[Philoshopy] Why do we keep trying to build something pretty ?

[Winterhome]

How do you optimize a bookshelf? Automatic sorting? I mean, a shelf is a shelf is a shelf, right?

Can you easily access everything on the shelf? If not, you screwed something up. :P

 

[Madman198237]

Guess so.....but still. If you already have a shelf, it's probably a good, average shelf. Which really needs no optimizations. Although, I suppose the case could be made for optimizing the way things are placed on the shelf...

 

[TheWurm]

Just going to point out that my statement is geared towards saying that anyone who is willing to put the time in to make a good ship will, most likely, produce a better ship, because they'll want their good-looking ship to be good all around. Usually.
If you intend to make a brick, then you're putting effort in. If your ship becomes a brick because you didn't put the effort in add something, well, how much effort are you likely to have put into everything else?

Alright, this seems like a much stronger argument, and I'll even go so far as to say it's convincing. I'll be interested to see how this trend evolves as the game gets more features and(presumably) attracts different sorts of players. I suspect that there will be an influx of low detail exteriors housing fiendishly clever systems, but I'm sure that time will tell.

One thing that hasn't really been flashed out so far in this thread(and I'm still taking the title at face value, in spite of everything) is that the game doesn't really offer great rewards for optimization, with the possible exception of mining optimization saving time. In most cases, the easy answer is"well just build something bigger!" We're left with self motivated goals, and I think aesthetics are a better long term motivator than optimization, since it's a lot easier to show off.

Of course there are sometimes community challenges, which are, to my mind, the best source of innovation in builds. But the game itself offers very little motivation to optimize.

 

[Lukwan]

Arguing with a drill-Sargent is like wrestling in the mud with a pig. You both get filthy, but the pig loves it.

ZektorSK-Challenge: build a 50,000 block doom-cube that can beat my 50k champ (with me piloting). One turret only/no swarm-missiles. It's not like my ship is example of beauty, but you might learn something about compromise and imaginative combat design.

 

[Comradecolonel]

I remember when I used to think this way. I was looking at it from a totally theoretical standpoint just like you are. I thought that adding more useless decoration and making weird shapes would make my ship less effective. Then I spent months working on a ship that i think looks great and kicks ass.

From my experiences I can easily see the merit in striving for both looks and performance. To me that is what makes a good ship, when it flies as good as it looks.

 

[JinM]

Starmade is like Minecraft. Therefore you are not bound to one build rule or battle rule. What if no one wants to fight with a "doombrick" anyway? Or what if it is okay to focus on the technical aspect of the building, and squeze out the last bit of efficiency with a doombrick? I think that building style is totally right. I think it is needed! I myself often just build "doombricks" just for a quick weapon setup testing to see if my weapon-mix is a good idea and how it behaves. And what if there will allways be a number of people - who cares how big their percentage is - who want to play with RP or style aka beauty elements and a number of people who want to play just with the most effective weapon setup because they like to do the math and love the function of their ship. I for myself are pro diversity in a playerbase and like if you do what you like to do and if you are happy with it.

Maybe you are more satisfied with your game, if you don't try to merge two different build aspects into one gamestyle, but search yourself some people or a server who want to play just like you want to play Starmade. You can't force this two perspectives together. The one NEED some story to their ship (I myself do too) and with story I mean that a design tells something about the ship. And the others NEED the purest math of their ship, undistracted from beauty forms that may spoil the math behind your carefully thoughtout weapon setup. Again: that two things don't need to be together, they can. But if you need math, then you better find your guys and start having fun with it. Maybe one day you get bored of the pure math and then you search guys who are interested in the new stuff you now like.

And the talk about what is more efficient...dude stop forcing your views of how something is meant to be played onto other people. You don't want to know whats more efficient, you ask this question because you want everyone to agree with you about the "brick vs beauty efficiency" and then make the claim how this game should be played! It's our free time and if we want to make a freaking pink ship in a tulip form we are free to do. Just change your point of view and let have people a different opinion and a different need in how to have fun. It will give you a better time, and I am pretty sure you don't want to be forced to an opinion or a "how it should be done" neither.

