Building and designing a sweet-looking ship in Space Engineers comes with practice and learning. But for beginners, your first several ship designs may turn out awkwardly blocky. How can you overcome this? While taking your time to build and design a ship sounds good and all, progress can feel slow. But there are a few ways to speed up this process and learn how to create something your mother would be proud of. This guide offers suggestions and tips for how to go about designing a ship in Space Engineers and where to draw inspiration but will not cover how you should do it. That part is up to you.
Draw Out Your Plans
You may not like drawing, and that’s fine. Many tend to wing it and build as they go or as inspiration comes.
But sketching out a ship design on paper can give you inspiration for what you want to build and brainstorm additional ideas. Some players prefer or need to draw out their ship designs on paper first before they start building.
Drawing drafts or sketches of a ship design does not need to be complicated or professional.
Go to the Steam Workshop
Get inspiration through the Steam Workshop for Space Engineers. There are thousands of blueprints you can explore where Space Engineers players have posted their ship builds for others to enjoy. You may choose to subscribe to these if you find a neat design and want to try it out. Or if you wish to learn how it was built and designed.
If you subscribe to a blueprint and want to paste it into your game, press F10 while in creative mode, and your blueprints menu will appear. Scroll down until you find your blueprint, select it, and click ‘Ok.’ The grid should appear as though you’re about to place an armor block down. Click the left mouse button to paste it in. If you don’t see it or need to re-paste a new copy, press Ctrl + V at the same time. From there, you can explore the creator’s work and learn how they set up their ship to help you plan your design.
Pick a Shape
Although a brick may not sound ideal, players have made some stunning ships using rectangular shapes that visually, the design worked. Think about designing and building your vehicle around a specific type of shape or multiple shapes.
Using a particular shape like a circle or triangle can help you develop a theme or feeling for your creation. Do you want it to feel ominous, non-threatening, old and rusty, alien, or mysterious? Use shapes to your advantage.
Decide the Functionality of Your Ship
What is your ship going to do? Is it going to mine ores or help weld stations and grids? Do you want it to be a battleship or a small fighter? Maybe a large freighter that can carry tons of ore and components? Deciding what you want your ship to do will help influence its design and feel.
Build the Outline First
A lot of players start creating their ship by building the outline or shape of it first. This practice gives them an idea of how much space they have to work with when the time comes to add the plumbing and wiring (conveyors, thrusters, power blocks, etc.).
There are multiple ways of doing this. You can start by building the outline of the lower portion of your ship and work your way up. Or, you can construct sections for the bottom (the underside of your grid), middle, and top of your ship first before sandwiching the pieces together using the copy and paste functions. Keep in mind that you will need to plan for where you’re going to add thrusters and other essential components.
Build the Plumbing/Interior First
Huh?! You just said to build the outline first! Correct. Some players start designing the exterior before they add everything else that needs to go inside. But many players prefer to configure the interior of their ship first before they construct the outside. In other words, they design around the plumbing.
There is an advantage to this as you can have your hallways (if you’re building a large, small or large-grid ship), thrusters, power blocks, gyros, and conveyors all planned and set up. It’s also practical for making the interior compact and tidy.
The downside is your ship design will look ugly to start. But, figuring out where conveyors and thrusters need to go can save you a lot of time versus building the exterior first. Most players probably prefer this option, as setting up the interior is the most complicated part of building a ship. But it all comes down to preference.
Use the Symmetry Tool
The Symmetry Tool is a fast way to build your ship. It enables you to build on one side without having to hand-build the other, eliminating time to fly back and forth to get it to match. As you add blocks to one side, blocks automatically get added to the other.
If in creative mode, you can activate this by looking at your grid and pressing M. A flat, red-colored square will vertically appear down the middle of your grid. Clicking the left mouse button will activate it on your grid, and you will see the colored square darken (that means it’s activated).
Pressing M will toggle through the other colored symmetry squares/rectangles, which you can activate/deactivate according to your likings.
To proceed to add blocks to your ship, you will need to keep pressing M to toggle through the rest of the symmetry options until you see armored blocks reappear.
To temporarily deactivate symmetry mode, press N. This allows you to add individual blocks without having a duplicate show up on the other side.
To turn it off or switch to another symmetry square, press M again and toggle through the colored squares until you come to the one(s) you activated (the opaque squares are the ones you have turned on). Once you find the ones you need to deactivate, click the Right Mouse Button like you’re deleting a block. You’ll hear a sound like an armor block being deleted (it shouldn’t delete any of your blocks). That means you have deactivated it and can proceed to activate another square or toggle through until you only see your armor block in hand.
Create Duplicates of Your Build
You may decide to create multiple variants if you’re uncertain about a design and wish to experiment with alternative ones. Just use the copy-paste key combo to make copies.
Don’t forget to also make blueprints of your designs by pressing Ctrl + B. Not only will you save a version of your build, but in case something goes wrong, you won’t have to start from scratch.
Choose a Color Theme
Much like the shapes section, choosing a color scheme will create a theme and feeling surrounding your build. You can pick however many colors you want to paint your ship with, but keeping your choices minimal will make things simpler for you. Pick 1-3 for starters.
Paint your ship by accessing the Color Picker with P. Select your color and skin type and exit the menu. Begin painting by using the Middle Mouse Button. Don’t forget you can use the Symmetry Tool to help paint both or multiple sides of your ship all at once.
Add the colors little by little to get a feel for where the design is going. Start with one color type, then add on to it with the next one.
Get Designing!
Hopefully, you have some ideas of where to begin with your ship’s design. If you need inspiration, look at what others have built to learn how they did it. Then, practice. Experiment. See what works for you and keep at it!