@@Zer0sLegion with all due respect, you sometimes seem to be very newbie to SE Zero, I mean it is true most players dont use this feature, but there were tons of videos about it when it came out, I'd be happy to show you how underrated this feature is, but sadly I currently only play on xbox...
@@LordDrackonel With all due respect, just because you know about it, doesn't mean everyone does. The poll don't lie, most people don't use the feature. I knew the trade stations were in the game but I'd never been to one as they're so rare. I wouldn't have even though to look into the economy mechanics if i wasn't making a video on how progression in SE needs an overhaul.
@@Zer0sLegion but to be fair, most people know, just because they dont use it doesn't mean they dont know about it, or at least know an overview of how it works. I only used the term newbie cause that's something I would expect from someone that havent been around, at least to watch all the videos that were released around the update, it was BIG, you said it yourself. The main reason a lot of people dont use it is because the contracts are repetitive, and even tho they were designed to be improved by modders, they never really were, because the meta of the game went around the encounters mods and weapon core. But there were many servers working with economy years around after the release, and many servers still use it, but players still dont go around it. PD: although I said modders didnt pay much attention to it, I want to point out there are really cool mods that work with economy, such as mobile merchants, plant and cook, food essentials and many mods that add community ships to the stores... it's a very well know mechanic, the poll doesn't lie, but that's the amount of your audience that doesn't use it, not the entire of the community that know about it. And if I meant anything about showing you how underrated it is, it was truly so a content creator like you help spreading the message... mostly since now I'm an xbox player, I would like for the modding community to work more around unscripted mods.
@@LordDrackonel I mean... I've been around in SE since 2015 and this is the first I've heard of any of this... Just because in your experience a lot of people that know about it, there are many that didn't know about it
I actually built my base right next to one of these stations, used pistons and connectors to connect up my massive industrial output right into this station for quick easy money making.
I am astounded that the economy is so unpopular. It's fundamental to how I play the game. 5:05 Its easy to find the stations. The drop pod will have a datepad with a GPS to the closest station on spawn, and stations sell datapads (for like 9 creds per, or something super cheap like that) that will have GPSs for other stations they're friendly or allied with.
@@kaiikiller4777 Yeah space engineers tends to have unfinished features... the game itself is unfinished, it's as if it were still in pre alpha, there's no pve no pvp, planets are pointless, exploration is pointless.
@@krirub8166 Its an engineering game, or at least it was conceived as one. It was all about building your own thing and then crashing it and watch the entire thing deform. Deformation is no longer in the game though.
The economy system is quite underwhelming for a reason - it is easier and cheaper to mine all resources you need than to trade them. Now what they should do to make it viable is rework the balance of the economy system, in a way that you could profit from trading and that it can become the same endgame as building a huge mining rig. They should balance it to be more like in Elite: Dangerous or in Space Rangers, where trading and contracts are a viable way of making money and buying ships.
It's cheaper, yes, but more time consuming. Why go out and mine Uranium and Platinum when i can buy those from the land-based mining company station? They buy ores for a good price, specially Nickel.
what about being able to buy unique ship components from the stations, these being attached to preexisting ships which you can break down to get the cool new uncraftable component
To be fair, the Economy System isn't just about trading materials/items/contracts - it's also a way to build reputation with the various AI factions. Better reputation offers better prices on items as well as better payouts for contracts.
More people would use it if you could save a ship design at a station and buy it back (price depending on components + a fee). It would make multiplayer combat a bit more forgiving to newbies in servers and incentivize large factions to pool together money for insurance on large vessels. Put a cool down that's longer dependent on block size and make it expensive enough you can't spam them out and it would take pretty well.
Yes, similar to what I was thinking. If you had the ability to blueprint something and then post the blueprint and it used the PCU and/or the block count or component cost as a price point, then you could basically have insurance on your ship and buy a new one anytime you need, or share them with others.
@@yusriyahbagheri8843 👆 this. For years I wondered why things that should be common sense don't get fixed, but new ways to buy blocks comes out regularly without fail. Then once they stole all my purchases and my game play style (offline, unless sharing with friends) and told me 'it was to prevent people stealing the blocks they force you to take without paying', I realized what kind of company it was. They didn't want to did the issue, just create more and take from the honest people. Unfortunately, I racked up 2000+ hours in the first year or so, which made it hard to stop playing all together. 😒
Stations have energy kits and med kits that aren't really available in other places. Useful tools if you are hydro-manning in your suit. I like to use those early game before I have a ship to get Platinum and Uranium from asteroids. AndrewmanGaming is currently in episode 12 of an economy only SE playthrough on RUclips.
One thing kinda nice about the economy bases: If they sell data pads, they come loaded with the location of another either same faction or allied economy base. Sometimes you get something close, maybe even on the same planet. Sometimes, you get a remote outpost 28,000 km out in space But the data pads are cheap, and it is a good way to build up a list of economy stations.
Things you missed: cola, coffee, power kits and med kits are like zone chips and plushies: NPC station exclusive. Ever lost a grid and you can't find where it's drifting? Create a search contract. What I would love to see is the ability for a player or player faction to create a bounty. That would rock
I've gotten power kits and med kits off random pod drops, also a fair bit of money too. I don't think I've ever gotten soda or coffee out of them though.
Im really surprised you never used this, as soon as I saw the stations I went there and started doing quests.. Also when you start the game, you will always get a cord to the nearest station in your drop pod you start in on survival.
@@Zer0sLegion Yeah I replied before I saw that part of the video, but yeah I actaully like the space stations but yeah I do agree that unless you spawned on a moon you would not find them on planets, they are just very very rare.
In the official keen servers, the economy is actually quite useful, with ships being sold and you *have* to use the economy to get zone chips, for the safe zone. The contracts also give you something to do in the game.
I arrived at the starting trading station on my mobile digging rig, crafted a few batches of resources that station asked me for, and bought myself a Cursor. I liked this little red ship.
2 weeks ago I started using the Ecomendy system. The first thing I noticed next to the hard-to-find station is that when you try to trade you usually need a small spaceship with a medium or large cargo container to move forward effectively. In addition, a basic refinery and the associated production plant are recommended. And to get ahead faster, a mining ship or even a miner with a cargo container. Which means that you can actually do everything yourself again and don't even want to trade. Thus, the potential of the system is already gone through the problematic entry.
I think every pvp player use it a least for chipzones , it's the only way to prevent raid off . Contracts blocs are also used to create new contract on your ship , accept it and you'll get a moving GPS point like respawn-pod. Can be also used as tracker inside enemy grid (don't forget to hide it on terminal) .
@@Gorwyn Sometimes you can destroy one enemy ship, but it can be better to just set a contract bloc inside , make a contract, accept it , hide in terminal , and wait for the player return to his base with the ship . Like that you can know where people are really living hehe This game is a large inspiration source and i think we don't expect everything we can do with ;)
Absolutely. Usually if I find a ship kicking about, I sneak a small grid tracker on board so I can make search contracts to find it later. This new idea presents so many options now..
the biggest problem is the economy really sucks for most players, and it's only existence is as something we might be forced to use to get components as a "balance" measure on some servers, not to mention the massive spread between stations, and the lackluster stock of ships, making trade rather unexciting... not to mention players being unable to drive the economy because the game itself forces players to sell and buy around pre-determined price ranges.
My friends and I found out about the economy by accident. We were playing on Triton and my friend was exploring for ores when he stumbled upon one of these stations. He was telling us that we could do quests to get space credits and buy tools/components and none of us believed him until he took us there. It made getting platinum much less annoying for us since we were pretty early into our game
I've actually used this feature a whole lot. I engage with the trade stations regularly to get some easy materials from time to time, or to just buy ships I cba to make myself. Edit; I've never had issues finding the trade stations either, their antenna range is kinda insane. Also yeah, there's always 1 you get access to right off the bat via datapad. Edit2; I think maybe adding something inbetween "I use it all the time" and "once or twice" would've given you better results on the poll. I'm fairly confident it isn't as unknown as the poll implied.
I've used the economy system, but I don't feel like it's currently anything to write home about. The problem is, to really get use of it, you need to have a jump-capable ship, but if you have a jump-capable ship, then technically you've already beat the game.
I am very surprised no one uses these stations! I always work towards making a ship doing these contracts. It is mainly late game activity especially with a small server. Plus, keep in mind if you do business with one faction a faction with similar resources will lower there reputation with you. So you need to choose wisely with who you trade with.
I use it sometimes. I said once or twice in your survey as that was the closest answer. The economy is pretty cool. I often play around with mods and self imposed rules and trade stations can help. Especially useful on space starts but can also give you start a boost on any planet. Still of limited use on a regular start unless you spawn close to one.
I use this quite a lot. As someone mentioned, you can buy datapads at a trade station that give other trade station locations. Also, you mentioned that the NPC ships could maybe go to a station. Well... They do. At least, the orbital stations. If you sit at one for a while, you will see business shipments, mining shipments, and military ships close with the station, slow down while passing through the safe zone, and then resuming their course. Maybe not every ship does, but if you sit there for a while, they pass through. So others are probably set on courses through other station safe zones.
@@Zer0sLegion Darn. I hadn't had a chance to follow one to see if it led me anywhere before it "jumped out," (never mind that they have no jump drive - still the best explanation). I have been preparing to record a couple videos myself soon, and my prep for this narrative play through prevented me checking myself.
