Space Engineers Wiki

New Official Space Engineers wiki

A new official wiki is now available! - at https://spaceengineers.wiki.gg/

This wiki is deprecated in favour of it.

READ MORE

Space Engineers Wiki
Advertisement
600px-Planet Planet01

There are eight planets and moons in the Star System that have their own gravity field and ores. Several planets come with their own moon. Some planets have an atmosphere, Weather, vegetation, NPC bases, and hostile life.

In contrast to real life, planets in game range in size from 19km to 120km in diameter and they do not actually spin nor move along any orbits.

Planets, moons, and asteroids are large, immobile, destructible voxel objects. They can be terraformed in Creative Mode using Voxel Hands. In Survival Mode, you can drill the voxel material.

For planetary maps, see Special:AllMaps.

Planets & Moons List[]

Planets and Moons List
Planet Moon
Earth-like Moon
Mars Europa
Triton none
Pertam none
Alien Planet Titan

Ore Generation[]

Ore generation overview
Celestial Body Cobalt Ore Gold Ore Ice Iron Ore Magnesium Ore Nickel Ore Platinum Ore Silicon Ore Silver Ore Stone Uranium Ore
Planet Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes No Yes Yes Yes No
Asteroid Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes
Moon Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes No

Measurements[]

This table lists the standard planets, their distance from the center (?), their diameter in kilometres, and their GPS coordinates. The values are obtained through SEToolbox.

Name Distance Diameter GPS
EarthLike 227.02 120.00 GPS:EarthLike:0.50:0.50:0.50:
Moon 176.92 19.00 GPS:Moon:16384.50:136384.50:-113615.50:
Mars 1749.29 120.00 GPS:Mars:1031072.50:131072.50:1631072.50:
Europa 1835.76 19.00 GPS:Europa:916384.50:16384.50:1616384.50:
Triton 2542.14 80.25 GPS:Triton:-284463.50:-2434463.50:365536.50:
Pertam 4079.73 60.00 GPS:Pertam:-3967231.50:-32231.50:-767231.50:
Alien 5600.00 120.00 GPS:Alien:131072.50:131072.50:5731072.50:
Titan 5783.85 19.00 GPS:Titan:36384.50:226384.50:5796384.50:

Planets’ Game Mechanics[]

Globe-rendering-earthlike

Earthlike planet rendered as globe map by u/AhCrapItsYou

In real life, a planet is a round celestial body that orbits a star on a cleared path. A moon is a natural satellite, a celestial body that orbits a larger body, possibly together with other moons or rings. Asteroids are irregularly shaped smaller objects that orbit a star, typically in clusters.

In game, asteroids, moons, and planets are technically exactly the same objects: Voxels arranged in different size and shape.

  • Planets, moons, and asteroids in game are completely immobile and never actually move along any orbits, no matter how much force or gravity is applied.
  • Planets, moons, and asteroids in game have in common that they are fully destructible voxels with Ore deposits on them.
  • Moons in game are simply smaller planets, only 19km in diameter by default, and possess much weaker gravitational fields than planets, down to 0.25 g. This is in contrast to real life, where the largest moons of Jupiter and Neptune have been shown to be half the size of Earth.
  • Asteroids in game are again much smaller than moons and planets and have no perceivable gravity.




Planetary Surface Generation[]

Globe-rendering-alien

Alien planet rendered as interactive globe map by u/AhCrapItsYou

While their surfaces appear randomly generated, they're in fact pre-loaded voxel models. When you start a Custom Game, there is no procedural generation for Planets or Moons, they are always the same.

Each planet type will spawn the appropriate environment models and surface textures associated with its template. The same properties are applied even when a planet is spawned in manually by the player using the Spawn Menu (SHIFT+F10) in Creative Mode.

When a player in creative mode increases the size of a manually spawned Planet, the game simply stretches the planetary models to accommodate for the new size. The textures and vegetation distribution adjust to the new size to look natural, only the surface model is stretched.

