I made once a space station that uses different kinds of gravity generators to make it fun, walking on ceilings and such, you could dock your ship on 6 different positions but always standing up feet. I havent it finished it though. Maybe i should revisit that project now with al the new blocks
@@Zer0sLegion It's always a surprise how so many folks use "gravity cannons", but never thought to use the ship itself in the same way lol For a bit of fun, if you add a prog-block in, you can create a script to flip the gravity field from Pos (+) to Neg (-) at the push of a button. I'll have to check, but I don't remember if gravity gens have an incremental +/- like thruster do or not. If not, add it to the control script to use the commands like a throttle ;) ::edit:: Just checked, and yep, you can script incremental increase/decrease gravity acceleration via scripts. So programmable throttles for grav drives are a go! :D ::/edit::
@@Zer0sLegion True, but with a script, you can assign a button (not on the tool bar) to the action :D And yes, having throttle or simply +/- inversion helps A LOT! :D
A few years ago another content creator made a missile using gravity generators, mass blocks and containers full of stone. Maybe you could revisit that concept in modern space engineers. It's called the reaper missile
It’s great to see more channels focusing on Space Engineers, it’s an unfortunately uncommon sight. The only channels posting about SE tend to be more established, older channels. Keep it up!
If you know how to code, you could try making a script to activate the directional mass blocks (in the spherical generator design) by using the default controls (WASD etc).
i find it funny how the SE community is either 3 years behind the meta, or developing the meta. Grav Drives arent meta anymore with the introduction of clang drives, as they are torque based and do not work in planets, whereas a clang drive can be non-torque, and works everywhere, and instead of providing fixed thrust amounts, it gets stronger the heavier the ship.
Why can't you make missiles that hit a ship but have a gravity thing you can turn on remotely once on remotely it pulls things towards it. Causing the ship to have other missiles seek that point once they get into the field.
I am new here, but watching this gives me the worst idea ever. Please tell me it is possible to put an AI on these gravity "rockets" to let them fly towards a target that moves.
I cut the bit out where I talked about scripts but the basic gist is that I don't like using scripts because it's basically like copying someones homework; the script does everything for me.
Why just make thrusters obsolete? Couldn't we also make massive ships rotate with gravity gens and mass blocks too? I'd imagine you could make some huuuge ships spin fast with the right configuration and some scripting.
@@CaptainPhantom6 Which is why such a ship wouldn't be atmosphere-capable, yeah. It would still be an interesting and potentially powerful new development for space-only vessels.
so gravity drive-based tech has a habit of interferin with other gd tech, so what if we utilize this? could one hypothetically make a weapon to throw gd-powered ships off course, or even repel gravity missiles?
Back when items did damage to blocks, you could make a "poor man's railgun." You would use a connector to eject stone into several rings of gravity generators and it would be pretty good. Unfortunately Keen nerfed the damage of items, so it's not as effective now. :(
At least you can still deposit a large cargo container’s worth of stone and launch it at a small grid, and if that small grid is right next to a ship or voxel it will be pushed into that which can damage it… very convoluted but…
Well now that I've seen a gravity missile with a Drill on the front of it, I'd love to see a mining ship that can detach its drills to send them flying at high speeds towards its enemies using gravity!
I've actually been working on what I like the call the "Angler Defense System" where a ship is outfitted with a very very strong gravity "cell" where one field pushes out very strong and another pulls in but at a further range allowing small artifical-mass defense satellites to skim the orbit which would in theory cover all angles of attack regardless of the ships static armaments
Oh that's cool. I've been designing something that is ironically designed to bypass those systems completely. I've never even seen someone who bothered with anti-kinetic. Everyone has it in their head it's too unwieldy.
Could the spherical gravity generators be used to create some kind of shrapnel shield? Like have one in the middle of the ship and use that spherical gravity field to make armor plates or something circle around it?
Yeah, in the olden days of SE PVP, we would overlap them (spherical fields) to make anti-ballistic shields for "gravity cannon" rounds and "cargo bombs" (cargo blocks loaded with stuff like gravel stacks) but they worked well in battle zones to protect your ship from misc debris from destroyed ships :D
@@Zer0sLegion lol, I'll see if I have any of my old designs still. I didn't usually post my "real" combat ships back when I was more into the PVP side, but I can probably put something together this weekend to show the theory :)
AP railgun rounds with drills. And HE with warheads. Interesting, wonder if you could make APHE rounds by adding a fuse to the warhead after in penetrates
@@KrakenIsMahB one second would be way too late after penetration, however if you extend the sensor detection by a bit you could fine tune it to explode about 0.1-0.3 seconds after hitting.