Wow I'm surprised people didn't know about this... you can also sell stuff on multi-player servers. Also safe zone chips are the exclusive item, they are amazing on PVP servers
I actually do use it. I usually do one mission to have some bank of credits and sometimes when I am building something and I find out that I ran out of a resource to make something I need, rather than flying there with my mining ship, mine for 10 minutes, then fly back and process the ore. I just hop into my speeder and buy that thing which takes much less time. I always build my bases where it is pretty, not where it is convenient and I play with Scarce resources mod so using economy makes a lot of sense for me. I think scarce resources should be part of the game (maybe a toggle in advanced settings of the world that is toggled on by default) and not just a mod.
I once went to a trading station and saw a contract that gives 20 million space credits for 15 reactor comp. It was the easiest 20 million space credits i've ever made
In my survival world I used the station you start with coordinates for to buy a bunch of uranium before I was capable of mining any. I was able to use that to run my ship for days of gameplay where I would otherwise have needed to spend ton of time gathering ice for hydrogen engines.
If you go to the faction tab, each trading faction you have discovered will have a brief description about what they sell. Some sell ships (such as the one in the video) but others can sell other things like ore or components
Because I am a wrenched builder I always go for the premade ships in the economy. I used it when it came out because of the challenges of the missions. Right now on my current game I am working my way to a station, (i crashed in the mountains and the rover I have built is having a hard time getting to the first station). Quests are always valued in ;difficulty. a low payout escort means you may fight a few drones, where a higher payout one will have more enemies. The find quests are the easiest way to make credits and are always best to grab once you have a smell ship. Some servers have resources set to nil and are economy, or salvage only. I was surprised by your results that more people do not know about it, But SE always was a building game first and the economy update came in so late in the game development that it must have been ignored.
i think when they add NPCs to the game they will also add a lot more variety in missions. both combat and delivery. Also it would feel much more lived in if there were actually people walking around the trading stations.
If you end up with a dead ship, and you can't spawn there it's always good to have a few million to be able to get back to your stuff, without risking being doublecrossed by someone giving you a lift.
I've been using the economy features since it was first added into the game. It isn't central to my playing but it is helpful and gives more things to do. I believe on multiplayer servers you can set up your own store block and put excess items up for sale. Other players can then buy them from your store block. It is possible to do an economy only play through but it can be extremely slow to get going unless you have a speed mod to allow you to fly faster. There are no ore deposits within about a 5 km radius of stations. AndrewManGaming here on RUclips has such a series going where he set some rules for doing it
I've been finding the stations brilliant for refuelling my hydrogen ships. I go in, sell some materials and can fill a ships tanks up with far less effort and time. If you end up with enough locations and the stations are stocking hydrogen, you can actually make a hydrogen only ship with usable jump drives. Only just found out that it was possible from another youtuber's videos in the last couple of weeks. Turns out that all this time I only needed to select the tanks as the inventory.
I just joined a server based on pertam. It's new and not flushed out yet but it's a scavenger type of play style. Refineries and assemblers don't work. When you spawn you get a data pad with the station and a gps location of a nearby abandoned settlement that usually has an old rover and you scrap the rest of the place for your building materials. Progression is reworked a bit. Grinding things down unlocks a smaller catagory of BPs. Settlements spawn based on distance traveled in one direction and the tier of settlement changes based on the amount of blocks/grids you own. After a couple days I just started getting settlements with low defenses where I found a functional h2 tank that was 80% full. Instead of grinding it down I detached it and stuck it on my rover to transport it home. Did the same with a large grid battery since power cells are hard to come by. I think the goal is to get off pertam and they want to make it so that your refineries and assemblers work when you do. But now I like the idea of getting some old rust bucket off pertam and buying a fancy ship from the moon station.
Bro... Buy datapads at trade stations. They usually sell like 15 at a time. Buy them all. They will reveal GPS locations of their friendly stations. Not all factions are friends with each other. Check the factions tab to see who they are friends with. Visiting other stations and buying their datapads will also reveal even more stations. Some are waaaaaaay out in deep space. Another hint to find other stations: do a hauling contract. Hauling contracts always start at one station, then end at another. Hauling contracts under 6,000 Km will usually bring you to stations on or orbiting planets and moons. Hauling contracts greater than 8,000 Km will pretty much always take you to a deep space space station. Heck, a super fun and challenging way to play the game is salvage/buying only. In other words, NO ASSEMBLERS! It's crazy immersive, and due to how difficult it can be to acquire ammo by only salvaging or buying, it offers a crazy challenge, and requires some creative solutions to disabling enemy ships. I recommend starting with a start that gives you a base and ship right away, like the Pertam Orbiter start.
As you said, the main problem is that you need to travel great distances to find thouse, much greater than to find moust ores. However, if you instal (for example) industrial overhaul mod with its additional ores and changed generation patterns (so the veins are large but only single type ore, also relatively scattered one from another) you end up in situation where you technologies are limited and some elements are scarce. So it becomes viable to mine, process and sell what you can, to buy something that you need.
Imo, with changed ore generation and some tech diversity many things in SE start to give much more sense. Your energy generation is bound to biome specifics (geothermal is easier to do in mountains, hydrogen near lakes, solar in plains). Your vechicle designs also becoming more adapted to avilable resources. Your exports/imports and global goals. It kinda creates your "faction identity" and forces you to play smart and adapt to be effective.
As a solo offline player, the contracts add a level of structure to the game that perfectly balances out the hours of open ended construction and exploration. Just this week I finally tried out a hauling mission as I had finally committed to a save file long enough to build 6 jump drives and enough reactors to recharge them. Also, easiest way to get upgraded tools early without finding precious metals.
What I would really like is the ability to buy ship blueprints through the economy. The community blueprints from the workshop I've subbed to being purchasable/traded for would be fun for the saves I have played that were more focused on progression/harder survival.
An economy only game is kind kind of playable (I've done several). Basically, you need to way to collect resources to sell for starting out like mining or pirating. The other way to do it is to give yourself a mission ready ship, which I've found kinda defeats the purpose unless you restrict yourself to something super basic.
I've been saying this since the Economy update first dropped, but Keen missed a major opportunity but not adding any of the new ships from that update to the random spawn list. So much new stuff made but practically unused.
@@Zer0sLegion I really want that to be the case, but given how Keen seems to forget about older content I'm not optimistic. My prediction is they'll leave the economy ships and their availability as-is and when GridAI gets added it'll be exclusively used with new ships, none of which will get back-intigrated.
I knew this exists and I flew to a station once, cause I had a gps location of it somehow. But as you mentioned there is not much incentive to use this system. At least it felt like that to me, cause I already had an established base and a ship. So the only real benefit would have been to get rare ores.
I do use this feature from time to time. To find more stations, you can buy datapads at those stations and they have other trading stations, but they can be quite far. So when I want to find more, I buy all the datapad at the station and check them sometime there is one or 2 near
I use this as part of my regular game play you can turn off the unknown signals and just rely on the stations but if i do that then i start fresh until i get a station closer than 30 klicks that is from a mining faction as they will almost always have ores for sell and sometimes you can get uranium and platinum in bulk. They are definitely geared toward mid to late game but some like the miners can be very helpful from the start.
From all of the people I play with and talk to in the Xebon community, we all use it pretty much every time. What the station buys/sells is based on the corporation that owned the station. A corp that sells ships will buy more materials, a corp that refines will buy ores and sell ingots. All stations can sell zone chips and things like cola. Its just random on whats in the given list which does update on a built in timer, same with contracts. You will almost always spawn within 10km of a station which is the station on the data pad in your pod seat. Data pads can also be bought from stations with the GPS of other stations. As you said moons are great for finding stations and normally it is easy to find 2 in orbit and 2 on the ground. Doing hauling contracts will give you a parcel that is always put in your personal inventory and an orange GPS labeled "Deliver Here" or something like that, which is always another station. BUT, those missions are in general not really worth the money as they normally are wanting you to jump 25,000km-30,000km, so a dedicated ship is needed and even with some modded jump drives you still need multiple jumps. If you really want to work the ECON system search contracts are east starter contracts but can be so god damn annoying to find sometimes even with a flying vehicle. Acquisition is the king of the contracts once you have some free resources. Me and my friend that I normally group up with start off not taking acquisition contracts below 100,000 SC then that quickly ramps up to nothing below 1mil SC. One trick we use is to build a small platform or ship and either pu tit just outside the shield if you want a station platform or you can nessel a ship with a spawn point next to the NPC station. Then death teleport to the different stations you know of to check for contracts and the store if you are looking for chips. Speaking of Zone Chips are what most players use the ECON system for. Its way to easy to get money from the contracts and buy Zone Chips to fuel a safe zone around your base. Tada! You know have an impenetrable shield and you can turn off damage inside so people in your group that suck at landing can come in at full speed and not give a shit. Also handy for players far away from server dealing with lag when trying to land. When you add in mods like the Build and Repair, and various NPCs you can get them to just stare at you through the shield while you grind them down from safety. Cheese? Yes. But it works, lol. On the current server me and my friend are on we have a large combat salvager/freighter that's job is literally to neutralizer a threat, eat it, then sell its parts. And we are thinking about going pirate now because of how many modded NPC stations are around use that keep spawning and they are from before the ECON update so there old econ system doesn't work with KEEN's.
this is actually what i do when i start a new game of space engineers, generate a world, start on a planet, make a simple buggy and drive around til i find a station, then build a small base next to it and buy/sell things til i have enough to buy a ship... then outfit it as i go, etc etc.
