Building Help

[shadowcrusnik]

So, when i think about design, when anyone does, they almost always begin somewhere, everyone starts at a different spot, sometimes the same person will start at different spots based on what part of the ship they envision the easiest, and make the rest from there.

I have run into a major issue.


I have a ship design, it is essentially a giant capital-sized mining ship, with numerous other functions for use in defense (turrets, fighter bays, etc.) A huge project, that will likely take many days to complete. However, due to the way the game works (that is to say, you start building by placing down a single block, which is the ONLY block from which you can pilot the ship) prevents me from building the design effectively. I need to start with the front, the actual mining mechanism, however the fact that the starter block cannot be moved or replaced or that there are no other blocks that allow the direct takeover of the ship, I am FORCED to start with the cockpit, however i usually fuck up at this point and cannot get the ship to come out how i had wanted it.

I need to be able to build one part of the ship, ANY part, and then build out from there the rest of the ship, without the restriction of not being able to get in the damn thing because the pilot block is embedded in the thrusters or the main weapon or something.

Is there any way to do this?

 

[Panpiper]

Put down your ship's core, then use hull blocks to block out your ship layout. Some people go so far as to outline the entire exterior. I would advise against doing that until after you are certain of the placement of your components vis-a-vis your ship core. By laying out just the block spacing, you can very easily change your mind, removing just a few blocks to expand or shrink some dimension.

Once you have your spacing and placement determined using those preliminary hull blocks, you can build whichever components you prefer with confidence. You are also at that point not constrained to build out from your ship's core.

 

[Jaaskinal]

You could experement around with copy and paste.

 

[Keptick]

Use tunnels to get to your core and camera blocks to control the ship.

 

[jayman38]

I recommend creating a design in an external program, such as Paint. (Personally, I use the OpenOffice/LibreOffice Draw program with a grid size of 1/10 so that there are 10 blocks in an inch.) Then laying out the ship how you want in that program. Then, when you are ready to actually build in StarMade, it's easy to place the cockpit where you need it, and then build out to the desired areas with only basic infrastructure, knowing that your systems are where they need to be in relation to that first, critical block.

 

[Raiben]

So, I don't know if this will work for you, but here is a series I made and I try to cover things like that to an extent:

 

[zigyzigy]

Raibens viedo is great, also the copy paste function is not to be underestimated. I have found that the easiest way for me is build as much of the shell of the ship as possible in a station. Then when I am happy with it I can copy and paste it into a ship, if the core then ends up in the wrong place, I can simply delete everything and paste the shell around the core in a different place.

It works for me but I think it is mainly about finding what works for you personally.

 

[IG-1000]

I would suggest building the entire Frame of the ship you will be able to see the scale of the ship and get a general idea of how it will look when its done, this is something i personally do i find it much easier to build ships especially if your using reference images