@@a_person5660 I feel you may be ovethinking that too much due to experience with real delayed fuse shells. I would leave it at 1 sec simply because missile isnt moving as fast as irl and SE physics may slow down its advance towards interior of the ship. So in order to maximize the damage it needs to go deeper and therefore it is good to leave at 1sec, maybe even slightly more.
instead of timer delay, it could be set to armed instead it'd blow earlier likely, but it would guarantee it explodes rather than being harmlessly destroyed
For that last one with a drill add a cargo container filled with gravel. In the past a gravity block shooting gravel out of a connector was enough to do major damage, so added to yours should do a lot of damage.
What about attaching more drills to the sides? Since they have that impact damage immunity I feel like that might make them much more effective and potentially unstoppable. I can test this at a later time, but this might be something to consider as if you can just stack on more drills for armor of the projectile then just throw it at a ship. Maybe that'll pack a lot more punch. Could also potentially make a huge battering ram with the custom turret controller setup that you used in another video then just throw a gravity drive on there and also throw on the drills for armor and boom, ship seeking gravity drive missile with a bunch of drills attached for impact armor
I saw a gravity based weapon on the workshop a bit ago (Ragnarok Shatter Shell I believe it was called) that absolutely shredded capital ships. And the thing's only 3x3x3
@@Zer0sLegion thing is you want to set them up to one grav is on at a time like you use the wasd use the numbers as 8456 w=8 a=4 s-5 d=6 also the only ting you need to stop is use gyros to turn ...also if you use the oouter shup as a pshere of mass blocks you can use v to see in 3rd person .. also do not forget that each mass block is one grav so if you put 4 or 5 you will begoing the full mass of the ship your on X4 so if your large ships say is 48,000 tons times the mass so it would ne going at a speed of 192000 in 4.34 sec with pout truster's also is you have that ship planetside you will have an antigrav x3 to pull you away or "UP" off the planet
There is a type of thruster missile which uses heavy army to penetrate of a ship, then destroys a cargo container in the missile that has tons of rocks inside of it to tear up the insides of the ship. It'll be interesting to see that with a grav missile.
server idea: king of the moon the idea is that a team is defending a moon base and the enemy team tryes to capture it in the amount of time start of the game: an amount of time is given to both teams to build their things to defend/attack mid game:The game starts after either both teams are ready or the building time ran out and the attackers attack the moon base while the defending team has to resist the attack end game:The game is won by the defenders when time rans out or they destroyed all the enemyes.The attackers win when they manage to kill all the defenders and/or capture the moon base next round: the teams switch roles (the ones that were attacking go on defense and the ones that were defending are now attacking) the whole game is won when a team gets a number of points (the wins for each round)
Build a version of this that is only used to accelerate and decelerate going forward and backwards and leave thrusters for directional control, if this is inside the ship it would be a low energy way at getting a ship up to traveling speeds
you could use a series of gravity generators and mass blocks at the core of a ship as sort of an internal slamjet engine for extreme acceleration on demand, and use regular thrusters for standard flight. might be quite useful for evasive maneuvers in a dogfight
Something from back in the day could use the drill treatment. Spherical generator with massblocks flying around it used to be used as a swarm shield type thing. Imagine this with drills that can't easily be destroyed. Fly in close and shred thine enemies. I actually now see CaptaiNarwhal remembers the same thing!
The turret gravity drive should be used with a program that uses regular control keys (zqsd or wasd (not sure for the second i have azerty) + going up and down) to switch on and off the mass blocs and can replicate the dampers effect to slow down and stop more effectively.
I’m just gonna put this out there, but the physics for turretblock-controlled rotors/hinges are different, including *clang*. Rotor collision will sometimes result in the grid teleporting randomly within a small area, and will teleport inside of other grids nearby. It’s not controllable but still… mayhem.
