Worth noting as a general piece of Space Engineers mod advice:

Anything that uses custom blocks means that your blueprints and ships can be rendered majorly broken by a drastic mod change, or it's removal from distribution. If the blocks don't exist, your ship has massive holes and loss of function and now needs rebuilding. Your only saving grace is a local copy of the original mod.

With a mod that is done in this style (just SBC mods and code), if it drastically changes or is removed, your design is intact and just doesn't have added functionality - so you can just carry on or find a replacement.

@-Data-
SDX use a lot of custom blocks and other stuff. It creates a great experience, but it creates backwards compatibility issues with blueprints and saves and is mainly designed around their custom RP-PVP server experience, which makes sense. I've played there. It's great.

These mods are designed with a more or less opposite philosophy.
You can spend months building anything you like with these mods and the blueprint will be valid in vanilla+DLC, or any other server or world because it is just functional layers on-top of preexisting base game blocks (such as locking thrust direction, drive signatures and heat calcs, thrust gravity, etc.) - at most all that you lose is the functionality added by this mod.
It also means you can combine these mods with basically anything else, as they don't use any other frameworks, or have any custom blocks that wouldn't be managed by other mods or scripts. Worst case another mod overwrites a functionality of this one.

Hope that helps!

How does this compare to the SDX modpack, generally speaking.

Glad to hear it! You're welcome 👍

Works a treat for thermal sig and cleanup utility warning. Thanks Vector!

@Squeech you can try it out and see if it works, but I can't guarantee it will. With my approach to vanilla backwards compatibility I'm not really interested in incorporating WC support into it.

I am eeger to try this but in my current setup i rely heavily on a Weaponcore - even tho i tuned it to basically be like vanilla ranges. i also dont use WC weapons. Is it possible to make this compatible?

@vector_cmdr thank you my friend, i will start testing Drive signatures and the cleanup utility right away.

New Minor Update:
Added support for Prototech thrusters to be added to signatures at the same level as large hydrogen variants and also be locked to forward only thrust. They do not have their color altered, however (intentional).

@Zackey_TNT all uploaded to separate mods per core function. Let me know if anything super odd happens, but I have tested them locally in combination and they seem to be behaving.

I had previously tested the torp guidance script on my Torch server and it was working, so hopefully it still is working fine - I am unable to confirm currently as my homelab is down for drive reworks.

@vector_cmdr, Totally understand! I wouldn't want my stuff taken either! I'm glad I reached out because that would be awesome. I'm building a small project so would love to include aspects of this in it! :)

@Zacket_TNT I've been meaning to for a while, so this is a good nudge to make me haha.
I'll get them uploaded separately over the weekend.
I would rather others didn't upload them on my behalf.

@vector_cmdr, would it be possible to upload some of these to steam workshop to enable multiplayer functionality (since the clients must download the mods)?

I could do this but I certainly dont want to intrude!

@Zackey_TNT not from the mod here (at least not yet) - but if you go to the GitHub link in the description you can grab each main component as a separate thing and add them to the mods folder to use in a custom combination.

Hey man, this is a really cool mod. Question, is it possible to split off components such as Drive Signatures System, and Speed Mods, to customize the experience in Multiplayer?

Regarding other previously planned & implemented features:
Due to a save corruption and poor backup practices, I have lost a lot of the WIP ship blueprints. So it's going to take some time to rebuild these, unfortunately.

Given the new systems that have come along with patches recently such as the weather changes, radiation system, etc. I will be looking at some of the intended features and whether to continue work on, remove, or rework them with the new systems - for instance: planetary damage, lighting disable, etc.

Added beta test of ship speed based control of Gravity Generators to (kind of) mimic thrust based gravity.
I opted for grid speed vs thrust for a better user experience over a more 'correct' approach.

The mod looks for any Gravity Generators on the grid and checks their custom names.
If the custom name has the character "+", positive Gravity Generator accel is added at speed.
If the custom name has the character "^" (ctrl+6), negative Gravity Generator accel is added at speed (for upside down gens in builds).
If you leave those characters out of the custom name for the grav gen block, you are opted out of this system.

If you want to use this system, please ensure that the Gravity Generator field is setup correctly with a little overlap.

Testing feedback is appreciated.

@Harkly, unsure. Depends when / how they get survival up and running. Now that they backpedalled on Steam Workshop support, I might. For now it's very much an SE1 project. SE2 isn't going to be in the same playable state for a long time yet.

Will this be moved to SE2 or kept on SE1 for now. Well till Mod support unlocks on SE2 that is?

@REV4666 Unfortunately I haven't had much time to build more of the ships to add the spawning yet due to other projects and personal responsibilities. I'm hoping to some time in the next few months.

Hello you add several factions but, but do you have the ships to spawn with them or will they spawn ships from other MES factions?

I saw the comment from April 2024 but i was wondering if you implement it yet or not

@Revale08 - Have tested now in a fresh save and an old save with only this mod enabled and the large backwards thrust is disabled nearly immediately.

Do you have the required beacon block attached?
This acts as both the thrust governor and the drive signature system.
An antenna is also recommended (for ship ID) but not required.

