I love the strong scientific basis of the surface geology.
I’m really looking forward to seeing more of what INE can do in comparison!
as am I 
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Recording of the livestream.
I like the rupture line between tectonic plates, looks really cool.
While barren, the generated surfaces look really really good and realistic.
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Here is the raw video of planets:
Wait, why would an airless moon have plate tectonics? Don’t those require oceans?
i think that requires molten core… or something … actually we don’t really know 
It is just a best guess so far.
@ThornEel
I’m trying to discuss that over here:
https://forums.frontier.co.uk/showthread.php?t=191267&p=2953348&viewfull=1#post2953348
and
https://forums.frontier.co.uk/showthread.php?t=191267&p=2953584&viewfull=1#post2953584
Summary of what I wrote: Wikipedia seems to indicate that there is a lot of disagreement about under what circumstances plate tectonics is possible, but the best guesses seem to be on worlds larger than Earth… with worlds around the size of Earth or Mars being on the borderline, and only able to have it due to lubrication from liquid water on their surface. There is NO good evidence of plate tectonics in our solar system, except for worlds with liquid (water?) on their surface (either now or in the past as in the case of Mars), i.e. Mars & Titan. (Titan has liquid on it’s surface, but not of water.) Generally that requires an atmosphere, but ice worlds may have liquid water below their (icy) surface, which might explain how Europa supposedly has some evidence for plate tectonics.
Second paragraph here.
or on the Wikipedia! It has to do with the earths molten insides / mantle. I’m pretty confident that you don’t need any surface liquids
Where is @Kichae at a time like this…
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Something to do with the flux of the mantle and oceanic plates getting eaten and regurgitated or something like that. Not sure why any surface liquids would be required for it.
One of the devs just posted this:
Howdy folks.
I wanted to try and explain a little more about our system to hopefully lay some concerns to rest. For a plate-based tectonic system on a planet, a large enough temperature gradient is required to have a phase difference between a relatively thin crust and the deeper innards. That temperature gradient can be driven by things such as gravitational compression on a large enough body, or gravitational stress from orbiting a much larger body closely.
So yes, smaller terrestrial worlds, unless under rather specific conditions, will likely have crustal plates too thick for a tectonic mask to make sense. However, tectonic interactions is not the only way in which surface features can be formed.
Asteroidal impacts can create shockwaves across an entire planet’s surface, deforming the crust in interesting patterns. The formation of a planet from the cataclysmic merging of two planetoids would liquify most of the material, but there is the chance for old solid outcrops to survive or influence the shape of the resulting body. Gravitational stressed can be enough to drive volcanism which forms mountain ranges on a surface. An event in a planet’s past might alter its orbit from the previously stressful one to a wider/eccentric one, solidifying the new features. Impacts can cause rifts, ridges, and hill ranges as well as the expected crater.
To get back on topic, our ‘tectonic mask’ system takes into account various factors from Stellar Forge, such as:
expected gravitational stress / sibling and parent orbits
gravitational compression heating
material of the planet
size of the planet
tidal locking state
expected core mantle, and crust temperatures
viscosity of mantle
deformability of the materials
age of the system
expected frequency and magnitude of meteorite collisions
nearby sources of regular debris
and more
The system creates masks for areas of potential crustal deformation activity. Those areas may reflect the shapes and activities of tectonic plates if it’s sensible for that particular planet.
It may reflect other shapes if the sources of those deformations isn’t bona fide tectonic activity. The same system is used for large and small planets, and adapts as it needs to.
We ended up calling it the ‘tectonic mask’ because it’s short, snappy, and places the same kind of visual features (even if what physically would have generated them might have been different).
TL;DR “tectonics mask” is a shorthand way we’ve been describing all the regions of crustal major deformation from a variety of sources.
(p.s. similar thing with the limestone material on an oceanless planet question. Limestone is a short, relatable name for development compared to “calcium carbonate rich analogues” )
Some serious scientific modeling going on there!
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And it just keeps on coming…
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Was just going to post this.
Looking forward to seeing more surface gameplay, but just driving off cliffs, watching a nebula-rise will be fun enough 
That rover jump 
And I just saw Martian yesterday
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Oooohhhh!
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Looks pretty intense.
Recording of last Wednesday’s live SRV stream.
Stealing all the thunder from battlescape 
This plus planets coming to Space Engineers. People are not as interested in a game that might come out in 2017