You're forgetting one impenetrable defense. Playing alone because you have no friends that play space engineers. No one will attack your underground base then.
yea its not protected from orbital strikes, its very easy to make a orbital Cannon that can pierce through 50m of Voxels with a single shot, can fire 10-15 rounds a minute
@@andrewhoughton8606 I do too. I think what would make sense is if the time invested in digging would offset the cost of heavy armor. I thinl the solution is to make deep bedrock devoid of useful ore and material, slow to dig, impervious to damage from small blocks and have mining it deal periodic damage to drills. Make it a massive time sink to save on resources but make it worthwhile.
Well they could make a block that makes voxels not take damage in a area round it. If you make it use power to do it, that would mean no base would be able to last forever as they would run out. And the bigger the base the more you would need, and you couldn't do mining while they were on wither.
@@-JustHuman- possible, would be a tad annoying though, i feel like im kinda in both parks, it should be possible to drill around the base, but not easily, IE as @Raso719 mentioned, youd have to bring a dedicated vehicle to achieve anything and the resources to maintain it along with protecting it personally this sounds fun, having the enemy bring a vehicle in to dig into another part of your base (im thinking them bringing it into your base not somewhere above ground) and the defenders going out and trying to destroy it well the attackers defend, it would give a good set of alterations to the flow of a fight like that, + the attackers would need to calculate when to send in a breacher vehicle
I mean there was a server I was on that didn't have warheads damage voxels, and also while it allowed digging into underground bases it required you use a ship. It was pretty fun as the defender and we (me and 10-20 other friends, we took shifts) held out for a 12 hour long siege against a force of about 30 people, all with dreadnaughts parked above (which through some creative tactics, we were able to take down some and later retrofit to our own purposes which was epic). We won the fight and it was the most fun I ever had in Space Engineers. Very specific conditions but it was so crazy with grinder drones, explosives, tight hallways, blast doors, etc. We had a secondary small base hidden outside we used to harrass them from behind, I mean it was legit the most fun I ever had.
A well moderated server with good community members makes anything possible sounds like you had a blast. What sort of mining machine did you find most effective at breaching there base.
To be fair pvp servers should have engagement rules in terms of time. As long as the enemy attacks during the time you available to play it is great. Not a fan of sneaky raids where they steal everything you have while you offline.
@@archangel8172 Maybe some sort of modded safe zone could be used that the server has an off period for all of them across the server kind of like a regulatory battle timeframe, but for people who can't get on to defend their base they should have a leeway system that checks if a minimum number of faction members are online at that moment for a fair defense and if they aren't then their safe zone stays up. But I'm just spit balling an idea I rarely play in pvp servers because I never have enough friends to not be bullied out of anywhere I set up or I'm harassed before I can even get anything off the ground. Maybe add some RP text to popup saying, SOLAR FLARE HAS DISABLED SAFETY NETS REBOOT IN ** HOURS1
@@Sworddeath727 i was leaning more towards a moderated server. Where you are just forbidden from attacking another faction unless it was agreed upon by both parties. Basically make the pvp an opportunity to have fun and get rich of someone. You register with the admins and then they organize the pvp between you and the faction you attacking. They would give you a window to act in accordance to what the parties agreed upon and afterwards it once again becomes a no pvp. In addition, defending from a raid would give you an opportunity to register for you to be the raiding party next time around. This way in order to attack someone you first would have to have suffered an attack from someone else. Just to keep it fair.
@@Sworddeath727 Or it can be done like in Eve online where each faction has it's active hours. Any structure belonging to that faction can only be attacked during the corp active hours.
(This has nothing to do with Space engineers but..) Do you guys like Pineapple on pizza? Personally I LOVE Hawaiian pizza with my whole heart, Might be because I am in Australia (Our national pizza) but I am curious on this debate on why others don’t like it
@@LastStandGamersI have never herd of that pizza before and I just looked it up and it look amazing… It’s 3:54am and now I crave pizza… (Where I am there is no delivery option) :(
There is also the problem that underground bases can easily be spotted from several Kilometers away. The removal of voxel changes the way the surface appears at a distance. Usually in the form of a massive hole.
When you build any base in SE, it must be able to remain hidden at all costs. Once it's found, it's already pretty much screwed, as other players won't stop coming after you, no matter what. They can set up respawn points and just keep coming back after they die, continueing the assault until they win.That's why underground bases and deep space bases are the most popular types.
@@JamesTDG thats the main ethos of space engineers pvp combat, jump ready space stations. The popularity of underground bases boomed only when they introduced planets, before that it was space station / capital ship warfare. SE's game engine was not just made for multiple large earth excavations projects
The trick is to make the base so annoyingly impenetrable, that assailants give up before they're even halfway through. I recommend making all the tunnels impossibly narrow and heavily armored to deter breaches. Place several thousand tons of armored blocks as the base; make it thick enough to deter sappers. I recommend at least 20 blocks deep. The key is to make the prospect of taking your base cost more than your base; essentially, diminishing returns in SE warfare.
A traditional system of tunnels just strikes me as a bad design choice in general. The more horizontal/vertical an underground base is, the more opportunities for a would-be sapper to entirely bypass defenses via tunneling/the more space you have to make sure is reinforced. I imagine the ideal layout would be something more onion like, with a series of heavily defended outer layers surrounding the critical stuff in the center. That way no matter their direction of approach, they'll have to go through the same amount of defenses to reach anything vital. They might could still tunnel to bypass the initial blast door, but they'll have to attack every layer past that conventionally.
This is what I do as a single player but my mothership I always have to be extremly careful with because of clang. Running into an asteroid once and losing a quarter of your ship once is enough. It depends on server rules but underground bases also just take so much longer tk build since you have to worry about digging and defenses around the shell of your base so people can't just dig in
This is the mortal engines iteration the problem is the weight of cargos and what happens to the base and the server when the mobile cargo pops. On LSG we have static storage in these iterations to get over this issue!
I also think big moving carrier like a thing in desert of Kharak is far more better. No matter land only or space allowance in the server. I always have 1 very big ship that can do all base thing (even constructing destroyer and carry it with you). Just moving it around make people hard to verify where exactly you are. Especially in space LeL. The only problem is it a "little bit laggy :D"
@mayshiratoshi6390 yea and some us can't support the lag so having a static base is useful. But at the end of the day there's pros and cons to all base types
Mobile star-bases are the best, as you have an infinite void to hide in, and barring mods/exploits/other shenanigans they are effectively impossible for hostiles to locate with but a single random jump in to the that infinite sky. That said, I think this is a surface-base vs underground-base vid, and land-carriers are one of those "coolness inversely proportionate to practicality" kinda things...
two positives to underground bases you didn't include are they're cheaper, you have to dig the materials while making the base either way but with bunkers it's just easier, but also turrets have less to focus on because the enemies are narrowed into a corridor.
One thing I've considered (but never done because I only play solo) is making tunnels/hangars that are just below the surface then have warheads set to open them up during an attack as a one time sneaky exit for fighters.
above ground they can FLY to your rooms, under ground they have to DIG to your rooms, its just another layer of armor, albeit not as strong, BUT it keeps the enemy in the dark, they dont know where your rooms are, where as above ground its easy to make our your room layout. also, all the negatives also apply to the enemy, its as equally inconvenient for them too. ... also, i hate having my back open, at least i know from which direction im being attacked, id rather get them in a choke point instead the risk of being attacked from all sides
@@callmeskal820 An above-ground base doesn't have that trade-off because it has no stealth to trade away, so it's not that you have to choose between stealth and defense underground, it's that you get to choose
The main downside to underground bases, is the voxel damage, we kinda need natural caves, this way, you can start a base inside the tunnel and hide in there. Plus, it'll make things more lively, (this already sort of done in asteroids)
To be fair, underground bases are very effective for PvE if you have several MES mods enabled. Voxels are much tougher for NPC enemies to get through than any blocks.
One possible effort would be excavating a greatly larger space than needed, and having the true secure chamber suspended in the middle with defences positioned externally on the base as well as at points of the interior facing inwards to enable them to hit would be sappers. Though this also has issues. Accessibility to defending persons, as well as the massive time requirements for setting it up come to mind immediately.
@@aone9050 If that was true, it would be the exact opposite, because tunneling under defenses to penetrate a vault is a time honored tradition of robberies.
I hope with Space Engineers 2 you can claim the group around your base, keeping people from digging around it. Or better yet, give us something we can build that claims the ground, much like a safe zone. Add that for asteroids, and I’d be ecstatic! However, you’d still want missiles to be able to destroy the ground, or people would just use dirt and stone as armor for all bases. 😅 Hmm… The more I think about it, scratch that last part. Making the ground indestructible would force us players to raid bases outside of our ships, and would add a lot of fun FPS raiding gameplay to the game. I could go either way.
a thought occurs about the performance, I wonder if it is possible to make a planetary voxel map that has natural caves, like that one asteroid with all the hollows already a part of it. even put critical resources within said caves so players have reasons to build in them. they'd still need to dig stuff out for building but I wonder if that would be less of a hit performance wise. I don't know, I don't do code, just pretty ships.
I don't code either, or even build pretty ships, but as far as I know planets in SE are, technically and mechanically speaking, just very very large asteroids. It should be possible, but I couldn't say for sure.
Natural caverns and other buildable terrain (cliffs, gullies) would be great. It would have some impact but less than if you dug out the same cave from voxels - it's the difference between the "map" every player already has for planets and the complexity of the geometry being rendered in graphics and physics. Natural caves wouldn't increase the map loading much, unless there are lots of small caverns. I have no idea how the game handles the voxel physics.
