Assertive Combat Systems

Assertive Combat Systems brings life and challenge to your world.

This mod includes cargoships and bases for planets, moons and space. It will progressively increase in challenge as you grow in threat.

So, how does it work?

• cargoships will spawn in the local area as long as they can find a safe path (you will see fewer if you are in a mountainous, high elevation area)
• bases will attempt to spawn as you move around, the further you travel, the more will spawn. The flatter the ground, the more will spawn.
• if you leave the ASSERT faction alone, it'll leave you be. If you start attacking, that will change...
• in order to defend themselves more effectively, cargoships and bases will call in drones for help

What makes ACS special?

Curated and custom builds

• the builds in ACS are partially my own but mostly community submissions that I've added my own spit and polish to
• large selection of carefully built and often rebuilt ships, bases and drones

Loot

• if you manage to capture a cargoship you may find some special loot
• this comes in the form of enhanced thrusters
• find small grid thrusters in cargo and use the component to place the complete thruster
• large grid thrusters will be a complete block which you will need to move intact
• you cannot place, grind down and rebuild these thrusters from scratch, so have some fun with cranes!
• thanks to gruzzob for making this possible

Vanilla feel

• I make an effort to keep all of the builds feeling consistent with the existing vanilla aesthetic in Space Engineers, while also having some fun with it.

Fully voiced NPCs

• every single radio call from all the NPCs has at least 2 different voice recordings for it, you'll get a random one each time
• kindly voiced by my patrons on patreon

Showers with lights

• because we shouldn't have to shower in the dark
• thanks to Chipstix for making this

Drones, lots of drones

• most of the ships have deliberate or accidental weakpoints
• the larger threat will be the drones supporting the ships and bases

Controllable threat

• ACS will leave you alone to build your base, ship whatever, but it'll be there for a fight when you want one
• beware once you start fighting them, they may not be so generous (at least for now, there are plans to change this in the future)

Things to use to customise your experience:

• MES configs. These are located in your save folder and allow manipulation of all sorts of things from spawn rate to blacklisting specific spawns.
• Assertive Bunkers - for those who don't mind the mod doing a little bit of digging, Pav has created a bunch of bases that include underground areas and utilises all the ACS behaviours and drones.

https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=2473174197

Mods you can add to spice things up:

• Crew Enabled by Patrick (utilising AiEnabled by jTurp), this will give you robot NPCs aboard the cargo ships and stations adding some interesting combat once you're past the outer turrets

https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=2803081060

• Improved Interior Turrets by me, this little mod makes interior turrets more like the good ol' days where you could actually come into view of one and not immediately die

https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=2780615880

• Perpetually Perturbed Pirates by MeridiusIX/Lucas, this mod will make sure you don't become friends with the Space Pirates SPRT faction when fighting ASSERT

https://steamcommunity.com/workshop/filedetails/?id=1992435623

Common issues and troubleshooting:

Your drone/ship whatever is smashing all my stuff!

• Check the name of the grid in the entity list (Alt+f10) to ensure it's one of mine. It will have (NPC-ACS) or (NPC-AI) in the name.
• Let me know the name of the grid and I can look into whether I did something odd with its behaviour

I'm not seeing anything spawn!

• while in game type /MES.GESAP and then paste the result into a text editor and check to see if there are any grids with (NPC-ACS) in the name. If present then the spawns are eligible but have either not been triggered (not moving far enough between position checks) or the terrain is blocking safe spawning. If not present then confirm that the mod is active in the world and that you do not have any other mods that might be conflicting.
• Are you playing on Pertam? If so you will likely get near zero cargoship spawns due to the very low atmospheric ceiling. You would still get bases to spawn though.
• Has combat phase begun? MES currently defaults to having two phases 'default' and 'combat'. This was added a few weeks after I'd made the decision to remove the same feature from my own mods as I felt they didn't work well in SE. Unfortunately, during combat phase you will not see any ACS spawns and will not get any clear indicator of why that is the case. To disable combat phase simply load your world with this mod active https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=2943024086

Should I be using your old mods/other Assertive mods?

• No.
• The old mods are not being supported and have been replaced by this one because it's better.
• Pav has updated the Bunkers mod so it is compatible and the link is above

Why does xxxxx ship keep crashing?

• Check the name of the grid in the entity list (Alt+f10) to ensure it's one of mine.
• ensure you are NOT using gasses with masses or other mods that can impact lifting thrust or speed mods.
• let me know the name of the grid and the planetary gravity in the area so I can fix it if none of the above.

If you're still running into troubles head to my discord or to the MES discord to ask for help.