Your videos are great for players that have little knowledge in the game which judging by those 80% is a lot of people you may be helping. One very cool feature you should cover on a future video is that you can use a contract block owned by you to find your own missing grids. You go to the admin tab create a search mission and select the missing grid. Having your grods proper named helps here ofc.
The trick is, say something wrong and people will come to correct you. I never need to google anything, I just make a statement about the game and wait for people to tell me how it actually working and how I should be doing things 😜
I wish you could automate the selling of Ores, Ingots or Components. We can get the drones to the station but have to be there to sell the items. Kind of defeats the purpose.
It's a shame really... The economy has a lot of potential but really all it's good for is getting player locations through bounty contracts and safezone chips.
I was wondering what use space credits has as I have collected 40K from those dropping satellites alone. I constructed buy/sell ATM in my base but players don't seem to use it at all.
I use this all the time; All of my single player games... Like you said, however, they are very hard to find without the original datapad... They typically only "reveal" if you are within 10km of them... I have had some games where there are two or three within 50km of my starting point. I also think that Splitsie and Capac did an "economy only" playthru....
To continue: The escort missions can be a lot of fun as well. Gives you a good opportunity to test out your ship designs/weapons and also lets you "earn" the included, developer-created, ships without "cheating" by just copying and pasting them. I would like to see the Devs update some of the AI ship designs with the new *WARFARE 2* weapons because the battles can be pretty one-sided... ESPECIALLY if you are using modded weapons (I use Ravenbolt Compact Weapons the most because I don't use WeaponCore) and/or Shield Mods...
I think it would be nice if you could add your own blueprints to the shops and just pay the station to build it for you, with the more complex ships obviously costing a considerable amount of money.
This could address more than several problems at once. It makes credits valuable/useful outside of roleplay as the starter. It is an alternative to a ship printer suitable for both the solo player and clans. It affords a solo and role players to go without a larger grid "base" that is really only there to help make ships. The limitations of projectors are circumvented as well because your blueprint can be spawned into the world instead of projected and welded. The service can be offered only at particularly large npc stations or maybe only a single npc faction offers it for some flavor.
the items available at the stations depend on the type of faction that controls them. for example a faction called "Space Miners" will have mostly ores and drills while "Intergalactic builders" will have ships and welders for sale. bonus info: if you do trading and contracts for a faction you will improve standing with that faction and its allies. and worsen standing with their enemies.(usually all factions who are not allies) you can see who is allied to who in the Factions tab
If you get the tradestation with ore first you can buy Iron, kobald and silver to speedrun in the first 10 min of the game :D its also very cheap to buy hydrogen. That way you skip the annoying waiting ice to process.
Delivery missions are a great way to find other stations. As the mission is literally take blank to blank. Also you can buy data pads that have station locations coords on them from stations.
I start all my games on Titan because of the economy. Titan is the size of the moon and starts with a cluster of economy trade stations but also has an atmosphere like a planet.
I wouldn't be surprised if each time someone's complained about the lack of quests or dynamic content in the game, a dev at Keen shakes their head and is disappointed with the ignorance of economy.
Other comments mention this, but it is important to note. You can buy a multiple datapads from a station and each one will hate the coordinates of a random Trade station. There a button to take the coordinates printed on the datapad and make a new GPS marker. Also the market and contracts refresh regularly, so if you leave and come back there will be some changes. Though certain stations have patterns in what they sell.
6:10 I think it would go a long way for immersion to include NPC text messages when in radar range, wouldn't be too costly in terms of dev I think, and would be a great addition. I always felt like this game lacks lore and overall doesn't talk to players enough (aside from goodbot which is really basic controls stuff). Maybe receiving a distress call with an actual message (that you could read from your HUD or even retrieve and display on a LCD panel with a script) would incentivize players to investigate planet surfaces and whatnot
With very little effort, Keen could add more to this. Like the datapad you start with, they could sprinkle information around and maybe offer more rewards. Like, you do a Search quest or retrieve something they lost and you get the location of a mineral deposit. This might be really helpful for players looking for that ONE resource that they can't seem to find any of.
You can also use hauling contracts to send your ship to new stations. Delivering a contract to a new station tells you where to put a new gps point for a station is. The reason some hauling contracts are more expensive is the distance/difficulty of landing reaching the station like at.
I like this feature cause it causes me to build specialised ships. Dedicated jump ship Corvette Mobile repair Etc Without this id usually just make a all purpose mothership and that'll be it
On server NA2 there is a new player station built by a faction for those new to the server and game to get a leg up. Helps with the progression aspect on survival by giving them access to fully upgraded refineries and assemblers. It is also about twenty or thirty km from npc stations for trading. One important thing to note is that gaining reputation with some npc factions can cause you to go “hostile” with others. The NPC factions show who they are friendly with via the factions tab.
Huh.. I just recently started playing SE, like about 2wks ago. I had no idea this was available to do in game! Very cool! I'll have to check it out and see what I can find at that GPS coordinate on the initial datapad you get in the rescue pod. I had no idea what to do with it. Good video! Thanks for this!
I dunno if this is just me, but literally every base I've ever made is within antenna range of faction bases with stores. Like before I understood how great this was I was annoyed at them clogging up my HUD lol.
If you have economy enabled, your starter pod will have a data chip in the control seat, alt-f10 will also help you find a nearby station. The moons of the star system map also has stations in close proximity of each other. The furthest station I found from the Earth like planet is 43k kilometers.
I have used the economy station few times, does helps by getting the better tier tools and resources. would be challenging to only buy stuff from economy station to progress on. there's something if there's mod for these function: like buy tech licence/s to unlock new blocks to build and buy extended limited blocks (example: thruster limit to 16 from start (4 up, 4 down, 2 left strife, 2 right strife, 2 front and 2 rear) to add additional 4/6 thrusters on any facing. wheels limited to 4 additional 2 more per purchase) also buying the land area to build the base or to mine resource otherwise reputation will cost you and possibility someone (npc) coming to destroy your new base and kill you. buy the entire planet what would be a hell a lot of credit to save up for :D Would love to see if that challenge set up
I was going to say your should be able to buy research or blueprints for blocks but I kinda went on a long tangent about how progression needs to be reworked 😓
@@Zer0sLegion hey don't worry, people tend to forgot what to mention when already thought about it. If this helps, write on the paper just key points what topic&features to talk about 🤘
I played this game for 800+ hours since launch, and have indeed used the economy features. A nice change of pace from the normal mining-refining-building loop.
The economy features definitely have their place. One useful use of them in the early game is to get a hold of thruster components / platinum (you can buy a ship and grind it down for those parts in a pinch, too) if you're having trouble finding a platinum deposit. They're also a renewable source of resources (!) which doesn't matter that much in this game, but it *is* handy that you can "convert" raw stone into a variety of materials by trading at stations in a pinch if you need to make some fast modifications to a ship or something.
I’m so shocked a lot of people didn’t know about these xD I discovered these within an hour of returning to the game after playing it back in early alpha days. I used them extensively while re-learning the game (buying platinum on a planet before you can go to space is pretty useful, etc.) But that enthusiasm didn’t last long, as soon as I got used to the game again, I don’t think I’ve stepped into a station or had interest in going there to do quests :D
I remember frequently searching for NPC stations but never finding them, I had no idea they were orbiting the moon. Thanks for making this video, I'll have to check this out.
There is a mod which integrates additional components, which lets you build better blocks (a better battery for example), three different tiers. These components are only available by trading. Thats makes that trading system valuable. (Mod is called "Tiered Tech Blocks")
In vanilla game I don't use the economic system, however, with Industrial overhaul mod the trade stations gave you acces to resources that you wouldn't be able to get for a long time. Also, if you play on Agaris you will have more trade stations on the planet and they are easy to find thanks to the roads that leads to them.
You can play, without mining ore, i tried it. Its difficult, but managable. You get some resources from unknown signals or being a pirate. Or simply: buy ore from the station, produce parts and sell it or fullfill quests to the same station, you gain surplus ;)
I will buy an abundance of prefab throwaway ships or even some of the bigger ships like the B60 hauler because they are good enough, quick, modifiable, and you can just give one to a friend if you don’t feel like building them a ship and they need a ship for something
Fun fact, you get the coords to a trade station in your drop pod seat alongside your gun and ammunition, at least on earth you do. I have always used this feature, it's so integral to singleplayer play, or even co-op play. Me and my friends wouldn't be able to stay interested in the game at all if it weren't for econmoy.
If you want to open a store. You have to fill the vending machine with stuff. Cyanide made a giant potrait of himself and power the safe zone to forever.
I've been playing since multiplayer was added and I've only recently completed a build using timer blocks for something useful (auto closing doors). Idk how many people use timer blocks regularly but I'd be happy to see some easy, not complicated uses that I could put on any build :)
Oh yea that's been in the game but Space Engineer isn't like a Star Citzien type of game. It doesn't depend on a economy or any specfic game mechanic . The economy is just there if you and some friends want to use it. That's what I love about Keen's view of SE, they gave you the tools to play their game the way you want to.
It would be neat if there were npc ships that occasionally fly by, and occasionally a fight might break out between them. It would be neat to watch two ships attack a small, defenseless one, and once the victim ship falls, hopping in a vehicle to go scrap parts from it. It would make the game feel more dynamic, and would be an actual reason to use weapons on ships.