Love it.. also great to see so many old underground bases I worked on appear in this video! I like the challange of underground bases. The vault server was allot of fun for me! Shame the game is not optimised for them.
Having an area control field, similar to the noc station shield gen that prevents drilling of terrain would help alleviate the cheese tactics. I remember some years ago, several of the random asteroids being hollow or with large voids scattered about it's mass. Those make good bases as well since they are naturally dug out, and therefore not affecting server performance the same as a dug out base would. I wonder if the dev team can continue to refine the engine to take things like this into account.
A rule I always go with is have a escape tunnel with a escape vehicle that can house all your valuable to act as a separate grid to immediately disconnect in the event to a total loss of a base.
Underground is bad but inside of an asteroid ? If the asteroid is big enough and hollow : hangar for your ships, protected from meteor showers and well hidden amongst the sea of other asteroids
The key part to any good underground base. Is to dig it deep into a mountain or some place. Then hollow out a massive hole with your base in the middle floating. After that place turrets in every angle around your base (underground). When the rocketman mole shows up they will have no chance to avoid the turrets. You can also set up mini warheads with proximity sensors to slow them down further. Either way, above ground or below takes effort to build. Remaining hidden and unfound is always the best defense. If/when you are found. Then it deploy many above ground turret bunkers in the area.
As someone who uses PMWs (player made weapons) as my main focus in the game, I have to say that the thought that underground bases offer orbital bombardment protection is outright ridiculous. Most underground bases can be defeated by a well designed bunker busting munition. Hell, I've destroyed bases that are hundreds of blocks below ground by just dropping a really heavy thing on it. Blast doors are ideal, as they don't deform. A 3x3x10 kinetic penetrator, with a sensor detonated warhead above it, will completely gut any shallow underground base if dropped with any semblance of accuracy. If that doesn't work, just print another. And another. And another. Underground bases can't protect against orbital bombardment, because the only way to stop a bombardment is to go destroy the ship. And underground bases are the worst at that because they only have a few places to launch ships, which an attacking player can easily obstruct or destroy. It's a joke. TL:DR: anyone who thinks an underground base will stop orbital bombardment has never taken part in orbital bombardment. They're probably thinking of a ship sitting 2KM up, firing weapons and dropping bombs in visual range. That's not the case. We sit outside of the planet's gravity well, using laser antennae to align ourselves perfectly, and use gravity generators to drop hundreds or thousands of blocks on the target.
I think there is no way to stop the digging and grinding so its probably best to have the base just hanging in a bubble cavern or something. Basically your base is a ship underground with weapons all over it as protection.
There are mods where you can install blocks that ban the use of drills within a certain radius. Unlike safezones, they don't require zone chips or crazy amounts of power. Not being able to dig through someone's base helps cut down on base sprawl and rat's nests of attack tunnels.
However, some advantages to underground bases: - Harder to find than above ground bases. - Due to enemies only being able to see your entrances, they do not know anything about the base layout or what to expect inside, making underground bases a maze for those who don't live in it. - While walls can be drilled, more valuable areas such as storage and command centers can be completely sealed, and turrets can be placed strategically anywhere in the base. plus, as said before, this base is a maze to them, so they don't even know where to drill. - Due to being underground, your base is much harder to attack with weapons such as bombs, meaning that if your enemy wants to raid you efficiently, they have to go in.
Underground bases are cool and good, so long as built right. Assume every point can be breached, plan accordingly. Really difficult to plan for that as people can just tear through the rock and plant a warhead. I suppose you could try a minefield or what not, but it is just a rabbit hole of trying to prepare for every possible attack... that's why I like these bases best when they are meant to be stealthy such as a 3x3 opening or are just on a PVE server where players dont attack it.
I think it comes down to what youre wanting to do. If youre in an area that isnt easily accesible and you wish to stay hidden due to the valley a few kilometers away is a hot mess of warfare, a Subterranean base works well. Also helps you get established before breaking out into the surface with your hangers and hardened defences, thpugh i would argue having a few layers of tunnels around your base that has turrets is a wise idea to prevent mining vehicles and lonely suited men with a drill from finding you.
Great video, I think that drilling in by hand with the drilling tool is not cool but drilling in with a drilling ship would be cool. I didn't think about the lag a bunker would cause maybe it would only be viable on a dedicated rp server rather then a competative pvp server.
This can apply only to PvP, and if you manage to make your base nearly invisible from outside using only radar antennas and far away relays the enemies will have a hard time finding your base in the first place. The main problems as I see it is the server slowdown and increase in size of the save file, and the fact that if you're in a place without air, just voxels won't make it to make your base airtight, you'll still need to create rooms with blocks, and that will take plenty of time between digging and building.
simple fix for the drill issue on servers, a drill-disabling field generator, as long as the base has power, enemy players can't use drills withing 500m from the base or something
I mean on one hand, you're right. On the other, in modded situations, you can use things like the concrete mod to build multiple-layer-thick walls to end up curbing the attackers breaching through walls thing. They're tough enough in that configuration that you'd probably lose less resources storming through the base than trying to breach tunnels. As for the attackers not having a lot of options, you could just enjoy the push instead, but that doesn't really fix the issue. For the defenders, though, underground bases are nearly perfect if you can just fix the wall breaching problem.
I have a tendency to make a sort of "open air" hole base. That is to say, the base is partially inland into the earth, but also open to the surface, think Owan and Beru's house from star wars. It's not as stealthy, but it provides a decent amount of internal protection from air attacks.
Whenever i made an underground base i made sure that the interior of said base had no rocks showing, id dig out and put unbuilt blocks where i planned to expand, made sure the ceiling was covered, the floor, and the tertiary walls. Some people like the rocky look, however like you said someone with a hand drill ( if they know the layout of your base [maybe a traitor,ive had it happen]) Can dig straight to your goodies. Cover up all your axises, always have a backup plan or a secondary base ready to bug out. (Your secondary base doesn’t have to be as big as your main, you can always work on it later) The most successful inground base ive had was on a asteroid. planets, not so much as planets have alot of traffic. Just my 2 cents, i only have about 300 hours in SE but those tips always run through my head when building a underground base, everything else Aaron touched on is good advice.
Now Asteroid bases are AWSOME and really fun to make. Planetary underground bases are just awful because you have to worry about natural gravity and stuff like that.
when I made my first hidden base there were turrets and heavy armor block everywhere after a lot of time so I don't care about intrudors but I see your point (I will still do them under ground no matter what
I don't think one is better than the other. It's situation based. A underground base can have walls so there is no difference to on top bases. You can dig in both, same goes to multiple entrances. The technical side of things is a failure of the developer. When you create voxel based planets it should not be performance heavy...
Being able to keep your base as low profile as possible is the easiest way of ensuring its survival. In this way, having your base sequestered underground or on the side of a cliff with minimal exposure, e.g. turret locations and landing/walking zones, is extremely advantageous. Granted if you got a whole fleet coming down on your base uncontested it's going to be a bloodbath no matter how well made your base is. On equal footing, however, is when this philosophy comes best into play.
I think if you have no rules or conventions then the only secure base is in deep space where nobody can find it. Anything on a planet is at risk as soon as you mine or dig because the voxel distortion can be seen from orbit. The main advantage of underground bases is they are really cool. And the second biggest one is they are the cheapest way to make some blast cover without grinding a ton of resources. Especially in the age of railguns and artillery. If voxel warhead damage is off you could make a pretty secure base by treating the outer cave walls as enemy territory. Make a huge cavern with a floating island in the middle with the base on with turrets all the way round. Or alternatively have a cavern with a floating floor at the halfway mark with your base buildings on it and turrets facing up and down.
I think a block that would harden the voxels around the base of a certain distance outside the grid(base). I think it would be good if it operated by disabling grinders and drills of enemy players, and this would be both handheld and small/large grid grinders and drills. There was a mod that did that I think, but it's now been abandoned I think.
Best thing to do with underground bases is make it as an above ground base is a large cave. That way there is no part of your base right next to voxels. Then you can arm the exterior with a liberal amount of interior turrets. This eliminates the effectiveness of breachers. They cannot plant explosives within range of your base because the cave walls are too far away from your base wall for them to do so without being shot.
I think smaller underground bases are more useful than larger ones. Or a network of smaller ones that can be locked and be able to provide multiple avenues of escape and/or fallback points. Large ones tend to be detected more quickly as enemies will at some point start to home in on activity via recon or some other method. They get eyes on it and observe for a period of time they will start to put together an idea of how big the base might be by the forces that move in and out, or the security that is around the entrance and start to figure out how to best deal with it. Even if there were some methods to camouflage them as some have posted larger bases will undoubtedly be sniffed out faster than smaller ones. And while smaller ones knocked out quickly, they are cheaper by comparison and can be setup much more quickly and honestly are easier to hide. And depending on the nature of the base they can be setup slightly closer to enemy bases if done right. Giving a fortified location to assault from or multiple fortified locations to assault an enemy. And if there is a network of tunnels to some of these bases can be used to ferry supplies, vehicles, and personnel between them. With smaller isolated bases being setup to draw attention or as temp holding stations for other a small taskforces and/or convoys that moves when it's dark or even during the day as rapidly as possible so that even should they be detected the loss suffered is mitigated by the fact that while one group might have been sniffed out another group(s) can move quickly unnoticed to those other holdout bunkers or the network and disappear from view. These networked bases will cost about as much resources as larger ones if not more in some ways, but the trade is that should one be detected enemies now have to contend with a network of rat mazes rather than one large one. And burning the network will take more time and manpower than the enemy might be able to throw at it at once. Drawing the fight out and exhausting attackers more since it's unclear if there is one central base or if this a disjointed network of cells. Main issues is time and location, where the first of this network is setup? How long it will take to build it up? How many are connected to the network? Their locations? Where are the isolated bunkers and holdouts going to be in proximity to these networked bases? Where is the enemy concentrations in relation to them? These have to be asked and have to be analyzed.
