You missed the most obvious con of using gravity drives: if your ship takes enough damage to shift the center of gravity, you have *ZERO* hope of preventing it from pinwheeling unless you turn them all off, which means you can't control it anyways. (It could make for a hilarious video, though!)
been using grav drives for a long time, the loss of parts of the grid will affect the controls slightly,at most.and that can be corrected while u fly back to base for repairs.
Set one of your gyros to overide for correcting after center of gravity gets messed up. I always keep one on standby for that reason, that and also I don't bother with center of gravity on design step XD
@@Lucifer_Nihilum grav drives are excellent for side strafing in a fight, though it really requires a script to shift mass between containers to maintain center of gravity.
Man, now I wanna do a gravity battering ram. Just imagine that you've spent hours on a pvp server building an impenetrable star fortress before some chucklefuck plows straight through the defenses, since the "engine" only really needs a single battery to work. Bonus points if there's remote access to a warhead embedded into the ship lol
@@Zer0sLegion then add in a warhead further back in the missile with a sensor activated detonator... once penetration is achieved BOOM! gut the target inside out.
Any veteran of Space engineers knows of the gravity drive. I still use them in all my larger ships and relegate thrusters to control the drift. You do have to somewhat design your ship around them but it's very useful if you can map your movement keys to the toggle groups for different grav generator arrays. It's also good to limit the size of the gravity volume so you don't end up with wonky gravity. I've seen some programmable blocks that activate different groups of grav gens for pitch, roll, and yaw as well. Grav drives also scale by volume so the larger your ship is the faster it can go. Using gravity catapults for fighters and drop pods is also a common thing I use on my carriers. As well as the infamous "railgun" which is just a rock or small mass block attached to a bunch of hanger doors ( sometimes warheads and gyroscopes as well) and fired out of a stack of gravity generators.
I made a ship years ago that only used gravity drives that accelerated at 106m/s². Literally by the time you fully depressed a directional key you were at vanilla top speed.
I use gravity drives on my kinetic ballistic missiles. The ramming power is insane. Add multiple stacked spin-blocks to the missile's front and you have a giant space drill with massive force and the ability to grind holes through ships.
I remember years ago back when Creative was big, using gravity driven torpedos with a container full of 50k stones in the front. The rocks would force each other apart and shred everything and the target's gravity gens would crush them down from ceiling down through the floor. Or crash the server with similar loads of explosive. Or, once you've already started doing evil things, release the Space Virus! which self-replicated and spread out, self-replicating again and again until the server crashed. Ahh those were the days
I am glad to see that someone is touching base on something that I called a mass gravity driver design a long time ago. To be honest, I don't think that I have seen anyone go into much detail about it sense I started playing the game when it was still very fresh years ago. Being a veteran to using the Gravity Engine, as you called them, be in mind that any large ship that you put them into, you will need to come back to them and recalibrate so that it does not drift from the center when you engage them. That is because when they add a big update the ships balance gets thrown off from changes the developers made. Another point that was kind of not correct is atmosphere worlds. You are correct that the engine will not work if the gravity is at 100%, or 1G. I will point this out here, you can have them working to move your ship as soon as the gravity from a planet gets to about .5 or less. This would be a helpful tip for anyone that wants to fly off a planet using less hydrogen. The last thing that I would like to note on here, is the total mass of the object and the number of gravity engines will affect the overall acceleration and the top speed that ships can go. One major drawback that was not mentioned about this engine, it is how it will snap pistons and rotor pieces. Landing gear or merge blocks can lock things in place to prevent this from being a problem, but it makes the ship much larger and bulky in some places. I thought about posting a link to something I made back in 2014 from my steam workshop, but it is really old and there was not atmosphere or planets at the time when I made it. I also don't want to take away from Zer0 here from putting together a very informative video about something that I really enjoy building on this game. Good work Zer0, I enjoyed this video. My steam GT is DireStragerd. I also play this on xbox one. GT for that is Stragerd. I don't mind talking to you about anything else or showing you what I did put together a long time ago. I don't mind loading up an old design and go over how I would recalibrate the gravity engine for flying straight or making it to where it can enter orbit on planets.
Artificial Mass Drives use to be vary common on ships before the Jump Drive came out back in mid 2015. Though I still use them in my larger warships as an emergency get away.
@@Zer0sLegion You can put Gravity generators facing other directions and set them very low to reduce drift. But it'll occur no matter what if you have a docked ship, an attached rotor; hinge etc, or if you have battle damage. For me it's an emergency drive, as long as it's pushing me forward-ish it doesn't matter.
@@TheNoobYouHATE I still use them in all my larger ships and relegate thrusters to control the drift. You do have to somewhat design your ship around them but it's very useful if you can map your movement keys to the toggle groups for different grav generator arrays. It's also good to limit the size of the gravity volume. I've seen some programmable blocks that activate different groups of grav gens for pitch, roll, and yaw as well. Grav drives also scale by volume so the larger your ship is the faster it can go.
@@inventor121 Ya know... I once made an Ork ship that I named _Snatch Graba_ It had little Mass Drives scattered all around it. It was a nightmare *with* thruster overrides to keep on target. It most devastating weapon was triggering my friend's OCD. (Which is exactly what I wanted)
I used gravity drives on my little mining ship in a server a while back. Ions only for precise movement, but the gravity drives got me from place to place So efficient... And oddly elegant too My center of mess was slightly misaligned though, if I were to build it again I could do better
With some trial-and-error, I found this possible with ships which are asymmetrical, but it requires quite a bit of care not to radically imbalance the craft. I modified an asymmetrical, 100m ship I am making, and aside from a very slight force pulling the bow downwards going forward, and upwards going in reverse, it works very well and the movement disappears as soon as you hit maximum speed and shut off the drives. I think people just need to build up some confidence in themselves. I now have two vessels equipped with forwards and reverse grav-drives, and I'm about to try to get one that can grav-strafe as well for a fast, destroyer-type ship.
This is actually very helpful and insightful. I have a very massive dreadnought that has a very hard time breaking with it only losing a meter per second every second meaning stopping at 60 meters per second takes a whole minute. This seems very helpful in quickly bringing the ship to a stop or burning away a majority of the speed. I don’t really want to add more breaking thrust though as it’d kinda ruin the look of the ship.