 

[blalblagoo]

You realise as has already been mentioned a cube is far from optimal. Even ignoring apperances you'd be far better off with a star-destroyer style wedge or a sphere.

Cubes are probability better, (not really sure haven't tested wedges i want to make cubes) if you make each 8 of the corners into a floating turret that is 1/27th of the total ship, filled with nothing but guns power and little shields, then add the ability to face any direction and I can get 7 of the 8 firing on one target all the time and i don't even have to face them, just have to try to fly into blind spots. Besides cubes have the most compact size and after the turrets are deployed it doesn't look like much of cube anymore either but it looks cool.

Well now, that's a pretty fun buzz word.

I've found that 90% or more of players who say 'completely optimized' aren't able to optimize a bookshelf, much less a ship.

yeah optimizing is a pain and I could probably do better but it would require more time work and math than i am willing to put into a game.

 

[ZektorSK]

Starmade is like Minecraft

No it isn't...
Minecraft is about building things of real life, and making them structurally epic..

Starmade is about building sometimes impossible builds, ment to be effective and deadly

 

[Dr. Whammy]

No it isn't...
Minecraft is about building things of real life, and making them structurally epic..

Starmade is about building sometimes impossible builds, ment to be effective and deadly

What is your reasoning behind this statement?

 

[sayerulz]

And you

What is your reasoning behind this statement?

There is none, just like all his other statements. I'm getting a bit tired of this.

 

[Top 4ce]

I used to build doombricks at some point... well if not doombricks, they were pretty blocky, with minimal detailing, I barely used more than black armor and ice crystals... it took me literal years in Starmade to actually start paying attention to detail.

Why bother? Because I envied those who built great ships, and I was very dissatisfied with mine. I wanted them to look better, AND perform better. I wanted versatility, and I also wanted them to be pleasing to look at. To be proud when I say "Yea, I built that ship" and to be able to post them on the Community Content with pride, not shame. I wanted to improve and push myself to see how efficient AND pretty can my designs be while trying not to overcomplicate them.

Why build pretty, you ask? Well, because I want to see if I can, without making the ship useless. Because I want to improve my designs and make them look like they were built by a legal adult who knows wtf he's doing, not by some 6-year-old playing with Legos.

To be fair, my job involves a lot of 6 year olds and Lego, and some of those kids build amazing/hilarious things.

My nephew who plays Starmade knows how to make a good looking ship (literally), and he's 10. Is it the most beat face in it's weight class? No, but he feel's like the biggest cheese around when he can take out a pirate station and it's reinforcements with it. If a ten year old can make a good looking and effective ship, no one has any excuse to think that you can't have both.

Spoiler: His ship

Side note, he just got really into star war's star destroyers.... I'm so proud.

 

[Dr. Whammy]

To be fair, my job involves a lot of 6 year olds and Lego, and some of those kids build amazing/hilarious things.

My nephew who plays Starmade knows how to make a good looking ship (literally), and he's 10. Is it the most beat face in it's weight class? No, but he feel's like the biggest cheese around when he can take out a pirate station and it's reinforcements with it. If a ten year old can make a good looking and effective ship, no one has any excuse to think that you can't have both.

Spoiler: His ship

Side note, he just got really into star war's star destroyers.... I'm so proud.

Ummmm Dayum! That looks... Awesome.

 

[Top 4ce]

Ummmm Dayum! That looks... Awesome.

I only helped with the turrets, he's still figuring out rails and logic. The rest is all him.

 

[Unnamed25]

because people say my stuff is ugly

 

[ZektorSK]

What is your reasoning behind this statement?

