APRIL 15, 2020 EDIT: This solution has been updated, as I have worked out a faster method of completing waves. Additionally, I couldn't guarantee the previous method will count towards your 1000 drone kills for the Scrap Delivery achievementNote: The achievement description is wrong and this will actually pop after 30 waves in a single game save. Also the trackers don't seem to be working at the moment but the achievement will still pop when it should.
This can be done relatively easily in a creative game along with a little help from the in-game admin panel, which can be opened by pressing
+
simultaneously, so long as you are the host of the game or you've been promoted to admin of the game you are in.
The first thing I recommend doing is heading to the Workshop from the main menu and finding yourself a ship you like that has a lot of defenses built into it, I personally used "Gunship" created by the user "XXANGRYWALNUT". Having a pre-built ship like this that you can simply spawn into the world will help speed up the process of knocking this and all other related achievements out.
Once this is done you can then start a new game in the Never Surrender scenario and switch the game type to creative. To switch from survival to creative you will first have to load up a game as normal then save and quit, back at the main menu when you go to load your game you can press
to edit your game's settings and choose to play in creative mode. This will allow you to be invulnerable and have infinite resources, as well as your turret defenses will not need to be reloaded.
Once you have spawned in you can open the admin panel (
+
) and use the drop down menu to select "Entity list", from here you should see a location titled "Platform A". Select that from the list and and use the option at the bottom of the screen to "teleport here". Press
to back out of spectator mode and you should now be at the station with the beacon you must protect. If the beacon is destroyed the waves will end and you will have to start a new game or reload a previous save, though you shouldn't have to worry too much using this method.
As you arrive to Platform A you will only have a few minutes before waves of drones begin to spawn so the first thing you will want to do is place your gunship(s) that you downloaded from the workshop, these can be accessed using
+
. Place them so they are in between the station and Earth, about 200-300 meters out, as this is where the drones will be coming from. Your gunship's defenses should be automated so long as the ship has power and will be doing all the work for you, so you shouldn't have to interact with them much apart from that. These ships are a great start for the early waves, however probably not viable in the long run, especially if you plan on going for the Scrap Delivery achievement. So while your ships are taking down drones for you I would recommend you also start spending your time fortifying the platform with the beacon with heavy armored blocks and more turrets. Its really up to you how you choose to do this so let your imagination run wild, and once you have gotten your base set up this can then be your primary means of defense if you so choose.
From here all that's left to do now is wait, rounds will generally take around 5 minutes each, including loading times in between waves. Just be sure to keep up with repairs as necessary and save your game at least every few rounds or so. If repairs start getting too overwhelming you could also always just delete your ship from the entity list in the admin panel and respawn it in between rounds. Once you have successfully survived 30 waves the achievement will be yours, not 100 like the description suggests.
Along the way you will also unlock the following achievements for completing 10 rounds...
As well as this one for completing 30 rounds, though the achievement will actually pop after 20
Additionally, if you played through 10 rounds (it must be the first 10 waves, so waves 1-10) with at least one other player you will unlock
The Joint Operation achievement in Space Engineers worth 385 points(Locked) Survive 10 waves with at least 1 other player in Never Surrender scenario.And eventually once 1000 drones are destroyed (after approximately 170 rounds) you will unlock
Edit: As HolloFox has pointed out you could also create a safe zone around your beacon if you wish. This will keep drones from even coming near your base though it will need to be powered and be up kept with zone chips in order for it to function.