One of my goals when making my Transition Drive mod was to improve the economy in some way. Sure, there's Zone Chips, but people generally don't even use them because the cost/benefit ratio is shit. I basically made a jump drive that uses fuel. The fuel can only be found on select planets and it's difficult to mine. Trade stations have contracts for it, and they sometimes sell it, making deep space trade stations the only way of getting fuel without going to a planet. Still, the mod is just a tiny nudge in the right direction. Players should spawn with all the NPC station coordinates already visible and the rewards for missions should be increased a lot, not to mention creating reasons to even want to go to an NPC station in the first place.
I *mostly* interact with the economy. I play solo on the official servers (I treat it like a big game of hide and seek). I tend to play in short intense bursts and then abandon it for a while, so it's nice to have enough credits to buy a ship to skip the very early game if my base hasn't survived in my absence. The kinds of things bought/sold at stations depend on the faction that runs it. The faction descriptions make it reasonably easy to guess if they sell ships, components or ores. Acquisition quests are pretty OP for making credits (as they have no timeouts and generally high value), but if you have an assembler or two and a mix of ingots you can make a similar amount of credits from selling components to stations. The shop and contract blocks reset every ~20 minutes. Things like the random cash hidden in beds also reset that often if you are in need of some spare change :) When you start, if you are within a certain range of a station, you will have a datapad in your inventory containing its coordinates. In my experience all of the start pods except the space pod has a very good chance of starting within range of a station, but it might not be a very useful station. The moon is definitely the easiest place to find stations since you can easily jetpack around the whole moon in a short time and spot all of the orbital and planetary stations. You can find other stations by buying datapads at stations, which contain station coords. All stations seem to have a chance of having some each restock. On a previous server reset, I had the info for every station in a database, thanks to an AHK script for exporting my GPS coords. However the AHK script doesn't work with the current UI and I haven't got around to fixing it. You can also find stations from doing hauling missions. If you do a lot of missions for the same faction, you will eventually get such a high reputation with one faction that you will become unfriendly with their allies. This is annoying when you do hauling missions because you won't be able to make the delivery if the destination is controlled by an unfriendly faction (you will get "access denied" at the station doors and terminals"). One of the uses of my station database was to guess the faction of the station in a hauling mission before taking it, so I could tell if it was one of the factions I was friendly with. This is why selling components is the most sustainable way to make lots of credits since it doesn't affect your reputation and you can remain neutral with everyone (except pirates of course). It seems playing with reputation but maintaining near universal neutral/friendly status is an impossible juggling act.
I used it all the time when it came out, those batteries and medpacks are very useful, and it’s a great way to get extra resources if you’re in need of quick repairs far away.
@@Zer0sLegion Maybe it could be a different mission type, then.. Just seems like a missed oppritunity to have some space engineering in space engineers
I use the economy fairly regularly, and often point out that it's a great way for players who want to start with a bit more challenge than normal, to actually be able to start with almost nothing and actually survive without needing to build a scenario or a starter ship/base. Doing the search missions is a quick way to earn enough credits/faction to buy starter (or even intermediate) ships with maybe 1 to 2 hours of effort. Trading components will net better returns if you're finding you have a lot of raw resources to process, but trade missions can pay out a LOT of credits if you have a ship able to get to you to the destination. If you want to do an economy only style, try using the Aww Scrap mod (no components returned when grinding, just component scrap) so you'll only get a portion of the materials back as scrap, and only a portion of the resource back from the scrap lol That combined with the advanced welding mod (allows you to disconnect blocks from the grid using a grinder, and reattach them using a "weld pad") gives the game a very different feel for SE :D
@@Zer0sLegion Yeah, it's been added to my "every game will probably use this" mod list Coupled with the advanced welding mod, it really pushes you to detach and reattach equipment instead of just "melting it" for parts to reassemble if you're going for a "no mining" playthrough! Good luck!
Sometimes I will start a new game in space with spawn ships turned off. This is very useful in those instances because you can buy hydrogen for your suit from the vending machines and your air is automatically restored entering the base. If you do a few search missions you'll scrape together enough to buy a small scout ship. It's alot of fun if you like the challenge of working with bare minimum resources.
I feel like it would be handier if they sold ammo in the stores, because that would be so much more handier than having to craft it all! And would also work well with the escort missions because you can refill what ammo you used to finish it.
@@Zer0sLegion They do, there are 3 types of station: Mining stations that sell ores and drills, trading stations that sell components/ammo/guns and welders/grinders and Builder stations that sell ships/rovers.
@@Zer0sLegion probably wouldve been good if i checked before i commented lol, although its probably telling that if we have a hard time remembering it might need some work
The faction that controls the station both determines the kind of goods they offer and the kind of contracts. For instance, a faction specializing in hauling probably won't offer any bounty hunting contracts. Finding as many stations that offer different services is important, in my opinion, because it can drastically improve acquisition of hard to get materials, like uranium. You can see an overview of the faction through the reputation tab in your i menu, which will give you an idea of what they specialize in.
Once the update came out for xbox I delved deep into it, turned the sandbox building crafting game it already was into a exploring and mission game added onto it all. I went into a different game mode of just using basically economy mechanics to get my stuff and ships. To a point. Starting out with simple beginnings as a solo start up company focused on mining. Unsurprisingly raw resources turned out to be valuable assets for many so my company went into weapon and defense research and development to maintain control of plots theyd paid for already and to safely transport and refine. Hauling needs alot of cargo space, and fast acceleration and brakes. You're right about it being basically end game content if you'd like more stuff to do. Acquisition is the best money maker. Gravity components and rare ores usually make great profit. Best yet they're not timed. Every other contract is timed or triggered, I think. Search sounds easy, and sometimes it is, but for me, majority of the time it was down right not rewarding for the time spent. Better to get an easy and cheap Acquisition contract and mine or make extra for yourself. Protection contracts... those are usually the most fun due to the action involved, but also for me the most preparation needed. They are and can be very serious tests of your skill and ship's agility, firepower, and armor. Put on relative dampeners to your client and I usually did a torsion circle around the client to reduce the relative difficulty. Never tried simply locking onto the client and shielding him or wrapping him in armor and turrets walls. All this was tested offline. Edit ps: data pads are cheap af. I usually buy the full stack of data pads of first station that'll sell them. I originally thought they were notes for multi-player. These datapads give GPS coordinates to other stations. Very good for getting that one pesky shop that sells uranium ingots.
first thing I do everytime I start new is figure out where the nearest station is. they are a easy way to get uranium to power your reactors you just got to do some missions. when you spawn you always have data pad you just copy the nav data. then you can buy data pads that give you nav points to others. and trade missions will take you to others
Yes, I have used this. If you start without a ship or without any kind of survival kit, this is the best way to get a start. Possibly the only way to get started until you can build a Survival Kit.
The funny thing is Economy is on by default when creating a new world, but they are so far between that unless you do a LOT of exploring or use the data pad, the chances of actually seeing a station is very slim
I was kinda confused on how it worked when i first found it in the crafting menu, and tried building one on my own base and saw that nothing came up. I get now that you go to stations to pick up contracts and sell, and you build it on your own station to create contracts (not sure) and buy. Neat!
![Felix "Unfair" | [Stray Kids : SKZ-PLAYER]](http://i.ytimg.com/vi/Oswujxm2Ag0/mqdefault.jpg)
Have you ever used this feature? Let me know your experience with it!
I use it all the time especially the search in space
when i am bored i used it, is pretty fun
I have never foud a trade station personally
I always try to set up shop near a trading station, i rather enjoy the locate quests
Always use it
You can also buy datapads from stations, the stations refresh every in-game day and sometimes they have datapads with locations of other stations
That's cool!
@@Zer0sLegion with all due respect, you sometimes seem to be very newbie to SE Zero, I mean it is true most players dont use this feature, but there were tons of videos about it when it came out, I'd be happy to show you how underrated this feature is, but sadly I currently only play on xbox...
@@LordDrackonel With all due respect, just because you know about it, doesn't mean everyone does. The poll don't lie, most people don't use the feature.
I knew the trade stations were in the game but I'd never been to one as they're so rare. I wouldn't have even though to look into the economy mechanics if i wasn't making a video on how progression in SE needs an overhaul.
@@Zer0sLegion but to be fair, most people know, just because they dont use it doesn't mean they dont know about it, or at least know an overview of how it works.
I only used the term newbie cause that's something I would expect from someone that havent been around, at least to watch all the videos that were released around the update, it was BIG, you said it yourself.
The main reason a lot of people dont use it is because the contracts are repetitive, and even tho they were designed to be improved by modders, they never really were, because the meta of the game went around the encounters mods and weapon core.
But there were many servers working with economy years around after the release, and many servers still use it, but players still dont go around it.
PD: although I said modders didnt pay much attention to it, I want to point out there are really cool mods that work with economy, such as mobile merchants, plant and cook, food essentials and many mods that add community ships to the stores... it's a very well know mechanic, the poll doesn't lie, but that's the amount of your audience that doesn't use it, not the entire of the community that know about it.
And if I meant anything about showing you how underrated it is, it was truly so a content creator like you help spreading the message... mostly since now I'm an xbox player, I would like for the modding community to work more around unscripted mods.
@@LordDrackonel I mean... I've been around in SE since 2015 and this is the first I've heard of any of this...
Just because in your experience a lot of people that know about it, there are many that didn't know about it
I actually built my base right next to one of these stations, used pistons and connectors to connect up my massive industrial output right into this station for quick easy money making.