It is easy to explain, yet you can't understand it without me telling it to you...
Well Minecraft: From the start you have the resources to build medieval builds, which is the main goal in this game, but you can mix other "non building" blocks to make textures of completely different times.. Homewer, the entire minecraft is working on system of building and getting resources, and if you play on Singleplayer then there is no point of making deadly weapons..
On the other hand Starmade: From the start you are motivated to make something powerful and deadly, which will defeat the pirates... The aesthetics don't involve much right ? You are never motivaed to do the most beatufil ship on the world.. you are ment to do the most powerful thing in the space... the whole starmade works on system of fighting and mining resources.

 

[Top 4ce]

Well Minecraft: From the start you have the resources to build medieval builds, which is the main goal in this game

Well Starmade: From the start you have the resources to build sci-fi builds, which is the main goal in this game.

if you play on Singleplayer then there is no point of making deadly weapons..

So the new combat system, enchanting, and bosses are there for what exactly? Oh yeah, to make deadly weapons.

You are never motivaed to do the most beatufil ship on the world.. you are ment to do the most powerful thing in the space... the whole starmade works on system of fighting and mining resources.

"You are never motivated to make the most brutal medieval builds.... You are ment to beat the face of every mob... the whole minecraft works on system of fighting and mining resources."

Your argument sucks.

A 10 year old went out and defeated space pirates with a battle ship that was conceived in WW2, build by him, and won. I think he gets what this game is about more then you EVER will.

This is a sandbox game, you do what you like. There's no "correct/best/must be played like" way to play the game. If you think otherwise, you're doing it wrong.

One can beat face and still look fly doing it.

 

[sayerulz]

It is easy to explain, yet you can't understand it without me telling it to you...
Well Minecraft: From the start you have the resources to build medieval builds, which is the main goal in this game, but you can mix other "non building" blocks to make textures of completely different times.. Homewer, the entire minecraft is working on system of building and getting resources, and if you play on Singleplayer then there is no point of making deadly weapons..
On the other hand Starmade: From the start you are motivated to make something powerful and deadly, which will defeat the pirates... The aesthetics don't involve much right ? You are never motivaed to do the most beatufil ship on the world.. you are ment to do the most powerful thing in the space... the whole starmade works on system of fighting and mining resources.

You seem to forget the abundance of hostile creatures in minecraft. Granted, they are not that powerful and are easy to avoid, but if you were not supposed to fight them, they would not be there.

You also forget the point of a sandbox. the entire point of the game is to build whatever you want. Your logic of aesthetics not being an important part of the game is also hilariously flawed. If the game were as you say, then the trailers would show doomcubes. Pirates would be doomcubes. Shops would be a small block of metal with a shop module in it. Abandoned stations would be big cubes of hull. Asteroids would just be blocks with some ore in them. Because who needs things to look good right?

Instead, the devs set up contests for stations and pirate ships, and chose the best looking of the bunch. Were they the most combat effective of all of them? I doubt it. But they looked really cool.

And even just recently, they updated the asteroid generation to make them look better.

If the point of the game is to build doomcubes/wedges/whatever, then why would the devs have gone through so much trouble to make the game world look better?

Lets take a look at textures as well. The original textures were trash (sorry Schema!). So they updated them, and have continued to update them. A ship performs the same regardless of what it looks like, so why bother right?

Who needs different colors of hull? They all work the same don't they?

Why can we color weapons? It doesn't affect their performance. For that matter, who needs lights anyway? decoration is pointless, and interiors are just a waste of space, right?

Most of the content in the game is there for the sole porpose of letting players build things that look good.

At this point, all you seem to be doing is trying to justify building ugly ships, which is simply not something you need to do. You feel free to build ugly ships all you want, but don't go and tell everyone else that they are just wasting time by making things that look good.

 

[JinM]

No it isn't...
Minecraft is about building things of real life, and making them structurally epic..

Starmade is about building sometimes impossible builds, ment to be effective and deadly

I said Starmade is like Minecraft, I did not say Starmade is the same as Minecraft.