2:34 TIP: The thrust of your Grav Drive should = number of mass blocks *x* weight of single mass block *x* Sum of all *g* (from all grav generators) You can always compare your *Grav Drive's thrust* to *actual* thrusters (which give you their thrust if you set them on override) - *save yourself the time testing all this*
Seems super handy for fast maneuvers. Attach the gravity gens to a rotor so you can "jump" up to avoid a railgun barrage. (Or fix center of mass drift) Or use one front and another on the back to do the same move, invert one drive, and quickly rotate yourself.
If you want to lose the thrusters entirely there are scripts that will control a multi-directional gravity drive to let you thrust in all directions at a ridiculous speed using the standard movement keys rather than hotbar buttons. I would still recommend some thrusters onboard though because trying to dock to a connector when your minimum acceleration is 100m/s per second is not gonna end well
I've been playing SE since it became available on Steam, I've always used Grav-Thrusters, it's more energy efficient, faster acceleration, and can allow for extreme maneuverability.
Grav drives certainly work quite well as a primary drive supported by maneuvering thrusters, which can be quite useful on ships in the cruiser grade and above range seeking to have good acceleration and long distance travel capabilities separate from their jump drive, especially useful when the max speed is upped. They do, however, present some potential weaknesses regarding the systems ability to function effectively through damage, especially compared to a dispersed array of self sufficient thrusters, and the expense and typical necessity to place it in prime ship internals real estate where you might otherwise place fuel, power gen, or magazine space. All in all, it's a useful tool to remember, but one with tradeoffs to keep in mind.
Ah yes, gravity drives. My favorite method of ship locomotion. My favorite use was sticking gravity gens inside hangers and fitting my drones or fighters in MP with mass blocks and maneuvering thrusters, we always had to have the learning curve of using dampeners off, but in return we could launch fighters fast when pirates came, have them at max speed immediately and when time to come back in we set up a gravity trap with a generator on a rotor, so the fighter returns never having to slow down and is stopped by the same generator to launch it; for added bonus, lining the launch bay with generators made launch and retrieval incredibly stable and you just raise the generator on the rotor to lock it in on all directions
If we really wanted to get complicated, set up generators top and bottom, and we could go without needing any kind of energy wastage in lifting the ship ready for launch... Eventually it got to the point we just had the launch bay be under a platform with a piston lift... It works like 60% of the time... If we kept the base ship stationary.
Was it over engineered? Yes... Was it and absolute pain to make in survival? Yes... did fighters end up incredibly flat and wide? Actually nope, we kinda made them like needles so we could fit them in a tube... Did we have to go through way too many copies in creative to get the timer blocks perfect? Oh yeah... Was it unbelievably fun to get that lowering into a launch tube effect? Hell yes! Did we ever fire a fighter from this catapult with a warhead just cause? Yup.
Interesting idea. Large ship design using a large container filled for maximum weight(or adjusted for task). Make it a subgrid with connectors on each and tores for buffers and disconnect it to use its momentum against the ship which has it trapped. Put the container on rail and you can adjust your center of gravity/thrust vector.
Two notes from my extensive use of grav drives. If the grav drive isnt perfect with the center of mass just make sure you have enough gyroscopes to keep the ship straight while you accelerate. on very large ships especially with cargo weight changing getting it perfect is impossible. Just make sure your ship has enough gyro control to hold it straight. Second, the further you put the grav drive in FRONT of the center of mass the more it pulls the ship forward and the less its trying to spin you. I have one large ship where the grav drive is 5 blocks below the center of mass but its 38 blocks ahead of it so it is not hard to fight it with gyros and still very effective since you only need the grav drive for a few seconds to accelerate, then power it down and coast 🚀🚀
There’s actually an more effective alternative Drive to use, the Clang Drive. It uses less energy and works perfectly no matter the Gravity and it’s only slightly bigger. It needs a Piston that’s pushing a an Interior Pillar in the Underside of an Normal Door(just slightly), the Stronger The Piston pushed the Faster/Stronger the Ship/Rocket(even a Rover if your Crazy enough) will accelerate. It even work in Small Grid with an Rotor pushing an 1x1 Wheel in an Door using the Offset function. It has to be aligned with the Center of Mass like a Gravity Drive and the Underside of the Door indicates the direction of the Pushing Force.
ive been doing this for years on giant ships to get to top speed quickly. you can adjust the gravity range and put like 30 gravity generators and 30 artificial weights in a stick formation and run it through the center of the ship. you can also hotkey adjusting the gravity they produce to create a reverse thrust. center of mass is difficult to balance but it makes you have the fastest acceleration for little power. on the practicality side the possibilities are endless. rapid escape pod ejection, flinging decoys in front of your ship before an attack to avoid first strike, my favorite is gravity missiles, cant aim worth shit but great for static targets
Wanted to build a ship that used the mass drive as a weapon by making it spin rapidly after boosting towards a target since at the time high speed collisions didn't always register on the faster craft and using blast doors as a buffer. Prototype was a nightmare to drive and spinning was hard to stop after watching the universe pass you by for the hundredth time
i think another problem could arise with combat, if you get one side of your ship destroyed then it won’t be symmetrical. i think a setup of gravity things and ion thrusters where you use gravity to accelerate and ions to keep yourself going might help
i use this in combination with Defense Shields to make what i call a "Battering Bubble." i also use them if i am taking a lot of damage and i need to make sure i can ram a target to do some damage.
There is a practical purpose, one that I think you showed off in another video. A gravity tube. You can use mass blocks on a small ship and have it be launched out the ship through a gravity tube, similar to Battlestar Galactica.
