Space Engineers

Space Engineers

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Launch Assistant
   
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25 May, 2018 @ 12:20pm
21 Mar, 2019 @ 3:02pm
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Launch Assistant

Description
This script is designed to be a "Fire and Forget" method to get your ship from the surface of a planet into space.

Add this script to a programmable block, and run it with the argument "toggle" to turn the program on/off.

This script checks the maximum effective thrust of all of your thrusters in every direction, and aligns the strongest side of your ship to face down, allowing for the most available thrust to keep your ship in the air.
As it does this actively, it can use atmospheric thrusters on one side of your ship to launch initially, and when they weaken, roll in mid flight to use another set if stronger thrusters are available.

Please note that if your ship is sitting on the ground, and the strongest available thrusters aren't already facing downwards, shennagins may occur. I'm planning on updating this to account for which thrusters are currently facing down for initial takeoff.
This has been fixed!

It is also very fuel efficient, using the minimum amount of thrust necessary to maintain a speed of approximately 98 meters per second. (If you want to change this, just look for the 98 within the code and change it. If you use a speed mod, changing this will also make it compatible.)

Once you enter the zero g environment of space, this script deactivates and resets gyro and thruster override to zero, returning full control to you, as well as activates a timer block (name [LaunchAssist] ). Alternatively, if you need to abort a launch in progress, simply run the PB with "toggle" and it returns control to you.

Special thanks to everyone who helped me out on Discord. Without them, I wouldn't know what a variable is.

Planned features:
As it stands, it only checks if the thrusters exist. It doesn't check if they are too damaged to function, turned off, or out of fuel. Rectifying this is next on the list.

An extension of the above, it also doesn't check if a thruster is added/removed/destroyed/etc after the script has started. I intend to make it actively look for changes and make the appropriate adjustments.

I'm thinking of doubling this as a landing script as well. The idea is if you enter a planets gravity well, it starts checking things, primarily over what distance it can bring the ship to a stop in the current gravity and if it is close enough to the ground action must be taken to avoid collision. Ideally you'd never notice its presence unless you are plummeting towards the ground at a risky speed/distance. Otherwise it will leave the flying to you.
As I said though, this is just a thought. Let me know if you'd actually like to see this.
Popular Discussions View All (2)
8
20 Mar, 2020 @ 2:26pm
PINNED: Suggestion Box
Valykry
0
25 May, 2018 @ 1:19pm
PINNED: Bug Reports
Valykry
14 Comments
MAMPF(GER) 29 Apr, 2021 @ 1:05am 
Are you still working on this?
Pixelblob 19 Sep, 2020 @ 11:38am 
Are you still working on this?
Jel 11 Aug, 2020 @ 11:12pm 
Small issue: After having used the script (turned off now), i am unable to use the thruster override function. Have to reload the save / restart the server to make it work again.
Quantum Starfield 11 Apr, 2020 @ 4:05pm 
Very nice script. I have noticed however that it is using all my thrusters (atmos and H2) all the time when launching. Even though I'm on the Earthlike so it should use atmos thrusters first then switch to H2 it is actually providing more override thrust from the H2 than the atmos. I can manually switch off the H2 until the atmos stop working very well, then switch over, but I thought that the script was supposed to do this for me. For reference I'm testing in a creative game before I try this in a survival. Other than this the script works nicely.
Airomis 23 Feb, 2020 @ 8:03am 
The rocket would be amazing if it would even dock on both ends
Bi0HazardXIII 13 Feb, 2020 @ 7:39am 
Could you adapt this for a rocket to launch cargo out into space and then return back to the launch pad?
rottielover 8 Dec, 2019 @ 8:36pm 
Working perfectly for me! Thank you for this !!!
Sp00kyAngel 20 Nov, 2019 @ 1:57am 
As a side note, if anybody knows of a script that can change my ship's orientation by x degrees via a command that would be very useful to me.
Sp00kyAngel 20 Nov, 2019 @ 1:57am 
Really liking the automated launch feature, however I am attempting to also automate rotating the ship so the most powerful thrusters turn back towards the planet and I activate dampeners to eliminate my velocity as quickly as possible. I have tried turning off certain gyroscopes in the hopes that the script would not touch them and I would retain my override values necessary to turn my ship. However, as I watch them while the launch procedure is running, their override values are changing despite the fact that they are off. If there were some way to define only certain gyroscopes to be used by the script, to fix the script keeping overrides disabled, and/or enable such a maneuver within the script itself it would be very much appreciated. It doesn't seem to me that this is still active or that you reply to comments here, but maybe I'll get lucky.
Sp00kyAngel 20 Nov, 2019 @ 1:57am 
This script is not correctly releasing control of the gyroscopes for me. I disable the script via the trigger command, however while I can manually control the ship I am unable to set the gyroscopes into override mode until I turn off the programmable block running this script. Also the override values are not set to 0 as stated. They remain where they were when the [LaunchAssistant] timer block was run and control was returned to me (values ranging from -0..7 to 0.7).