Sounds pretty cool!
One issue with being too close to stations is that ores don't spawn next to them. You have to go about 5km away to get ores.
@@CyberKeith the pipeline must grow
@@CyberKeith ...but that isn't an issue with the ResourceNodes + Pipelines mods.
@@KeithOlson Thanks. I'll have to check out those mods.
I am astounded that the economy is so unpopular. It's fundamental to how I play the game.
5:05 Its easy to find the stations. The drop pod will have a datepad with a GPS to the closest station on spawn, and stations sell datapads (for like 9 creds per, or something super cheap like that) that will have GPSs for other stations they're friendly or allied with.
Yeap, mentioned that in the video.
Essentially it's an unfinished feature.
I find it amusing to play those mods that add more encounters and then pausing them all off and see how many I can kill and scrap
@@kaiikiller4777 Yeah space engineers tends to have unfinished features... the game itself is unfinished, it's as if it were still in pre alpha, there's no pve no pvp, planets are pointless, exploration is pointless.
@@krirub8166 Its an engineering game, or at least it was conceived as one. It was all about building your own thing and then crashing it and watch the entire thing deform. Deformation is no longer in the game though.
The economy system is quite underwhelming for a reason - it is easier and cheaper to mine all resources you need than to trade them. Now what they should do to make it viable is rework the balance of the economy system, in a way that you could profit from trading and that it can become the same endgame as building a huge mining rig. They should balance it to be more like in Elite: Dangerous or in Space Rangers, where trading and contracts are a viable way of making money and buying ships.
It's cheaper, yes, but more time consuming.
Why go out and mine Uranium and Platinum when i can buy those from the land-based mining company station? They buy ores for a good price, specially Nickel.
Personally I would like a way to easily make custom blueprints purchasable.
what about being able to buy unique ship components from the stations, these being attached to preexisting ships which you can break down to get the cool new uncraftable component
To be fair, the Economy System isn't just about trading materials/items/contracts - it's also a way to build reputation with the various AI factions. Better reputation offers better prices on items as well as better payouts for contracts.
Why would someone trade in a game with no more than 50 people per server??
More people would use it if you could save a ship design at a station and buy it back (price depending on components + a fee). It would make multiplayer combat a bit more forgiving to newbies in servers and incentivize large factions to pool together money for insurance on large vessels. Put a cool down that's longer dependent on block size and make it expensive enough you can't spam them out and it would take pretty well.
Yes, similar to what I was thinking.
If you had the ability to blueprint something and then post the blueprint and it used the PCU and/or the block count or component cost as a price point, then you could basically have insurance on your ship and buy a new one anytime you need, or share them with others.
@shadenphoenix Such a simple problem to solve but they just focus on wack dlc.
@@yusriyahbagheri8843 👆 this. For years I wondered why things that should be common sense don't get fixed, but new ways to buy blocks comes out regularly without fail. Then once they stole all my purchases and my game play style (offline, unless sharing with friends) and told me 'it was to prevent people stealing the blocks they force you to take without paying', I realized what kind of company it was. They didn't want to did the issue, just create more and take from the honest people.
Unfortunately, I racked up 2000+ hours in the first year or so, which made it hard to stop playing all together. 😒
Stations have energy kits and med kits that aren't really available in other places. Useful tools if you are hydro-manning in your suit. I like to use those early game before I have a ship to get Platinum and Uranium from asteroids. AndrewmanGaming is currently in episode 12 of an economy only SE playthrough on RUclips.
yep they can be a source of uranium before you leave the planet
One thing kinda nice about the economy bases: If they sell data pads, they come loaded with the location of another either same faction or allied economy base. Sometimes you get something close, maybe even on the same planet. Sometimes, you get a remote outpost 28,000 km out in space But the data pads are cheap, and it is a good way to build up a list of economy stations.
Things you missed: cola, coffee, power kits and med kits are like zone chips and plushies: NPC station exclusive. Ever lost a grid and you can't find where it's drifting? Create a search contract.
What I would love to see is the ability for a player or player faction to create a bounty. That would rock
I've gotten power kits and med kits off random pod drops, also a fair bit of money too. I don't think I've ever gotten soda or coffee out of them though.
I was gonna say, i'm pretty sure you can get them from drop pods.
Oh what I would do without zone chips in my main base... Also the med kits and power kits are golden!
And maybe AI factions acting on the contracts as well, so you can compete with NPCs or try to deliberately thwart NPC missions.
Almost no one knows that you can use the search contract that way
Im really surprised you never used this, as soon as I saw the stations I went there and started doing quests.. Also when you start the game, you will always get a cord to the nearest station in your drop pod you start in on survival.
Yeah, I mentioned that in the video but it always seems to be like 40km away lol
@@Zer0sLegion Yeah I replied before I saw that part of the video, but yeah I actaully like the space stations but yeah I do agree that unless you spawned on a moon you would not find them on planets, they are just very very rare.
@@Zer0sLegion what when I played with my friend we got one like 7km away we used it to get miners for us it was an essential part of the gams
In the official keen servers, the economy is actually quite useful, with ships being sold and you *have* to use the economy to get zone chips, for the safe zone. The contracts also give you something to do in the game.
I arrived at the starting trading station on my mobile digging rig, crafted a few batches of resources that station asked me for, and bought myself a Cursor. I liked this little red ship.
Is it any good, I haven't had the chance to buy any ships yet?
@@Zer0sLegion it has some problems, but nothing critical, if you not going to fight.
2 weeks ago I started using the Ecomendy system.
The first thing I noticed next to the hard-to-find station is that when you try to trade you usually need a small spaceship with a medium or large cargo container to move forward effectively. In addition, a basic refinery and the associated production plant are recommended. And to get ahead faster, a mining ship or even a miner with a cargo container. Which means that you can actually do everything yourself again and don't even want to trade.
Thus, the potential of the system is already gone through the problematic entry.
I think every pvp player use it a least for chipzones , it's the only way to prevent raid off .
Contracts blocs are also used to create new contract on your ship , accept it and you'll get a moving GPS point like respawn-pod.
Can be also used as tracker inside enemy grid (don't forget to hide it on terminal) .
Mate, I never even thought about the moving GPS point. I knew about searching for your own grid, but hadn't thought about the other potential.
Thanks!
@@Gorwyn Sometimes you can destroy one enemy ship, but it can be better to just set a contract bloc inside , make a contract, accept it , hide in terminal , and wait for the player return to his base with the ship .
Like that you can know where people are really living hehe
This game is a large inspiration source and i think we don't expect everything we can do with ;)
Absolutely. Usually if I find a ship kicking about, I sneak a small grid tracker on board so I can make search contracts to find it later. This new idea presents so many options now..
@@Gorwyn let an "abandoned" ship with tracker is very funny too , people love to pirate mining ships .
suit upgrades would be a nice addition to make the economy worth interacting with
the biggest problem is the economy really sucks for most players, and it's only existence is as something we might be forced to use to get components as a "balance" measure on some servers, not to mention the massive spread between stations, and the lackluster stock of ships, making trade rather unexciting... not to mention players being unable to drive the economy because the game itself forces players to sell and buy around pre-determined price ranges.
My friends and I found out about the economy by accident. We were playing on Triton and my friend was exploring for ores when he stumbled upon one of these stations. He was telling us that we could do quests to get space credits and buy tools/components and none of us believed him until he took us there. It made getting platinum much less annoying for us since we were pretty early into our game
The datapad they sometimes sell is basically a advertisement telling someone where another station is, complete with GPS cords.
I've actually used this feature a whole lot. I engage with the trade stations regularly to get some easy materials from time to time, or to just buy ships I cba to make myself.
Edit; I've never had issues finding the trade stations either, their antenna range is kinda insane. Also yeah, there's always 1 you get access to right off the bat via datapad.
Edit2; I think maybe adding something inbetween "I use it all the time" and "once or twice" would've given you better results on the poll. I'm fairly confident it isn't as unknown as the poll implied.
I've used the economy system, but I don't feel like it's currently anything to write home about. The problem is, to really get use of it, you need to have a jump-capable ship, but if you have a jump-capable ship, then technically you've already beat the game.
I am very surprised no one uses these stations! I always work towards making a ship doing these contracts. It is mainly late game activity especially with a small server. Plus, keep in mind if you do business with one faction a faction with similar resources will lower there reputation with you. So you need to choose wisely with who you trade with.
Yeah, I kinda did the poll to make sure it wasn't just me who didn't know about it lol
I use it sometimes. I said once or twice in your survey as that was the closest answer. The economy is pretty cool. I often play around with mods and self imposed rules and trade stations can help. Especially useful on space starts but can also give you start a boost on any planet.
Still of limited use on a regular start unless you spawn close to one.
Yeah, trade station that was on the datapad I spawned with was 40km away from me 💀
I use this quite a lot. As someone mentioned, you can buy datapads at a trade station that give other trade station locations. Also, you mentioned that the NPC ships could maybe go to a station. Well... They do. At least, the orbital stations. If you sit at one for a while, you will see business shipments, mining shipments, and military ships close with the station, slow down while passing through the safe zone, and then resuming their course. Maybe not every ship does, but if you sit there for a while, they pass through. So others are probably set on courses through other station safe zones.
