+ Destroy/conquer all space enemy ships and stations (encounters).

+ Enable "Economy" to do the Faction contracts.

++
Play in the available scenarios or player made scenario shared on the Workshop.
Or
Add enemy Mods to make it more challenging at surviving on planets.

[frag2k4]

An idea is to watch Splitsie's survival unlikely series with Capac, aside from some NPC mods and such the pair embark on a series of adventures (including workshop scenarios) with an actual endgame for themselves. Its a fun series and a good laugh and might help get an idea what survival with friends can be like.

[Raider Deci]

Personally I play with a bunch of npc to do some fighting once in awhile. I also use scarce resources-mod to spread out every non-basic resource so I have a reason to go to the various planets which adds a sense of progression.

[Mantha]

Technically speaking, there ISN'T anything to do in survival. The idea is to create your own goals. Mods help a lot with this, but ultimately, Keen needs to greatly expand on the initiatives and ideas they had with the Economy update.

[TheHellKat]

Gotta say, I love the name, original is best 😁

Anyway in answer to your question...
What ever you want.

SE is a sandbox, it's a make your own fun kinda game. Granted the base game itself comes with very few toys to play with but that's why the SE Devs made it soo east to mod.

Think of the mods as toys you can bring into your sandbox to give you something more to do.

Want to play as a pirate, install the npc expansion mods (they even come with a police force).
Want to play as a salvage reclaimer, install the wrecks mods.

Basically, do what ever you want.

[Gorf2010]

Originally posted by frag2k4:

An idea is to watch Splitsie's survival unlikely series with Capac, aside from some NPC mods and such the pair embark on a series of adventures (including workshop scenarios) with an actual endgame for themselves. Its a fun series and a good laugh and might help get an idea what survival with friends can be like.

I binge-watched Splitsie's videos for days on end when I was on holiday. He really is the Guru of SE. A great single player series he did was Survival Impossible. Many chuckles were had. Not to mention the various easy-to-understand tutorials he makes

[Grumpy-Granddad]

Originally posted by Kraft is best macaroni:

Me and my friend love playing space engineers but we never really found a use for survival because we would build a ship, get into space, and then.... What are we supposed to do?
Is there ANYTHING we can do other than just fly around because there is no Danger, farming, interactions, there is literally nothing that isn't 9000 kilometers away? I heard people can get cargo but that's really it.

Point being, is there any reason to play survival at all? Or is it a useless gamemode in its entirety?
(Im new to the game so there probably is but I just can't figure it out)

THe basic difference between the 2 is that in survival you must create your own materials from the ground up. No fancy click and build. You gotta grind from the bottom up everything you need to have to survive. Even a basic homebase becomes a challenge on some planets.
Having past the survival kit and build your first refinery you can now refine a few more materials like Iron and Cobalt. Those two, specificly the last one, you gotta have to create the end refinery and assembler to open up all options in building materials but even then you are not done.
Finding all resources is a must to survive and yes you can get attacked by space pirates and bots in space. There is no "safe" place in space just because you are alone.
Also, having to grind everything from the ground up gives you way more insight in the game then you would have on the sandbox mode.
There are a few options for game play in survival and I suggest to try a few or atleast try to survive space and find all your needed resources up to Uranium. Last one is hardcore to find and only in space available.

[Commander_Black]

The answer to your question is simply one word. MODS

There are so many mods to augment the survival aspect of the game. And even more for quality of life and automation.
Whatever makes you tick, the modders got your back :)

[Tux]

Yeah, like others say 'mods'.

In fact, in many cases I have even found it faster to get ore by hand then it is to design and build a mining ship, rover or drill rig, unless I am planning on a mega ship of which I dont need.
To be fair a mining space ship is likely worth it though

[Spaceman Spiff]

You can still play a challenging game of survival without mods. If I'm bored and just want a challenge, I'll do a custom start in either Empty Space or Star System while in creative mode. First, I'll move to some random place in space using spectator mode, then move my character there. Then I'll spawn in a battery with an O2/H2 generator and a cryo chamber attached, and I'll spawn some ice into the O2/H2 generator so I can fill some bottles. Then I spawn a single oxygen and hydrogen bottle into the O2/H2 generator so they will fill, then put them in my backpack. I'll also spawn in maybe 10 or 20 MR-20 magazines to go with the default MR-20 rifle that comes with a respawn. Finally, I'll spawn and collect 4 each of the medkits and powerkits (or 2 each if I'm wanting a bit more challenge, or none if I really want a challenge). Finally, I pop inside the cryo chamber to top off my power, oxygen, and hydrogen, then save and exit from the game.

Once that's done I'll go to the load screen, change the game to Survival, then go into Advanced Settings and set everything the way I want to play the game (cargo capacity, speeds, etc.); don't forget to enable in-game scripts so the drones will do their thing properly.

Load the survival game, go into the Admin screen and select Entities, and delete the grid that has the battery, O2/H2 generator, and cryo chamber. Now save and go survive!

I generally just start jetpacking to full speed and tootle along until a "MAYDAY" (or other) signal appears, then head that way. Your beginning in this survival game is to capture or find powered grids so you can recharge your suit, get oxygen and hydrogen, and start building infrastructure such as a base or ship. Be mindful that most of the vanilla grids have some level of self-defense. Only when I have enough components do I consider building a mining ship to expand my part production capability.

If you want to have even more fun, load some PvE mods (such as Corruption PvE Combat) so that space populates with additional hostile entities. Survival is now more interesting.

I usually play until I have a self-sustaining base or ship built. Some PvE mods will start throwing bigger and bigger ships at you as your PCU increases, so whatever you've built has to survive that onslaught. Sometimes I make it a goal to get to a far away planet and build a base. Whatever. Be creative in your survival goals.

[Anonymous]

Originally posted by Kraft is best macaroni:

Me and my friend love playing space engineers but we never really found a use for survival because we would build a ship, get into space, and then.... What are we supposed to do?
Is there ANYTHING we can do other than just fly around because there is no Danger, farming, interactions, there is literally nothing that isn't 9000 kilometers away? I heard people can get cargo but that's really it.

Point being, is there any reason to play survival at all? Or is it a useless gamemode in its entirety?
(Im new to the game so there probably is but I just can't figure it out)

Starting from a planet rings the "survival" bell a lot more for me, it feels an accomplishment to rise to the stars from digging earth stone.

[Cathedral of Pain]

Oh I am glad I found this thread. I was hoping to find a prettier and more interesting (regarding building mechanics) version of Empyrion. But I get the impression that SE is not much of a game but rather virtual LEGO. I'll pass then and hope that one day a developer creates a challenging game where your machines you build have a purpose, and that purpose is hopefully not exclusively waging war.

[Anonymous]

Originally posted by Cathedral of Pain:

Oh I am glad I found this thread. I was hoping to find a prettier and more interesting (regarding building mechanics) version of Empyrion. But I get the impression that SE is not much of a game but rather virtual LEGO. I'll pass then and hope that one day a developer creates a challenging game where your machines you build have a purpose, and that purpose is hopefully not exclusively waging war.

It's gamified little by little but yeah the purpose can be building better machines, accessing better resources, I mean survival start on planet is definitely a game. And there are many scenarios, if that thread scares you off this sucks cause it doesn't tell the whole story.