This should be named the Münchausen-Drive. After all, the ship literally pulls itself forward, just like how Münchausen pulled himself out of a swamp 😂
I love it... Used it to build missiles on my modded servers. A heavy armored head with a seperated part loaded with one or multiple (depending on the version, Scarce Ressources is a pain when waging eternal war with 30+ ppl in surviva😅l) Warheads and gravity drive. Enemy missile defense was mostly unable to bring them down (speed) and most capital ships and stations tend to use artificial gravitiy, so after the timed shutdown of the gravity generators it would just find it's target. The heavy armor head punched a hole and after that the warheads set off... Hit rate for my beloved Mjolner Mk. IV (with 4-6 Warheads, for economic reasons) was slightly more than 30%, but I saw whole battleships ripped by a single hit. Biggest advantage was still the speed though... If you're lucky, you could fire from 20km and still hit (not likely, but in theory absolutely possible). Working on some scripts and concepts for an even more advanced missile of doom
2 years late but you could use it to make an electric ship capable of operating in both atmospheres and in space, simply by using the gravity drive to escape the planet
The best use I've seen is launch tubes for small fightercraft (think Battlestars). Morph created a tutorial using gravity gens to align and accelerate as small block craft, that craft utilizing toggle mass blocks
That’s always been one of the cool uses for grav gens from my perspective, it allows either the sci fi equivalent of a carrier catapult or the rapid ejection of things like escape pods or even internally stored missiles if the mood strikes you
ive seen grav gens on stations and you just put 1 mass block on ships, this way you arent lugging all that weight around and once you get up to speed you dont need them anymore
Ahhh ye olde grav drive. Wanna learn a fun trick, put those mass blocks AROUND the spherical gravity generator and turn all the blocks off except the ones pointed in the direction you want to go. 3-dimentional grav thrust.
The first time I tried to make a Gravity powered ship... I spent a few hours building it, was really proud of what I had made and then the moment I placed the PU on, it shot away from me at top speed, never to be seen again. It's funny now, but I was so annoyed at the time!!
I think grav drives with speed cap removed would be a very cool alternative to warp drive, just get up to super speed, travel halfway across the system. Uses less power but far riskier, as you probably wouldnt be able to avoid asteroids very easily
@@Zer0sLegion I completely forgot about that, I guess at that point the only thing stopping you would be calculating your stop speed or your pc catching fire
@@HerobrinesPizzaGuy I've never seen Space Engineers crash since I've been playing it but I once went so fast the game just stopped. It didn't freeze, it just stopped. I could pause and up pause but couldn't do anything in the world.
I wouldn't surprise if one day a guy build a ship with gravity drive as thruster and jump without jump drive but only use some sort of gravity drive mechanism and physic
I suppose a lot depends on what your most constraining resource is. Large Ion Thrusters are only 15 PCU. 1 Aritifical Mass Block + 1 Gravity Generator is 210 PCU. Ion Thrusters also work in relatively low-gravity enviornments, like the moon, so there are definitely advantages and disadvantages to both.
I was wondering if you can use gravity generators on another ship, like an interdictpr type weapon or something like the jump ships that lock on to another ship's hull and jump it away. If it works, I am imagining some sort of remote control ship, or massive dreadnaught that has rows and rows of gravity generators oriented so that when it gets close enough, the gravity pushes or pulls the enemy vessel in an unpredictable manner. Thoughts on feasibility?
The scary thing with gravity drives is that they actually work irl. There is proper science and math behind using tech to deform spacetime around a ship to create a spacetime slingshot. Gravity drives do require exotic matter (which we dont have any of yet), but the science is there. Space Engineers devs regard the G-Drives as a bug, but they are more real than most things. Gravity generators supposedly work by using exotic matter to shape spacetime, so artificial gravity, gravity drives, gravity cannons and gravity shields would work in a world with exotic matter and G-Drives.
@@Zer0sLegion The thing is that with irl Grav Drives they would affect the entire ship (there is no such thing as a "grid" to follow), although they would still work differently. SE Grav drives work by creating a "gravity well" in spacetime, thus making the ship "fall" forward. Irl Grav Drives work by creating a spacetime "wave", then releasing that wave through the ship, catapulting it forward, as if surfing on spacetime itself. This works in theory by having exotic matter react with antimatter as a primer, then reacting with the dark energy and dark matter filling out the void of space, again thus catapulting the ship forward. So they work differently, but they still work, if exotic matter exists.
(all done with removed speed cap because it's cringe) Damn, I remember how good it felt when my friend placed his cool ship and I made a ship that shoots grav drive torpedos and proceded to destroy him from 12 km of range. At some point we progressed to moving gravity drive torpedos with huge gravity gen clusters for deflection, this progressed to making torpedoes that switch off the power on the grav gen. Since the latter opened the world of Space engineers coding, we moved to seeker torpedoes in a crazy arms race
@@Zer0sLegion Anyway thanks for video. Ive got one small question tho. Does it still work? And how about when you have cargo on ship, do cargo containers put center off mass to the side or something like that?
I've had the idea floating around for a while to use a sort of gyroscope to move the mass block in the direction I need to move and a second set in the nose or back to steer but I'm much to lazy to do that.
I've haven't done anything in SE yet, but could you use these as booby traps inside a space station? Mount one behind a wall/floor/ceiling section that's technically not part of the station (probably some building trick could be used to accomplish that) with a sensor nearby. Enemy walks past the sensor, grav gen activates and cue the Wiley Coyote & Road Runner sound effects.
So yeah ive done this before With 12k grav blocks I got an acceleration of 0 to mach 24.5 (8.5km/s) in 71 milliseconds The most i've fit into a space like that was about 50k drives held together with only mass blocks, couldn't turn it on, instantly bricked my pc, you want 2 gravs for every 1 mass block
I mean, you could build an upward facing grav drive and achieve neutral buoyancy on a planet. Then you can use thrusters or more grav gens to move horizontally.
Space Balls dont need power. Place a blastdoor block and attach a spaceball. Move into the influence of the gravity field. It will penetrate deep into whatever it hits.
There is also an optimal number of mass blocks and gravity gens that gives you the best acceleration, depending on how much PCU you want to put into the grav drive and the weight of your ship Without doing any math, having about 4 or 5 times more mass blocks than generators shouldnt get you too far from that optimal combination
From my testing, adding more gravity gens or mass blocks had exactly the same impact on acceleration. Mass blocks are cheaper resource wise and I'd assume they have less PCU so I'd assume you'd be right. HOWEVER, mass blocks seems to create a lot more lag the more of them I placed compared to gravity gens. I'd assume this is because there's more physics updates, more mass blocks would mean more things that needed to be pushed...
