I like using merge blocks to build space hulks which is really just a whole bunch of space debris and damaged ships bound together

I've only ever heard the term "Kitbashing" in tabletop wargames like the Ironic Warhammer 40k. This idea sounds fun. It's like the "Uglies" from Star wars.

the new beds are such a game-changer. They've allowed me to fully flesh out my interiors the way I intended, and it's allowed me to get back into space engineers.

Honestly, I totally suck at designing ships and stations so retrofitting pre-existing designs is the majority of my shipbuilding. So when you said that the economy designs have "room for improvement", you weren't kidding. Most of the designs are from years ago and can definitely benefit from being upgraded, modernized, and having redundant blocks replaced with newer streamlined (or modded) blocks.

Ladders: When I'm in a rush no. If I'm just chillin, absolutely love em for the compactness they provide

You brought up kitbashing and I remembered the first time I heard that phrase, iirc, was in an old magazine called Car-Toons. Two guys were making models, one a stealth bomber and the other a drag car, and the the jet body falls onto the car. They then decided to make an RC, to-scale replica, and ended up wanted by the FBI. Irrelevant story aside, you earned a new sub here. Nice presentation and redesigns.

I'm pretty sure that the primary designer of the KSH ships was Aragath(sp?). From comments he's made here and there, I suspect the gravity generators were added later literally because the block was added after he did the original design. Later builds then had to conform to the style of previous ones, and he was prohibited from using DLC blocks as well. In any case, the IP belongs to the company rather than the employee, so.

Its so hard for me to build nice ships. I see all these amazin creations in the WS and think: How are you not all designers for real life things? Helpful video!

In the same vein as your kitbashing approach, a thing I like to do regularly is just design parts of a ship without a final ship in mind. Just try variants on crew quarters, a cafeteria, a hangar, a bridge, a corridor, an airlock, an engine nacelle, each in isolation just seeing what I can do within different sizes and shapes. That experience has been invaluable to draw upon so many times when it came to building specific ships. In theory, I could've saved those modules as blueprints and kitbashed them together, but in practice I simply remember all the little tricks. And perhaps more importantly, you develop a sense of how much space a given function needs. Having that instinct saves so much grief.

7:00- I always finish the ship and then go 'oh, F--- GYROS!".

People complained endlessly when they got rid of ladders (they were buggy at the time), then there was much rejoicing when they re-added them. And now you only ever seem to see them being used for aesthetics rather than something practical unless it's on a station or base or something static. They're genuinely useful when you have limited hydrogen for your jet pack or you're doing a no jetpack play through of some kind.

In warhammer, converting a model to be from the Ork faction is often called “looting”, maybe we should call Turing vanilla ships in space engineers into pirate ships “Plundering”

I definitely like to modify/retrofit workshop ships when im not feeling inspired, however my favorite thing to do is to turn them into full modular ships (you know with connectors and merge blocks). Thanks for the reminder on the economy ones, I tend to forget about them but I already have some ideas! Should probably also make a hangar for this too. Edit: I just realized who you are, I've used your ship Luna in a few playthroughs. Great ship

I love ladders, I put them as the main access-route to any & all areas of my base where I don't actually need to go.

Okay, I somehow never thought of just.. retrofitting stuff that already exists. For some reason, I was always of the mindset that I have to come up with my own stuff. I will endeavour to retrofit. This sounds sensible.

I'm the one guy who likes ladders. I like the atmosphere of climbing up in the calm, sort of anticipation knowing I'm about to go do something crazy, or the frantic climbing when I'm desperately trying to get to where I need to be (but only if I know its not actually urgent lol.)

The trick I've always used is to just start on a new ship every time you get a little bored of your current ship. This way, you have hundreds of blueprints of half built ships you have to sort though every time, and barely any finished ships to show for the thousands of hours you've played the game.