You can find more in the readme above under Thrust & Systems > 3. Drive Signature Systems

Hope that helps

@Revale08 - sounds like something broke with the hotfixes they rolled out. I'll look into it. Thanks for reporting!

had a friend confirm, the large reverse thrusters are still firing and working as normal even with this mod active on its own on a new save.

I cant seem to get the functionality of the Forward thrust only to work. I tested this by starting a new solar syustem save, with this as the only mod active. Spawned in a space pod, slapped on a large ion reverse thruster. it activated and stayed active. Am i missing something?

Update to include the new update/DLC Prototech thrusters in the forward thrust code (support for color, disabling backwards large thrusters etc.) is pending my schedule but is planned.

@D4NGERM4N598:

That's one of the main points of the mod.
Large thrust forward only in the style of the expanse. If you want backward facing thrust, you need to use small thrusters as RCS.

If you add backwards large thrusters they will be disabled.

If you mean that there is a bug with forward large ion, there is not (confirmed with test just now and with reload and grid switch). If this is happening, ensure you have a beacon on and active or you are locked out of drive control.
Test screenshot: https://imgur.com/a/ZwHplw5

introduces game braking bug in which no matter what you do bkwd large ion thrusters of all variants stay turned off in k menu no action can turn them on

Is there any way to disable the "Forward Only Thrusters" or a version with that part removed?

To explain further on the below comment:

I currently have around 20 fairly accurately designed expanse ship blueprints that will be included at a later date:
* Stealth Missile Platform
* Laconian Pulsar/Storm Class
* Morrigan Class
* Tachi class
* Roci
* UNS Vessel
* Belter Rock Hoppers (x5)
* Belter Frigate (x2)
* FN Pella/Raptor Class
* Tycho Station
* Razorback
* Yacht (x3)
* Morrigan Class

I am hoping to implement them into MES with some custom radio chatter and other behaviours similar to the Assertive Combat Systems mod. The intent is for it to also have custom belter spawn ships.
This will take a lot of time to finish though as I only work on this between other off-time projects :)

@Artyomson - Enemy ships need to comply with the design principals outlined in the mods support. If they don't have the beacon, correct thrusters and placement, etc. they won't work correctly (i.e. won't have sigs, or won't fly correctly).

Initial beta testing had most default enemies and MES default ships working fine.
There were a handful that did not though (and essentially they just end up being wrecks / dead ships to go raid which suits me fine for now).

Currently the factions are simply in place in the factions list/menu for future use, this mod does not currently spawn custom enemy encounters.
When I get enough free time again, I will be adding them, but I can't give a timeline.

I don't see any enemy drive signatures, and none of the factions are spawning for me, tried on a new save with no faction mods or mods that change spawn behaviour.

@silver.talon - Thanks for the compliment, glad you like it. Yes, that should work to allow the use of both.

yeet

Hey LotteHime, cool mod! I'm an Expanse Fan! Hey Question for ya, if I use this with Weaponcore and put this lower on the mod list, Weaponcore should overwrite the weapon features of this and Weaponcore's scripting should take over. I'm mainly asking because I really like the Expanse Weapons for Weaponcore and like the other features of this mod. Let me know what you think?

It's not currently possible to disable some parts individually unless you run it locally and remove the parts you don't want. Please see the GitHub page for more info on this.

@Dagoobaert - Flight speed is still working on this end. Perhaps a clash with another mod?

Hello, its a great mod, but the speed isnt increasing, still at 100m/s

possible to disable some functions ?

is it possible to change the no fly zone to allow small grid and damage large grid's to allow small drop pods?

I don't know the spec of your laptop, but it doesn't add much overhead - so if it's fine playing SE with a few mods, then it should be ok .

will this mod fry my laptop or is it able to be used by lower end PC's and laptops?

Мод - огонь! Но скорость лучше сделать 400мс.

...using an image editing software lol

Greetings, please tell me how to insert words into the main photo (preview) of the product in the workshop like yours.

It's intended as a bit of a thematic all or nothing, but I may upload individual parts later as separate mods.
If you're using it singleplayer you can follow the installation instructions on the GitHub readme to install individual parts for singleplayer use.

Drive Signatures System: can you make Pack with this alone?

Thanks, glad you like it :)
Yeah works great for singleplayer too, but main development is with multiplayer in mind.

I'll keep the idea of switchable features in mind for future development and add it to the WIP list

Hey thanks mate, oh so it works for single players hey? i was using this for my server, found it to be really good for discipline and management for public players, ah well that's a bummer. but i cant wait for your future developments, this is really good!

By default, no there isn't as it's part of the core concept for expanse style ships (built tower style, large thrust for main thrust, small for RCS).

If you're playing singleplayer and can load local mods (can't for multiplayer servers) you can jump over to the project GitHub and download the mod components as individual mods of their own and place them in the local mods folder (C:\Users\[USERNAME]\AppData\Roaming\SpaceEngineers\Mods).

This looks interesting, is there a way to disable the following? many of our ships are built with large upwards thrusters:

Large thrusters placed / built in a direction other than forward are disabled.
Large thrusters (main drives) are turned off at init for safety and performance.