@@Zer0sLegion A gdrive with 1 gen and 10 masses will perform allmost the same as 10 gens and 1 masses, but first one is 375 PCU and the second is 1275 PCU The explanation behind what I said is that for X max ammount of PCU you want to use, you can put more mass blocks than gens, as mass blocks are 25 PCU, gens are 5 times that at 125 PCU Thats basically why the fastest gdrives have a lot more mass blocks than gens (Yes I do have a life)
I do something similar, but I prefer to go with 2 to 3 for every grave generator. This helps me to rebalance the ship later after a few updates. What was flying straight before, it will start to drift after a while.
I downloaded once a Ship, several Years ago, who haad Gravity Engine. with my Thrusters and it realy had insane much Thrusters, i had like 1 minute to reach full speed. very big ship. almost couldent handle Atmosphere, with Gravity Engine it took 3 seconds to full speed ^^
Grav drives are the best, after all, everything else leaves your craft with structural weakpoints better spent on thicker armor and more mass to spear the enemy with.
@@Zer0sLegion I tried making a gravity cannon, but using a ton of gravity generators on the ship and an artificial mass on the projectile, I mean it kinda worked okish... but nowhere near the speed you were flying at here... I never could get it to work as I wanted. Never occurred to me to put the gravity generator on the projectile itself. I'ma have to try this out now :P
Thats cool i will ad to my Space Game Gravity Drive. I am making a Game like Space Engineers but it was gonna be more Focused on Fighting Aliens. Gravity Drive is Interesting next Tech Tier should be quantum gravity drive. Then Latest Tier should be Mini Black Hole for Solar System Sized Ships.
I wonder. Would it theoretically be possible to utilize this to make a ship that requires no ion and hydrogon thrusters. Say. Have a mass block with a gravity generator on all six sides, turning them on depending on which direction the player wants to move the ship.
@@Zer0sLegion Never tried it due to self imposed size constrictions, since 4 or 5 blocks had a tendency to yaw. At that time I came across the cruise missile script and changed builds :)
@@Zer0sLegion One other feature you can build in is reverse generators that decelerate faster than thrusters as well, just pair it with the forward generators and switch the on/off.
Only two Star Wars quotes this time, SLACKING! What are you guy's favourite Star Wars quotes, let me know!
There are four lights.
@@copter2000 Ah yes, a person of culture I see
"Another happy landing !"
@@Baguette-pd8cy Waiting to use this one at some point.
@@Zer0sLegion Han Solo: Ever heard of the Millennium Falcon its the ship that made the castle run in 12 Parsec.
You missed the most obvious con of using gravity drives: if your ship takes enough damage to shift the center of gravity, you have *ZERO* hope of preventing it from pinwheeling unless you turn them all off, which means you can't control it anyways. (It could make for a hilarious video, though!)
Well, if you use a sub-grid that weakness is completely negated.
And Gravity Drives are almost entirely suited for travel rather than PvP anyway.
been using grav drives for a long time, the loss of parts of the grid will affect the controls slightly,at most.and that can be corrected while u fly back to base for repairs.
You could have both and have a button to turn on the gravity drive just to accelerate to max speed for minimal energy usage.
Set one of your gyros to overide for correcting after center of gravity gets messed up. I always keep one on standby for that reason, that and also I don't bother with center of gravity on design step XD
@@Lucifer_Nihilum grav drives are excellent for side strafing in a fight, though it really requires a script to shift mass between containers to maintain center of gravity.
I knew about grav gens, but i didn't realise just how powerful they were
It surprised me as well, I didn't realise they were quite that effective.
We used to call them "jump drives" before those got added
@@Zer0sLegion I’ve known about this for a few years now didn’t actually take the centre of mass into account tho
I thought that developers nerfed gravity "drive" years ago.
Man, now I wanna do a gravity battering ram.
Just imagine that you've spent hours on a pvp server building an impenetrable star fortress before some chucklefuck plows straight through the defenses, since the "engine" only really needs a single battery to work.
Bonus points if there's remote access to a warhead embedded into the ship lol
I've found drills work best to ram with, I went through 16 blocks of heavy armour with one on the tip of my ship.
@@Zer0sLegion then add in a warhead further back in the missile with a sensor activated detonator... once penetration is achieved BOOM! gut the target inside out.
@@robinhood5627 thermonuclear warhead from nuke mod
No energy needed if you use space balls in lieu of art mass.
@@Zer0sLegion builders + gravity gen missles is a fun one for long range engagement
Any veteran of Space engineers knows of the gravity drive. I still use them in all my larger ships and relegate thrusters to control the drift. You do have to somewhat design your ship around them but it's very useful if you can map your movement keys to the toggle groups for different grav generator arrays. It's also good to limit the size of the gravity volume so you don't end up with wonky gravity. I've seen some programmable blocks that activate different groups of grav gens for pitch, roll, and yaw as well. Grav drives also scale by volume so the larger your ship is the faster it can go.
Using gravity catapults for fighters and drop pods is also a common thing I use on my carriers. As well as the infamous "railgun" which is just a rock or small mass block attached to a bunch of hanger doors ( sometimes warheads and gyroscopes as well) and fired out of a stack of gravity generators.
I made a ship years ago that only used gravity drives that accelerated at 106m/s². Literally by the time you fully depressed a directional key you were at vanilla top speed.
It's crazy how effective it is, I've been testing stuff for the next video and I was able to get to 15,000m/s instantly.
@@Zer0sLegion check out jump gates. I have several designs. It's like an external gravity drive that also works on small grids.
@@korvatusklok4059 might already have a video coming out soon with that in it 😋
I use gravity drives on my kinetic ballistic missiles. The ramming power is insane. Add multiple stacked spin-blocks to the missile's front and you have a giant space drill with massive force and the ability to grind holes through ships.
Speaking of drills, they're the best tips for your weapons. Drills have very high HP and are 72% resistant to explosions and don't deform.
