@@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.
Yes, Elite & Space Ranger have equipment maintenance so all the hording spam builders will suffer!!! I would love that than the current baby step easy survival that thinks making you grind more is a difficulty.
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.
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.
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 RU-vid.
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.
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.
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..
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 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.
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 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'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 RU-vid has such a series going where he set some rules for doing it
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
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 these they are fun and keep me into flying around. im tired of mining and building station go run contracts when npcs come into the game these will get more attention im sure.
Andrewmangaming did an economy only play through that seemed a bit fun. Personally I love doing some of the missions. But agree it's hard to find a reason outside of just making money or having fun. I would love more trader only items. Give you more insensitive to do work and get into favor with them. I'd even be down for needing to buy blueprints for a better progression system. Or have things like modules need trader only parts. Could add in jump drives gravity generators and a lot of the high end stuff. Also yes I believe stations need to be a bit more common. But you can buy more datapads with locations on them at some stations
@@Zer0sLegion will be on the look out for that. I like the idea of progression. But when it's done well. I don't like how SE has there's set up. So always interested in hearing how others think on how to change or improve it.
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
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.
People ask me why I need 30 jump drives in my ship. The answer is because I'm a jump addict, and my ship can do >22,000 Km jumps. Yeah, I can do many of the hauling contracts in ONE jump, and the longer ones just take 2 jumps. I can jump from Pertam to Alien, and back to Pertam in ... get this... ... 20-25 seconds. And I still have enough jump capacity to jump to Earth or Mars. When doing shorter jumps, I don't even have to wait for my jump drives to recharge. I can lose people so fast. Do a 100 Km jump in one direction, a 1,000 Km jump in another direction, and then a 5,000 Km jump in yet another, all within 30 seconds, making pursuing my ship damn near impossible. Also means when I'm ready to log out, I just jump 20,000 Km into deep space, park inside an asteroid, and shut off my coms to go dark. Can't get locked on to by any ships that stumble on by. No need for shields. All this was because of the economy update, which made me build a series of jump ships specifically to do those hauling missions. Been a jump addict ever since. Even with over 1M Kg of cargo, I can still jump over 16,000 Km in a single jump. This is the way.
Just wait until you get the platinum ingot acquisition quests. Most I ever made off one of those was over 18,000,000 SC. Pt ingot quests often yield over 10,000,000 SC. Uranium ingot ones also pay well, but because I'm a smuggler/jumper, uranium is far too valuable to sell, as jump drives are uranium hogs. Magnesium powder quests pay well, too, but are often super small quantities. Still, will net you a few million SC. Most I've ever had in my bank at one time was about 900,000,000 SC, but then we had a server wipe. I was aiming for 1 billion SC.
Y'all must not be playing in survival. I use the economy stuff all the time. Hell, I was part of a server that entirely revolved around the economy update. Even my main ship has a store, contracts, soda machine, and ATM. If you don't know, you can actually become a space pirate! Like no joke, you can become allied with them! There are even space pirate trade 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 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
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.
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've always used the economy features since getting the game back on February, I tend to think those who play on PvP servers like myself rely on the economy massively to sustain our safe zones. *Tip:* do the acquisition contracts to save you the pain of doing hauling contracts in a expensive jump ship that will only be used for hauling contracts
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
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.
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.
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.
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 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.
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 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.
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.
If I played it when this was already in the game then I would definitely use this. Problem is I've played this game years before this was a feature so when it came out its use was very pointless to me. Now with the contracts there's some interest. Not in the rewards, the economy is still entirely ignorable to me but having actual missions gives more reasons to build different types of ships
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
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.
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 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 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.
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.
Another reason why people do not use the economy system in SE is because it is in my opinion too grindy and boring. If a player was to fully engage with the system, they would quickly find that with all of time and resources spent making enough money to buy a good ship would have been spent building their own ship. Also, there is nothing unique to see when doing jobs for any faction.
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
I'am very exited for your Multiplayer Server and i think that many Problem's lay in SE's existing AI so i would Love to See how the AI mods Play Out in the Server👍
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 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'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.
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.
