Life Support for Engineers covers the availability of oxygen and power, and avoiding death by environmental dangers such as hostiles, weather, or the vacuum of space. Monitor your health, oxygen, and power levels in the bottom left of the HUD.
Life support is trivial to maintain on the Earthlike Planet, and gets more involved as you venture into space and travel across other planetary bodies.
Recharging the Space Suit[]
The Engineer’s suit provides life support as long as its supplied with power and Oxygen Bottles and the helmet is closed in space (toggle the visor using (J key)).
On planets with an atmosphere and high pressure, you can leave the helmet open or closed, as the suit also automatically uses filtered oxygen from the environment. In atmospheres with low pressure, the player can survive with the helmet open but the suit cannot refill itself.
The suit refills itself by emptying bottles in the inventory, but the suit cannot refill the bottles, only an O2/H2 Generator can.
You have the following options to recharge the suit:
Using consumable items:
- Carry Oxygen Bottles in your inventory - they provide several large oxygen recharges, but are voluminous to carry.
- Activate Medkits in your inventory - heals you a little bit.
- Activate Powerkits in your inventory - recharges suit power a little bit.
Using blocks:
- Interact with a Medical Room screen - recharges suit fast if block is powered and conveyored to a source of oxygen.
- Interact with a Survival Kit screen - recharges suit slowly if block is powered and conveyored to a source of oxygen
- Enter a Cryo Chamber - it keeps players inside alive as long as the block is powered and conveyored to a source of oxygen. But it provides no healing.
- Add O2/H2 Generator to you base - it uses up
Ice to recharge gas bottles placed in its inventory, and to supply gas to other blocks such as tanks/survival kit/etc. - Add Oxygen Tanks - they quickly refill inserted oxygen bottles and provide a source of oxygen to other blocks.
- Add Oxygen Farms - provide a slow source of oxygen to other blocks when exposed to sunlight.
Living in Airtight Cabins[]
To not constantly depend on these emergency recharging options on hostile planets or during a long space flight, sit your engineer in an airtight cabin.
- The simplest cabin is a Cockpit block or Fighter Cockpit block that’s powered and conveyored to a source of oxygen.
- Or you can build an airtight interior on your ship using pressurising Air Vents conveyored to a source of oxygen.
An airtight room or cockpit additionally protects you from environmental effects that drain your suit’s power, such as extreme weather on planets, and vacuum in space and on atmosphere-free moons.
Related Topics[]
Refuelling the jetpack with Hydrogen is similarly important for survival to get out of mining holes or return to the ship in zero gravity. And for an interior to be truly walkable in zero gravity (not just using Magnetic Boots), consider building a Gravity Generator. Both of these pieces of advice are about manoeuvrability and not life support per se.