I found the "turret" was too heavy with the mass blocks on it. Also the more mass blocks I place, the faster I go and I'm able to place more if they're not on the turret
It looked to me like it was only difficult to fly because the superstructure of the drive obscured your camera vision quite a lot. Furthermore, you had thrusters turned on, which I gather was for braking force (dampeners) but I put it to you that turning them off would allow for better control and more speed and then toggle them with a timer maybe to disengage the gravity drive and turn the thrusters on to stop?
Aiming the turret was fine as I was aiming for a marker which I could see through the ship. It's just every difficult to maneuverer, it slides about everywhere. I had the thrusters on for the spherical test to see which direction I was going as I messed up the grouping and believe me, they were doing basically nothing to slow me down.
I would recommend that you add a "breaking" gravity generator, one that is inverted relative to your drive generators so you can slow down when you are looking at your destination.
If you were to make the missile eject items (for example stone) the gravity should force the items against the ship breaking it, there is already loads of missiles I've seen using a similar system but I'm curious how it might work on a grav drive projectile
My immediate though was to scatter a bunch of artillery shells to launch with gravity at a target, but they don’t detonate that way unfortunately (have to shoot them or destroy a cargo container with them in it). Maybe in conjunction with a warhead detonating next to all the shells, that might detonate them…
As for as being able to move diagonally could you use a bunch of rotors and lock directional gravity gens in diagonal positions and place mass blocks in the diagonals? same idea turn them gens off and on to go in those directions? also I think you are able to group thrusters with other objects so they activate at the same time using a bit of signal logic which would allow you to use the arrow keys for coordinal directions instead of having to use the hotbar.
maybe invert the first design with a spherical gravity generator: have the generator in the center and set up a custom turret with a mass block attached to it
you could put the artificial mass on the same part of the turret as the gravity generator, like the missile you showed, then you could have it set up so it goes wherever the camera is facing. then you just set binds so you can reverse it easily and bam, your good.
Alright, I should try that. Thrusters in SE kinda upset me. The larger the ship the more thrusters I need, the more thrusters I have the larger is the ship. It seems like a neverending loop of thrusters that need more thrusters to move. Because I need large thrusters and they weight a quadrillion ton and take several years to make. And then I need the same amount of reverse thrusters so it doubles the mass. And to move that mass I need even more... Yeah, I hate that. I hope I can at least replace some forward\backward power with gravity. To build a ship that has a... "beautiful" number of thrusters, not "necessary" number.
Massive necro, but in regards to Gravity-related concepts: I've been using these sort of things for like 6 1/2 years now, and about 2 years ago I started using very fine-tuned Gravity-acceleration rings to automatically slingshot large amounts of resources in-between planets by essentially throwing containers from ring A to ring B. It's tedious to set up and adjust and it's not really worth the resources given you'd be a lot faster using a Jump-drive, but for RP and just laziness it's really handy. Nothing beats the flabbergasted look on a friends face when their ship is overtaken in the middle of nowhere by 500 tons of Ammo in a metal box that you hurled towards Mars cuz another mate ordered some.
For the turret design gravity drive, attach the gravity generator and the mass blocks in the same frame so they constantly interact with each other in the same way as one unit, then mount that whole unit of 2 that now act as one on a gimbal. End effect should be a directional gravity field which you directly control with the mouse. You should also be able to make the power adjustable with different numbers of gravity generators by turning them on or off in SYMMETRICAL manner. if the generator on/off and the interaction with the gravity blocks is not kept directionally even then you will add extra gravity plane vector distortions. I would suggest a 9 generator grid for example for 5 power levels, set in 3 rows of 3 for a square, at level 1 speed only center generator is on, at level 2 4 generators in a square at corners, at level 3 an 'X' shape come on to equalize pressure, at level 4 the 8 around the outside in a hollow square and finally level 5 with all 9 active. Note the power curve is not exactly equal or incremental with this set up however level 1 is 11% power, level 2 is 44% power, level 3 is 55% power, level 4 is 88% power and 5 is 100%, you can't get 7 to apply the gravity plane equally, 2 and 3 center left right, or just center line would be 'wobbly' in up down plane, and 6 could be mostly stable a line top and bottom or a line left and right, but it would have slightly weaker thrust in one plane. Handling differently at different speeds this way could be a control issue. The reason the design you are currently using is hard to control is because the generator is not interacting with mass blocks in a steady manner. ie. at say 45 degrees the field might be interact with block 1 50% block 2 30% and block 3 20%, Shifting the angle just 10 degrees could totally alter all of those numbers so suddenly the strength of propulsion for the 3 is totally different now it might be block 1-0%, block 2-10%, block 3-40% Block4 40%. etc. Another alternative design would be to a perfect mass block sphere with the directional gimbal with generator in the center point interacting with different mass blocks at the same level no matter the direction it points in. However because the gimbal and the mounting point itself will introduce imperfections to the mass block sphere there will be a few 'directional blind spots' that this type of drive will not be able to point at. All in all drive 1 is probably more feasible even if drive 2 would be more 'esthetically pleasing'. One problem in such a drive however would be if you mount the gimbal cage inside a ship you need to tune your gravity generators so they do not accidentally interact with mass blocks in the ship outside of the gravity drive. I'm not sure how it would interact with other gravity fields, you will also have to be very careful about weight distribution and symmetry of the ship or it will affect angular vector. Also with such a drive it might be difficult to control directionality of 'front' when considering weapon placement in dogfight maneuvering, I'm not sure just gyroscopes will do it, some thrusters might be needed as well and getting those 2 systems to mesh in overall effect would probably be a nightmare. 2 linked gravity drives in symmetrical positions would probably greatly improve stability, where 1 drive would be like trying to balance a plate on a pole on larger ships.
