With nearly 1 million players exploring the great unknown thus far, the team behind Space Engineers is hard at work on their Steam Early Access Game. In recent weeks, a number of features have been added to the popular game.
“A great Steam Early Access game must deliver on its promises to the community – the gamers who have taken the risk of buying into your vision – by continually growing and improving with new features, expansion of gameplay, and more,” said Marek Rosa, CEO and Founder, Keen Software House. “Over the past month, we’ve worked hard to deliver against that standard and we’re fortunate to have the smartest and most dedicated fans on Steam offering their insights and suggestions to shape the future of Space Engineers.”
Here’s a quick rundown of what players have to look forward to in the most recent updates to the game:
- Official Dedicated Servers/Hosts (commercial use): Dedicated servers allow players to connect to a third party host, rather than using a player-host, in a peer-to-peer set-up. This feature often results in faster connections and less lag.
- Merge Blocks, Conversion of Station to Ship: Players can now permanently merge ships and stations of the same block size by using the ‘Merge Block’ feature. When a ship is merged with a station, the ship becomes the station. Stations can also be converted to ships, but the blocks that are partially inside asteroids will be damaged or destroyed.
- Factions: Players may now create and join factions, determine ownership of blocks, and manage relations between them (hostile/ally); blocks can be shared within factions or with everyone; ownership can be transferred by the owner.
- Hacking & Breaching: Block ownership is determined by computers, so if players want to take over hostile blocks, they will have to replace the computers that are in these blocks.
- Steering wheels, wheel controls: Players can now build and control vehicles with the addition of steering wheels and wheel controls.
- Batteries: The Battery Block enables players to store the energy generated by solar panels or reactors at an efficiency rate of 80%. The time needed for charging depends on the amount of energy available.
- Pistons: Pistons is a new type of block which allows players to build even more advanced machinery.
- Antenna Communication: Signals can travel through multiple antennas so players can receive a signal from any distance; broadcasting can be limited by player or by the power of the antenna.
- Spectator mode: players can now learn from the community’s best by spectating their work.
You can grab your copy of the Space Engineers on Steam Early Access at http://store.steampowered.com/app/244850/. Learn more about the game at http://www.spaceengineersgame.com/