I think I have an unhealthy addiction to ladders in my ships... I just love the cramped industrial crawlspaces and ventilation shafts. They make me feel things in my soooul

One of my favorite thing to do was make blueprints of all the random encounter derelicts and try to rebuild them in creative. Having the ship torn open/apart like they are when found in survival is a great opportunity to see inside the inner workings and get ideas for improving things on my own designs. Then, i'd rebuild the ships again making my own changes to them. One of my favorite ships to tinker with was the "corvette" random encounter since it was based off a very old design and had been redone several times before finally being added as a random encounter meaning the insides are a jumbled mess leaving a ton of opportunity to change things and test ideas. I probably have 10 iterations of that one ship alone.

i love ladders! they immerse me more, and i dont mind them

A cool feature they could add is the ability for players to buy and sell ships or blueprints to each other on an in-game exchange for space credits

One of the first things I "designed" was to put a drill on a really long conveyer tube(15 at least). I call it the mosquito, or probuscuss. I had to then make, the "suckulator", and "dumper outer". A sorter, connecter combo with stones white listed on the sorter, and trash all on the connector. I first put this design on the little yellow ship. The Duck.

Amazing job! Will you consider making a pirate NPC mod with your "New Age Pirates" fleet for MES? The Mothership would make a great boss encounter.

I generally slap a gravity generator on my miners so they can poop out the stone. And with negative Gs it shoots it away from my ship.

I’ll take your ladders I find they’re more space efficient if you use them correctly 😅 19:16 I don’t think you can use that landing pad anymore especially since the antenna gives you about 1 1/2 blocks to work with… but either way loving the ship so far!! 😍

First of all - great narration and video sequence. Second - butchering existing ships really helps understanding how things work to improve the practicality of your own builds, and overall design to some extent too, but.. at the same time I caught myself on not progressing with ship design while modifying another captured LCC3 Freighter for the 40th time. Like I made my "Perfect B-60 Bulk Freighter" on full hydrogen thrust, still using highly modified Cursor as main fighter, even merged three LCC3 ships together for fun once. But still every time I'm trying to build my own large grid ship from scrap it's either overcomplicated, ugly, not functional, too heavy, too niche, etc. Pick at least 3 for every ship, while "ugly" is by default. There's something more with SE that makes it so hard to come up with a truly original, functional and beautiful design. Probably main reason I still play this game tho :)

Hi Shifty. This is a great video. I have done lots of reworking the economy since i started playing. I've played so much now that I recognized and called out each each ship section in your kit bashed mothership even with your modernizing them. I know each of those ships well and I agree they make great projects. Some of them are made by Aragath and some are StreamBG. Really enjoyed this look forward to more.

What a cool video! I love the modifications you made.

I'm that guy! Always looking for ways to save hydrogen, while engaging in activities requiring vertical displacement.

I have over 2000 hours on SE and this still helped me improve

This video gave me the inspiration to do a game where I cannot build my own ships. I have to buy and retrofit the economy ships.

Never heard of this game but referred by the algorithm b/c I love Satisfactory. Reminds me a bit of Starfield’s ship crafting which I loved. Might check this one out! Great vid! Cheers!

Retro fit the red and blue capital ship and see what you can come up with. At some point in one of my save, i retrofitted the red capital ship into a land moving mining platform.