Early Space Engineer meta was ALL grav drives. It got to the point where turning itself was driven by grav drives. It's a crazy energy suck though in more recent versions.
Did you know the first gravity drives used a big chunk of stone attached via landing gear to the ship for its mass? This was long before the mass blocks introduction to SE.
I used to use a bunch of gravity generators arranged in many stacked rings to sling rods of blast door blocks at things with mass block. They where effective as dumb fire torpedoes but they could hardly ever hit a moving ship if you where manually aiming at something. However, I ended up adapting the exact same ship to launch micro fighters with heavy front armor. Practical? No. Cool? Yes
Multiple grav drives w/multiple gimbles. 1 5 set forward .. 1 5 set aft both outside the range of the other, linked to one console (the rear being partially reversed X and Y, but Z being normal) .. this should allow you to spin the ship in any direction quickly and accerate forward at 2x speed.
I feel like the gravity drive could be miniaturized by quite a bit if you just had a rotor/hinge turret then put the mass blocks/balls just above it with the gen range being expanded to just cover the mass. Would likely fit in a 3³ void with the rotor and mass being embedded in the top and bottom and slope blocks with panels enclosing it for added protection and miniaturization. This could then be slotted into most large ships as a 5x3x3 self contained module or have the outer shell replaced with a bunch of glass for an externally mounted virtual cockpit.
With the new stealth drive mod out on the workshop, figuring out how to make gravity drives work has an extra benefit. The stealth drive will not hide thruster contrails, but if you're propulsion doesn't emit contrails.... yeah.
Easiest method to control is use limited range gravity and mass blocks that you turn on or off via panel, then you can still use gyros etc - I used it as impulse engine ages ago and could limit the range to like 10m and it still worked great
Hmm…. That gives me an idea. What if you made a ship seeking gravity drone. When it finds a ship, it attaches itself to it, and starts pulling it towards the ground. If you have enough of these drones, you should be able to crash a large ship onto the nearest planet. It would probably be far more effective if you’re already in an atmosphere.
It seems like something that'll make forward thrusters completely obsolete... requiring only maneuvering thrusters to move. Sure the gravity generators are expensive, but its cheaper to rebuild it than to build and rebuild the masses of thrusters you need to move a ship...
Would a delayed warhead explosion work with the Gravity missiles? Im wondering because im using the Nuclear Warheads mod and im thinking of having a missile that burrows into the target.
The gravity missile is beautiful in its insidious potential... there is always movement in combat... now there is a giant block of clang embeded deep inside the bowels of your ship !! Fortunately there is a defense, you can make a gravity shield to repel them... it of course has to be far stronger than the incoming gravity drive itself.