Ores on planets and moons are easier to find, because there are more deposits and several are always clustered together within 150m below the surface. Asteroids, in contrast, contain larger deposits, but they are further apart and spread out over a larger 3D volume of space and many asteroid contain only stone.

Planets and Moons globe maps by u/AhCrapItsYou
Planet Moon
Earth-like globe Moon globe
Mars globe Europa globe
Triton globe none
Pertam globe none
Alien Planet globe Titan globe

How to Spawn Planets and Moons Manually[]

Newly created custom games from the Star System template include all default planets, while other custom games and scenarios may contain only a subset. When an update comes out, new planets are not retroactively added to old game saves. In this case, players in singleplayer and server admins can add planets manually, if desired.

How to add planets to a game:

  1. (In a Survival game: Press Alt+F10 and enable creative mode tools, then press Alt+F10 to close the Admin Screen again.)
  2. Copy the GPS of the planet from the table above.
  3. Press K, open the GPS tab in game, and click "New From Clipboard". Make sure it is visible on your HUD.
  4. Travel to the GPS location.
    • Either open the Admin Screen and go to Cycle Objects > GPS (press Next a few times until you find the GPS, then click Teleport Here).
    • Or press F8 to go into Spectator Mode, use shift+mousewheel to increase your speed, and "fly" to the GPS.
  5. Press Shift+F10 to open the Spawn menu, and select "Planets" from the drop-down.
    1. Select the planet or moon to add. (Do not select the ones that say "tutorial" or "example" or "test".)
    2. Select its size. Use the diameter value from the table above.
    3. Click Spawn and click to paste it.
  6. Press Shift-F10 again to close the Spawn menu.
  7. (In a Survival game: Press Alt+F10 again and disable creative mode tools.)

A planet or moon in your game save doesn't have to be spawned in its standard position to „work“, you can just place planets where you like. (The coordinates would only matter if you have copied GPS locations of standard ore patches from another save and expect them to work in the new game.)

When you manually spawn a planet in, and you also want the planet’s moon, you must spawn the moon in manually as well.

Advanced tips: How to move planets[]

Summary of an advanced tip from u/MarkoffChaneyIII:

You can change the position of a spawned in planet to given coordinates.

To obtain valid planet coordinates, copy the x,y,z values from another temporary game save.

  1. Create a new temporary game based off the default "Star System".
  2. In Windows Explorer, go to %APPDATA%\SpaceEngineers\Saves, open your numeric-named directory, then open the saved game directory in it.
  3. Open the game's SANDBOX_0_0_0_.sbs file in NotePad++.
  4. Search for the name of the planet at the desired location and copy the x, y, z values into a text editor.
    • Alternatively, find a setting called "ShowGPS", which is set to false by default. Replace false by true and restart the game to see a planet's GPS in game.
  5. Close the game file without saving any changes. You can delete the temporary world now.

To move a spawned in planet:

  1. Go to %APPDATA%\SpaceEngineers\Saves, open your numeric-named directory, then open the saved game directory in it.
  2. Open the SANDBOX_0_0_0_.sbs file in NotePad++ (it will take a while to open this file).
  3. Make a backup of this file in Windows Explorer.
  4. Find the planet you wish to edit and change the x, y, and z values to the ones you recorded earlier.
  5. Save the .sbs file.
  6. In the same directory in Windows Explorer, find a temporary file called SANDBOX_0_0_0 _.sbsB5 and delete it.

When you now load the edited save, you'll get a warning message about some files being out of sync, just click OK and it should rebuild the .sbcB5 and load. The first time loading will take longer than usual, but that's normal after such a big change.

For console players to have a drop-pod spawn option for spawned planets, make sure to enable the respawn ship in your advanced settings. Then load and save the world and exit, reload, and force respawn. Now there should be an option for the drop-pod spawn on those planets.

Related Mods[]

Advertisement