It sounds like either less efficiency on hand drills - which I would balance by increasing the output of stone from a handdrill so you get the same materials in the same time, just from a way shorter tunnel - would solve this. A safe zone around a base would also prevent this from happening. Historically, the most accurate to an underground base would probably be a narrow hallway. If it's well constructed, that is. An underground base could field far more vehicles and fighting power, realistically, than a mobile attack force. Combine that with a narrow and bunker-like buildstyle intended to support defense - like cone-shaped halls which force attacking forces to enter one at a time while allowing defenders to line up like a firing squad at an execution - and you get a base that has the most important quality a base can have: being nigh unbreachable. The bases we build in SE are less similiar to homes and more similiar to castles. Very few castles were actually taken in battle. The tactic to take a castle is a siege - blockade the castle, cut off water, food, and supplies. Then let's see how long the castle can hold out. Underground bases are like planets protected by a shield generator in Star Wars: it's impossible to effectively bombard them or run air strikes. The only feasible method of attack is an attack on the ground.
Pro-tip - make voxel 10 times harder to dig but also cough up 10 time the resources. Voxels are too cheap, and thats why theres such performance and cheese issues within SE. Underground bases cause lag, yes, but so does any voxel you mine. A way to reduce load is to have voxels last ten times as long and give ten times the resources in compensation. This removes the cheese issues with digging around defenses, and it reduces server load by having mining pits/mines be far less massive
It seems to be like underground bases do have a use, but they shouldnt be your long term base. I think making a functional underground base to get started is a great idea! Get on your feet and start building up some power while you remain stealthy and once you can defend yourself in an open engagement you start on your permanent location above ground or in space
the server load is undeniable but if you build the base like a dungeon, with surprise turrets everywhere, cameras and custom turrets, you can pretty much force stalemate while having nearly inifnite basic materials via refining stone. And of course, have an emergency exit
Voxal void defense. Lack of voxals around the underground base for defense. Voxal anchors to compensate for lack of anchor points. Drawback. Extra reinforced main entrance and omnidirectional security points. Trapdoor attack positions. Points of quickly removable voxals for unexpected attack. Tradeoff for higher unexpected retaliation rate is access to launch zones (recommend extra security checkpoints Can't wait to play this game, trail makers is great but honestly airo/hydro arodinamics is not worth the limitation (had PS4) I'll should be able to get a PC by the end of the year) So many nomad test to conduct lol
I would agree. Underground bases could be a problem UNLESS their outside defences are good. I've always played only with my friend, so there weren't any other players but we have a bunch of mods to add other factions. Building stuff underground would usually give us the advantage of it being way more protected from bullets or shrapnel coming from Assert drones chasing us. It also helps that we always build a long range missile system to shoot stuff down, picture the patriot system.
Underground bases are a bad idea in multiplayer, but if you play PvE, in particular with Reavers, they're the best defense because NPC ships are pretty dumb, and they will just keep blasting at the ground until they run out of ammo. On the other hand, surface bases in a PvE scenario are sitting ducks unless you spam turrets everywhere.
The best security system I found for this was to set 1 warhead for every compartment, set to go off if an intruder enters, yes I will lose the whole base but the intruder gets nothing as well, soon they'll learn not to attack THAT particular base because the joker lives there.
im a big fan of the aesthetic of a bunker base, specially the exposed stone. for sappers, I wonder. different tiers of rock having different density, requiring better equipment to drill through, hand drill / small grid drill / large grid drill, though also potential for different types of drills in terms of tiers / drill tips. if sappers were forced to commit an expensive drill, with expensive support systems, it would in part balance deeper bunkers. would be a fundamental change to game balance, and well beyond the scope of SE, perhaps something for SE2 that being said, some sort of seismic sensor to detect drilling would introduce some fun counterplay, preparing defenses where they are aiming to penetrate the bunker, would just be a single hole as opposed to the more partisen, drill new tunnels all throughout and generate Salt for defenders. tldr, sappers will sap because its easier than penetrating walls and defenses, so what about the uno reverse, bedrock is difficult to penetrate
Sooo.. what about asteroid bases where most of the hollow cave was already created by the server? better than underground bases? I love tunnelroids myself.
with the underground stuff, i do wish there was a way to "Un-drill" or back fill holes and tunnels with out using the admin tools. I dont play on the multi server side of SE enough to comment on that but in Single player i do build into mountains and Asteroids. I do agree that lag and Sim speed drop are bad.
This is why I always fully wall tunnels, no voxel access without breaking through the outer and inner walls, and turret every room and tunnel so if they do break thru it's just fish in a barrel
*Underground* Protection: Offers natural protection from potential external threats such as enemy attacks or meteor showers. Conceals your base, making it less visible to other players or AI threats. Aesthetics: Some players prefer the immersive and realistic feel of building underground structures. Resource Accessibility: Easier access to certain resources that may be found underground, such as ores. Stealth: Provides a stealth advantage *Above-Ground or Space Station* Visibility: Offers better visibility for surveillance and monitoring the surroundings. Solar Power: Floating stations can leverage solar power more effectively without worrying about obstacles. Mobility: Floating stations provide mobility and can be moved to different locations. Aesthetics: Some players prefer the aesthetic appeal of above-ground structures. *Considerations for Both* Functionality: Consider the specific functions of your base and how well each location supports those functions. Resource Management: Evaluate the availability of resources in the chosen location and how easily they can be accessed. Defense: Assess the defensive capabilities of each type of base and whether one offers better protection against potential threats. Multiplayer Dynamics: In multiplayer settings, the preferences and strategies of other players may influence your decision.
Voxel deforestation is a big issue for servers, there's no doubt. The other issues like salt from voxel digging, underground warheads, and directly accessing a loot room are present for any voxel based static grid. Not just underground bases. With above ground bases you have to worry about orbital bombardment as well, which certainly makes me salty. The underground bases I've been a part of are a mix of underground production, storage, and power. With grinding, and mass vehicle storage kept outside in a protected area.
I think that SE just doesn't do PvP as well as other similar games that are far more simplistic (Empyrion) but due to their simplicity are able to focus on pvp systems. The problems mentioned with underground bases are pretty much mostly all solved in those other games by things like core blocks making terrain invulnerable in a certain radius around them (so players do have to go through built blocks), the lag is handled differently (but it does compromise on other aspects that make SE preferable) etc.
it only makes sense in pve or if all spectator functions are disabled on a server so it's never found to begin with. once it's found it's super easy to defeat as it has zero effective defense in all but one direction and no way of moving out of harms way.
Underground bases are great for a solo, small group, or just early game. The problem is when they get to absurd sizes like the ones you showed in the video. Those are some incredible works of art and look really cool to actually play with, but they're awful for all the reasons you said and then some. Groups of those sizes or small groups that have tons of assets are much better off moving to a space station. The only other use I could see for an underground base is to only have a small section of the base underground, like a small safe room or escape hangar or something.
alot of this is the exact reason i kind of hate that planets got implemented no one wants to be in space or make space craft its gone from space engineers to planet engineers i really enjoyed the older survival series you could fine on you tube (including yours) its ok as a concept but I do miss the older salvaging ships and building in space without needing to constantly hunt ice for hydrogen for the jetpack
i think the main downside would be there's no jump drive no quick exit from conflict making them giant hanger's for ships that can escape at best but you will always leave something behind the only advantages is stealth which is still time limited vs players and has an environmental advantage vs events like asteroids and o2
While it eou make gameplay a drag, slower mining would help (at least on blocks and voxels not owned by you). As for lag, voxels need to be optimized. You should not need to track all voxel changes, just the geometry of the changes.
I gotta disagree on the first point Arron . Sure it's true if you just use the cavern walls but that's your own lazy fault. If you build a proper base just as you would an above ground base it's better protection. Not only can't your attacker see the layout and guess where you keep the good stuff.(which you also pointed out as a perk) but they also need to drill through layers of rock to get to your walls or find a weak point.(which you kind of touch on as well) You could even do like we used to in rust and build giant bases that are just a maze of doors, most of which lead nowhere. This ensures most raiders run out of explosives and leave empty handed. I do agree with the points you made though. And on a side note... I didn't know how big your base was until i saw that banana @5:42 . Kudos.
If faction locked inhibitors are used, the drilling issue can be sidestepped. Limit the growth of bases by setting a maximum area of coverage and a maximum number of inhibitors per faction. I know inhibitors exist, there's several MES mods that use them, ill bet someone can figure out how to allow faction members to drill while everyone else cannot.