Excellent editing on the ships and the video! I enjoyed this alot 👊

Great video! I've done exactly your suggestion a few times! When I'm at a loss for an original starting concept, I like to sort workshop blueprints by date and go to the oldest ones from circa 2015. More than a few are invalid now due to time-sensitive exploits and scripts, or fundamental game changes. But it's still cool to revisit someone's original ideas from nearly a decade ago. Some designs really age well. Others tried hard (too hard) to do more than was really practical with the limited block sets available at their time. Some of the workaround or kludges people used to use can still apply for greebling today. And personally, I also like to set certain specs to (re)design to -- maybe the accounting department demands that we cut costs (PCUs) or mass by 10%+ without compromising the ship's functions and/or aesthetics. Maybe an older design had fatal flaws in air tightness, or isn't 1g / atmospheric flight capable (back when planets didn't exist in the SE universe) -- and your local spaceflight agency has introduced scope creep into the mission, requiring a rebuild to bring up to spec. :D Or for new concepts from scratch, I"m not the most artistic guy, so I again like to pick roles and specs to build toward. It also helps to develop a program of features for the ship, like how architects start by creating a program for what a new project is required to do. I've had a lot of fun building within the aforementioned PCU or mass constraints. Or as one very specific example, I build and retrofit racing ships to various performance requirements. This gets a lot deeper when using the Relative Speed Mod to raise top speed up to a modest 300 m/s, and Draygo Korvan's aerodynamics mod, which creates air resistance and lifting surface effects using only existing vanilla armor blocks if so desired. A very particular 3rd place for me goes to a hydrogen fuel mass mod, so that I have to take O2 and H2 mass into account when a ship's tanks are both full and near empty.

I do actually like ladders in certain places. Use them a lot in engineering and on the outside of ship for high gravity planets to save on hydrogen.

I really enjoy this. The idea of retrofitting ships is so... idk why I´ve never done it... I mean, I shy back from retrofitting my OWN ships XD this may have given me some new steam

nice. I started a new game where i only use the starter ship in space. I had to rebuild the entire thing so it wouldnt despawn if something happened. It now has more thrusters, weapons, refiners, a hangar bay for ships ect. was fun changing it to fit needs

I love "mutation builds" in truth for me, no 2 economy ships are the same. i buy them then modify them for what i'm currently doing in my play. the hauler being one of my fav's and sometimes becoming ice miners, others pure h2 ships with some guns, in others pure atmospheric. Though as yo know my fav mutations in the starting rescue ship. that thing gets turned into everything from mining ships, cargo ships its had atmosphic and h2 thrusters added to it... Its even been turned into a Luxury ship complete with jump drive.

The LLC-3 is one of my favorite ships to redesign, in my newest design I managed to squeeze in a refinery an upgraded assembler w speed upgrades and a few new reactors. It's exterior is also retrofitted with assault turrets and rocket launcher turrets. It was a fun redesign, maybe I'll try kit bashing, see what I can make.

I like climbing ladders in Space Engineers It makes it feel more realistic I think and looks cool in engine rooms and the like, but... I only (most of the time) employ them, where I don't go too often, because their slow speed is a bit of a hassle.

Kitbashing is what I'm good at. I am horrible at building "pretty" ships. I definitely have a style, but it's more about function. I actually have an entire space station that is 3 or 4 different NPC bases just mashed together. I added a few pieces, but you can tell what I added. You'd think with 4k hours in game I would have improved in that area, but nope. Great video, by the way.

I love retrofitting existing builds, it's much easier for me than making my own from scratch... There's one I've been really wanting to rebuild at a 2:1 scale, but I haven't been able to get myself to play.

Ladderman greatly disapproves of your tastes. 😹 I think ladders are cool specially for tight or industrial spaces, the 1st ship you showed had a ladder, it beats just the empty space to fall off to get in the cockpit. 👍

Ladders actually act as a seat if you have to jump. Saved me a few times in the ship tunnels! Also great vid, Subed.

I love ladders, They're so cool :)

i dabbled in kit bashing before i knew what it was and im not good at it but i enjoy it

I don't dislike ladders, but I wouldn't say I like them. In Splitsies "Scrapyard" scenario there's a few POIs that spawn that the ladders are rather rewarding... When you see ladders in it you know there's something good coming. Especially if you play it as intended where your jetpack is disabled.