They despawn after a certain distance, they're not persistent
@@Zer0sLegion Darn. I hadn't had a chance to follow one to see if it led me anywhere before it "jumped out," (never mind that they have no jump drive - still the best explanation). I have been preparing to record a couple videos myself soon, and my prep for this narrative play through prevented me checking myself.
Wow I'm surprised people didn't know about this... you can also sell stuff on multi-player servers. Also safe zone chips are the exclusive item, they are amazing on PVP servers
I actually do use it. I usually do one mission to have some bank of credits and sometimes when I am building something and I find out that I ran out of a resource to make something I need, rather than flying there with my mining ship, mine for 10 minutes, then fly back and process the ore. I just hop into my speeder and buy that thing which takes much less time. I always build my bases where it is pretty, not where it is convenient and I play with Scarce resources mod so using economy makes a lot of sense for me. I think scarce resources should be part of the game (maybe a toggle in advanced settings of the world that is toggled on by default) and not just a mod.
Rapid ship repair would be nice. You pay a premium for a short repair and rearm of your ship as opposed to welding up every block yourself
I once went to a trading station and saw a contract that gives 20 million space credits for 15 reactor comp. It was the easiest 20 million space credits i've ever made
Also you can get tens of millions per acquisition quest if you get lucky getting grav, med, plat or other expensive components
In my survival world I used the station you start with coordinates for to buy a bunch of uranium before I was capable of mining any. I was able to use that to run my ship for days of gameplay where I would otherwise have needed to spend ton of time gathering ice for hydrogen engines.
If you go to the faction tab, each trading faction you have discovered will have a brief description about what they sell. Some sell ships (such as the one in the video) but others can sell other things like ore or components
Because I am a wrenched builder I always go for the premade ships in the economy. I used it when it came out because of the challenges of the missions. Right now on my current game I am working my way to a station, (i crashed in the mountains and the rover I have built is having a hard time getting to the first station).
Quests are always valued in ;difficulty. a low payout escort means you may fight a few drones, where a higher payout one will have more enemies. The find quests are the easiest way to make credits and are always best to grab once you have a smell ship.
Some servers have resources set to nil and are economy, or salvage only.
I was surprised by your results that more people do not know about it, But SE always was a building game first and the economy update came in so late in the game development that it must have been ignored.
i think when they add NPCs to the game they will also add a lot more variety in missions. both combat and delivery. Also it would feel much more lived in if there were actually people walking around the trading stations.
I expect so.
If you end up with a dead ship, and you can't spawn there it's always good to have a few million to be able to get back to your stuff, without risking being doublecrossed by someone giving you a lift.
I've been using the economy features since it was first added into the game. It isn't central to my playing but it is helpful and gives more things to do. I believe on multiplayer servers you can set up your own store block and put excess items up for sale. Other players can then buy them from your store block. It is possible to do an economy only play through but it can be extremely slow to get going unless you have a speed mod to allow you to fly faster. There are no ore deposits within about a 5 km radius of stations. AndrewManGaming here on RUclips has such a series going where he set some rules for doing it
I've been finding the stations brilliant for refuelling my hydrogen ships. I go in, sell some materials and can fill a ships tanks up with far less effort and time.
If you end up with enough locations and the stations are stocking hydrogen, you can actually make a hydrogen only ship with usable jump drives. Only just found out that it was possible from another youtuber's videos in the last couple of weeks. Turns out that all this time I only needed to select the tanks as the inventory.
I just joined a server based on pertam. It's new and not flushed out yet but it's a scavenger type of play style. Refineries and assemblers don't work. When you spawn you get a data pad with the station and a gps location of a nearby abandoned settlement that usually has an old rover and you scrap the rest of the place for your building materials. Progression is reworked a bit. Grinding things down unlocks a smaller catagory of BPs. Settlements spawn based on distance traveled in one direction and the tier of settlement changes based on the amount of blocks/grids you own. After a couple days I just started getting settlements with low defenses where I found a functional h2 tank that was 80% full. Instead of grinding it down I detached it and stuck it on my rover to transport it home. Did the same with a large grid battery since power cells are hard to come by. I think the goal is to get off pertam and they want to make it so that your refineries and assemblers work when you do. But now I like the idea of getting some old rust bucket off pertam and buying a fancy ship from the moon station.
Bro... Buy datapads at trade stations.
They usually sell like 15 at a time. Buy them all. They will reveal GPS locations of their friendly stations.
Not all factions are friends with each other. Check the factions tab to see who they are friends with.
Visiting other stations and buying their datapads will also reveal even more stations.
Some are waaaaaaay out in deep space.
Another hint to find other stations: do a hauling contract. Hauling contracts always start at one station, then end at another.
Hauling contracts under 6,000 Km will usually bring you to stations on or orbiting planets and moons.
Hauling contracts greater than 8,000 Km will pretty much always take you to a deep space space station.
Heck, a super fun and challenging way to play the game is salvage/buying only. In other words, NO ASSEMBLERS!
It's crazy immersive, and due to how difficult it can be to acquire ammo by only salvaging or buying, it offers a crazy challenge, and requires some creative solutions to disabling enemy ships. I recommend starting with a start that gives you a base and ship right away, like the Pertam Orbiter start.
I use this to get rich every server I join because each station has asteroids nearby that sometimes turn out to be a good load
As you said, the main problem is that you need to travel great distances to find thouse, much greater than to find moust ores. However, if you instal (for example) industrial overhaul mod with its additional ores and changed generation patterns (so the veins are large but only single type ore, also relatively scattered one from another) you end up in situation where you technologies are limited and some elements are scarce. So it becomes viable to mine, process and sell what you can, to buy something that you need.
Imo, with changed ore generation and some tech diversity many things in SE start to give much more sense. Your energy generation is bound to biome specifics (geothermal is easier to do in mountains, hydrogen near lakes, solar in plains). Your vechicle designs also becoming more adapted to avilable resources. Your exports/imports and global goals. It kinda creates your "faction identity" and forces you to play smart and adapt to be effective.
As a solo offline player, the contracts add a level of structure to the game that perfectly balances out the hours of open ended construction and exploration. Just this week I finally tried out a hauling mission as I had finally committed to a save file long enough to build 6 jump drives and enough reactors to recharge them. Also, easiest way to get upgraded tools early without finding precious metals.
What I would really like is the ability to buy ship blueprints through the economy. The community blueprints from the workshop I've subbed to being purchasable/traded for would be fun for the saves I have played that were more focused on progression/harder survival.
An economy only game is kind kind of playable (I've done several). Basically, you need to way to collect resources to sell for starting out like mining or pirating. The other way to do it is to give yourself a mission ready ship, which I've found kinda defeats the purpose unless you restrict yourself to something super basic.
I've been saying this since the Economy update first dropped, but Keen missed a major opportunity but not adding any of the new ships from that update to the random spawn list. So much new stuff made but practically unused.
I'm sure when GridAI gets added, they'll make improvements to this
@@Zer0sLegion I really want that to be the case, but given how Keen seems to forget about older content I'm not optimistic. My prediction is they'll leave the economy ships and their availability as-is and when GridAI gets added it'll be exclusively used with new ships, none of which will get back-intigrated.
They added the new weapons to the previous AI ships, I'm sure they do the same with GridAI
I knew this exists and I flew to a station once, cause I had a gps location of it somehow. But as you mentioned there is not much incentive to use this system. At least it felt like that to me, cause I already had an established base and a ship. So the only real benefit would have been to get rare ores.
I do use this feature from time to time.
To find more stations, you can buy datapads at those stations and they have other trading stations, but they can be quite far. So when I want to find more, I buy all the datapad at the station and check them sometime there is one or 2 near
That's fine but out of the 4 stations I found none of them had data pads lol
I use this as part of my regular game play you can turn off the unknown signals and just rely on the stations but if i do that then i start fresh until i get a station closer than 30 klicks that is from a mining faction as they will almost always have ores for sell and sometimes you can get uranium and platinum in bulk. They are definitely geared toward mid to late game but some like the miners can be very helpful from the start.
From all of the people I play with and talk to in the Xebon community, we all use it pretty much every time. What the station buys/sells is based on the corporation that owned the station. A corp that sells ships will buy more materials, a corp that refines will buy ores and sell ingots. All stations can sell zone chips and things like cola. Its just random on whats in the given list which does update on a built in timer, same with contracts. You will almost always spawn within 10km of a station which is the station on the data pad in your pod seat. Data pads can also be bought from stations with the GPS of other stations. As you said moons are great for finding stations and normally it is easy to find 2 in orbit and 2 on the ground. Doing hauling contracts will give you a parcel that is always put in your personal inventory and an orange GPS labeled "Deliver Here" or something like that, which is always another station. BUT, those missions are in general not really worth the money as they normally are wanting you to jump 25,000km-30,000km, so a dedicated ship is needed and even with some modded jump drives you still need multiple jumps. If you really want to work the ECON system search contracts are east starter contracts but can be so god damn annoying to find sometimes even with a flying vehicle. Acquisition is the king of the contracts once you have some free resources. Me and my friend that I normally group up with start off not taking acquisition contracts below 100,000 SC then that quickly ramps up to nothing below 1mil SC. One trick we use is to build a small platform or ship and either pu tit just outside the shield if you want a station platform or you can nessel a ship with a spawn point next to the NPC station. Then death teleport to the different stations you know of to check for contracts and the store if you are looking for chips. Speaking of Zone Chips are what most players use the ECON system for. Its way to easy to get money from the contracts and buy Zone Chips to fuel a safe zone around your base. Tada! You know have an impenetrable shield and you can turn off damage inside so people in your group that suck at landing can come in at full speed and not give a shit. Also handy for players far away from server dealing with lag when trying to land. When you add in mods like the Build and Repair, and various NPCs you can get them to just stare at you through the shield while you grind them down from safety. Cheese? Yes. But it works, lol. On the current server me and my friend are on we have a large combat salvager/freighter that's job is literally to neutralizer a threat, eat it, then sell its parts. And we are thinking about going pirate now because of how many modded NPC stations are around use that keep spawning and they are from before the ECON update so there old econ system doesn't work with KEEN's.
this is actually what i do when i start a new game of space engineers, generate a world, start on a planet, make a simple buggy and drive around til i find a station, then build a small base next to it and buy/sell things til i have enough to buy a ship... then outfit it as i go, etc etc.