It is that thing in discussions...easy to understand arguments are not meant to be validated with further examples or explanation. They are so easy to understand, it only would make a diskussion unneccessarily long like a science work. And we are not in science we are in our free time and we don't need this overly complicated talking. If the other man then just disagrees with such an easy to understand statement with a very odd argument (Starmade is not like Starmade), he shows that he does not want to actually talk with an open ear for the other side. And then I don't want to either.

You also forget the point of a sandbox. the entire point of the game is to build whatever you want.
(...)
At this point, all you seem to be doing is trying to justify building ugly ships, which is simply not something you need to do. You feel free to build ugly ships all you want, but don't go and tell everyone else that they are just wasting time by making things that look good.

I agree with that.

And if you guys want to talk about this further, be constructive. Not like "No minecraft is not like starmade duh!"

 

[ZektorSK]

I said Starmade is like Minecraft, I did not say Starmade is the same as Minecraft.

It is that thing in discussions...easy to understand arguments are not meant to be validated with further examples or explanation. They are so easy to understand, it only would make a diskussion unneccessarily long like a science work. And we are not in science we are in our free time and we don't need this overly complicated talking. If the other man then just disagrees with such an easy to understand statement with a very odd argument (Starmade is not like Starmade), he shows that he does not want to actually talk with an open ear for the other side. And then I don't want to either.


I agree with that.

And if you guys want to talk about this further, be constructive. Not like "No minecraft is not like starmade duh!"

Compraing Starmade an Minecraft is waste of time, there is no "Starmade is like Minecraft" because they are 2 completely different games with different motives...

You seem to forget the abundance of hostile creatures in minecraft. Granted, they are not that powerful and are easy to avoid, but if you were not supposed to fight them, they would not be there.

You also forget the point of a sandbox. the entire point of the game is to build whatever you want. Your logic of aesthetics not being an important part of the game is also hilariously flawed. If the game were as you say, then the trailers would show doomcubes. Pirates would be doomcubes. Shops would be a small block of metal with a shop module in it. Abandoned stations would be big cubes of hull. Asteroids would just be blocks with some ore in them. Because who needs things to look good right?

Instead, the devs set up contests for stations and pirate ships, and chose the best looking of the bunch. Were they the most combat effective of all of them? I doubt it. But they looked really cool.

And even just recently, they updated the asteroid generation to make them look better.

If the point of the game is to build doomcubes/wedges/whatever, then why would the devs have gone through so much trouble to make the game world look better?

Lets take a look at textures as well. The original textures were trash (sorry Schema!). So they updated them, and have continued to update them. A ship performs the same regardless of what it looks like, so why bother right?

Who needs different colors of hull? They all work the same don't they?

Why can we color weapons? It doesn't affect their performance. For that matter, who needs lights anyway? decoration is pointless, and interiors are just a waste of space, right?

Most of the content in the game is there for the sole porpose of letting players build things that look good.

At this point, all you seem to be doing is trying to justify building ugly ships, which is simply not something you need to do. You feel free to build ugly ships all you want, but don't go and tell everyone else that they are just wasting time by making things that look good.

You seem to misunderstand the "deadly weapon"... why would you make a TNT cannon for defeating mobs ?

I am trying to discuss why we try to build something pretty, and I justify building cubes more then ships, because they are more effective and usually not so complicated... the trailers and ingame builds don't involve much this discussion

 

[Unnamed25]

Compraing Starmade an Minecraft is waste of time, there is no "Starmade is like Minecraft" because they are 2 completely different games with different motives...



You seem to misunderstand the "deadly weapon"... why would you make a TNT cannon for defeating mobs ?

I am trying to discuss why we try to build something pretty, and I justify building cubes more then ships, because they are more effective and usually not so complicated... the trailers and ingame builds don't involve much this discussion

You do realize cubes and flat shapes in general are more fragile than non-cubes when they get shot by missiles right?

Plus, details help as armor too