2017 Star Made Overview - Convincing a Friend to Play

[JohnLardinois]

Hey guys, I was hoping we could crowd-source a nice overview of what Star Made is and how it plays, as well as a good, brief description of each of it's core mechanics and features.

I've been playing for a few years, and am trying to convince a friend to join who I used to play a lot of Minecraft with. I wouldn't necessarily call this game "Minecraft in Space", because that doesn't even scratch the surface, but I'm at a loss for words on how to describe this awesome game and it's mechanics in a way that is concise enough to still be engaging.

How would you describe this game, it's appeal, and its core mechanics and features if you were trying to capture the attention of a new player, or even the attention of someone who enjoys games like Minecraft, Don't Starve, Rust, No Man's Sky, Fallout 4, War Thunder, Kerbal Space Program, or any hyper-realistic role-playing game, or any game based in physics and calculable mechanics?

Or,

What are your favorite 2 or 3 things about Star Made, and how would you describe them to a newcomer?

Thanks, friends.

 

[jorgekorke]

You should wait for the major power update, and then call your friend. The servers may get a little breath of life, so it will be a better chance for him to stay.

 

[dwwojcik]

To be honest I wouldn't push too hard to get your friends to play until the game is into Beta. Until then things will be changing constantly and we all know how angry people get when something they like is removed or changed.

I consider myself very lucky that the devs and I coincidentally seem to share a similar vision for what Starmade 1.0 should look like.

 

[jayman38]

At this point, "Minecraft in Space" is a decent starter description. It will engage the person's imagination of "blocks" in an outer-space setting, which matches the concept of Starmade pretty well. If you compare it to other, more recent, and/or more space-y games, you might give the wrong impression.

Add in the critical difference of "flying and fighting spaceships" instead of building castles or log cabins and running around in armor and swords. And instead of endless earth, there is endless emptiness filled with asteroids and tiny planets. (Make sure to mention that the planets are tiny, so that the person doesn't think each planet is its own massive Minecraft world.)

Instead of wood, stone, steel, etc., you can talk about how there is hull, standard armor, advanced armor, and your choice of several colors to choose from in all those different levels. In addition to doors, you can also place forcefields that act the same, but are translucent. You can talk about the different light options, like whole-block lights in different colors, a white "beacon" light, light bars, and light sticks. He might ask about the difference between sticks and bars, and you can tease him, saying he'll just have to play to find out. Leave information about system blocks out of the description, so you can surprise him with that information in-game. He'll probably ask how to add engines and such, and you can tease him into the game, telling he has to play to find out. Salesmanship.

Offering to Explore together to see if you can find one of those mythical abandoned cities or pyramids on planets.

Co-op space-pirate hunting might be a fun distraction.

Exploring the galaxy, and then explore beyond, to the void and other quadrillions of galaxies. This long-distance exploration might be the most unique feature of Starmade. Most games won't have an opportunity to explore a whole galaxy, much less a whole cluster of galaxies.

You can suggest that "we" build a planet-side city or base, and then get into spaceships and bomb it to atoms for fun.

Mention that it has a red-stone-a-like built-in as "logic", closely tied into a "cart-a-like" called rails. That way, he won't have to worry too much about adding mods to make the game fun.

 

[JohnLardinois]

You should wait for the major power update, and then call your friend. The servers may get a little breath of life, so it will be a better chance for him to stay.

No worries, he already owns it, but he just hasn't played yet. He bought it a while ago and never got around to learning it. I agree, it might be easier to jump in after the update rather than learning and re-learning.

As far as servers go, we mostly plan to play privately instead of on huge servers.
[doublepost=1506384942,1506384912][/doublepost]

At this point, "Minecraft in Space" is a decent starter description. It will engage the person's imagination of "blocks" in an outer-space setting, which matches the concept of Starmade pretty well. If you compare it to other, more recent, and/or more space-y games, you might give the wrong impression.

Add in the critical difference of "flying and fighting spaceships" instead of building castles or log cabins and running around in armor and swords. And instead of endless earth, there is endless emptiness filled with asteroids and tiny planets. (Make sure to mention that the planets are tiny, so that the person doesn't think each planet is its own massive Minecraft world.)

Instead of wood, stone, steel, etc., you can talk about how there is hull, standard armor, advanced armor, and your choice of several colors to choose from in all those different levels. In addition to doors, you can also place forcefields that act the same, but are translucent. You can talk about the different light options, like whole-block lights in different colors, a white "beacon" light, light bars, and light sticks. He might ask about the difference between sticks and bars, and you can tease him, saying he'll just have to play to find out. Leave information about system blocks out of the description, so you can surprise him with that information in-game. He'll probably ask how to add engines and such, and you can tease him into the game, telling he has to play to find out. Salesmanship.