Your videos are great for players that have little knowledge in the game which judging by those 80% is a lot of people you may be helping. One very cool feature you should cover on a future video is that you can use a contract block owned by you to find your own missing grids. You go to the admin tab create a search mission and select the missing grid. Having your grods proper named helps here ofc.
Also one of the main uses I see for many players is to buy chip zones for multi-player to keep your build safe
Imagine losing your ships, would never happen to me 😓
Funny how you did not even know this part of the game existed, but you immediately know how it could be so much better than you initially think it is.
The trick is, say something wrong and people will come to correct you. I never need to google anything, I just make a statement about the game and wait for people to tell me how it actually working and how I should be doing things 😜
@@Zer0sLegion Yeah, I gathered as much from watching just two videos on your channel. ^^
I wish you could automate the selling of Ores, Ingots or Components. We can get the drones to the station but have to be there to sell the items. Kind of defeats the purpose.
It's a shame really... The economy has a lot of potential but really all it's good for is getting player locations through bounty contracts and safezone chips.
I was wondering what use space credits has as I have collected 40K from those dropping satellites alone. I constructed buy/sell ATM in my base but players don't seem to use it at all.
I use this all the time; All of my single player games... Like you said, however, they are very hard to find without the original datapad... They typically only "reveal" if you are within 10km of them... I have had some games where there are two or three within 50km of my starting point.
I also think that Splitsie and Capac did an "economy only" playthru....
To continue: The escort missions can be a lot of fun as well. Gives you a good opportunity to test out your ship designs/weapons and also lets you "earn" the included, developer-created, ships without "cheating" by just copying and pasting them. I would like to see the Devs update some of the AI ship designs with the new *WARFARE 2* weapons because the battles can be pretty one-sided... ESPECIALLY if you are using modded weapons (I use Ravenbolt Compact Weapons the most because I don't use WeaponCore) and/or Shield Mods...
I think it would be nice if you could add your own blueprints to the shops and just pay the station to build it for you, with the more complex ships obviously costing a considerable amount of money.
This could address more than several problems at once. It makes credits valuable/useful outside of roleplay as the starter. It is an alternative to a ship printer suitable for both the solo player and clans. It affords a solo and role players to go without a larger grid "base" that is really only there to help make ships. The limitations of projectors are circumvented as well because your blueprint can be spawned into the world instead of projected and welded. The service can be offered only at particularly large npc stations or maybe only a single npc faction offers it for some flavor.
the items available at the stations depend on the type of faction that controls them. for example a faction called "Space Miners" will have mostly ores and drills while "Intergalactic builders" will have ships and welders for sale.
bonus info: if you do trading and contracts for a faction you will improve standing with that faction and its allies. and worsen standing with their enemies.(usually all factions who are not allies)
you can see who is allied to who in the Factions tab
If you get the tradestation with ore first you can buy Iron, kobald and silver to speedrun in the first 10 min of the game :D its also very cheap to buy hydrogen. That way you skip the annoying waiting ice to process.
Delivery missions are a great way to find other stations. As the mission is literally take blank to blank. Also you can buy data pads that have station locations coords on them from stations.
I start all my games on Titan because of the economy. Titan is the size of the moon and starts with a cluster of economy trade stations but also has an atmosphere like a planet.
That's probably why I haven't seen them lol. I've never really been to Titan
Mostly newb here: I'm actually planning on abusing the hell out of the economy system as soon as I build some decent transportation.
I wouldn't be surprised if each time someone's complained about the lack of quests or dynamic content in the game, a dev at Keen shakes their head and is disappointed with the ignorance of economy.
😓
Other comments mention this, but it is important to note. You can buy a multiple datapads from a station and each one will hate the coordinates of a random Trade station. There a button to take the coordinates printed on the datapad and make a new GPS marker.
Also the market and contracts refresh regularly, so if you leave and come back there will be some changes. Though certain stations have patterns in what they sell.
6:10 I think it would go a long way for immersion to include NPC text messages when in radar range, wouldn't be too costly in terms of dev I think, and would be a great addition. I always felt like this game lacks lore and overall doesn't talk to players enough (aside from goodbot which is really basic controls stuff). Maybe receiving a distress call with an actual message (that you could read from your HUD or even retrieve and display on a LCD panel with a script) would incentivize players to investigate planet surfaces and whatnot
With very little effort, Keen could add more to this. Like the datapad you start with, they could sprinkle information around and maybe offer more rewards. Like, you do a Search quest or retrieve something they lost and you get the location of a mineral deposit. This might be really helpful for players looking for that ONE resource that they can't seem to find any of.
You can also use hauling contracts to send your ship to new stations. Delivering a contract to a new station tells you where to put a new gps point for a station is. The reason some hauling contracts are more expensive is the distance/difficulty of landing reaching the station like at.
I like this feature cause it causes me to build specialised ships.
Dedicated jump ship
Corvette
Mobile repair
Etc
Without this id usually just make a all purpose mothership and that'll be it
On server NA2 there is a new player station built by a faction for those new to the server and game to get a leg up. Helps with the progression aspect on survival by giving them access to fully upgraded refineries and assemblers. It is also about twenty or thirty km from npc stations for trading.
One important thing to note is that gaining reputation with some npc factions can cause you to go “hostile” with others. The NPC factions show who they are friendly with via the factions tab.
Huh.. I just recently started playing SE, like about 2wks ago. I had no idea this was available to do in game! Very cool!
I'll have to check it out and see what I can find at that GPS coordinate on the initial datapad you get in the rescue pod.
I had no idea what to do with it. Good video! Thanks for this!
Have fun!
I dunno if this is just me, but literally every base I've ever made is within antenna range of faction bases with stores. Like before I understood how great this was I was annoyed at them clogging up my HUD lol.
I wish I was that lucky.
If you have economy enabled, your starter pod will have a data chip in the control seat, alt-f10 will also help you find a nearby station. The moons of the star system map also has stations in close proximity of each other. The furthest station I found from the Earth like planet is 43k kilometers.
Objection, Plushies come in those random drop pods everyone ignores.
I have used the economy station few times, does helps by getting the better tier tools and resources. would be challenging to only buy stuff from economy station to progress on.
there's something if there's mod for these function: like buy tech licence/s to unlock new blocks to build and buy extended limited blocks (example: thruster limit to 16 from start (4 up, 4 down, 2 left strife, 2 right strife, 2 front and 2 rear) to add additional 4/6 thrusters on any facing. wheels limited to 4 additional 2 more per purchase) also buying the land area to build the base or to mine resource otherwise reputation will cost you and possibility someone (npc) coming to destroy your new base and kill you. buy the entire planet what would be a hell a lot of credit to save up for :D
Would love to see if that challenge set up
I was going to say your should be able to buy research or blueprints for blocks but I kinda went on a long tangent about how progression needs to be reworked 😓
@@Zer0sLegion hey don't worry, people tend to forgot what to mention when already thought about it.
If this helps, write on the paper just key points what topic&features to talk about 🤘
I played this game for 800+ hours since launch, and have indeed used the economy features. A nice change of pace from the normal mining-refining-building loop.
The economy features definitely have their place. One useful use of them in the early game is to get a hold of thruster components / platinum (you can buy a ship and grind it down for those parts in a pinch, too) if you're having trouble finding a platinum deposit.
They're also a renewable source of resources (!) which doesn't matter that much in this game, but it *is* handy that you can "convert" raw stone into a variety of materials by trading at stations in a pinch if you need to make some fast modifications to a ship or something.
I’m so shocked a lot of people didn’t know about these xD I discovered these within an hour of returning to the game after playing it back in early alpha days. I used them extensively while re-learning the game (buying platinum on a planet before you can go to space is pretty useful, etc.) But that enthusiasm didn’t last long, as soon as I got used to the game again, I don’t think I’ve stepped into a station or had interest in going there to do quests :D
I play on official servers and the economy is super useful. It makes the game better.
I remember frequently searching for NPC stations but never finding them, I had no idea they were orbiting the moon. Thanks for making this video, I'll have to check this out.
There is a mod which integrates additional components, which lets you build better blocks (a better battery for example), three different tiers. These components are only available by trading. Thats makes that trading system valuable. (Mod is called "Tiered Tech Blocks")
Yo, that's actually a pretty smart way of doing it.
@@Zer0sLegion i beg of you put it on the server
@@iplaygames8090 no
@@Zer0sLegion fair enough
In vanilla game I don't use the economic system, however, with Industrial overhaul mod the trade stations gave you acces to resources that you wouldn't be able to get for a long time. Also, if you play on Agaris you will have more trade stations on the planet and they are easy to find thanks to the roads that leads to them.
