Mod of the Week: Star Wars Ships, for Space Engineers

While Evan continues to make a mockery of Star Wars canon , I thought I might try something different: sticking to the celebrated story that no one has a right to change (except George Lucas, who has the right to change it but really, really shouldn't).

, I thought I might try something different: sticking to the celebrated story that no one has a right to change (except George Lucas, who has the right to change it but really, really shouldn't). I noticed that Space Engineers, while still in early access, is a part of Steam Workshop, and that players have been busy constructing tons of Star Wars ships and bases. While I don't know if player creations are technically mods, it's player-made content, and I figure that's close enough for my purposes.

And so I present a completely accurate and above all respectful re-telling of the original Star Wars trilogy, in screenshots!

Star Wars

A long time ago (Wednesday) in an early-access game on my computer, a star destroyer approaches a diplomatic ship suspected of carrying stolen plans for the Empire's Death Star. It's a Venator-class destroyer, hence the red racing stripes, which immediately derails my promise of absolute accuracy. Though they do give the ship a sporty feel!

A lone stormtrooper seems to be the only one on board and he discovers a couple things when he reaches the cockpit: the star destroyer can only fly in one direction, straight ahead, and has no working weapons. After drifting further and further from the ship he's trying to capture, he decides to investigate an Imperial-class star destroyer. It doesn't have working weapons, either. The stormtrooper is disappointed.

Meanwhile, on a planet Tatooine, Luke Skywalker stares at the (only available) sun and wishes something would happen on his boring planet, though honestly, his boring planet has gangster slugs and daring pilots and dangerous spaceports and tribes of sandmen and pod-racing and, frankly, all sorts of things constantly happening all the time all over it. So, I don't know what Luke's problem is.

Back to the stormtrooper! He has found yet another Star Destroyer, the Chimera, and in its docking bay he finds a bunch of small flyable ships that sorta kinda look like TIE fighters. He attempts to pilot a TIE bomber out of the docking bay -- still trying to capture that ambassador ship -- but has some trouble.

Luke, meanwhile, tired of waiting for the Empire to capture the ship and set off the chain of events that will rescue him from farming chores and blue milkshakes, stops whining about his planned excursion to Tosche Station and finds the Millennium Falcon, which is promptly captured by Imperials. Han Solo tries to hide in the smuggling containers under his floorboards, but when he cuts a hole in his floor he just falls out into space, his limbs flailing.

Luke, desperate to end the movie, finds an X-wing and launches a solo attack on the Death Star. Luke wants to get this thing DONE.

Reaching the Death Star, which is immense, he discovers that his X-Wing, while cool looking, doesn't actually have any weapons on it. So, he ejects himself and manually cuts a small exhaust port into the Death Star with his grinder. Peering inside, he discovers it is completely hollow and thus, not a threat. The Rebellion is saved!

The Empire Strikes Back

Han Solo hides the Millennium Falcon inside an asteroid-hole (which I actually did but then somehow forgot to take a picture of). There's no giant space worm in it, though, because what the hell is a giant space worm living in an asteroid going to survive on? The occasional tiny modified freighter that flies willingly into its mouth? Come on. Get real.

In his ship Slave 1, Boba Fett stalks the Millennium Falcon as it clings to the side of a star destroyer. You may notice that part of Slave 1 is missing, the bit that sticks out of the right side. This is because Boba Fett was not being particularly careful during takeoff and smashed it.

The Falcon flies to Cloud City, where these weird red two-seater ships are always flying around.

After Fett captures Han Solo at Bespin, Leia shoots at Slave 1, but it's too damn late.

Luke and Leia look out the window of a Nebula-B frigate so frighteningly massive it made Luke's PC grind down to about three frames per second. They vow to get Han Solo back even it involves an overlong ruse where every single person they know is individually captured by Jabba the Hutt in the hopes that Hutt will then try to throw them all into a giant sand-mouth, which is critical to the plan's success.

Return of the Jedi

Blah-blah sail barge blah-blah Endor, and Luke finally finds an X-wing that has weapons on it, even though it's an X-wing with the wings locked in the closed position and not the attack position. Whatever! It has working guns , that's the important thing. He flies off to destroy the new Death Star that is under construction. Wait, no, that wasn't Luke, that was whatsisname, Wedge. Luke was getting electrocuted by an old man with finger-lightning.

Granted, this Death Star doesn't look much at all like a Death Star. It's basically like a rough framework of a Death Star. But that's okay! This Death Star has a very important quality that makes up for its lack of looks: it has an explodable core. Wedge flies in and shoots his X-Wing guns.

Kablooie! And another kablooie! In fact, there's a massive chain reaction of satisfying kablooies that explode their way along the entire structure. So many, in fact, that Wedge's X-Wing begins to fall apart on the way out, and he's sort of stranded there, which is okay, because I just remembered it wasn't Wedge who blew up the reactor, he just blew up the power regulator. It was Lando in the Falcon who blew up the reactor. Whatever, close enough. The End! Try to follow that , J.J Abrams!

Here are the links to the Workshop mods I used for this article, and there are lots more if you look through the Workshop.