One of the problems is that Space Engineers is kinda old. There are bugs that have existed for years, and they can't and/or won't fix them. I think some of the issues were even ported over into Medieval Engineers. At the end of the day Space Engineers and its engine are simply outdated, and the "Issues" with underground bases prove that. There are much more optimized ways to track the things Space Engineers need to track. Just look at No Man's Sky. I changed the terrain a lot when I built my base years ago and then stopped playing. I went back recently, and my base is still there terrain edits and all. "Simpler base designs" you might say. We're talking about terrain edits though. How is it that No Man's Sky not only keeps track of my terrain edits but also keeps trans of the edits thousands of other people have made across thousands of planets and their bases that I can easily teleport to at any time, but Space Engineers struggles with performance issues keeping track of terrain edits on a server with a dozen or so people on it? Space Engineers is outdated. They should stop making DLC to keep people playing it, and start creating Space Engineers 2 with an updated more modern engine.
I think just basic rules to be agreed upon before hand could solve the use of hand drills and building bombs underneath enemy bases. Personally I would just make a scouts-honor rule that only vehicles can do tunneling, and you can’t plant bombs. Plus I’ve been kicking around the idea of using warheads and sensors as an underground minefield
When Keen confirmed planets the Forums were filled with players proclaiming that they were going to build "Secret Hidden Underground Impenetrable Fortresses" and be INVINCIBLE. I built my first base in a giant asteroid back when there were no planets. The further along I got, the more I realized that building a base was a bad idea, in general, in Space Engineers, except perhaps as a building exercise. Building a huge, sprawling underground base with all the trimmings can be rewarding, and you don't have to worry about how they look. Underground bases are automatically cool. In THIS game, they are also sitting ducks with a big "I Am Here" flag over them. For a lot of reasons, most of which were outlined in this video, you just shouldn't. In my opinion. a Mothership in space offers more offensive and defensive options, including bugging out while you can. Build a base for the experience. Go nuts. But on a server where you will most certainly be attacked don't waste your time, resources and effort on a giant stationary target. If your enemy wants to destroy your base, make 'em work for it. Make it mobile.
Well, in my opinion, and from what I’ve seen, I’ve been overly bombarded with war heads 16 times on separate occasions when it comes to bases. Even some shielded ones. I can definitely say that it is not perfect. In fact, far from it, but for underground bases, I would say it gives you weather protection. Which is good for acidic rain. Also, for interior defense, they could have Turrets placed inside of their bases. Including Gatling’ which would definitely do some extreme damage. Personally, what I intend on doing with my next mountain base is also having doors that are mediately protected with guns. He did bring up a good point though about the insights not being guarded by enough turrets so for that, I’d probably put a lot of interior Turrets. This is because they are small and do moderate damage to small light armored grids. Also, with my next one I was planning on making it airtight so that would probably make it harder to penetrate because it would have windows at least at some areas and other areas it would just have armor walls. I was also thinking of making the area pass the interior hanger, which uses extremely large player made large grade doors. Sort of elevator for moving down vehicles, and perhaps even fighters to a area that can act as a bunker. To avoid anything like a modded, super laser, but at the bare minimum guard against. The war heads, which I deal way too much with.
If people put the effort into actually building defences against sappers then they can work well, if you leave your walls rocks, just build a floor and have a single door at the end of a long coridor full of turrets and call it a day, only for the enemy to just... go around, than you cannot be upset for being so tactically deaf as to expect the enemy to just charge head long directly into your most fortified and defended killbox instead of just going the easy way through the rock you left unguarded.
I was building them on singleplayer because it stops the AI from shooting you, however if you get far enough away the underground doesn't render and they just blow stuff up anyways lol...
While I agree that it certainly does present a tactical weakness, I will also point out that pvp or no I still will do some things just for the rule of cool. But again thats just me 😊
Boggles me why there isn't a vanilla block to prevent enemy voxel manipulation within the range of the block. Diameter based on power consumption and with a "currency" fuel that needs to be topped up so abandoned bases are eventually unlocked.
You need to have two things on your server to enable people to have defensible Planet bases. The first thing being a Thruster inhibitor where the radius is outside of Maximum weapon range of your longest range weapon to prevent ships from bombarding from above. Allow the owner of the base access to turn this feature on or off, as if it were a module and make it consume a bunch of power. And of course no other enemy player can turn one on in the vicinity and of course make the effect invisible from a distance, but have a warning message to approaching ships. This would promote ground combat for starters. And the other mod, make it so the player who's base it is has a module to turn off their enemies drill in a radius around their base and of course just like the Thruster inhibitor, enemies around cannot enable the same without destroying the one that's there first. As far as the data goes for server voxel changes, there's nothing to do except for having multiple servers for different areas.
Most of the issues you are raising also apply to surface bases. The main difference being, as you said, underground bases can' suffer from an orbital strike. Having a way out is not necessary, if the goal is to protect the base, you don't need a way out. And you certainly don't need your enemies to have multiple ways in. What you need is chokepoints. Large areas that can hold a lot of attackers, that end with very small access points and killboxes. And that's easier to do underground or in every controlled environment. Underground, you need to be aware of people coming in front of you and eventually from the walls if they dig. But... you should protect you walls, leaving some areas easily accessible to drills is the same as not putting any hull to your ship. On the surface, people can drop from the sky, they can destroy infrastructures from afar. It's not possible to do so underground. There are reasons why sensible military or administrative infrastructures are built underground IRL. But well... we also have bunker buster weapons IRL.
@@LastStandGamers nope i think if you create like a warning system that would start a drone or maby few and release them from out side the base and trap them inside you would have the advantage from both sides and you could save most of your base atleast even if you can just get them to retreat back to space i would say that's a win
there's really no need to reinvent the wheel. Use your experience in building real underground shelters. First of all, secrecy. If the base is discovered, the first line of defense has already been broken through, they know about you, and they will prepare to storm your base. Second, separate everything by as large distances as possible, make a lot of narrow corridors stuffed with traps, a lot of stairs, transitions to different levels, even useless ones, create a dungeon for the enemy, confuse him, make him feel uncomfortable. Third, hidden emergency exits and entrances. I don't see any point in keeping large ships underground either. A ship in a hangar on the ground is a defenseless and useless thing. You can make a separate base for such purposes. This way you can approach the enemy from the rear and take him by surprise, even if the sky at the base is blocked. However, this base will consume a lot of time, resources and people for defense. And all this in order to realize that there is no impenetrable fortress if they decide to take it at any cost. But at least you can make your enemies suffer.
I mean considering its total counter to Ships Its still a lose / win / lose. Also there is a way to create even better loot room. Make it massive. Turn that into a total giant floating box that carries the whole base. Inside? Your juicy loot. If the players want a good fight here is the best option. Communucation between those two factions. Lets make up two. KSI and PSI. If PSI Offline raid a base... Well It will be pointless war becouse those only one team would have fun. Other one is just doesnt. If you communucate and tell them we gonna raid how you guys wanna set it up etc that make it more fun. Well Enemy will build fortifications and stuff but still at the end will be a more fun fight
Biggest upside to underground bases:
- Perfect for those who can build interior, but not exterior
That's a really good point didn't think of that one.
What about those who can build exterior, but not interior?
@@joeallen9104 would be perfect for building Potemkin villages then, i guess
@@joeallen9104 If you can build an exterior, but not interior, then why are you building in a cave?
@@AliceDoesThings404 I'm not.
You're forgetting one impenetrable defense. Playing alone because you have no friends that play space engineers. No one will attack your underground base then.
No friends gang win again!
Together alone
Forever alone
That way I'm always the best player on my server.
I offered to buy my friend a copy and he said “don’t waste your money” DUDE THIS GAME IS A BLAST
On PVP servers yes, its bad. On PVE servers with loads of enemy AI that constantly attack you, i like to have my main storage stored in the mountains
I agree for PVE its one of the safest ways of living and surviving unless there are bugs on.
@@LastStandGamerswell if your base is a built above ground they can still dig under you couldn't they?
@@TomTomXIV Due to the way voxels work, they'd be better served shooting out your foundations than digging them out.
Well it’s good until the enemy discovers your underground base. It’s hidden and protected against orbital strikes or spy planes/ships
U can see them from space cus game bad
Edited voxels are spottable from five miles away + if you run weaponcore it has a 9km detection range that does not care about voxels lol
Hopefully Space Engineers 2 fixes that, it's really game-breaking
AI ships in a pve server:
yea its not protected from orbital strikes, its very easy to make a orbital Cannon that can pierce through 50m of Voxels with a single shot, can fire 10-15 rounds a minute
If the terrain can be dug, i shall be a dwarf.
Agreed.
“I am a Dwarf and I am digging a hole” -Simone
@@Fire-superme"Diggy Diggy Hole!"
Agreed!! 🧝♂️
rock and stone!
I think bedrock needs to be more durable so drilling through rock is at least as difficult as drilling through blast doors.
I always build base under ground but build it likes it is above ground so full mutli layers heavy armour
@@andrewhoughton8606 I do too. I think what would make sense is if the time invested in digging would offset the cost of heavy armor. I thinl the solution is to make deep bedrock devoid of useful ore and material, slow to dig, impervious to damage from small blocks and have mining it deal periodic damage to drills. Make it a massive time sink to save on resources but make it worthwhile.
Well they could make a block that makes voxels not take damage in a area round it. If you make it use power to do it, that would mean no base would be able to last forever as they would run out. And the bigger the base the more you would need, and you couldn't do mining while they were on wither.
@@Raso719 this sounds like it would be a great addition, the question is how deep would deep bedrock be for these effects to kick in?