You can play, without mining ore, i tried it. Its difficult, but managable. You get some resources from unknown signals or being a pirate. Or simply: buy ore from the station, produce parts and sell it or fullfill quests to the same station, you gain surplus ;)
I will buy an abundance of prefab throwaway ships or even some of the bigger ships like the B60 hauler because they are good enough, quick, modifiable, and you can just give one to a friend if you don’t feel like building them a ship and they need a ship for something
Fun fact, you get the coords to a trade station in your drop pod seat alongside your gun and ammunition, at least on earth you do. I have always used this feature, it's so integral to singleplayer play, or even co-op play. Me and my friends wouldn't be able to stay interested in the game at all if it weren't for econmoy.
Oops, well that's what I get for commenting mid-video.
If you want to open a store. You have to fill the vending machine with stuff. Cyanide made a giant potrait of himself and power the safe zone to forever.
I've been playing since multiplayer was added and I've only recently completed a build using timer blocks for something useful (auto closing doors). Idk how many people use timer blocks regularly but I'd be happy to see some easy, not complicated uses that I could put on any build :)
Oh yea that's been in the game but Space Engineer isn't like a Star Citzien type of game. It doesn't depend on a economy or any specfic game mechanic . The economy is just there if you and some friends want to use it. That's what I love about Keen's view of SE, they gave you the tools to play their game the way you want to.
Yeah, it's a lot of fun!
It would be neat if there were npc ships that occasionally fly by, and occasionally a fight might break out between them. It would be neat to watch two ships attack a small, defenseless one, and once the victim ship falls, hopping in a vehicle to go scrap parts from it. It would make the game feel more dynamic, and would be an actual reason to use weapons on ships.
One of my goals when making my Transition Drive mod was to improve the economy in some way. Sure, there's Zone Chips, but people generally don't even use them because the cost/benefit ratio is shit.
I basically made a jump drive that uses fuel. The fuel can only be found on select planets and it's difficult to mine. Trade stations have contracts for it, and they sometimes sell it, making deep space trade stations the only way of getting fuel without going to a planet.
Still, the mod is just a tiny nudge in the right direction. Players should spawn with all the NPC station coordinates already visible and the rewards for missions should be increased a lot, not to mention creating reasons to even want to go to an NPC station in the first place.
I *mostly* interact with the economy. I play solo on the official servers (I treat it like a big game of hide and seek). I tend to play in short intense bursts and then abandon it for a while, so it's nice to have enough credits to buy a ship to skip the very early game if my base hasn't survived in my absence. The kinds of things bought/sold at stations depend on the faction that runs it. The faction descriptions make it reasonably easy to guess if they sell ships, components or ores. Acquisition quests are pretty OP for making credits (as they have no timeouts and generally high value), but if you have an assembler or two and a mix of ingots you can make a similar amount of credits from selling components to stations. The shop and contract blocks reset every ~20 minutes. Things like the random cash hidden in beds also reset that often if you are in need of some spare change :)
When you start, if you are within a certain range of a station, you will have a datapad in your inventory containing its coordinates. In my experience all of the start pods except the space pod has a very good chance of starting within range of a station, but it might not be a very useful station. The moon is definitely the easiest place to find stations since you can easily jetpack around the whole moon in a short time and spot all of the orbital and planetary stations.
You can find other stations by buying datapads at stations, which contain station coords. All stations seem to have a chance of having some each restock. On a previous server reset, I had the info for every station in a database, thanks to an AHK script for exporting my GPS coords. However the AHK script doesn't work with the current UI and I haven't got around to fixing it.
You can also find stations from doing hauling missions. If you do a lot of missions for the same faction, you will eventually get such a high reputation with one faction that you will become unfriendly with their allies. This is annoying when you do hauling missions because you won't be able to make the delivery if the destination is controlled by an unfriendly faction (you will get "access denied" at the station doors and terminals"). One of the uses of my station database was to guess the faction of the station in a hauling mission before taking it, so I could tell if it was one of the factions I was friendly with. This is why selling components is the most sustainable way to make lots of credits since it doesn't affect your reputation and you can remain neutral with everyone (except pirates of course). It seems playing with reputation but maintaining near universal neutral/friendly status is an impossible juggling act.
I use these mechanics every time I play, though I’m exhausted of playing solo
Also these stations are impossible to find
Yeah, over an hour trying to find one for this video 😓
I used it all the time when it came out, those batteries and medpacks are very useful, and it’s a great way to get extra resources if you’re in need of quick repairs far away.
Always wished the shipping missions gave you a physical box to move instead of a package you can hold in your inventory
Yeah, that would be cool but it would mean that you'd have to change your ship in order to facilitate it.
@@Zer0sLegion Maybe it could be a different mission type, then.. Just seems like a missed oppritunity to have some space engineering in space engineers
I use the economy fairly regularly, and often point out that it's a great way for players who want to start with a bit more challenge than normal, to actually be able to start with almost nothing and actually survive without needing to build a scenario or a starter ship/base.
Doing the search missions is a quick way to earn enough credits/faction to buy starter (or even intermediate) ships with maybe 1 to 2 hours of effort. Trading components will net better returns if you're finding you have a lot of raw resources to process, but trade missions can pay out a LOT of credits if you have a ship able to get to you to the destination.
If you want to do an economy only style, try using the Aww Scrap mod (no components returned when grinding, just component scrap) so you'll only get a portion of the materials back as scrap, and only a portion of the resource back from the scrap lol
That combined with the advanced welding mod (allows you to disconnect blocks from the grid using a grinder, and reattach them using a "weld pad") gives the game a very different feel for SE :D
Using Aww Scrap is a pretty good idea, i'll give that a go
@@Zer0sLegion Yeah, it's been added to my "every game will probably use this" mod list
Coupled with the advanced welding mod, it really pushes you to detach and reattach equipment instead of just "melting it" for parts to reassemble if you're going for a "no mining" playthrough!
Good luck!
Sometimes I will start a new game in space with spawn ships turned off. This is very useful in those instances because you can buy hydrogen for your suit from the vending machines and your air is automatically restored entering the base. If you do a few search missions you'll scrape together enough to buy a small scout ship. It's alot of fun if you like the challenge of working with bare minimum resources.
I feel like it would be handier if they sold ammo in the stores, because that would be so much more handier than having to craft it all! And would also work well with the escort missions because you can refill what ammo you used to finish it.
Don't they sell ammo, I swear I found one that did...
@@Zer0sLegion They do, there are 3 types of station: Mining stations that sell ores and drills, trading stations that sell components/ammo/guns and welders/grinders and Builder stations that sell ships/rovers.
@@Zer0sLegion probably wouldve been good if i checked before i commented lol, although its probably telling that if we have a hard time remembering it might need some work
The faction that controls the station both determines the kind of goods they offer and the kind of contracts. For instance, a faction specializing in hauling probably won't offer any bounty hunting contracts. Finding as many stations that offer different services is important, in my opinion, because it can drastically improve acquisition of hard to get materials, like uranium. You can see an overview of the faction through the reputation tab in your i menu, which will give you an idea of what they specialize in.
Once the update came out for xbox I delved deep into it, turned the sandbox building crafting game it already was into a exploring and mission game added onto it all. I went into a different game mode of just using basically economy mechanics to get my stuff and ships. To a point. Starting out with simple beginnings as a solo start up company focused on mining. Unsurprisingly raw resources turned out to be valuable assets for many so my company went into weapon and defense research and development to maintain control of plots theyd paid for already and to safely transport and refine.
Hauling needs alot of cargo space, and fast acceleration and brakes. You're right about it being basically end game content if you'd like more stuff to do.
Acquisition is the best money maker. Gravity components and rare ores usually make great profit. Best yet they're not timed. Every other contract is timed or triggered, I think.
Search sounds easy, and sometimes it is, but for me, majority of the time it was down right not rewarding for the time spent. Better to get an easy and cheap Acquisition contract and mine or make extra for yourself.
Protection contracts... those are usually the most fun due to the action involved, but also for me the most preparation needed. They are and can be very serious tests of your skill and ship's agility, firepower, and armor. Put on relative dampeners to your client and I usually did a torsion circle around the client to reduce the relative difficulty.
Never tried simply locking onto the client and shielding him or wrapping him in armor and turrets walls.
All this was tested offline.
Edit ps: data pads are cheap af. I usually buy the full stack of data pads of first station that'll sell them. I originally thought they were notes for multi-player. These datapads give GPS coordinates to other stations. Very good for getting that one pesky shop that sells uranium ingots.
first thing I do everytime I start new is figure out where the nearest station is. they are a easy way to get uranium to power your reactors you just got to do some missions. when you spawn you always have data pad you just copy the nav data. then you can buy data pads that give you nav points to others. and trade missions will take you to others
Yes, I have used this. If you start without a ship or without any kind of survival kit, this is the best way to get a start. Possibly the only way to get started until you can build a Survival Kit.
Considering you can't craft without a survival kit, I would say it's very improtant!
The funny thing is Economy is on by default when creating a new world, but they are so far between that unless you do a LOT of exploring or use the data pad, the chances of actually seeing a station is very slim
I was kinda confused on how it worked when i first found it in the crafting menu, and tried building one on my own base and saw that nothing came up. I get now that you go to stations to pick up contracts and sell, and you build it on your own station to create contracts (not sure) and buy. Neat!