Summary
- The Signals DLC for Space Engineers adds remote communication between grids using wireless signals, benefitting all players in the game.
- The game now features a new Red Ship starting scenario with challenges to help new players learn essential game actions.
- Quality of life changes in the game include improved help, tree collisions, stacking items, and AI improvements. Players will appreciate these updates.
Space Engineers is an older survival crafting game, but one of the first to incorporate base building and ship construction into its survival gameplay. Initially released in 2013, the game has received many free updates and 13 separate DLCs. Some of these DLC also added updates to the core gameplay that were given to all players, regardless of whether they purchased the DLC or not.
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The Signals DLC was released in May 2024, and it also came with a free update for all game owners. The name "Signals" refers to the new gameplay feature of remote communication between grids using wireless signals. Everyone gets this new feature in the Signals update, whether they buy the DLC or not. It adds some real possibilities for remote control and automation in this great space simulation game.
6 New Red Ship Starting Scenario
A Fresh Challenge For New Players
Space Engineers doesn’t have the type of new game tutorial that holds the player’s hand and guides them through the first stages of gameplay. Instead, the game has a number of automated prompts that help players learn how to undertake certain actions. This can make the game hard to learn at first.
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The updated version of the Red Ship start helps with this. It is a revamped version of the old Red Ship start that includes challenges that a new player can complete, learning the game as they do so. This includes building basic blocks, mining, repairing ships, and pretty much every type of action they will need to learn to play the game fully. This is a very good new addition for players that discovered Space Engineers after it was added to Xbox Pass in 2024.
5 Additional Round Armor Panels
Some Well-Needed Visual Variation
The Signals update for Space Engineers does include a few free cosmetic blocks for all players who don’t buy the associated Signals DLC. These come in the form of curbed armor panels. There are both small-grid and large-grid versions of this new armor block.
Having access to a curved armor panel without having to pay for DLC for the first time in Space Engineers is something of a big deal. For many years, players who didn't want to buy any DLC had been limited to just square and triangular armor blocks. This new addition is going to help players build better-looking structures and ships with more variety.
4 Quality Of Life Changes
Some Very Sensible New Additions
The Signals update for Space Engineers brings in some well-thought-out quality of life changes, some of which the community has been requesting for a long time. This shows that Keen is listening to its customers, which is nice to know. Here is a list of the most significant changes:
- Warning added when a block will turn to scrap when ground down.
- Improved help and in-game information.
- Tree collisions improved (finally).
- Item stacking for non-unique items.
- Better information from applicable blocks.
- AI improvements, including cargo ship flight paths.
- NPC grids balanced and adjusted.
These are all solid changes and add to the game. Players who have spent a lot of time on a planet with trees will know just how bad the old tree collision could be at times, so this is a great change in itself. There were around 20 QoL changes in all, across both PC and console.
3 Compact Antenna
Finally, A Sensibly SIzed Antenna
A long-time gripe for Space Engineers players has been the size of the antenna block. Not so much the small-grid block, which isn’t too bad size-wise, but the large-grid antenna which is extremely large, with a huge footprint and requiring around 5 blocks of length available somewhere in a build to fit it.
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The new Compact Antenna is much smaller. On a large grid structure, it has a single-block footprint and is around two blocks high. This new block has been added based on player feedback and is likely to be very well received by the community. The new antenna can be controlled using scripts in the same way the existing ones can.
2 Broadcast Controller
Enabling Automated Chat Messages
The Space Engineers Signals update is, well, all about signals, revolving around two new special blocks that have been added to the game in the update. The first of these is the Broadcast Controller. What this block does is automatically send chat messages when it is triggered.
The Broadcast Array can be used with or without an antenna, and the chat messages sent by the block are only visible to players that are in range. Furthermore, a GPS position can be sent with the chat message. This block is very simple to use, but opens up a whole range of scenarios for adding interactive chat messaging. Advertising the location of specific services on a private server, for example. It will be interesting to see where the community goes with this.
1 Action Relay
Remote Control Across A Wireless Network
The main new addition in the Signals update for Space Engineers, is the new Action Relay block. This basically works as a remote control across a wireless network. A pair of Action Relay blocks can be connected using an antenna at each end of the connection. Furthermore, the Action Relays used can be on different grids. This adds some real scope for remote control and automation.
Setting up a pair of Action Relays is a little complicated. Channels need to be selected, and the receiving relay has to be set up to accept commands from the sending relay. Once this is done, the player has to set up the action itself, which is triggered by the relay. This can be anything that the Automatons update added, such as pressing a button or starting a timer.
There can be no doubt that the community is going to produce some incredible builds based on the new addition of remote wireless control to the game. It adds so much scope for clever automation and customization of vehicles and ships, such as entire fleets of remote mining vessels that the player can control from a mothership, for example.
Space Engineers
- Released
- February 28, 2019
WHERE TO PLAY
- Platform(s)
- PC, PlayStation 4, PlayStation 5, Xbox One, Xbox Series X, Xbox Series S
- Genre(s)
- Simulation, Sandbox
