Attention: This mod will receive an update with the Apex Release content. I am working on overhauling all my scenarios in this order:

Making Planetfall
Ieram Colony
Narsut Colony
Light Casts Shadow
Operation Vanguard
Operation Spearhead
Acolin Colony
Imperial Academy
Akholestis Colony
Gautus Colony

Damn, sorry to hear it. The water mod definitely takes it’s toll as well. Have you tried Narsut? It has a lot of places as well but no water mod. Then there is Akholestis - it is fairly recent, also no water mod - but be prepared for heavy gravity well planets. And there’s both operation spearhead and operation vanguard that are based on a single story line and I have gotten no performance complaints on them - they are more combat intensive, though

well, this investigator got as far as the S/O refuelling station and realised there was no ammo in teh dropship's little pea-shooters. I rigged up a battering ram to take out the troublesome turrets, and it would have been fun to try, but in the end I can't go on with the slow sim speed - my laptop can only manage about 1/8 - 1/10 speed. You have built a fantastic story, but it runs too slowly on my rig.
Have you built any scenarios that aren't such big loads?

I enjoyed every bit of that storytelling, it was written greatly :-D

And yes, nothing in my worlds is even remotely equipped to slow down from 450m/s in a reasonable amout of time ^^

@Sarekh I was getting into character - a grumpy investigator who doesn't like to admit he made a piloting error and crashed the empire's ship in the sea.
It probably happened because I have a speed mod and was falling at 450m/s. Still, I wasn't able to brake much at all.

I am getting the slightest idea, really, very faint, might be just me imagining things - that you don't quite like the player ship? Just a hunch

[Imperial Investigator, journal - extract #2]
If only I had done the standard calculations - there was obviously not enough vertical thrust for the insanely high ship mass. Why was it built like that? Those huge ferrocrete blocks they obviously stitched on underneath - not hard to get rid of - but the extra vertical turbines I added just weren't enough.
Looks like there's a large seaship of some type over on the docks there. Salvaging the scrap of my wreckage, 1.2km out from the shore, might be worthwhile if there are any drive cells or other hard-to-come-by components that weren't crushed in the impact.
I wasn't meant to survive this. I was meant to be entombed in that ridiculous excuse for a starship, at the bottom of Acolin's sea. Today I intend to start finding out why.

(minor spoiler)

[Imperial Investigator, journal- extract #1]
Day Eight.
Sitting on the beach at Acolin City - hah, they call this a city? I've seen bigger corner stores.

I always felt there was something off about the starship that was assigned to me when I was appointed to this mission. That funny glance Lord Heversheme gave me, the way his cheerful manner was forced. He was almost sweating as he transmitted the ship codes to me. I think I've been set up. But I don't know why yet, nor by whom. I know Hevers is in the debt of one of the other houses, but I don't know which one.
The days I spent on that asteroid, renovating that stupid ship, getting that boarding ramp built just right, getting the hull airtight again, taking out all the useless junk, rearranging the thrusters and conveyors, I'll just have to consign to my own stupidity.

[imperial station staff conversation, overheard]
A: Do you know if that Imperial Investigator has some kind of... I dunno... mental issues?
B: Why you say that, man?
A: Like, you know he requisitioned that Wasp fighter? Without filling in the forms in the admin office? And left his starship sitting in the ring? He's gonna be days and days trying to reach Acolin with no jump drive. Just weird.
B: Maybe he got lost. He was wandering around this station for hours.

Okay, you seem to have travelled quite a bit around, that's awesome :-)
The sound system with space engineers is wonky - but I might have named the blocks differently as well. Might be worth to get into a console and check via the blocks overview if there are hidden sound blocks that were just named differently. Sorry if I am not absolutely up to speed on this one, I released it 3/4 of a year ago after working on this for roughly a year - things tend to get fuzzy ^^
As for the Space Elevator - there would be a release that detaches the elevator from the ground station. If that does not work, (it should be a merge block) try converting the grid AFTER detachment from stationary grid to ship, that might do the trick?
Thanks for the feedback, btw!

I remember turning the sound blocks off entirely, but I'll have to double-check.

Unrelated, I think the space elevator (which was hard to find) might be broken (it says automatic is off, but I couldn't even manually move it). I could also just not have understood it, but idk

the birds are part of the water mod, I believe.
The crowds are indeed a sound effect from sound blocks. Did you just stop them? They are on timers and might just restart :)

What is playing the different crowd noises??? I turned the jukeboxes and sound blocks off on the acolin city grid, but the birds and crowds just keep playing.

Very impressive work. I would suggest that you have a look at MES static encounters, so that grids spawn in only when you are near them. Might be a bit more performant friendly for people with bad pc's like me. Anyway very impressed with what you did

Thank you very much! I'm looking forward to take the proper time to play through your world over Christmas as well :)

This is great! Just started exploring, love the way stations feels alive, with NPCs and chatter sound :)

Hahaha, you might not have the time for that now. You encouraged me, it is your own fault :-P

And here I was thinking about starting to play Red Dead Redemption 2 during the holidays, now I'm not so sure about that anymore :D