I don't get Starmade anymore.

[Gasboy]

Once you have taken some of the excellent advice in this thread to heart, there is only one thing you can do: Do.

 

[nulitor]

Or behave like me and become an entity unable to understand the concept of beauty that then spams ships that maximise efficiency per cost and then with the swarms kill whatever you want.

 

[philthy mcnasty]

Have a table of contents instead of a TL;DR as I want people to fully read through my post before giving it any feedback to clarify any misunderstanding and prevent flaming:

1) Understanding my motivation
2) Explaining my problem
3) Explaining my problem with others' help, or from my perspective, a lack thereof
4) Analogy to why I can't solve this and won't be able to at this rate
5) With the above in mind, this section won't be a flounce
6) Call to Action, or in other words, plz help

It should be an enriching experience, and if it isn't, like food that you don't like when you're full, leave it alone. This text is in red and bold so that I can't be, by the content of this post, entitled, attention-whoring, or flouncing as people will read this far easier than if it was formatted identically. Thanks in advance all the longsuffering individuals who took their time to read and understand this.

1) Understanding my motivation

This game sounded great. From my experience, it is enigmatic, deep, and wide, rich in ways to get resources and things to fight, with the goal to conquer the galaxy with no less than your creations.

The issue with my experience with the gameplay loop is the last part.

2) Explaining my problem

I have always been struggling with voxel building games. They are, from my limited experience and pool of knowledge, impossible to even build a structure vaguely like a reference image, as regardless of whether your mapping the structure out by placing scaffolding or vertices, they're impossible to build properly around. Anything you build looks terribly deflated, with a plain surface that as a result of the scaffolding shape and size cannot be ribbed or decorated without making it look even less structured. The best ships I've built were simply shaped like composites of simple geometric primitives, and anything I've tried, small or big, usually results in an unworkable mess on one or all sides. To prove my, as anyone besides always says about what I say in times like this, extraordinary, unrealistic, catastrophic sounding claim, as all of mine always are, A station I built ages ago, with a ship I gave up on:View attachment 54878
Look at that: extremely small size, dinky turrets that couldn't hurt a player, minimal shields, open reactors, a shipyard that can't fit anything above a single salvage drone...
Want more? Two ships I submitted to the dock to at least have in my poor-tfolio.
Why did I submit these? I at least wanted to prove I had any amount of experience building in the game.
Why do I hate them? Both of them are actual cylinders, they have poor systems and chamber selections, they were made fun of time and time again when I showed them as they were and asked for help to make a better one, and the community is tight-knit enough where they probably know who they are, but I forgive them and I can 100% see why they thought it was abhorrent. A couple of people honestly thought they would be great fixer-uppers but they still are thought of by most of the enlightened masses and master shipwrights, or everyone who actually plays this game but me, as a personal embarrassment, a weak scrap of metal and put down.

https://starmadedock.net/content/sword-of-orion-warship.7558/ And its direct precursor https://starmadedock.net/content/big-dipper-cruiser.7554/

3) Explaining my problem with others' help, or from my perspective, a lack thereof

I have asked in the Discord for help, and what it ends up becoming every time is either a brief apprenticeship that starts as soon as it ends, out of frustration with me, confusion of mine, or otherwise, or being told I need to practice more when this is all I know how to do. It is also all I will ever know if I'm told to practice, as all practicing ever helped me with is improving the speed and accuracy of what I already know.

4) Analogy to why I can't solve this and won't be able to at this rate

To elaborate, with a (in the developed world only) universal experience: Could you be asked, on an assignment at school in a math class, to long divide polynomials over and over (something difficult to compare building to) and improve without being taught? With no outside resources to help you beyond the pencil and paper at your desk (analogous in this case to basic tutorials on controls, the in-game shape and line tools, etc), would you ever improve? What if you were being shown the answer key and it showed the correct answer but no work, or the work was written in the wrong order, or you didn't know what it meant?

5) With the above in mind, this section won't be a flounce

So on a world I made right after thinking I already had completely given up, disillusioned with my confidence in building, which I aptly named "vestiges", I decided to make a replica of the Nautilus from 20,000 Leagues Under The Sea. Of course, like most of what I made in this game, it became nearly unworkable, and was very confusing to work around.


View attachment 54879

With this in mind, here is the reference image I used.

I'm guessing someone's already made one before and it's already flooded through the community hundreds of times over, so don't be bothered if I stole someone else's idea. Because that's just how places like this have always worked, and this game made for people who aren't me, who aren't so much guarding secret knowledge on how to build away from me as some conspiracy as they are just inherently better than me, as people, at this game, or otherwise. I don't know how to enjoy this game anymore without being negative and stressed and leaving far worse than I came in.

