Empyrion VS Space Engineers?

[Hans Pebble]

I played space engineers since it was in beta, i played it to death and now im not playing it so much but always wanted to agian, from watching the videos this looks like an exact copy of space enigneers with slight variations on very minor things, so is it?

[Pembroke]

Originally posted by VulcanTourist:

Month after month, year after year, same questions, same answers....

True that.

Though, I'm still hoping that some day, some enthusiastic company and their dev team will start building a game that has:
- Space Engineer's building and engineering system
- Empyrion's survival and exploration content
- Kerbal Space Program's physics and orbital mechanics
...or at least their own take on these but that's the basic idea. Dream Game.

Will pay triple-A bucks for that and will buy your DLCs for it or whatever you do even if you release them multiple times a year. Hear me? Take my money. Build it, please.

Ah, well, maybe one day when the computers are better and the GPU's even fancier...

[Yria]

and do not forget here :
you can dig holes (Voxel)
to hide
to build
for fun
thats the most fun part for me
now tell me which of those before mentioned games can do that

[BuffHamster]

Originally posted by Yria:

and do not forget here :
you can dig holes (Voxel)
to hide
to build
for fun
thats the most fun part for me
now tell me which of those before mentioned games can do that

No Man's Sky
7 Days to Die (same game engine)
almost any voxel based game will have terrain that can be deformed.

Generally speaking, while you can dig into NMS, EGS, and 7d2d terrain, those games tend to put the terrain back to where it was before digging.

I love building underground bases, but get tired of having to dig them back out whenever I return to them.

[VulcanTourist]

Originally posted by Yria:

and do not forget here :
you can dig holes (Voxel)
to hide
to build
for fun
thats the most fun part for me
now tell me which of those before mentioned games can do that

WHY do people insist on speaking outside their expertise or at least experience as if they possess it? Just don't.

Originally posted by BuffHamster:

Generally speaking, while you can dig into NMS, EGS, and 7d2d terrain, those games tend to put the terrain back to where it was before digging.

Empyrion places no limits on how much terrain deformation you can perform. EVERY change is permanent and is recorded in the save-game files as exceptions to the procedural generation. There is an embarrassingly short distance at which the engine will begin redrawing those exceptions, for alleged performance reasons.

No Man's Sky also stores terrain deformations in the saved game as procedural exceptions, BUT there is a hard fixed limit on how many bytes those exceptions are allowed to occupy in the saved game. In effect that section of the JSON data functions as a FIFO buffer, with the oldest exceptions being progressively removed when new deformations exceed the allocated space.

I have no experience with 7 Days to Die. At least I readily admit that.

The wisest thing Dirty Harry ever said was, "a man has got to know his limitations." Too few people paid him heed, not least the bad guy whose limitations got him an early retirement.

[Pembroke]

Yeah, these things are extremely hard to combine in a single game:
- Allow free voxel deformation
- Allow free building of vehicles
- Simulate collisions well
- Simulate fluid physics well (air and water)
- Simulate rotational forces and torque well (thruster forces, wheels, etc.)

Usually, if a game wants to do some of the above, it has to skimp on the rest. Simply not enough GPU and processing power available yet to have it all.

Maybe some day.

[I am Goot]

I have played both Empyrion and Space Engineers. I used to give Empyrion such a really bad time in my disappointment, but since playing Space Engineers I have changed my opinion on Empyrion drastically. I always considered Space Engineers the direct competitor to Empyrion, but having since played Space Engineers, its sadly, the other way around.

I am aware of how Mods work. I am aware that Mods are content potential within actual code and game files. This means that many Mod Content are possibilities the game developers have simply refused to turn on, why should they, they have Modders who'll do it for them, for free.

Space Engineers is a game which is highly reliant on its modding community to make the game reasonably playable and if you look on Nexus, you'll find 1000s of Mods for Space engineers, which are Quality of Life improvements on what the game provides.

I have friends (like most do) who play SE, but they have 1000s of active Mods in place just to be able to basic things, some of those mods are game breaking, you get that in a lot of mods, but most are quality of life mods within the coding of the main game

There are no such needs in Empyrion, because the game is in a working state that doesn't need heavy modding involvement. Sure Reforged Eden mod gives Empyrion new life, but RE doesn't bring to the game 1000's of mod changes which the devs choose not to implement each of which need to update whenever a new version of SE is launched.

Space Engineers came out in 2013, Empyrion in 2015. In the time that both games are out, the Devs of SE have had 2 years head start to implement some of the code which modders use to make the game nicer to play. Empyrions devs haven't needed to implement such things.

I personally got fed up of SE after about 56 hours of gameplay, I've got 1900ish in Empyrion. Which do I think is the better game, I've already said

[japp_02]

Originally posted by Pembroke:

Originally posted by VulcanTourist:

Month after month, year after year, same questions, same answers....

True that.

Though, I'm still hoping that some day, some enthusiastic company and their dev team will start building a game that has:
- Space Engineer's building and engineering system
- Empyrion's survival and exploration content
- Kerbal Space Program's physics and orbital mechanics
...or at least their own take on these but that's the basic idea. Dream Game.

