Star System Home System

Star System / Home System is the most popular and most commonly used Sandbox Game preset for starting adventures in Survival Mode.

• On PC, the Star System world contains all default planets of the Space Engineers star system:
  • Earthlike, Moon, Mars, Alien, Triton, Europa, Titan, Pertam.
• On consoles, choose among those three options to start:
  • Home System: contains Earthlike, Moon, Mars
  • Distant Worlds/Alien System: contains Alien planet, Pertam
  • Distant Moons: contains Europa, Titan, Triton

Starting Locations

You choose your start location in the beginning. Starting locations in the Star System represent varying difficulty levels. The game's difficulty depends on escape velocity, which resources can be found, and how hard it is to maintain life support.

• Survival is easier on planets with an atmosphere.
• Lifting off is easier from moons with low gravity.
• Ice planets lack resources but are great for oxygen and hydrogen production.
• The hardest survival start is "space suit only" (can be enabled in the World Settings) where you start with just a jetpack, handtools, and a weapon, drifting in space. For details, see Space Suit Only Survival. "Space suit only" is otherwise more commonly used in Creative Mode.

Spoilers

Click to view spoiler for survival on hard planets

If you start on an ice planet, immediately pack your bottles in your inventory, and jetpack straight up to mine asteroids for resources.
In a "space suit only" scenario, grab your gun and take over passing NPC ships to survive. Their ability to defend themselves varies greatly, a few of them are even unarmed.