Drop Pod

The Drop Pod, also named the Respawn Planet Pod (its grid name), acts as starting ship for players that spawn on a planet or moon after starting a new survival game.

You select your starting location in the spawn menu when starting up the world for the first time, or when respawing upon death.

Variants

The planetary variant has no wheels and no cockpit

The moon variant has wheels and a cockpit

• The standard drop pod (this page) is optimised for planetary landings.
• The Moon Drop Pod is a variant of the drop pod with a cockpit and wheels to ease survival on moons with low gravity and no atmosphere.
• The Respawn Space Pod is a variant for a space start.

Most usage tips on this page apply to all of them equally.

Survival equipment

Drop pods are small-grid vessels that provide the basic requirements to survive:

• It contains a powered Survival kit and O2 H2 Generator to recharge health, oxygen, hydrogen, and produce basic ingots from stone and basic spare parts.
• The standard variant has only a passenger seat with tiny inventory and no wheels, no cockpit, nor steering capabilities.
• For planetary emergency landings, it is equipped with safety features such as a Parachute Hatch set to auto-deploy and auto-locking landing gear.
• It provides enough energy in its Battery to give you time to find a good place to start, but you can’t rely on it for an extended time.
• It has an antenna that helps you find it again.
• It comes with an ore detector.
• The drop pod comes with four Atmospheric Thrusters and one Hydrogen Thruster, but has thrust only in one direction and hardly any hydrogen fuel.

The passenger seat contains in its inventory an S-10 Pistol, four S-10 Magazines, and a Datapad. Press I key while sitting in the seat to access its inventory.

Usage

The pod provides early-game life support, a respawn point, and spare parts production. Your task is to use its unique features, and to strategically disassemble it while you hand-mine and build your first starter base and respawn point.

Tip: For a planetary landing, you will start in mid-air, seated in the drop pod, which auto-deploys its parachutes while safely descending. Stay seated (possibly switch to third person by pressing V key, and use the drop time to look around and survey the landscape in third-person view.

How to enable respawn pods

To spawn with a drop pod, the host must enable respawn ships in the advanced world settings for everyone.

Especially for players wanting to start in a drop pod on a custom star system with manually spawned-in planets, make sure to have Respawn Ships enabled in the advanced settings. Then load and save the world, exit, reload, and force respawn. After this, the drop pod spawn should be an option on these non-standard planets as well.

How to find the next trade station

If Economy is enabled, a datapad in your seat will have the GPS of a trading station written in it.

To add the Trade Station GPS to your HUD:

1. Press I key while sitting in the seat to access its inventory.
2. Drag the datapad to your inventory.
3. -clicking the Datapad in the inventory screen to open it.
4. Press the "Create GPS Marker" button.
5. Press ESC key to close the Datapad, and in the terminal, switch from the Inventory tab to the GPS tab.
6. Find a new greyed out GPS for the station in the GPS list.
7. Enable the signal by double-clicking the GPS, or by selecting it and ticking the "Show on HUD" box.

Now when you close the terminal and look around the world, you should be able to see the signal for the station on your HUD.

How to prevent auto-deletion of a drop pod

In multiplayer, the pod is temporary and disappears after you log out, or after you die and respawn in a new pod! An Admin can configure the pod's despawn behaviour in the World Settings.

In singleplayer, the pod does not despawn unless you spawn a new one (e.g. by turning off your survival kit so you do not have a respawn point and dying).

How to Convert a Drop Pod into a starter base

To not lose the respawn point and its resources, use an approach similar to the following:

1. Hand-mine and use the survival kit to start processing  Ice and  Stone and produce gases and components.
2. Grind down the unused parts of the drop pod (roof, thrusters, landing gear etc.) but keep the survival kit, battery, and O2/H2 Generator intact at first.
3. Build a minimalistic, independently powered starter base.
4. Before you log out, make sure to re-build the battery, O2/H2 Generator, and survival kit in your starter base, to be able to respawn there.

Next, build a  Basic Refinery and a  Basic Assembler in your starter base in order to progress beyond the drop pod.

(video by Luca The Guide)

How to fly a drop pod

The planetary drop pod comes with four Atmospheric Thrusters. With experience and skill, it is possible to fly a drop pod in gravity "helicopter style", for example, if you landed in a location with no ice in walking distance and you want a second chance to find a better spot.

An understanding of Progression, Key Bindings, and Inertial Dampers is required.

Prepare the pod:

1. First grind down the hydrogen thruster under the seat (hard to reach) for spare parts.
2. Add a Remote Control to the seat. This replaces a cockpit.
3. Add a Gyroscope to make the drop pod flyable.
4. While seated in the passenger seat, access the drop pod’s Control Panel, turn on the option to Show Hidden Blocks (an eye button just to the right of the search field), select the atmospheric thrusters and turn them on.
5. Click the control button of the Remote Control to substitute the missing cockpit.

How to fly:

1. Press the spacebar gently to lift off.
2. Use the mouse (or arrow keys) to tilt the flying pod at 45 degree angles
   • tilt forward to accelerate,
   • tilt backwards to brake,
   • switch off dampers Z key to sink, and
   • switch on dampers and return to the horizontal position to hover.
3. Return to hovering after every manoeuvre! It's easier to cancel motion in only one direction.
4. To land, first hover, then strategically toggle the Inertial Dampers Z key on and off to control your fall.

Go slow, you’ll spin and crash if you rush this.

Another strategy is to grind down and rebuild two of the thrusters so you have thrust in three directions: two down, one back, one right. The tilt the pod 45 degrees back and 45 degrees right while flying. Your thrusters are now aligned at angles like tripod legs which is more stable.

How to insert your own Respawn Ship

This Respawn Ship Steam guide will show you how to create and publish your own Respawn Ship mod from start to finish.

Trivia

The drop pods including the Respawn Space Pod have been introduced in the major Space Engineers Release of February 28, 2019 that brought the game out of Early Access.

Judging by the blue colour scheme, these emergency pods are possibly produced by the Sol Cooperative faction.