I mean.... i see the use in it in long range travel. Like an Interstellar Drive. The thing is only the breaking back down to normal speeds again. That would only need one direction with a Gyroscope you could change your target a little. No need for something complicated.
you ought to do a video showing the countermeasure and counter-countermeasure to this: a reverse spherical gravity generator on the defending ship (repulsion field), with the countermeasure being a timer block on the missile itself to shut off the mass block before impact :)
Any way to make a gravity drive missile use the custom turret controller tracking when within 800m? Would probably need just a gryo and weapon on the grid to make it work
my favorite ship design is a gravity gun that also uses the projectile as a gravity drive. Most of the time its just there for show since i mostly just like to build, but having a ship that can get up to speed with next to no power, with a strong base killer style weapon is a nice jack of all trades style ship, since i usually put it on cargo ships. So from now on, ill remember to put drills on the tip of the gravity bullet. maybe ill even make a capital ship with a usable drill to pick up surface ore from asteroids with the same thing.
what if you putthe gravity cube? square... the first desighn in side of a propper large ship and use a connected control system to move the ship from the cockpit. like how your stearing wheel moves you car wheels without direct control on large vehicals
Years ago i did a gravity drop miner, a huge block of few large container and a few drills infront and wheels on the sides that acts like a rail. When it reach its drill point the gravity will be reverse back towards the ship im using by the help of mass blocks and connector. Now i cant remember how i did it.
The applications for this could change the entire game for ships. If people can miniaturize the spherical gravity generator, and use a programmable block to integrate all of the thrusters functions, we may potentially see an alternative to the thruster.
Yooooo if someone makes a script that controls all six directions and translates movement keys into gravity generator activations, you could make a completely thruster-less alien UFO!
Surround the entire harness with mass blocks so you don't have to aim in such a fixed area. Also can you have the gravity generator putting out constant gravity at variable strength for better and smoother control.
I love and haven't stopped using gravity drives most of my built don't have thrusters I also have a design on a rotating system where I use the rotors and gravity drive to turn my ship so it would still function like a joystick control
put down a cockpit place a roter behind it facing up place a grav block with its end down tords the cockpit now on the rotor place another roter . now program them and now buils a shpere around them of mass blocks laso do not forget to puit a gyro on rather side of the cock pit and then use v go into 3rd person and fly it around to stop shut off the power . no you will not be bale to stop fast because you have no trusters but you can slow not get hit by missels or ships because of the grav vortex you ship is putting out .because all the gravity is pushiong away from the inside going out . p.s. i will post my ideas in the workshop soon .
ok i have an idea your going to make 9 block by 1 block flat plane of mass blocks then put one gravity the ends the gravity blocks and one on ether side looking at it from the side should look like a pinwheel .and anchor the ship to that and you wil have what you atr looking for .. if you like i can try and remember how to put some thing is the steam workshop ?
I'll have to try to build it again but I had a small drone that was a landing gear and a few artificial mass blocks on it. Latch onto enemy ship and they are now fighting their own artificial gravity or fighting more planets
How about instead of one gravity generator you have four, one for each plain and manually turn them on and off so you can accelerate and decelerate and up and down. But keep your thrusters so you can turn. Should significantly decrease the space needed too
Why not use multiple gravity drives in different parts of your ship and have those turned off and on depending on the direction you wanted to go, rather than having to turn on and off Mass blocks?
Add a camera script and gyro to track the enemy ship, the gravity drive will propel it at insane speeds and it should technically woh enough speed pad through and circle back around and continue to do so until the target is destroyed
make a GMD and have a APHE round that uses a drill on the front a warhead behind it a battery the mass block and then a sensor to trigger the warhead after impact
i have an idea . see the the trusters are slow and the jump drive has to build up power . so i thought what would be coo well set up a mass drive in the senter of your ship and place around it the grav blocks . so no matter where you go the shipw it go that way .. but see i would need tow people to do what i want .. one is to use the mass drive systom in the ship the onther one is at the helm of the / outer ship see the inner ship will move the ship with the mass drive the oouter ship will do the shooting and or landing or minning .. the other idea is how i set up my ship that uses the mas drive to se it up on the helm but as wasd moves the ship the 8456 moves the gravdrive .
Gravity torpedoes? A way of defending your ship against these is to make a turret with a gravity gen (like your no thrusters prototype ship) but invert the gravity so its pushing things away from the ship Now point the turret at gravity torpedoes and you should be able to slow them down
Dude I created a space ship with this idea it’s a kamikaze thing it runs only on two batteries and has armed war heads but it works decently well and no thrusters it’s like the grav torpedo you made but on Xbox so is there a way i can share it so you can test it
Why does your spherical gravity drive system require so much space? Wouldn't a more compact design be easier to build and protect, and less resource intensive?