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.
i was excited for this when it came out but very quickly upon using it lost interest because its just some boring unbalanced fetch quests for no real gain. the currency is damn near useless and especially for me since i dont like to play on multiplayer servers outside of with my buddy on a private because of the everlasting lag and dozens of reboots per day. there are already mods that add actual life to the world and so the official quest system is very low on the list of personal requirements. i want life and purpose added to the game and i dont think this did that. id like to have like a space engineers mixed with Empyrion kind of game. empyrion has decent purpose to the gameplay while space engineers has pretty much everything else. im not a fan of the whole "create your own adventure" kind of thing. doing a quest that you created is not as fun as doing a quest someone else created because you know everything about it and you know what to do and expect.
What I would love to see in Empyrion is an industrial scale trade system. Maybe special NPC's that would buy "crates" of goods on an Intergalactic business scale. Basically meaning they can take all you could produce. Making a "crate" would require the time and materials of the same volume of the individual items.
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.
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
Honestly, the economy system is just not that useful, and straight up unnecessary for players like me. I play the game to just go around and make my own ships and fly them around and make my own stories up in my head. I also play for the creative mode because building your own ships in your design language and style is just more fun. The economy is solely for MP purposes. While it has niche applications in singleplayer or local MP across two or more computers on the same WIFI, it's just not necessary. Building your own stuff is just more entertaining. Especially if you have an end goal, like reaching another planet or finding the lunar/mars obelisks, and encounter mishaps along the way to engineer around. If you're not doing anything with it, especially if you're more of a loner or close circle of friends type player, the economy update, aside from the other unrelated blocks in the DLC/update, are completely useless. What value can you get out of space credits if you have 'Zer0' (hehe) interest or use for them? That's just my argument, and I'm sure plenty of people who play on servers use the economy features a bunch. I just think that in the grand scheme of what the game was trying to be, it was just kind of a useless update. Nobody aside from creatively challenged players would want a pre-built Keen ship when they can get a far better looking/designed ship from the workshop and projector build it, or better yet, get out of the comfort zone and build a ship themselves, as it would be leagues cheaper. The best thing about the economy for me, is you can turn it off.
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
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.
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
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'm using it and it helps a lot because the "nearby" station have platinum, I did a few acquisition contracts and got enough for some 64 platinum ingots, my small grid hauling ship is now space capable without the need of hydrogen. Anyhow if I remeber correctly, not every trade station sells platinum or uranium, which would make them much more attractive. What I'd improve would also be the hauling contracts, make a few to transport from one station to another on the same planet would make me want to do them more often and earlier.
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.
the reason i dont personally use these features is they are too time consuming and unengaging when mining enables you to get way more resources then doing quests and purchasing.
I *Allways* have at least 1 ATM and 1 Contracts block in any of my builds, and i always try to build near a trade station. I probably use the Economy DLC the most.
Recently read from a player who couldn't build an assembler a frustrated request about it. I immediately suggested enabling economy and stealing ships etc because he's actually kind of correct... there are levels that have no available ways to do even the simplest things without the economy mode enabled.
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.
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.
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.
Well. It would be nice if you could. Disable Drills in the Options. So your only Way to get ressources is either trading, loot and grinding wracks and abondend Places and stealing it from NPCs. But there has to be enough NPC stuff on the Planets and in Space. I tried to achieve that with mods but I am not quite there, because I had no way to get Ice without drilling, because it is neither loot nor you can grind it. You can only buy Hydrogen or Oxygen in some Stations. But that would be my Vision. A No-Drill-Mode. Maybe you could try to get a working Modpack for that survival Mode. My Collections are called "Space Engineers Modlist! - Cosmetics (Graphics), Tweaks, QoL, World Content" and "Space Engineers Modlist! - Blocks and Scripts" if you want to check it out. I also couldn't find a mod which disables Drills.
fun fact, on my main survival i have (sadly with mods cause i apparently don't know how to play vanilla kekw) i got 180m coins from *just* 1 contract, an acquisition of some reactor components (18), and it was about 23k km away (spoiler yes it was a long trip)
Hi there. I am fairly new to this game. And i landed not far from a station.. First game survival. I was like ohhh i can you buy all..i just need money. A few months later i have a orbital/atmo ship of 3.2 mio kg. A space station with Samv2 drones hauling in cobold, hydrogen, and gold.. I have 8gl of hydrogen on my station... I loaded in reapers... Mod Well as strong as i am, these kick the shit out of me... I never went back to the store. But if i could put in a contract to have friendly npc, come and help out, for say... 200000 liters of hydrogen...or come in welding something up repair....i would go.. Also uranium, i would like to be able to buy.. Or unik pods... Quick button...on a drop pod, blam...a new functioning mining rig. On my gps mark... This need to be on the stations. Unik things.. Also i always wondered how to utilize the "Trade mode" for the connector block.....what is it?