I remember years ago back when Creative was big, using gravity driven torpedos with a container full of 50k stones in the front. The rocks would force each other apart and shred everything and the target's gravity gens would crush them down from ceiling down through the floor. Or crash the server with similar loads of explosive. Or, once you've already started doing evil things, release the Space Virus! which self-replicated and spread out, self-replicating again and again until the server crashed.
Ahh those were the days
1:25 "I'll try spinning thats a good trick"
I am glad to see that someone is touching base on something that I called a mass gravity driver design a long time ago. To be honest, I don't think that I have seen anyone go into much detail about it sense I started playing the game when it was still very fresh years ago.
Being a veteran to using the Gravity Engine, as you called them, be in mind that any large ship that you put them into, you will need to come back to them and recalibrate so that it does not drift from the center when you engage them. That is because when they add a big update the ships balance gets thrown off from changes the developers made.
Another point that was kind of not correct is atmosphere worlds. You are correct that the engine will not work if the gravity is at 100%, or 1G. I will point this out here, you can have them working to move your ship as soon as the gravity from a planet gets to about .5 or less. This would be a helpful tip for anyone that wants to fly off a planet using less hydrogen.
The last thing that I would like to note on here, is the total mass of the object and the number of gravity engines will affect the overall acceleration and the top speed that ships can go.
One major drawback that was not mentioned about this engine, it is how it will snap pistons and rotor pieces. Landing gear or merge blocks can lock things in place to prevent this from being a problem, but it makes the ship much larger and bulky in some places.
I thought about posting a link to something I made back in 2014 from my steam workshop, but it is really old and there was not atmosphere or planets at the time when I made it. I also don't want to take away from Zer0 here from putting together a very informative video about something that I really enjoy building on this game.
Good work Zer0, I enjoyed this video.
My steam GT is DireStragerd. I also play this on xbox one. GT for that is Stragerd.
I don't mind talking to you about anything else or showing you what I did put together a long time ago. I don't mind loading up an old design and go over how I would recalibrate the gravity engine for flying straight or making it to where it can enter orbit on planets.
Artificial Mass Drives use to be vary common on ships before the Jump Drive came out back in mid 2015.
Though I still use them in my larger warships as an emergency get away.
I'd like to build a ship that uses one but I also don't want to spend all the time making sure the mass is balanced
@@Zer0sLegion You can put Gravity generators facing other directions and set them very low to reduce drift.
But it'll occur no matter what if you have a docked ship, an attached rotor; hinge etc, or if you have battle damage.
For me it's an emergency drive, as long as it's pushing me forward-ish it doesn't matter.
@@TheNoobYouHATE you could probably use gyro override to cancel it out as well.
@@TheNoobYouHATE I still use them in all my larger ships and relegate thrusters to control the drift. You do have to somewhat design your ship around them but it's very useful if you can map your movement keys to the toggle groups for different grav generator arrays. It's also good to limit the size of the gravity volume. I've seen some programmable blocks that activate different groups of grav gens for pitch, roll, and yaw as well. Grav drives also scale by volume so the larger your ship is the faster it can go.
@@inventor121 Ya know...
I once made an Ork ship that I named _Snatch Graba_
It had little Mass Drives scattered all around it.
It was a nightmare *with* thruster overrides to keep on target.
It most devastating weapon was triggering my friend's OCD. (Which is exactly what I wanted)
I used gravity drives on my little mining ship in a server a while back.
Ions only for precise movement, but the gravity drives got me from place to place
So efficient... And oddly elegant too
My center of mess was slightly misaligned though, if I were to build it again I could do better
With some trial-and-error, I found this possible with ships which are asymmetrical, but it requires quite a bit of care not to radically imbalance the craft.
I modified an asymmetrical, 100m ship I am making, and aside from a very slight force pulling the bow downwards going forward, and upwards going in reverse, it works very well and the movement disappears as soon as you hit maximum speed and shut off the drives.
I think people just need to build up some confidence in themselves. I now have two vessels equipped with forwards and reverse grav-drives, and I'm about to try to get one that can grav-strafe as well for a fast, destroyer-type ship.
This is literally troll physics
This is actually very helpful and insightful. I have a very massive dreadnought that has a very hard time breaking with it only losing a meter per second every second meaning stopping at 60 meters per second takes a whole minute. This seems very helpful in quickly bringing the ship to a stop or burning away a majority of the speed. I don’t really want to add more breaking thrust though as it’d kinda ruin the look of the ship.
Who needs braking thrust, I just hit astroids to slow down!
2:34 TIP: The thrust of your Grav Drive should = number of mass blocks *x* weight of single mass block *x* Sum of all *g* (from all grav generators)
You can always compare your *Grav Drive's thrust* to *actual* thrusters (which give you their thrust if you set them on override) - *save yourself the time testing all this*
If I didn't test it, there wouldn't be a video
@@Zer0sLegion It would be a shorter video yes. Would that be bad? I'd still watch it :)
shouldn't you also multiply this with g=9.81, since g is just the constent of gravity on earth?
@@Ramog1000 9.81 would be more accurate
Seems super handy for fast maneuvers.
Attach the gravity gens to a rotor so you can "jump" up to avoid a railgun barrage. (Or fix center of mass drift)
Or use one front and another on the back to do the same move, invert one drive, and quickly rotate yourself.
If you want to lose the thrusters entirely there are scripts that will control a multi-directional gravity drive to let you thrust in all directions at a ridiculous speed using the standard movement keys rather than hotbar buttons. I would still recommend some thrusters onboard though because trying to dock to a connector when your minimum acceleration is 100m/s per second is not gonna end well
I've seen the scripts, it just feels like cheating (more than it does already 😜)
@@Zer0sLegion Fair enough lol
I've been playing SE since it became available on Steam, I've always used Grav-Thrusters, it's more energy efficient, faster acceleration, and can allow for extreme maneuverability.
5:13 Thats the only reason I clicked on the video.
