Components and Tools

Tools

Tools are usable items with the ability to interact with the environment in different ways:

Automatic Rifle		Enabled	Personal Defense	Used for man to man combat Uses ammo
Hand Drill		Enabled	Tool	Used for hand mining (as opposed to the ship drill) Requires energy from your suit to function
Welder		Enabled	Tool	Used for assembling and repairing blocks Requires energy from your suit to function
Grinder		Enabled	Tool	Used for disassembling blocks to be used again Requires energy from your suit to function

Components

All components in Space Engineers are based on either the Large Block or Small Block. Large Blocks are 2.5 meters square and small blocks are .5 meters square. Each components size is one or more blocks. The following blocks and tools are available in the current Alpha build of Space Engineers.

Large Ship / Station

Name	Icon	Mass (kg)	Description
Block	64px
Conveyor		524	A multi-directional conveyor block that can transfer items between other blocks from all sides
Hydrogen Tank
O2	64px	2,587	A functional structure for processing Ice into breathable Oxygen and Hydrogen.
Small Hydrogen Tank		0	A smaller Hydrogen Tank block used to store and distribute Hydrogen.
Vending Machine
Window 1x1 Side Inv		0	1x1 Inverted corner side
Window 1x2 Side Left Inv		0	Inverted Angled 1x2 window.
Window 1x2 Side Right Inv		0	Inverted Angled 1x2 window.

Small Ship

Name	Icon	Mass (kg)	Description
Conveyor		783	A multi-directional conveyor block that can transfer items between other blocks from all sides
Hydrogen Tank
O2	64px	298.6	A functional structure for processing Ice into breathable Oxygen and Hydrogen.
Small Hydrogen Tank		0	A smaller Hydrogen Tank block used to store and distribute Hydrogen.

Selected Component Details

Thrusters

Thrusters for both small and large ships require reactor energy and apply two different kinds of thrust. A thruster applies its maximum thrust while stabilizing and only 2/3 of the maximum thrust when the pilot uses W, A, S, D, or any other means of maneuvering. This means a ship will stabilize faster if the pilot does not activate any maneuvering controls.

Small Ships

Small Ship Thruster Characteristics
		Force (N)	Power (MW)	Mass (Kg)
Small Thruster	Max	18,165	0.05	93
	Maneuvering	12,000	0.0336
Large Thruster	Max	218,250	0.6	721
	Maneuvering	144,400	0.4

Large Ships

Large Ship Thruster Characteristics
		Force (N)	Power (GW)	Mass (Kg)
Small Thruster	Max	150,660	1	3384
	Maneuvering	100,000	0.56
Large Thruster	Max	1,815,000	10	43212
	Maneuvering	1,200,000	6.72

Reactors

Ship reactors output different amounts of power depending on reactor and ship size. Most functional blocks use some power, Refineries Assemblers and Thusters are the giggest consumers of power. Note that they all have small idle power usage.

Reactor Power Output
		Power (MW)
Small Ship	Small Reactor	0.1
	Large Reactor	3.5
Large Ship	Small Reactor	5
	Large Reactor	100

Tips for Planning Ship Thruster-Reactor Systems

In order to avoid overusing your ship's reactors, use enough reactors to supply all of your ship's thruster's maximum power consumption.

Take the number of small and large thrusters and multiply them by their respective maximum power (GW). This is the minimum amount of power your ship's reactors need to supply.

Landing Gear

Landing gears allow a ship to latch onto another object. They are particularly useful when docking small ships on larger carrier ships. However, when the larger ship maneuvers (especially in pitch and yaw) there is a common issue where the smaller ship's landing gear will break due to a collision error.

In order to avoid this issue, ensure that the landing gear is not in direct contact with the metal of the carrier ship. Instead, slowly move toward the ship and attach them the instant the indicator turns yellow. This will leave some space in between the two ships, and keep the collision error from occurring.