6) Call to Action, or in other words, plz help

With all of this, which is likely going to be called a wall of unimportant text, removed by a moderator who thinks it's just going to cause issues (and honestly I fully forgive, far more than I ever would myself, anyone who may sound like my stumbling block in this, because I was my own stumbling block in all this, because of my inhumanly terrible personal permanent flaw that makes me a freak, not knowing immediately when I started playing how to build a flagship the size of a planet, let alone how to get to that point) said, if literally anyone can so much as validate my feelings, share in the experience, and hopefully describe how to get out of it, I would be ever in debt.

An open letter brought to you by Xpertice.

Your problem is number 2. It's a voxel game. SO your ship is ugly? so is mine. What gets me is once i build my ship, what do i do with it? Why build the ship? where do i take the ship? what is the point of making the ugly ship?

Stationeers: you build ugly station so you don't freeze to death, starve to death, or die horrible vacuum death.

Emperyon: you build ugly space ship to get away from ugly spiders and to mess with ugly npc factions.

Starmade: what is the point?

This game suffers from what elite dangerous suffers from: big universe, nothing to do. what they need is something to do, maybe some sort of story pack system where it creates a type of themed universe to play in.

 

[joshspaceboy]

Thought I’d add my two cents, as someone who is an intermediate builder. I’ve been playing starmade for over 300 hours and Minecraft for over 10 years and more hours than I’d like to admit. Improvement takes time. Like a lot of time. Some people do have a natural knack for it but most people practice like crazy. Certainly putting the work in is the most important part.

Some basic tips I’d give to newer players, hopefully some which you are already doing:

1. Draw all your builds ahead of time. You wouldn’t believe how helpful it is for me to draw everything out multiple times until I get what I want. Admittedly ideas are easy and execution difficult but continually working on an idea until you like what you got is helpful. Some of my current in progress builds took an hour or two to draw, and I drew them from different viewpoints to make sure it would look good From various angles. It’s much easier to erase pencil marks then redesign a whole ship halfway through building it.

2. Design your ships to work with the system instead of against it. This is what I think makes the difference between good and bad builds a lot of times. Don’t fight the voxels, embrace them and design your ships accordingly. This also helps cut down time. For instance I almost never build asymmetrical because it takes a lot more time than using symmetry and I am extremely tight on time. Use every tool in your arsenal, everything! The best builders know every block and experiment with what works in various styles. Come up with your own unique style that embraces starmade. This helps me tremendously.

3. View better builders stuff. This is how you know how to use the arsenal I was just talking about. My builds have gotten exponentially better just by exploring and admiring others people’s content. I then take elements of those ships and recreate them while keeping my designs unique.

As you can see none of this is necessarily building tips but more how to think like a better builder. A few of these were addressed already but I was just enjoying the post so much I thought I should give my opinion. Hopefully that helps some.

 

[Sgtwisky]

I can't really tell you "How to build" but I can give you some tips based off of what has helped me.

1. If I am having trouble with a specific shape angle or visual effect, I try to find a ship someone has built and uploaded. I then just copy the idea and retrofit it into my design. That's how I learned to use ice to diffuse light to make even better engines. In fact. the last time I was thinking of starmade and browsed the forums, I found a ship that had the exact perfect shape of a wing which I had failed at making since I started the game. I downloaded that immediately and took their build apart to figure out what combination of block shapes they used to get it. Can't stress this point enough.

2. I like to build the "Skeleton" of my ship first. This is more or less a rough 3d outline of my ship. Doing so lets me change proportions angles and such without all the work of completely redoing the entire ship hull.

3. Start Medium. When I started building things I found that I was terrible. Especially at small things. But I couldn't justify putting tons of time and effort into ships that were huge because I would feel like I wasted time on something that turned out bad. Most of my building experience is in the range of 100 - 151 blocks long. This is with front to back being the longest dimension of the ship. It wasn't until latter that I found many of the little things I learned were applicable or adaptable to smaller and larger builds.

Hope some of this helps.

 

[Dr. Whammy]

Here's something that might help.

There is a widely available tool that allows you to practice building at a small scale, albeit on a 2-dimensional plane.

Windows Paint

Start a new Windows Paint Picture, zoom in as far as it will let you and then draw by placing the pixels individually or with the supplied program tools to make the kind of shapes you want. This will allow you to create a rough sketch of what you want to make in StarMade.

This is a key part of how I became a decent builder in StarMade. ...I had been using Windows Paint to draw ship and base schematics in 2-D since Windows 3.1 was out in 1992.

This is also why I say my faction; the United Star Axis predates StarMade (and perhaps even several of you) by several decades.