Grav drives certainly work quite well as a primary drive supported by maneuvering thrusters, which can be quite useful on ships in the cruiser grade and above range seeking to have good acceleration and long distance travel capabilities separate from their jump drive, especially useful when the max speed is upped. They do, however, present some potential weaknesses regarding the systems ability to function effectively through damage, especially compared to a dispersed array of self sufficient thrusters, and the expense and typical necessity to place it in prime ship internals real estate where you might otherwise place fuel, power gen, or magazine space. All in all, it's a useful tool to remember, but one with tradeoffs to keep in mind.
Ah yes, gravity drives. My favorite method of ship locomotion. My favorite use was sticking gravity gens inside hangers and fitting my drones or fighters in MP with mass blocks and maneuvering thrusters, we always had to have the learning curve of using dampeners off, but in return we could launch fighters fast when pirates came, have them at max speed immediately and when time to come back in we set up a gravity trap with a generator on a rotor, so the fighter returns never having to slow down and is stopped by the same generator to launch it; for added bonus, lining the launch bay with generators made launch and retrieval incredibly stable and you just raise the generator on the rotor to lock it in on all directions
If we really wanted to get complicated, set up generators top and bottom, and we could go without needing any kind of energy wastage in lifting the ship ready for launch... Eventually it got to the point we just had the launch bay be under a platform with a piston lift... It works like 60% of the time... If we kept the base ship stationary.
Was it over engineered? Yes... Was it and absolute pain to make in survival? Yes... did fighters end up incredibly flat and wide? Actually nope, we kinda made them like needles so we could fit them in a tube... Did we have to go through way too many copies in creative to get the timer blocks perfect? Oh yeah... Was it unbelievably fun to get that lowering into a launch tube effect? Hell yes! Did we ever fire a fighter from this catapult with a warhead just cause? Yup.
Humans are starting to understand gravity drives through a game before they even created the technology. What a time to be alive.
Interesting idea. Large ship design using a large container filled for maximum weight(or adjusted for task). Make it a subgrid with connectors on each and tores for buffers and disconnect it to use its momentum against the ship which has it trapped. Put the container on rail and you can adjust your center of gravity/thrust vector.
Two notes from my extensive use of grav drives. If the grav drive isnt perfect with the center of mass just make sure you have enough gyroscopes to keep the ship straight while you accelerate. on very large ships especially with cargo weight changing getting it perfect is impossible. Just make sure your ship has enough gyro control to hold it straight. Second, the further you put the grav drive in FRONT of the center of mass the more it pulls the ship forward and the less its trying to spin you. I have one large ship where the grav drive is 5 blocks below the center of mass but its 38 blocks ahead of it so it is not hard to fight it with gyros and still very effective since you only need the grav drive for a few seconds to accelerate, then power it down and coast 🚀🚀
Good advice, I'll keep that in mind for next time
There’s actually an more effective alternative Drive to use, the Clang Drive.
It uses less energy and works perfectly no matter the Gravity and it’s only slightly bigger.
It needs a Piston that’s pushing a an Interior Pillar in the Underside of an Normal Door(just slightly), the Stronger The Piston pushed the Faster/Stronger the Ship/Rocket(even a Rover if your Crazy enough) will accelerate.
It even work in Small Grid with an Rotor pushing an 1x1 Wheel in an Door using the Offset function.
It has to be aligned with the Center of Mass like a Gravity Drive and the Underside of the Door indicates the direction of the Pushing Force.
Live long and prosper is my fave star wars quote.
A person of a culture I see
ive been doing this for years on giant ships to get to top speed quickly. you can adjust the gravity range and put like 30 gravity generators and 30 artificial weights in a stick formation and run it through the center of the ship. you can also hotkey adjusting the gravity they produce to create a reverse thrust. center of mass is difficult to balance but it makes you have the fastest acceleration for little power. on the practicality side the possibilities are endless. rapid escape pod ejection, flinging decoys in front of your ship before an attack to avoid first strike, my favorite is gravity missiles, cant aim worth shit but great for static targets
There is a type of person this game is made for. I don't think I'm that person, but it is cool.
Wanted to build a ship that used the mass drive as a weapon by making it spin rapidly after boosting towards a target since at the time high speed collisions didn't always register on the faster craft and using blast doors as a buffer. Prototype was a nightmare to drive and spinning was hard to stop after watching the universe pass you by for the hundredth time
On other uses, I do love making some gravity missiles just for the fun of it. Just the generator, a battery, the mass block and a warhead
i think another problem could arise with combat, if you get one side of your ship destroyed then it won’t be symmetrical. i think a setup of gravity things and ion thrusters where you use gravity to accelerate and ions to keep yourself going might help
i use this in combination with Defense Shields to make what i call a "Battering Bubble."
i also use them if i am taking a lot of damage and i need to make sure i can ram a target to do some damage.
It’s not a bug, it’s a feature ( I think this is the only time where this saying is actually true)
There is a practical purpose, one that I think you showed off in another video. A gravity tube. You can use mass blocks on a small ship and have it be launched out the ship through a gravity tube, similar to Battlestar Galactica.
This should be named the Münchausen-Drive.
After all, the ship literally pulls itself forward, just like how Münchausen pulled himself out of a swamp 😂
I love it... Used it to build missiles on my modded servers.
A heavy armored head with a seperated part loaded with one or multiple (depending on the version, Scarce Ressources is a pain when waging eternal war with 30+ ppl in surviva😅l) Warheads and gravity drive.
Enemy missile defense was mostly unable to bring them down (speed) and most capital ships and stations tend to use artificial gravitiy, so after the timed shutdown of the gravity generators it would just find it's target.
The heavy armor head punched a hole and after that the warheads set off... Hit rate for my beloved Mjolner Mk. IV (with 4-6 Warheads, for economic reasons) was slightly more than 30%, but I saw whole battleships ripped by a single hit.
Biggest advantage was still the speed though... If you're lucky, you could fire from 20km and still hit (not likely, but in theory absolutely possible). Working on some scripts and concepts for an even more advanced missile of doom
Good for unguided missile that punctures then detonate doing maximum internal damage
“While spinning is a good trick” 😂😂😂
You like big explosions and big speed? Wait until you find out about the Orion Drive.
