StarMade

[Fiodis]

I recently stumbled across this, it's in a free alpha version. It's basically Minecraft with space travel: instead of a (relatively) flat world you have a galaxy populated by planets, asteroids, space stations, pirates, etc. You build flyable spaceships the way you build structures in Minecraft. It looks really cool, I'll definitely give it a go. Anyone interested in an online session?

[Bob]

Tried it out, it's really fun. Too bad the Wiki is extremely incomplete, apart from what I learned in the turorial I know about nothing. Can you do something with the minerals you find or are they only for selling in shops? Is there a "workbench" of some sort?
I should watch some videos on YT about this game, it's too confusing for me.

[Cleb]

I got it, it was fun until I started making a ship and the tutorial kept looping over and over again about how to name my ship and I couldn't continue. Ill try again though!

[Maveritchell]

I'll try it out with you sometime, sure. Don't know if this game has legs for me, though - everything feels really slow and tedious.

[Cleb]

I finally figured out how to build a ship, and I also found out how to speed things up What you do is build a ship with what you start with and use N to find a space station (make sure it's a peaceful one, I found that our the hard way and land in a hangar, and literally just strip the place of everything valuable (there were 400 engine blocks in the one I found) take everything from glass to the lights to the hulls. Now go to a shop and buy and sell hulls as you need to get other blocks like engines etc. you can strip down your old ship to the core and start from scratch or just buy s new one. I have a giant frigate now through this method

[Bob]

I finally figured out how to build a ship, and I also found out how to speed things up What you do is build a ship with what you start with and use N to find a space station (make sure it's a peaceful one, I found that our the hard way and land in a hangar, and literally just strip the place of everything valuable (there were 400 engine blocks in the one I found) take everything from glass to the lights to the hulls. Now go to a shop and buy and sell hulls as you need to get other blocks like engines etc. you can strip down your old ship to the core and start from scratch or just buy s new one. I have a giant frigate now through this method

I always search for a terran type planet and punch all the trees. Wood and leaf bring you tons of credits at a shop. Then I take the "Harvester" (my lenghty Borg cuboid with 13 9-block-long salvaging lazers on the front), fly to one of the 3 abandoned stations I found and salvage the Coca Cola out of everything there. After a minute I got like 2000 hull blocks. A mining ship is a must have. With all the hulls and creds earned this way you can build everything you like.

I'm a little bit afraid of building large ships though, because I don't want to risk ramming a space rock accidentaly. My first ship more or less died this way. I can't even remember ramming something, but when I landed and ejected from the core I noticed that half of the ship was gone. Disassembled it because it didn't look nice anymore, didn't have stuff to repair it at that point. My biggest ship now is a medium sized Battlecruiser.

Hidden/Spoiler:

[Maveritchell]

I always search for a terran type planet and punch all the trees.

What you do is build a ship with what you start with and use N to find a space station

Is this really what this genre of game is about? I haven't played Minecraft, and maybe it's this boring too, I dunno. In two days of playing, I've found one planet with trees on it and zero space stations. I'm sorry, but you have a bad game if I've got to be flying around useless for two hours before I can have any fun.

[Bob]

In two days of playing, I've found one planet with trees on it and zero space stations. I'm sorry, but you have a bad game if I've got to be flying around useless for two hours before I can have any fun.

I'm also just 2 days in, but found 3 stations and 2 planets with trees and made 4 ships. Well, 7 ships If I count with my first ship and the 2 small dummy ships that were destroyed while I tested my Battlecruiser. You just didn't have luck.

[Maveritchell]

In two days of playing, I've found one planet with trees on it and zero space stations. I'm sorry, but you have a bad game if I've got to be flying around useless for two hours before I can have any fun.

I'm also just 2 days in, but found 3 stations and 2 planets with trees and made 4 ships. Well, 7 ships If I count with my first ship and the 2 small dummy ships that were destroyed while I tested my Battlecruiser. You just didn't have luck.

Yeah, that's fair, but if I'd wanted to base my enjoyment on luck, I could just roll a die and play Freelancer if I roll a 20. To be fair, I only played a couple hours over the course of a couple days, but that's still unacceptable - I shouldn't have to go 20 minutes flailing around or being bored, much less two hours.

[Cleb]

Ive only played about an hour and a half and found like 10 space stations, but no planets yet. In about 900 hull blocks Ive built my ship. I haven't tested it yet, Im still setting up its weapons and engines. And yes minecraft is a lot like this game, mindless mining or slightly less mindless building. I don't have a problem with this though, I find any sort of building at all fun and it gives me a lot of time to think about other things. Anyway, is there some sort of trick to finding planets? I really want to find one.

EDIT: Also, is there a way to move a ship core? mine is located really inconveniently and is impossible to access with ship gravity.

[THEWULFMAN]

Played for two hours. Lots of potential, but it's really boring right now. Probably better in MP, but it's a bit of a mess in terms of galactic navigation.

[Bob]

Ive only played about an hour and a half and found like 10 space stations, but no planets yet. In about 900 hull blocks Ive built my ship. I haven't tested it yet, Im still setting up its weapons and engines. And yes minecraft is a lot like this game, mindless mining or slightly less mindless building. I don't have a problem with this though, I find any sort of building at all fun and it gives me a lot of time to think about other things. Anyway, is there some sort of trick to finding planets? I really want to find one.

EDIT: Also, is there a way to move a ship core? mine is located really inconveniently and is impossible to access with ship gravity.

Finding planets isn't hard since you can already see them from like 15 sectors away. Just fly straight to one of the big, colored bubbles you see in the sky. The grey/lightblue ones have trees in most cases.
And I don't think moving a core is possible. If you can't reach it with gravity, don't turn it on. Gravity is for n00bz anyways.

[Cleb]

Oh, I thought those were just part of the background. About gravity, I put them in because sometimes if your ship is sideways when you get out you might not be able to get in without breaking it, which I just don't like to do.

[Bob]

The answer to that is building hallways in 2x2 format (or bigger, but power of 2). No matter how your ship is rotated, you can freely move around in it.
Defeated my first pirate-station today. The Battlecruiser with it's 68-block SD-BB Missile main weapon did a great job. Only minor damage on my ship.
Also build a ship that is capable of transporting all of my ships at once, except the Battlecruiser (too big for any docking zone). Will soon be used, my "home" shop ran out of important goodies, so I have to move to another one.

[THEWULFMAN]

If weapons could be placed in turrets and you could play in 3rd person when in flight mode, the game would be 200% better.

[Cleb]

Well, I landed on a planet, but I didn't have enough engines to get off, so I had to restart. But now I have a better ship with radar jammers and cloaking devices (even though I still haven't figured them out yet). I was tearing apart a space station for materials for this ship when suddenly hundreds of pirate ships came out of nowhere and started bombarding the station!! I had to get out quick and outrun the ships that chased me! So yeah watch out for those. And yes you can make turrets.

[Bob]

Like Cleb said, you can mount weapons on turrets.
3rd person is also sort of possible, you just have to zoom out , Lcntrl (or Lshift, forgot)+ scrolling. The camera will be exactly behind your ship though, so you won't see anything in front of you.

[Cleb]

You can also put a cockpit block on your ship

[Bob]

You can also put a cockpit block on your ship

...way too complicated.

[computergeek]

I love this game and I'm so glad I found this topic. My brother and I were playing together and figuring stuff out when I attacked a shop and thought they were bluffing when they said a fleet was on the way. I was soooo wrong!

Anyways, its a great game and I think that as development progresses its only going to get better