Hi! What are the names of the blocks that look like half-constructed light armor plates? You use them on the pirated Ambassador Explorer for the entrance, and in a few interior places to cover up conveyor hatches so you can still reach them. You're pointing directly at them at 19:30

Most of the economy ships are from the Devs themself and are fair game. Aragath made the B-60, H-01, Ambassador, others are from Xocliv, iirc. Really no one cares if these get reposted. It is true tho to workshop specific ships to ask. Also, I'm your ladder guy. Why? Immersion. You want mostly to conserve as much weight and as much space as possible, thinking from a fuel/energy and resource point. I get they are tedious to walk, but I build space ships, not yachts :) edit: typo.

Concerning ladders, they were removed from the game early on and a huge number of players asked (begged really) keen to re-add them (which they did in 2018 or 2019, can't remember which). Then, there are servers (server admins) and players that turn off/disable the use of the jet pack, so you'd be in bad shape without ladders.

grav on top is probably to "add detail" to the exterior, or so is my guess.... I prefere to hide those as well, but I can see people wanting more variety, specially back then when there was a lot less option for it

One of my mates I play SE with loves building on planets and he loves ladders puts them on all of his ships. xD

Really love your content! I love the fact that you dont cut the video every 2 seconds and have obnoxious music playing over the top of it all. Do you think you could do a tutorial or something on how to actually kitbash? Im not really sure what the best way to do it is with the SE building mechanics.

i got question I've catch some trade faction ships from vanilla ships, sprt ship like the military minelayer and escort tried to rebuild them but have no clue were start on.

What I would love to be added to the game is CAD like tool to design ships.

"Have fun! Better and become builder"

I like ladders because I’m stingy using my suit thrusters planetside in survival mode. I hate wasting hydrogen. 🤷‍♂️ I only have like 350hrs in the game tho so I’m not over ladders haha. Also dammit, I didn’t realize you did build competitions! I’ll have to join the next one. Badass kitbash!

I like ladders, I just wish they worked a bit smoother with magnet boots.

I will gladly take your ladders.

I'm the guy. I like ladders. My main ship has a huge one for when it's in planetary gravity.

How did you join two ships together? Merge blocks? The tour was nice but it would've been nice to see the process.

we need another economy update to bring all the ships up to date

2:03 "all the floor in here is salad" wut

how can I get all the base game economy ships added to my blueprints?

I need a full blown tutorial on how to make a ship or rover look good is efficient and functions in creative and survival

Give me ALL your ladders!

I play with no jetpack. So yeah, ladders. Everywhere.

I just got done watching this and wanted to ask something. Would you be interested in doing a video about improving, critiquing or advising about some of my ship designs? I know thats a weird question, but I'm a relatively novice ps5 player and I want to see some things I may have either overlooked or messed up in my designs. I gladly give full permission to modify them to your liking to show improvements or tips about how to better build in the future.

can you get the blueprints for the economy ships?

Hot take but I like ladders

hey shifty, i allways make my ships and then i dont have space for an interior. any tips?

It's me, I'm the ladder girl, give me all of your ladders

All the vanilla stuff is built by Aragath

i like climbing ladders.... 😂

For some reason I've always REALLY struggled with ship building. Bases, sure. But ships not so much. Retro fitting other peoples designs at least lets me pretend I can build a ship 😅

Unfortunately a lot of the early builders no longer play or the account no longer exists so it might be hard to get permission for some ships

Are these on mod io? Would love to use them.

To be fair a lot of the Keen ships leave a lot to be desired.

I like climb ladders.

Im actually very good at designing bases that cater to the environ its based in. Suspended base on Pertam? Check. Hidden asteroid base? Done. Underground/Side of mountain? Easy. Build a ship? Square box. 🤦‍♂️

I turn them onto pirate ships for fun

Hi

I like ladders! The utility and looks, everything except the unusually bad implementation in SE :

I can't even build un armoured working ships so I got no chance

wait you can buy ships?

Guy who likes ladders here

Ive been trying to tell newbs all the time years now. Start leaving to build. Practice. So much more what this game is about is building (engineering) ships. If your not good practice. , the game is greater as an engineer. Learn despite you sucking at first.