Will pay triple-A bucks for that and will buy your DLCs for it or whatever you do even if you release them multiple times a year. Hear me? Take my money. Build it, please.

Ah, well, maybe one day when the computers are better and the GPU's even fancier...

Then you should look at Starfield (Bethesda) with planed release before end of 2022, and maybe Kerbal Space Program 2 although I don't think that in this last one the mechanics will change a lot, but more worlds will for sure be added; exploration in the classic sense of the genre? Nah, I don't think so.

[ravien_ff]

Starfield sounds like it's going to be more Skyrim in space. Cool for sure, but I doubt it will allow for terrain manipulation or building your own ships.

[ossmpossm]

yeah i have a hard Time keeping up with bethesda they are usually all over the place, like that multiplayer Triple Galaxy i think? gets your itch scratched though for underground sources of mainstream expenses

[Yria]

"WHY do people insist on speaking outside their expertise or at least experience as if they possess it? Just don't."

how do you know ?

[VulcanTourist]

Originally posted by Yria:

how do you know ?

You erroneously believed that Empyrion is the only game of its type that allows terrain deformation, and tried to convince others:

Originally posted by Yria:

and do not forget here :
you can dig holes (Voxel)
now tell me which of those before mentioned games can do that

That is trivially demonstrated to be false, as BuffHamster showed. I have extensive personal experience with "digging holes" in No Man's Sky.

Try actually PLAYING other games before making comparative statements about them. Playing one game and then making laughable statements like "this is the only game that lets me dig holes!" makes your inexperience obvious. How do I know? I"m not inexperienced. Solipsism like "how on earth can you possibly know what I don't?" is not a good defense of ignorance... and why on earth would you want to defend it?

[Evil_Doc]

Originally posted by Pembroke:

it's very hard to beat Space Engineers in its own game

No, it's not, really. Actually, I can think of 2 games that beat SE, easily.

For starship / spaceship construction: StarshipEVO is way better. The amount of detail you can create in this game is astounding! (Check out the workshop for some of the amazing work people have done) Sadly though, that's really the only thing to do in that game at the moment. Just build. Nothing else to do yet.

And for base / space station construction, I recommend: "Stationeers". If you want a complex simulation about engineering, plumbing, HVAC, electrical systems, that take into account: temperature, pressure, gravity, thermodynamics, and physics, this is it. There is a little bit of "magic" involved (like being able to eat/drink through a sealed space helmet), but I think that can be changed with the difficulty settings. On the hardest setting, you are literally a glutton for punishment! Now, other than building and survival, there isn't much else to do in this game, either.

Both those games feature single AND multiplayer, and both are fun building games, with cute (cartoony / anime like) graphics, but do not come near SE's graphics. So if graphics are important, then stick with SE / EGS.


However, as everyone else has said: EGS is about survival / exploration and has been from the get go. You started on a single planet, with the ability to explore the immediate vicinity (I think there were 3 planets in total, originally). Now the scope of the Galaxy is like NMS or Elite.

Now SE was all about building and engineering space ships and stations when it started. (Miss those old days). They only added planets later as an after thought.... and that's when it started going downhill (IMO)

https://store.steampowered.com/app/544550/Stationeers/

https://store.steampowered.com/app/711980/Starship_EVO/

[The Big Brzezinski]

Also Scrap Mechanic.

[Kikinaak]

Starship EVO looks good, I'm keeping my eye on it but right now multiplayer is in a broken state. Stationeers is indeed very complex, but SS13 did what its trying to do first, free, and far better.

[BuffHamster]

Ugh, I have the worst time with underground bases in NMS. My first 2 bases are constantly getting reburied. [sigh] I think it is still problematic in that game:
https://steamcommunity.com/app/275850/discussions/0/2974027717628134472/?ctp=2
https://steamcommunity.com/app/275850/discussions/0/3203744275138105383/?ctp=2
https://steamcommunity.com/app/275850/discussions/0/3203747834751775021/
-apparently it takes a little time away from them to recreate the issue, but it is consistent. I can reload my game now and have to dig those 2 bases out all over again. As VulcanTourist pointed out, your save game file only holds a finite amount of data.
... but you can work around it as building underground in NMS isn't really necessary for game play reasons.
What I mean is, unlike EGS, nobody really attacks your bases on purpose, unless you irritate the Sentinels enough I guess, and even then, they are after you, not the structure you're hiding in*.
In EGS. using blueprints is the best option for myself.
In NMS, many planets have extensive cave systems, best to build inside those.
*exception is your 'settlement', the Sentinels do attack the central pylon located in your settlement every so often. You have to dispose of them to stop the attack.

Other games that use deform-able terrain:

https://store.steampowered.com/app/237870/Planet_Explorers/

https://store.steampowered.com/app/504050/Planet_Nomads/

interesting to note that the devs who introduced Planet Explorers also developed "My Time at Portia"