Onion Drives made me cry
2 years late but you could use it to make an electric ship capable of operating in both atmospheres and in space, simply by using the gravity drive to escape the planet
The best use I've seen is launch tubes for small fightercraft (think Battlestars). Morph created a tutorial using gravity gens to align and accelerate as small block craft, that craft utilizing toggle mass blocks
Sounds cool
That’s always been one of the cool uses for grav gens from my perspective, it allows either the sci fi equivalent of a carrier catapult or the rapid ejection of things like escape pods or even internally stored missiles if the mood strikes you
ive seen grav gens on stations and you just put 1 mass block on ships, this way you arent lugging all that weight around and once you get up to speed you dont need them anymore
I have an orbital base, when my pals on a planet
I can build an gravity canon to launch supplies to them by some cargo rods
You had me at Spinning is a neat trick.
Ahhh ye olde grav drive. Wanna learn a fun trick, put those mass blocks AROUND the spherical gravity generator and turn all the blocks off except the ones pointed in the direction you want to go.
3-dimentional grav thrust.
That's sounds awesome, I can't believe I didn't think of this
The first time I tried to make a Gravity powered ship... I spent a few hours building it, was really proud of what I had made and then the moment I placed the PU on, it shot away from me at top speed, never to be seen again. It's funny now, but I was so annoyed at the time!!
There's several outtakes in this and the next video where I may or may not make that mistake.
@@Zer0sLegion Don't you love it when games sometimes make you feel stupid?? xD
Gravity drive + warhead = very poggers missile thingy
expensive
This has been a thing for years, I remember seeing grav drive ships, and gravity torpedos. I’ve even seen ships with no thrusters only gravity gens.
I think grav drives with speed cap removed would be a very cool alternative to warp drive, just get up to super speed, travel halfway across the system. Uses less power but far riskier, as you probably wouldnt be able to avoid asteroids very easily
The asteroids wouldn't be a problem, when you go above a certain speed you just phase right through them. And planets too
@@Zer0sLegion I completely forgot about that, I guess at that point the only thing stopping you would be calculating your stop speed or your pc catching fire
@@HerobrinesPizzaGuy I've never seen Space Engineers crash since I've been playing it but I once went so fast the game just stopped. It didn't freeze, it just stopped. I could pause and up pause but couldn't do anything in the world.
I wouldn't surprise if one day a guy build a ship with gravity drive as thruster and jump without jump drive but only use some sort of gravity drive mechanism and physic
The Star Wars references are strong with this one.
I suppose a lot depends on what your most constraining resource is. Large Ion Thrusters are only 15 PCU. 1 Aritifical Mass Block + 1 Gravity Generator is 210 PCU. Ion Thrusters also work in relatively low-gravity enviornments, like the moon, so there are definitely advantages and disadvantages to both.
Yeap, 100% in atmosphere thrusters are a better option.
I was wondering if you can use gravity generators on another ship, like an interdictpr type weapon or something like the jump ships that lock on to another ship's hull and jump it away. If it works, I am imagining some sort of remote control ship, or massive dreadnaught that has rows and rows of gravity generators oriented so that when it gets close enough, the gravity pushes or pulls the enemy vessel in an unpredictable manner. Thoughts on feasibility?
Only if they have mass blocks on them, doesn't work otherwise.
The scary thing with gravity drives is that they actually work irl. There is proper science and math behind using tech to deform spacetime around a ship to create a spacetime slingshot. Gravity drives do require exotic matter (which we dont have any of yet), but the science is there. Space Engineers devs regard the G-Drives as a bug, but they are more real than most things. Gravity generators supposedly work by using exotic matter to shape spacetime, so artificial gravity, gravity drives, gravity cannons and gravity shields would work in a world with exotic matter and G-Drives.
I look forward to the day where I can bend the laws of real world physics to my will
@@Zer0sLegion The thing is that with irl Grav Drives they would affect the entire ship (there is no such thing as a "grid" to follow), although they would still work differently. SE Grav drives work by creating a "gravity well" in spacetime, thus making the ship "fall" forward. Irl Grav Drives work by creating a spacetime "wave", then releasing that wave through the ship, catapulting it forward, as if surfing on spacetime itself. This works in theory by having exotic matter react with antimatter as a primer, then reacting with the dark energy and dark matter filling out the void of space, again thus catapulting the ship forward. So they work differently, but they still work, if exotic matter exists.
Lol messed with this stuff 10 years ago! Welcome to the gravity club, too bad you missed out on the rock rail guns.
All hail Klang!
The first 10 seconds of the video is so relatable
So grav drive is a good go-fast button for your ships.
Neat
I've made quite a few gravity generated missiles, the best type you could build and always will be.
OMG! Mount a warhead on the front and you have a perfect gravity torpedo! I'm gonna soooo use this tonight. :> Thank you! :>
(all done with removed speed cap because it's cringe)
Damn, I remember how good it felt when my friend placed his cool ship and I made a ship that shoots grav drive torpedos and proceded to destroy him from 12 km of range.
At some point we progressed to moving gravity drive torpedos with huge gravity gen clusters for deflection, this progressed to making torpedoes that switch off the power on the grav gen.
Since the latter opened the world of Space engineers coding, we moved to seeker torpedoes in a crazy arms race
I….didn’t know about this. I have so many new ideas now
Did i hear like 3 star wars references? :DD Amazing
This is getting out of hand!
@@Zer0sLegion Anyway thanks for video. Ive got one small question tho. Does it still work? And how about when you have cargo on ship, do cargo containers put center off mass to the side or something like that?
@@thenaberius6081 It most definitely does work
Sounds like a great way to move a space station
With the small ship mega mo pack you can have a small grid gravity generator
I thought the green was stomping you because I didn't know you had the view backwards. I was like " damn there's a catch".
I've had the idea floating around for a while to use a sort of gyroscope to move the mass block in the direction I need to move and a second set in the nose or back to steer but I'm much to lazy to do that.
You might enjoy the next video in making then...
back in my day it was the ore drive as mass block and space balls were not in game back then
I've haven't done anything in SE yet, but could you use these as booby traps inside a space station? Mount one behind a wall/floor/ceiling section that's technically not part of the station (probably some building trick could be used to accomplish that) with a sensor nearby. Enemy walks past the sensor, grav gen activates and cue the Wiley Coyote & Road Runner sound effects.