@@-JustHuman- possible, would be a tad annoying though, i feel like im kinda in both parks, it should be possible to drill around the base, but not easily, IE as @Raso719 mentioned, youd have to bring a dedicated vehicle to achieve anything and the resources to maintain it along with protecting it
personally this sounds fun, having the enemy bring a vehicle in to dig into another part of your base (im thinking them bringing it into your base not somewhere above ground) and the defenders going out and trying to destroy it well the attackers defend, it would give a good set of alterations to the flow of a fight like that, + the attackers would need to calculate when to send in a breacher vehicle
I mean there was a server I was on that didn't have warheads damage voxels, and also while it allowed digging into underground bases it required you use a ship. It was pretty fun as the defender and we (me and 10-20 other friends, we took shifts) held out for a 12 hour long siege against a force of about 30 people, all with dreadnaughts parked above (which through some creative tactics, we were able to take down some and later retrofit to our own purposes which was epic). We won the fight and it was the most fun I ever had in Space Engineers. Very specific conditions but it was so crazy with grinder drones, explosives, tight hallways, blast doors, etc. We had a secondary small base hidden outside we used to harrass them from behind, I mean it was legit the most fun I ever had.
A well moderated server with good community members makes anything possible sounds like you had a blast. What sort of mining machine did you find most effective at breaching there base.
To be fair pvp servers should have engagement rules in terms of time. As long as the enemy attacks during the time you available to play it is great. Not a fan of sneaky raids where they steal everything you have while you offline.
@@archangel8172 Maybe some sort of modded safe zone could be used that the server has an off period for all of them across the server kind of like a regulatory battle timeframe, but for people who can't get on to defend their base they should have a leeway system that checks if a minimum number of faction members are online at that moment for a fair defense and if they aren't then their safe zone stays up. But I'm just spit balling an idea I rarely play in pvp servers because I never have enough friends to not be bullied out of anywhere I set up or I'm harassed before I can even get anything off the ground.
Maybe add some RP text to popup saying, SOLAR FLARE HAS DISABLED SAFETY NETS REBOOT IN ** HOURS1
@@Sworddeath727 i was leaning more towards a moderated server. Where you are just forbidden from attacking another faction unless it was agreed upon by both parties.
Basically make the pvp an opportunity to have fun and get rich of someone. You register with the admins and then they organize the pvp between you and the faction you attacking. They would give you a window to act in accordance to what the parties agreed upon and afterwards it once again becomes a no pvp.
In addition, defending from a raid would give you an opportunity to register for you to be the raiding party next time around. This way in order to attack someone you first would have to have suffered an attack from someone else. Just to keep it fair.
@@Sworddeath727 Or it can be done like in Eve online where each faction has it's active hours. Any structure belonging to that faction can only be attacked during the corp active hours.
They simply look way better = I have won the fight on under ground bases being better
(This has nothing to do with Space engineers but..) Do you guys like Pineapple on pizza? Personally I LOVE Hawaiian pizza with my whole heart, Might be because I am in Australia (Our national pizza) but I am curious on this debate on why others don’t like it
Ham and Pineapple is good
but a meat feast would be my go to.@@Fire-superme
@@LastStandGamersI have never herd of that pizza before and I just looked it up and it look amazing… It’s 3:54am and now I crave pizza… (Where I am there is no delivery option) :(
I feel disgusted by the replies on this comment 🤢 you have committed a war crime in the eyes of Italians
@@thefalloutphoenixItalians are just prideful their food isnt even the best
There is also the problem that underground bases can easily be spotted from several Kilometers away. The removal of voxel changes the way the surface appears at a distance. Usually in the form of a massive hole.
They must fix this for real! The community should pressure this change on the devs
When you build any base in SE, it must be able to remain hidden at all costs. Once it's found, it's already pretty much screwed, as other players won't stop coming after you, no matter what. They can set up respawn points and just keep coming back after they die, continueing the assault until they win.That's why underground bases and deep space bases are the most popular types.
exactly why i build a large ship with everything on it, if it is found it can be moved
Mobile home class bases are also really good too, right?
@@JamesTDG Yea. Great for moving quickly if you get found.
@@JamesTDG thats the main ethos of space engineers pvp combat, jump ready space stations. The popularity of underground bases boomed only when they introduced planets, before that it was space station / capital ship warfare. SE's game engine was not just made for multiple large earth excavations projects
Thats why you build a station out in the void.
A claim function needs adding that either blocks players without permission from mining voxels or drastically slows them down (almost to a crawl)
The best underground base is one disguised as a raided/destroyed ground level one
ghost town silo was my thought too
The trick is to make the base so annoyingly impenetrable, that assailants give up before they're even halfway through. I recommend making all the tunnels impossibly narrow and heavily armored to deter breaches. Place several thousand tons of armored blocks as the base; make it thick enough to deter sappers. I recommend at least 20 blocks deep. The key is to make the prospect of taking your base cost more than your base; essentially, diminishing returns in SE warfare.
two words
Willis ducks
make them go though a maze of them
@@gamerproductions5469 That means nothing, Google doesn't even give an answer.
@@Razumen that means you haven't played SE in months.
There a block that was added two updates ago
They mean Willis Ducts*, it's Keen's reference to Bruce Willis always crawling through air ducts in Die Hard movies@@Razumen
A traditional system of tunnels just strikes me as a bad design choice in general. The more horizontal/vertical an underground base is, the more opportunities for a would-be sapper to entirely bypass defenses via tunneling/the more space you have to make sure is reinforced.
I imagine the ideal layout would be something more onion like, with a series of heavily defended outer layers surrounding the critical stuff in the center. That way no matter their direction of approach, they'll have to go through the same amount of defenses to reach anything vital. They might could still tunnel to bypass the initial blast door, but they'll have to attack every layer past that conventionally.
Wouldn't it be better to just have all mobile bases? Make carriers or transport vessels and defend them with a fleet
This is what I do as a single player but my mothership I always have to be extremly careful with because of clang. Running into an asteroid once and losing a quarter of your ship once is enough. It depends on server rules but underground bases also just take so much longer tk build since you have to worry about digging and defenses around the shell of your base so people can't just dig in
This is the mortal engines iteration the problem is the weight of cargos and what happens to the base and the server when the mobile cargo pops. On LSG we have static storage in these iterations to get over this issue!
I also think big moving carrier like a thing in desert of Kharak is far more better.
No matter land only or space allowance in the server. I always have 1 very big ship that can do all base thing (even constructing destroyer and carry it with you). Just moving it around make people hard to verify where exactly you are. Especially in space LeL.
The only problem is it a "little bit laggy :D"
@mayshiratoshi6390 yea and some us can't support the lag so having a static base is useful. But at the end of the day there's pros and cons to all base types
Mobile star-bases are the best, as you have an infinite void to hide in, and barring mods/exploits/other shenanigans they are effectively impossible for hostiles to locate with but a single random jump in to the that infinite sky.
That said, I think this is a surface-base vs underground-base vid, and land-carriers are one of those "coolness inversely proportionate to practicality" kinda things...
two positives to underground bases you didn't include are they're cheaper, you have to dig the materials while making the base either way but with bunkers it's just easier, but also turrets have less to focus on because the enemies are narrowed into a corridor.
One thing I've considered (but never done because I only play solo) is making tunnels/hangars that are just below the surface then have warheads set to open them up during an attack as a one time sneaky exit for fighters.
above ground they can FLY to your rooms, under ground they have to DIG to your rooms, its just another layer of armor, albeit not as strong, BUT it keeps the enemy in the dark, they dont know where your rooms are, where as above ground its easy to make our your room layout.
also, all the negatives also apply to the enemy, its as equally inconvenient for them too.
... also, i hate having my back open, at least i know from which direction im being attacked, id rather get them in a choke point instead the risk of being attacked from all sides
@@callmeskal820 that would of course cross the line of cheating in my book
At least if you build on the surface you can get turrets all around to deter them.
@@callmeskal820 An above-ground base doesn't have that trade-off because it has no stealth to trade away, so it's not that you have to choose between stealth and defense underground, it's that you get to choose
@@callmeskal820 Camouflage, turret doors, building your base under mountainous terrain so turrets can pop-out from the side of hills??
@@LastStandGamerswhat if they dig under your above ground base and cut their way in those turrets are useless at that point
The main downside to underground bases, is the voxel damage, we kinda need natural caves, this way, you can start a base inside the tunnel and hide in there. Plus, it'll make things more lively, (this already sort of done in asteroids)
MES Cave Systems
To be fair, underground bases are very effective for PvE if you have several MES mods enabled. Voxels are much tougher for NPC enemies to get through than any blocks.
If the server is set up to prevent sappers (drilling around defences and into the base), then small underground bases can be viable.
Even if its set up that way prepare for the frustration when you can't get out to fight....
One possible effort would be excavating a greatly larger space than needed, and having the true secure chamber suspended in the middle with defences positioned externally on the base as well as at points of the interior facing inwards to enable them to hit would be sappers. Though this also has issues. Accessibility to defending persons, as well as the massive time requirements for setting it up come to mind immediately.
Any good server admin would prohibit and punish sappers. It’s low effort raiding.
@@TheBojaboja wow, roleplay dweebs have kind of taken over, if you're allowed to say that kind of stuff with no pushback.
@@aone9050 If that was true, it would be the exact opposite, because tunneling under defenses to penetrate a vault is a time honored tradition of robberies.
I hope with Space Engineers 2 you can claim the group around your base, keeping people from digging around it. Or better yet, give us something we can build that claims the ground, much like a safe zone.
Add that for asteroids, and I’d be ecstatic!