If memory serves me correctly best contract I’ve seen was around 10-12mil, and the plushy you showed in the video can be found in the unknown drops(I’ve gotten like 5 or 6 from about 50 drops)
my 2 cents: I'm playing with mods, two of them being awwscrap and procedurally generated ores(PGO). I started on the alien planet because i wanted to get some parts from... ehm... the locals... Quickly i realized i would have massive problems with cobalt and magnesium. The PGO mod only allows uranium and gold from veins and the meteors and asetroids only spawn silver and iron. Trading has been really fun on my singleplayer survival. I got some grids by selling some parts. Made my first mini hauler to sell more parts and get more grids. Had to engage in PVE to get the magnesium tho. Stations are fine! you can buy more data pads with coordinates once you find one. all of a sudden they are everywhere
To be honest, I don't play survival all that much. When I do I tend to stay very localized to my drop point and play with rovers. I do like the Economy play. It gives structure, in a completely optional way, to the sandbox. It just rarely mixes with what my vision of what I am in the sandbox to do. I love to build bases, and consequently tend to make poor ships. The contracts are, believe it or not, all but exclusively ship based. Even the planetary stations, don't have ground level connector access. Or near ground level even. So I can't supply the Acquisitions. On my most recent sandbox game, I'm slowly colonizing Luna, and thankfully spawned within 10km of a station, so I'm grinding out what I can for quick contracts, and hoping to buy a few small grid ships to expedite my work. Although in the future, I might have to look into these contracts as a way to combat test my ships in creative mode....
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.
I've been reacquainting myself with the game. Took me some time to get around to trekking the 70 km over rough mountains to the nearest AVAT trade center. I liked the variety in doing some of the various missions, and then earning enough to buy some of the ships and rovers offered just to play with them and see how they were built. Since then, I've been trying to find more information on how you can configure the options of what's sold, and hopefully mods that extend those options, but I haven't had much success. If you'd be interested in revisiting this in more depth, or pointing me at someone that has already, I'd appreciate it. Thanks for all your great videos!
I completely brute forced a 21000 km hauling contract before I had a ship. I just grabbed like 4 o2/ Hydrogen bottles and some power kits, grabbed a speed mod and walked away, checking in every now and then to power kit. It was worth it.
I gotta be honest, I don't have much reason to use economy. I'm in the game to play with interconnected systems and to build hyperoptimised ships. And nothing in economy really meshes in an interesting way with anything outside of the economy unless you're traveling a lot. And I like building places to call home so travelling isn't on my to-do list. I think I'd have more reason to use economy if it had more effect on the factions, but the factions are currently only markers for different producers (hydrogen/ore and Ingots/parts/ships) and an obligatory reputation system, so there isn't much to be affected. What I'd wish the economy were is a simulation of resource networks and faction "disputes" (wink wink nudge nudge). Where "disputes" allow players to engage in PVE space warfare to conquer stations for factions and where which stations a faction holds affects the resources and ships they offer at their other stations. But that'll first need grid A.I. (even worse it needs competent combat A.I.) AND might be a rather complex system so I don't expect it anytime soon.
I would gladly play a Economy-Only adventure. I do use it, and have even cloned a trade station or two, but they stop working after a while. Maybe that's because I usually play offline. Would be interested what kinds of activities (selling vs buying, etc) can support full Survival mode.
i saw the siluette of the block and instantly went "wait, that's the ATM isnt it?" i then understood what this video was about before i even started it haha! and you are right! Economy is used WAY to little! i use it in Survival worlds when playing singleplayer ALL the time, as i can buy ships through the Economy system at times, depending on what faction owns a station. it gives me a reason to farm ores and other goodies so that i can sell in bulk and buy upgrades! it is actually quite satisfying doing so as well! i HIGHLY recommend using it in a Survival world!
I found 2 trade stations on my earth like planet when I managed to blow up the survival kit of my first base (bofe I watched your tutorial videos xD) and tried a 50-100 respawns to get close to my base again. (managed to get within 30 km once but managed to kill myself with the jetpack again).