That's definitely very possible
Finally warp Drives, my dreams have come true
So yeah ive done this before
With 12k grav blocks I got an acceleration of 0 to mach 24.5 (8.5km/s) in 71 milliseconds
The most i've fit into a space like that was about 50k drives held together with only mass blocks, couldn't turn it on, instantly bricked my pc, you want 2 gravs for every 1 mass block
if u just discovered the grav drive, u will be amazed by what u can do with it. grav hook, grav deflector vs other grav drives,ships or torpedoes....
No one seriously gonna address the Star Wars reference? No just me? Ok well, well done Zer0
well, you could make a space pizza with Grav Drives and become a star wars Venetor class ship
How about building a cruiser or a battleship to see if the "symetricity" works with the design?
I mean, you could build an upward facing grav drive and achieve neutral buoyancy on a planet. Then you can use thrusters or more grav gens to move horizontally.
Aside from the fact they don't work on planets, yeah.
@@Zer0sLegion There's a mod for that. And if it doesn't exist yet, someone will make one.
u need to use a clang drive for planets :)
this is a irl concept they are thinking could get faster than light speeds, negetive gravity in back positive in front to warp space time
Been using these for ever. Be sure you balance your ship perfectly.
Space Balls dont need power. Place a blastdoor block and attach a spaceball. Move into the influence of the gravity field. It will penetrate deep into whatever it hits.
Drills are better than blastdoor blocks but yeah
@@Zer0sLegion drills? what? gonna test that
@@devNeverless No need, wait till next week for my video on it
Now you're on your way to making a mass relay. If your lucky you can find old videos of ore manipulation with grav gens.
There is also an optimal number of mass blocks and gravity gens that gives you the best acceleration, depending on how much PCU you want to put into the grav drive and the weight of your ship
Without doing any math, having about 4 or 5 times more mass blocks than generators shouldnt get you too far from that optimal combination
From my testing, adding more gravity gens or mass blocks had exactly the same impact on acceleration. Mass blocks are cheaper resource wise and I'd assume they have less PCU so I'd assume you'd be right.
HOWEVER, mass blocks seems to create a lot more lag the more of them I placed compared to gravity gens. I'd assume this is because there's more physics updates, more mass blocks would mean more things that needed to be pushed...
@@Zer0sLegion A gdrive with 1 gen and 10 masses will perform allmost the same as 10 gens and 1 masses,
but first one is 375 PCU and the second is 1275 PCU
The explanation behind what I said is that for X max ammount of PCU you want to use, you can put more mass blocks than gens, as mass blocks are 25 PCU, gens are 5 times that at 125 PCU
Thats basically why the fastest gdrives have a lot more mass blocks than gens
(Yes I do have a life)
I do something similar, but I prefer to go with 2 to 3 for every grave generator. This helps me to rebalance the ship later after a few updates. What was flying straight before, it will start to drift after a while.
what if you create a 3D gravity drive? like the gravity drive can spin on a radial axis to change the direction of movement.
You could do that using the new turret controller
Although I fear clang would like it..m
You can have scripted drive that can accelerate in any direction in 3d space, by having at least one gen per axis (i.e. up, left, forward).
I could see this being useful for a super fast custom missile maybe?
I downloaded once a Ship, several Years ago, who haad Gravity Engine. with my Thrusters and it realy had insane much Thrusters, i had like 1 minute to reach full speed. very big ship. almost couldent handle Atmosphere, with Gravity Engine it took 3 seconds to full speed ^^
Grav drives are the best, after all, everything else leaves your craft with structural weakpoints better spent on thicker armor and more mass to spear the enemy with.
Ramming speed!
My question is if you could use as a antigravity propussion of sort? Like scy fi Gravity lift for ships
I did this in the follow up video to this
"while spinning is a good trick" hahaha my guy is a star wars fan mby? bro i laughed so hard when you said it
Could this not be used for a large grid kinetic missile?
It could yes. Remember, big explosions *and* big speed!
@@Zer0sLegion I tried making a gravity cannon, but using a ton of gravity generators on the ship and an artificial mass on the projectile, I mean it kinda worked okish... but nowhere near the speed you were flying at here... I never could get it to work as I wanted.
Never occurred to me to put the gravity generator on the projectile itself. I'ma have to try this out now :P
I wonder if you would be able to make a self propelled nuke this way
Thats cool i will ad to my Space Game Gravity Drive.
I am making a Game like Space Engineers but it was gonna be more Focused on Fighting Aliens. Gravity Drive is Interesting next Tech Tier should be quantum gravity drive.
Then Latest Tier should be Mini Black Hole for Solar System Sized Ships.
Bro made a Frame Shift Drive
These seem very good for guided missiles.
i feel like using this to make a torpedo to mount it on a dive bomber
Does one need to change any settings on the gravity gen or just slap it on and go?
Should just be fine to slap it on and go
I wonder. Would it theoretically be possible to utilize this to make a ship that requires no ion and hydrogon thrusters. Say. Have a mass block with a gravity generator on all six sides, turning them on depending on which direction the player wants to move the ship.
Most definitely, in fact, you should subscribe as I've just recorded me doing that for a future video.
Classy!
Always fun to find a new SE toy!
Well presented too.. Subscribed!
Thank you!
Add a warhead in front of battery and grav gen, and you got yourself a vanilla friendly dumbfire torpedo.
You want a drill at the front to break the armour and then a warhead to blown up the insides
@@Zer0sLegion Never tried it due to self imposed size constrictions, since 4 or 5 blocks had a tendency to yaw.
At that time I came across the cruise missile script and changed builds :)
okay first thing I think of when I hear gravity drive is the movie "Event Horizon"
dude made a slime block flying machine in space engineers
True!
This is what I call a microwarpdrive, generally I have to use an overide gyro or two to optimize functionality and pair it all as a group.
If you get the centre of mass right, you shouldn't need a gyroscope
@@Zer0sLegion One other feature you can build in is reverse generators that decelerate faster than thrusters as well, just pair it with the forward generators and switch the on/off.
Now i can make pretty cheap and fast torpedos!