However, you’d still want missiles to be able to destroy the ground, or people would just use dirt and stone as armor for all bases. 😅
Hmm… The more I think about it, scratch that last part. Making the ground indestructible would force us players to raid bases outside of our ships, and would add a lot of fun FPS raiding gameplay to the game.
I could go either way.
a thought occurs about the performance, I wonder if it is possible to make a planetary voxel map that has natural caves, like that one asteroid with all the hollows already a part of it. even put critical resources within said caves so players have reasons to build in them. they'd still need to dig stuff out for building but I wonder if that would be less of a hit performance wise. I don't know, I don't do code, just pretty ships.
I don't code either, or even build pretty ships, but as far as I know planets in SE are, technically and mechanically speaking, just very very large asteroids. It should be possible, but I couldn't say for sure.
Natural caverns and other buildable terrain (cliffs, gullies) would be great.
It would have some impact but less than if you dug out the same cave from voxels - it's the difference between the "map" every player already has for planets and the complexity of the geometry being rendered in graphics and physics. Natural caves wouldn't increase the map loading much, unless there are lots of small caverns. I have no idea how the game handles the voxel physics.
Love it.. also great to see so many old underground bases I worked on appear in this video! I like the challange of underground bases. The vault server was allot of fun for me! Shame the game is not optimised for them.
Having an area control field, similar to the noc station shield gen that prevents drilling of terrain would help alleviate the cheese tactics. I remember some years ago, several of the random asteroids being hollow or with large voids scattered about it's mass. Those make good bases as well since they are naturally dug out, and therefore not affecting server performance the same as a dug out base would. I wonder if the dev team can continue to refine the engine to take things like this into account.
A rule I always go with is have a escape tunnel with a escape vehicle that can house all your valuable to act as a separate grid to immediately disconnect in the event to a total loss of a base.
Weapon Core is pretty much standard on most servers now, so remaining hidden is not possible.
Underground is bad but inside of an asteroid ? If the asteroid is big enough and hollow : hangar for your ships, protected from meteor showers and well hidden amongst the sea of other asteroids
The key part to any good underground base. Is to dig it deep into a mountain or some place. Then hollow out a massive hole with your base in the middle floating. After that place turrets in every angle around your base (underground). When the rocketman mole shows up they will have no chance to avoid the turrets. You can also set up mini warheads with proximity sensors to slow them down further.
Either way, above ground or below takes effort to build. Remaining hidden and unfound is always the best defense. If/when you are found. Then it deploy many above ground turret bunkers in the area.
As someone who uses PMWs (player made weapons) as my main focus in the game, I have to say that the thought that underground bases offer orbital bombardment protection is outright ridiculous.
Most underground bases can be defeated by a well designed bunker busting munition. Hell, I've destroyed bases that are hundreds of blocks below ground by just dropping a really heavy thing on it. Blast doors are ideal, as they don't deform. A 3x3x10 kinetic penetrator, with a sensor detonated warhead above it, will completely gut any shallow underground base if dropped with any semblance of accuracy. If that doesn't work, just print another. And another. And another.
Underground bases can't protect against orbital bombardment, because the only way to stop a bombardment is to go destroy the ship. And underground bases are the worst at that because they only have a few places to launch ships, which an attacking player can easily obstruct or destroy. It's a joke.
TL:DR: anyone who thinks an underground base will stop orbital bombardment has never taken part in orbital bombardment. They're probably thinking of a ship sitting 2KM up, firing weapons and dropping bombs in visual range. That's not the case. We sit outside of the planet's gravity well, using laser antennae to align ourselves perfectly, and use gravity generators to drop hundreds or thousands of blocks on the target.
Sounds like digging should be a LOT harder than it is currently, that would solve most of the problems with ppl exploiting them.
Or at least a device that reinforces terrain across a given area.
I think there is no way to stop the digging and grinding so its probably best to have the base just hanging in a bubble cavern or something. Basically your base is a ship underground with weapons all over it as protection.
There are mods where you can install blocks that ban the use of drills within a certain radius. Unlike safezones, they don't require zone chips or crazy amounts of power. Not being able to dig through someone's base helps cut down on base sprawl and rat's nests of attack tunnels.
However, some advantages to underground bases:
- Harder to find than above ground bases.
- Due to enemies only being able to see your entrances, they do not know anything about the base layout or what to expect inside, making underground bases a maze for those who don't live in it.
- While walls can be drilled, more valuable areas such as storage and command centers can be completely sealed, and turrets can be placed strategically anywhere in the base. plus, as said before, this base is a maze to them, so they don't even know where to drill.
- Due to being underground, your base is much harder to attack with weapons such as bombs, meaning that if your enemy wants to raid you efficiently, they have to go in.
Underground bases are cool and good, so long as built right. Assume every point can be breached, plan accordingly. Really difficult to plan for that as people can just tear through the rock and plant a warhead. I suppose you could try a minefield or what not, but it is just a rabbit hole of trying to prepare for every possible attack... that's why I like these bases best when they are meant to be stealthy such as a 3x3 opening or are just on a PVE server where players dont attack it.
I think it comes down to what youre wanting to do. If youre in an area that isnt easily accesible and you wish to stay hidden due to the valley a few kilometers away is a hot mess of warfare, a Subterranean base works well. Also helps you get established before breaking out into the surface with your hangers and hardened defences, thpugh i would argue having a few layers of tunnels around your base that has turrets is a wise idea to prevent mining vehicles and lonely suited men with a drill from finding you.
Great video, I think that drilling in by hand with the drilling tool is not cool but drilling in with a drilling ship would be cool. I didn't think about the lag a bunker would cause maybe it would only be viable on a dedicated rp server rather then a competative pvp server.
This can apply only to PvP, and if you manage to make your base nearly invisible from outside using only radar antennas and far away relays the enemies will have a hard time finding your base in the first place.
The main problems as I see it is the server slowdown and increase in size of the save file, and the fact that if you're in a place without air, just voxels won't make it to make your base airtight, you'll still need to create rooms with blocks, and that will take plenty of time between digging and building.
simple fix for the drill issue on servers, a drill-disabling field generator, as long as the base has power, enemy players can't use drills withing 500m from the base or something
I mean on one hand, you're right. On the other, in modded situations, you can use things like the concrete mod to build multiple-layer-thick walls to end up curbing the attackers breaching through walls thing. They're tough enough in that configuration that you'd probably lose less resources storming through the base than trying to breach tunnels.
As for the attackers not having a lot of options, you could just enjoy the push instead, but that doesn't really fix the issue.
For the defenders, though, underground bases are nearly perfect if you can just fix the wall breaching problem.
I have a tendency to make a sort of "open air" hole base. That is to say, the base is partially inland into the earth, but also open to the surface, think Owan and Beru's house from star wars.
It's not as stealthy, but it provides a decent amount of internal protection from air attacks.
Whenever i made an underground base i made sure that the interior of said base had no rocks showing, id dig out and put unbuilt blocks where i planned to expand, made sure the ceiling was covered, the floor, and the tertiary walls. Some people like the rocky look, however like you said someone with a hand drill
( if they know the layout of your base
[maybe a traitor,ive had it happen])
Can dig straight to your goodies.
Cover up all your axises, always have a backup plan or a secondary base ready to bug out. (Your secondary base doesn’t have to be as big as your main, you can always work on it later)
The most successful inground base ive had was on a asteroid. planets, not so much as planets have alot of traffic.
Just my 2 cents, i only have about 300 hours in SE but those tips always run through my head when building a underground base, everything else Aaron touched on is good advice.
Now Asteroid bases are AWSOME and really fun to make. Planetary underground bases are just awful because you have to worry about natural gravity and stuff like that.
when I made my first hidden base there were turrets and heavy armor block everywhere after a lot of time so I don't care about intrudors but I see your point (I will still do them under ground no matter what
I don't think one is better than the other. It's situation based.
A underground base can have walls so there is no difference to on top bases. You can dig in both, same goes to multiple entrances.
The technical side of things is a failure of the developer. When you create voxel based planets it should not be performance heavy...
Being able to keep your base as low profile as possible is the easiest way of ensuring its survival. In this way, having your base sequestered underground or on the side of a cliff with minimal exposure, e.g. turret locations and landing/walking zones, is extremely advantageous.
Granted if you got a whole fleet coming down on your base uncontested it's going to be a bloodbath no matter how well made your base is. On equal footing, however, is when this philosophy comes best into play.
I think if you have no rules or conventions then the only secure base is in deep space where nobody can find it. Anything on a planet is at risk as soon as you mine or dig because the voxel distortion can be seen from orbit.
The main advantage of underground bases is they are really cool. And the second biggest one is they are the cheapest way to make some blast cover without grinding a ton of resources. Especially in the age of railguns and artillery.
If voxel warhead damage is off you could make a pretty secure base by treating the outer cave walls as enemy territory. Make a huge cavern with a floating island in the middle with the base on with turrets all the way round. Or alternatively have a cavern with a floating floor at the halfway mark with your base buildings on it and turrets facing up and down.
I think a block that would harden the voxels around the base of a certain distance outside the grid(base). I think it would be good if it operated by disabling grinders and drills of enemy players, and this would be both handheld and small/large grid grinders and drills. There was a mod that did that I think, but it's now been abandoned I think.