Offering to Explore together to see if you can find one of those mythical abandoned cities or pyramids on planets.

Co-op space-pirate hunting might be a fun distraction.

Exploring the galaxy, and then explore beyond, to the void and other quadrillions of galaxies. This long-distance exploration might be the most unique feature of Starmade. Most games won't have an opportunity to explore a whole galaxy, much less a whole cluster of galaxies.

You can suggest that "we" build a planet-side city or base, and then get into spaceships and bomb it to atoms for fun.

Mention that it has a red-stone-a-like built-in as "logic", closely tied into a "cart-a-like" called rails. That way, he won't have to worry too much about adding mods to make the game fun.

Awesome reply! Thank you so much, that helped a lot. Very well-written and thought out.
[doublepost=1506385032][/doublepost]

To be honest I wouldn't push too hard to get your friends to play until the game is into Beta. Until then things will be changing constantly and we all know how angry people get when something they like is removed or changed.

I consider myself very lucky that the devs and I coincidentally seem to share a similar vision for what Starmade 1.0 should look like.

I think it's kind of neat that things are changing so quickly. I never got to experience the rise of Minecraft, but a lot of people say it was a really cool experience to watch it blossom. I think he would like to experience that as well.

 

[Edymnion]

Well, if he likes Minecraft, I'd wager he probably likes building cool stuff.

Get him started in creation mode and tell him to ignore the systems and mechanics for right now and try re-creating his favorite scifi ships instead. Get him hooked on building cool stuff, then move him over to survival after the system updates to learn to build up.

 

[BrotherLazarus]

No worries, he already owns it, but he just hasn't played yet. He bought it a while ago and never got around to learning it. I agree, it might be easier to jump in after the update rather than learning and re-learning.

As far as servers go, we mostly plan to play privately instead of on huge servers.
[doublepost=1506384942,1506384912][/doublepost]

Awesome reply! Thank you so much, that helped a lot. Very well-written and thought out.
[doublepost=1506385032][/doublepost]

I think it's kind of neat that things are changing so quickly. I never got to experience the rise of Minecraft, but a lot of people say it was a really cool experience to watch it blossom. I think he would like to experience that as well.

You didn't miss much. Minecraft had a lot of "all your stuff is broken" or "no-wipe update accidentally corrupted the worlds of a tiny percentage of the population, of which you and your world are one!". It wasn't until the mod scene really blew up that Minecraft got "good", and even then it was more of a wandering game than a dedicated great game--the genre still has some stumbling blocks (pun intended) to clear before it really produces a gem. And then MS bought them out and it's gotten weird, which is par for the course with MS (older folks might remember a 1998 CGW disk with a promotional video for a little Rainbow-Six-In-Space game called HALO, which vanished into obscurity only to surface years later as Halo: Combat Evolved, stripped of content by MS decree in order to function on their flagship console). The PC scene kinda died after that, since the Windows Store version and the older version aren't compatible with each other, and most of us didn't want to pay to get a "new" OS compatibility.

Now, since you mention your friend likes Kerbal, play up that angle. Having blown myself up while experimenting with drone live-fire tests, accidentally lawn-darted ships into things and been flung sectors away without a ship, and a dozen other Kerbal-esque mishaps... the trial-and-error of a lot of the more complex systems might appeal more than just "Minecraft in space". Personally, I spend more of my time on the "hardware" side building mechanical systems than I do mining or exploring and that might provide some appeal.

Failing that, start a Creative server and then duke it out in a pair of titans. It's an amusing way to get someone's interest piqued, giving them access to late-game systems all built and set up for you, and then saying "That's something a player made". I know the drone R&D thread gave me a lot of inspiration that went into stations and ships later, usually on a scale (like Kep's titan) that I wasn't skilled enough to replicate yet. And then I was, and it was a pretty nifty threshold to cross.

 

[JinM]

Compared to Minecraft the objects you build here persist way longer. The mansions and castles I've build in Minecraft are all long gone, after I created new worlds. In Starmade I can save everything I build as blueprint and can load old stuff again.

Btw. if you guys like to play a sandbox survival game with functioning blueprint system you should try out Creativerse. I didn't play it myself though, just remembered it that I have it in my to-play list.

If I would like to convince a friend to play Starmade I would tell him that this game has a great schematic system (just save any object like nice furniture and plop it down later), and has the possibility for nice space fights in own built ships. The only important thing is to only seek fights with a maximum mass or block count limit, that actually is friendly to your time. Not everyone has time to mine and build 20k mass ships, but there are enough out there that enjoy fighting in reasonable scales. And you can build everything, due to the rail and logic systems. Best space building game out there right now, beating Space Engineers and Empyrion easily when it comes to freedom of building.