Best thing to do with underground bases is make it as an above ground base is a large cave. That way there is no part of your base right next to voxels. Then you can arm the exterior with a liberal amount of interior turrets. This eliminates the effectiveness of breachers. They cannot plant explosives within range of your base because the cave walls are too far away from your base wall for them to do so without being shot.
underground bases in this game is like having underground bases in dwarf fortress
I think smaller underground bases are more useful than larger ones. Or a network of smaller ones that can be locked and be able to provide multiple avenues of escape and/or fallback points. Large ones tend to be detected more quickly as enemies will at some point start to home in on activity via recon or some other method. They get eyes on it and observe for a period of time they will start to put together an idea of how big the base might be by the forces that move in and out, or the security that is around the entrance and start to figure out how to best deal with it. Even if there were some methods to camouflage them as some have posted larger bases will undoubtedly be sniffed out faster than smaller ones. And while smaller ones knocked out quickly, they are cheaper by comparison and can be setup much more quickly and honestly are easier to hide. And depending on the nature of the base they can be setup slightly closer to enemy bases if done right. Giving a fortified location to assault from or multiple fortified locations to assault an enemy. And if there is a network of tunnels to some of these bases can be used to ferry supplies, vehicles, and personnel between them. With smaller isolated bases being setup to draw attention or as temp holding stations for other a small taskforces and/or convoys that moves when it's dark or even during the day as rapidly as possible so that even should they be detected the loss suffered is mitigated by the fact that while one group might have been sniffed out another group(s) can move quickly unnoticed to those other holdout bunkers or the network and disappear from view. These networked bases will cost about as much resources as larger ones if not more in some ways, but the trade is that should one be detected enemies now have to contend with a network of rat mazes rather than one large one. And burning the network will take more time and manpower than the enemy might be able to throw at it at once. Drawing the fight out and exhausting attackers more since it's unclear if there is one central base or if this a disjointed network of cells. Main issues is time and location, where the first of this network is setup? How long it will take to build it up? How many are connected to the network? Their locations? Where are the isolated bunkers and holdouts going to be in proximity to these networked bases? Where is the enemy concentrations in relation to them? These have to be asked and have to be analyzed.
It sounds like either less efficiency on hand drills - which I would balance by increasing the output of stone from a handdrill so you get the same materials in the same time, just from a way shorter tunnel - would solve this.
A safe zone around a base would also prevent this from happening.
Historically, the most accurate to an underground base would probably be a narrow hallway. If it's well constructed, that is.
An underground base could field far more vehicles and fighting power, realistically, than a mobile attack force. Combine that with a narrow and bunker-like buildstyle intended to support defense - like cone-shaped halls which force attacking forces to enter one at a time while allowing defenders to line up like a firing squad at an execution - and you get a base that has the most important quality a base can have: being nigh unbreachable.
The bases we build in SE are less similiar to homes and more similiar to castles. Very few castles were actually taken in battle. The tactic to take a castle is a siege - blockade the castle, cut off water, food, and supplies. Then let's see how long the castle can hold out.
Underground bases are like planets protected by a shield generator in Star Wars: it's impossible to effectively bombard them or run air strikes. The only feasible method of attack is an attack on the ground.
Pro-tip - make voxel 10 times harder to dig but also cough up 10 time the resources.
Voxels are too cheap, and thats why theres such performance and cheese issues within SE.
Underground bases cause lag, yes, but so does any voxel you mine. A way to reduce load is to have voxels last ten times as long and give ten times the resources in compensation. This removes the cheese issues with digging around defenses, and it reduces server load by having mining pits/mines be far less massive
It seems to be like underground bases do have a use, but they shouldnt be your long term base. I think making a functional underground base to get started is a great idea! Get on your feet and start building up some power while you remain stealthy and once you can defend yourself in an open engagement you start on your permanent location above ground or in space
the server load is undeniable but if you build the base like a dungeon, with surprise turrets everywhere, cameras and custom turrets, you can pretty much force stalemate while having nearly inifnite basic materials via refining stone. And of course, have an emergency exit
Voxal void defense. Lack of voxals around the underground base for defense.
Voxal anchors to compensate for lack of anchor points.
Drawback. Extra reinforced main entrance and omnidirectional security points.
Trapdoor attack positions. Points of quickly removable voxals for unexpected attack.
Tradeoff for higher unexpected retaliation rate is access to launch zones (recommend extra security checkpoints
Can't wait to play this game, trail makers is great but honestly airo/hydro arodinamics is not worth the limitation (had PS4) I'll should be able to get a PC by the end of the year) So many nomad test to conduct lol
I would agree. Underground bases could be a problem UNLESS their outside defences are good.
I've always played only with my friend, so there weren't any other players but we have a bunch of mods to add other factions.
Building stuff underground would usually give us the advantage of it being way more protected from bullets or shrapnel coming from Assert drones chasing us.
It also helps that we always build a long range missile system to shoot stuff down, picture the patriot system.
Underground bases are a bad idea in multiplayer, but if you play PvE, in particular with Reavers, they're the best defense because NPC ships are pretty dumb, and they will just keep blasting at the ground until they run out of ammo.
On the other hand, surface bases in a PvE scenario are sitting ducks unless you spam turrets everywhere.
The best security system I found for this was to set 1 warhead for every compartment, set to go off if an intruder enters, yes I will lose the whole base but the intruder gets nothing as well, soon they'll learn not to attack THAT particular base because the joker lives there.
im a big fan of the aesthetic of a bunker base, specially the exposed stone.
for sappers, I wonder. different tiers of rock having different density, requiring better equipment to drill through, hand drill / small grid drill / large grid drill, though also potential for different types of drills in terms of tiers / drill tips. if sappers were forced to commit an expensive drill, with expensive support systems, it would in part balance deeper bunkers. would be a fundamental change to game balance, and well beyond the scope of SE, perhaps something for SE2
that being said, some sort of seismic sensor to detect drilling would introduce some fun counterplay, preparing defenses where they are aiming to penetrate the bunker, would just be a single hole as opposed to the more partisen, drill new tunnels all throughout and generate Salt for defenders.
tldr, sappers will sap because its easier than penetrating walls and defenses, so what about the uno reverse, bedrock is difficult to penetrate
Need something like the base shield that invisible and makes drilling way harder
Sooo.. what about asteroid bases where most of the hollow cave was already created by the server? better than underground bases? I love tunnelroids myself.
with the underground stuff, i do wish there was a way to "Un-drill" or back fill holes and tunnels with out using the admin tools. I dont play on the multi server side of SE enough to comment on that but in Single player i do build into mountains and Asteroids. I do agree that lag and Sim speed drop are bad.
This is why I always fully wall tunnels, no voxel access without breaking through the outer and inner walls, and turret every room and tunnel so if they do break thru it's just fish in a barrel
*Underground*
Protection: Offers natural protection from potential external threats such as enemy attacks or meteor showers.
Conceals your base, making it less visible to other players or AI threats.
Aesthetics: Some players prefer the immersive and realistic feel of building underground structures.
Resource Accessibility: Easier access to certain resources that may be found underground, such as ores.
Stealth: Provides a stealth advantage
*Above-Ground or Space Station*
Visibility: Offers better visibility for surveillance and monitoring the surroundings.
Solar Power: Floating stations can leverage solar power more effectively without worrying about obstacles.
Mobility: Floating stations provide mobility and can be moved to different locations.
Aesthetics: Some players prefer the aesthetic appeal of above-ground structures.
*Considerations for Both*
Functionality: Consider the specific functions of your base and how well each location supports those functions.
Resource Management: Evaluate the availability of resources in the chosen location and how easily they can be accessed.
Defense: Assess the defensive capabilities of each type of base and whether one offers better protection against potential threats.
Multiplayer Dynamics: In multiplayer settings, the preferences and strategies of other players may influence your decision.
Need a way to harden the ground to basically unbreakable or a very slow dig process.
Time to build a vehicle specifically meant for laying siege to underground bases. Nice giant drill with pop out turrets should do the trick 🤣
Voxel deforestation is a big issue for servers, there's no doubt. The other issues like salt from voxel digging, underground warheads, and directly accessing a loot room are present for any voxel based static grid. Not just underground bases. With above ground bases you have to worry about orbital bombardment as well, which certainly makes me salty.
The underground bases I've been a part of are a mix of underground production, storage, and power. With grinding, and mass vehicle storage kept outside in a protected area.
I think that SE just doesn't do PvP as well as other similar games that are far more simplistic (Empyrion) but due to their simplicity are able to focus on pvp systems. The problems mentioned with underground bases are pretty much mostly all solved in those other games by things like core blocks making terrain invulnerable in a certain radius around them (so players do have to go through built blocks), the lag is handled differently (but it does compromise on other aspects that make SE preferable) etc.
Okay, okay. Fair point. Counterpoint; they’re really cool.
it only makes sense in pve or if all spectator functions are disabled on a server so it's never found to begin with. once it's found it's super easy to defeat as it has zero effective defense in all but one direction and no way of moving out of harms way.
Underground bases are great for a solo, small group, or just early game. The problem is when they get to absurd sizes like the ones you showed in the video. Those are some incredible works of art and look really cool to actually play with, but they're awful for all the reasons you said and then some. Groups of those sizes or small groups that have tons of assets are much better off moving to a space station.
The only other use I could see for an underground base is to only have a small section of the base underground, like a small safe room or escape hangar or something.
After 2500 hours, I agree with your points.... i like to have an above ground base but early on will have a small bunker on Pertam.
alot of this is the exact reason i kind of hate that planets got implemented no one wants to be in space or make space craft its gone from space engineers to planet engineers i really enjoyed the older survival series you could fine on you tube (including yours) its ok as a concept but I do miss the older salvaging ships and building in space without needing to constantly hunt ice for hydrogen for the jetpack
i think the main downside would be there's no jump drive no quick exit from conflict making them giant hanger's for ships that can escape at best but you will always leave something behind the only advantages is stealth which is still time limited vs players and has an environmental advantage vs events like asteroids and o2
Easiest fix is make a cave larger than the base , leave room for defensive turrets
While it eou make gameplay a drag, slower mining would help (at least on blocks and voxels not owned by you). As for lag, voxels need to be optimized. You should not need to track all voxel changes, just the geometry of the changes.
I gotta disagree on the first point Arron . Sure it's true if you just use the cavern walls but that's your own lazy fault. If you build a proper base just as you would an above ground base it's better protection. Not only can't your attacker see the layout and guess where you keep the good stuff.(which you also pointed out as a perk) but they also need to drill through layers of rock to get to your walls or find a weak point.(which you kind of touch on as well) You could even do like we used to in rust and build giant bases that are just a maze of doors, most of which lead nowhere. This ensures most raiders run out of explosives and leave empty handed. I do agree with the points you made though. And on a side note... I didn't know how big your base was until i saw that banana @5:42 . Kudos.
If faction locked inhibitors are used, the drilling issue can be sidestepped. Limit the growth of bases by setting a maximum area of coverage and a maximum number of inhibitors per faction.
I know inhibitors exist, there's several MES mods that use them, ill bet someone can figure out how to allow faction members to drill while everyone else cannot.
One of the problems is that Space Engineers is kinda old. There are bugs that have existed for years, and they can't and/or won't fix them. I think some of the issues were even ported over into Medieval Engineers. At the end of the day Space Engineers and its engine are simply outdated, and the "Issues" with underground bases prove that.
There are much more optimized ways to track the things Space Engineers need to track. Just look at No Man's Sky. I changed the terrain a lot when I built my base years ago and then stopped playing. I went back recently, and my base is still there terrain edits and all.
"Simpler base designs" you might say. We're talking about terrain edits though. How is it that No Man's Sky not only keeps track of my terrain edits but also keeps trans of the edits thousands of other people have made across thousands of planets and their bases that I can easily teleport to at any time, but Space Engineers struggles with performance issues keeping track of terrain edits on a server with a dozen or so people on it?
Space Engineers is outdated. They should stop making DLC to keep people playing it, and start creating Space Engineers 2 with an updated more modern engine.
Yeah SE needs a "1km home block" wich disables not owners to destroy Voxels by Drilling
Agreed. Building an underground base is basically useless. Can just drill to the weakest point then grind. Horrible system.
I think just basic rules to be agreed upon before hand could solve the use of hand drills and building bombs underneath enemy bases. Personally I would just make a scouts-honor rule that only vehicles can do tunneling, and you can’t plant bombs. Plus I’ve been kicking around the idea of using warheads and sensors as an underground minefield
When Keen confirmed planets the Forums were filled with players proclaiming that they were going to build "Secret Hidden Underground Impenetrable Fortresses" and be INVINCIBLE.
I built my first base in a giant asteroid back when there were no planets. The further along I got, the more I realized that building a base was a bad idea, in general, in Space Engineers, except perhaps as a building exercise. Building a huge, sprawling underground base with all the trimmings can be rewarding, and you don't have to worry about how they look. Underground bases are automatically cool. In THIS game, they are also sitting ducks with a big "I Am Here" flag over them. For a lot of reasons, most of which were outlined in this video, you just shouldn't. In my opinion. a Mothership in space offers more offensive and defensive options, including bugging out while you can.
Build a base for the experience. Go nuts. But on a server where you will most certainly be attacked don't waste your time, resources and effort on a giant stationary target. If your enemy wants to destroy your base, make 'em work for it. Make it mobile.
Better than reloading a save, running to a vehicle and falling in a hole
I like this bases. its more difficult and the war never ends😈. To destroy our enemies we need an complet army 😎🔥
Well, in my opinion, and from what I’ve seen, I’ve been overly bombarded with war heads 16 times on separate occasions when it comes to bases. Even some shielded ones. I can definitely say that it is not perfect. In fact, far from it, but for underground bases, I would say it gives you weather protection. Which is good for acidic rain. Also, for interior defense, they could have Turrets placed inside of their bases. Including Gatling’ which would definitely do some extreme damage. Personally, what I intend on doing with my next mountain base is also having doors that are mediately protected with guns. He did bring up a good point though about the insights not being guarded by enough turrets so for that, I’d probably put a lot of interior Turrets. This is because they are small and do moderate damage to small light armored grids. Also, with my next one I was planning on making it airtight so that would probably make it harder to penetrate because it would have windows at least at some areas and other areas it would just have armor walls. I was also thinking of making the area pass the interior hanger, which uses extremely large player made large grade doors. Sort of elevator for moving down vehicles, and perhaps even fighters to a area that can act as a bunker. To avoid anything like a modded, super laser, but at the bare minimum guard against. The war heads, which I deal way too much with.
If people put the effort into actually building defences against sappers then they can work well, if you leave your walls rocks, just build a floor and have a single door at the end of a long coridor full of turrets and call it a day, only for the enemy to just... go around, than you cannot be upset for being so tactically deaf as to expect the enemy to just charge head long directly into your most fortified and defended killbox instead of just going the easy way through the rock you left unguarded.
I was building them on singleplayer because it stops the AI from shooting you, however if you get far enough away the underground doesn't render and they just blow stuff up anyways lol...
While I agree that it certainly does present a tactical weakness, I will also point out that pvp or no I still will do some things just for the rule of cool. But again thats just me 😊
The fact that you can instantly cut down enemy doors, is the reason why I don't pvp..
Boggles me why there isn't a vanilla block to prevent enemy voxel manipulation within the range of the block. Diameter based on power consumption and with a "currency" fuel that needs to be topped up so abandoned bases are eventually unlocked.
Well couldn't one just simply do the same to a normal base?
Start digging far away until they're just underneath and fill everything with warheads...
You need to have two things on your server to enable people to have defensible Planet bases. The first thing being a Thruster inhibitor where the radius is outside of Maximum weapon range of your longest range weapon to prevent ships from bombarding from above. Allow the owner of the base access to turn this feature on or off, as if it were a module and make it consume a bunch of power. And of course no other enemy player can turn one on in the vicinity and of course make the effect invisible from a distance, but have a warning message to approaching ships. This would promote ground combat for starters. And the other mod, make it so the player who's base it is has a module to turn off their enemies drill in a radius around their base and of course just like the Thruster inhibitor, enemies around cannot enable the same without destroying the one that's there first. As far as the data goes for server voxel changes, there's nothing to do except for having multiple servers for different areas.
This is why a mobile space station works wonders. Getting attacked? Flick on the jump drive and move somewhere else.
Where’s the the video that the background? Looks cool
Most of the issues you are raising also apply to surface bases.
The main difference being, as you said, underground bases can' suffer from an orbital strike.
Having a way out is not necessary, if the goal is to protect the base, you don't need a way out. And you certainly don't need your enemies to have multiple ways in. What you need is chokepoints. Large areas that can hold a lot of attackers, that end with very small access points and killboxes. And that's easier to do underground or in every controlled environment.
Underground, you need to be aware of people coming in front of you and eventually from the walls if they dig. But... you should protect you walls, leaving some areas easily accessible to drills is the same as not putting any hull to your ship.
On the surface, people can drop from the sky, they can destroy infrastructures from afar. It's not possible to do so underground.
There are reasons why sensible military or administrative infrastructures are built underground IRL.
But well... we also have bunker buster weapons IRL.
Well the underground part is just to house the soft mushy guts of the base, and i build a planetary defense platform above it, that's how i do it.
Or alternatively in the good ol' days of ADI, Speak softly and carry the biggest stick in the form of the infamous *"Hot Pink"*
I love underground bases.
You have a very good point about underground bases aswel gave me some new ideas to construct something new🎉 🙏
Are these ideas a top secret ?
@@LastStandGamers nope i think if you create like a warning system that would start a drone or maby few and release them from out side the base and trap them inside you would have the advantage from both sides and you could save most of your base atleast even if you can just get them to retreat back to space i would say that's a win
there's really no need to reinvent the wheel. Use your experience in building real underground shelters. First of all, secrecy. If the base is discovered, the first line of defense has already been broken through, they know about you, and they will prepare to storm your base. Second, separate everything by as large distances as possible, make a lot of narrow corridors stuffed with traps, a lot of stairs, transitions to different levels, even useless ones, create a dungeon for the enemy, confuse him, make him feel uncomfortable. Third, hidden emergency exits and entrances. I don't see any point in keeping large ships underground either. A ship in a hangar on the ground is a defenseless and useless thing. You can make a separate base for such purposes. This way you can approach the enemy from the rear and take him by surprise, even if the sky at the base is blocked. However, this base will consume a lot of time, resources and people for defense. And all this in order to realize that there is no impenetrable fortress if they decide to take it at any cost. But at least you can make your enemies suffer.
I mean considering its total counter to Ships Its still a lose / win / lose. Also there is a way to create even better loot room. Make it massive. Turn that into a total giant floating box that carries the whole base. Inside? Your juicy loot.
If the players want a good fight here is the best option. Communucation between those two factions. Lets make up two. KSI and PSI. If PSI Offline raid a base... Well It will be pointless war becouse those only one team would have fun. Other one is just doesnt.
If you communucate and tell them we gonna raid how you guys wanna set it up etc that make it more fun. Well Enemy will build fortifications and stuff but still at the end will be a more fun fight