Spoiler: 2008

 

[PainNigouto]

i think i have few words to throw around here..

first off: practice.
personally, i like to do micro-stuff. mini vehicles, computer terminals, chairs, machine parts, etc. working in micro-spaces will force you to be creative and you'll find uses for blocks you haven't thought of before.
also, keep in mind the 10.000 hour rule: it takes 10k hrs to master a skill.. given theres about 8600 hrs in a year you have no choice but to sit down and take your sweet sweet time.

Spoiler: Image

next up, design/shaping.
it sounds like you're on the right track. just like with pencil drawing and regulair 3d-modelling, getting your base shapes down is a good first step. I usually start my builds with a frame of rectangles and elipsoids. build helper and symmetry mode are my best friends here. if i want to add a weird curve or shape i just plop it on there with symmetry off. once i'm happy with how it looks from 1 side i turn symm back on and cover it with my preferred hull blocks

Spoiler: Image

detailing/greeblies
this is one of the most time-consuming steps in any build. one common mistake i see a LOT is builds having lots of greebles that don't have any function. as a rule of thumb, make sure at least 50% of your detailing serves a mechanical function. Engines, power cores, fans, pipes, circuit boards, armor plates, cannon barrels.. adding this sort of stuff adds a layer of familiarity to what is otherwise just an abstract blob of shapes

Spoiler: Image

these were just a few thought i had while reading your post. if you (or anyone else for that matter) have questions or want to do a teambuild, feel free to give me a holler

Edit: added images

 

[Minsc]

Hi.

I'm no vet. To be honest I've hardly played over the past few years. When I last played I came across the idea of starting with small and abstract models and then scale up. A basic example is to slap a wedge on each side of the core for wings and slant another wedge down on the front to act as a nose/cockpit. This is as basic as one can get in the game to make something which sort of looks fighter jet in shape. From there scale up by a factor of three. As a result 1 cube block is scaled up to a cube grid volume of 27 blocks. Now a person has room to mess around with some detailing. What's great is the initial model can be scaled up by other odd factors. Multiply by 5 and the cube grid balloons to 125 blocks. Awesome, ever more room for details (and systems). As one further upscales they can build a wireframe and then fill it in.

Someone here had posted some videos describing this build process. I saw it as a great starting point to learn and see what works.

A couple months ago I began messing with this and started off with a simple triangle wedge ship, which I then scaled up by 3. If I ever get back to this game I plan to continue this process. Looking at what I did I can see there's still more I can do on the 3x scale. Things like sacrificing some systems to add more detail or changing up the "paint job". Breaking the mold I could even stretch the ship on different axis or even add additional detail outside of the confines of the ship "border". Fun, fun.

 

[Minsc]

Tempting me to play.

I'm looking at the ship featured in this video.


Way more detailed than anything I've ever built. This goes for shell design, logic and other systems.

Looking at it, I think of an interesting exercise. Scale down the ship as small as possible to keep the basic shape. Then, scale up to the original size and re-chisel a new ship. I wonder what different designs would come out of different people?

 

[N0_FACE]

Not to chime in late, but just recently coming back to the game myself I understand your frustrations. I love making ships that look neat, and i've been realizing how hard it is when your only real options for shapes are squares and triangles. The only advice I can give is , realize that organic shapes require MASSIVE scale for the best visuals, and then in turn don't be afraid to utilize that by making large, cool ships a bit on the boxy side. A good place to kinda help you out of your rut would be making some basic shape frames like cubes, wedges, corners, and so on, and using those to build the bulk of the ship. This goes along with what Minsc said, about scaling down and back up. The devil is in the detail, but sometimes getting the basic shape of the ship first is not only the most important, but the hardest.

 

[Skwidz]

I'm not sure if using these has been mentioned here, but I find building templated parts to be copied onto the final product to be helpful when designing ships. Usually I start with the reactor, find an offset from the core, paste it, and let the reactor's limitations determine the function pf my build. Then I'll shape up some outer structure and paste more armored modules for the systems which are "exposed" and fill the enclosed areas with the rest of the systems I'd need. Afterwards, the crew access points, tunnels, and rooms could be built to what would "need" access and the rest of the hull will be filled in

I haven't completely followed this method, but I have built a few system-module-only ships which ended up really ugly when I tried to add hull instead of defining a shape earlier. For small ships, it might be easier to start with the cockpit and expand from that so you have all the internals first, then cover it with hull. In both cases I find it more successful to completely build a section I know how it will look

 

[Minsc]

Captain Skwidz Building standardized parts is something I never did. I can see how useful it would be, especially for things like docking ports.

 

[Drakkart]

i went with you should hate yourself for being so negative...
Thing is as the game stands right now it does not leave any option but to build sticks so sticks are fine even though they might look too sticky for a sci-fi lovers taste. Saying it is not you, atm the game sucks.
play something else lurk any every 3/4 of a year check by to see if shine finally might have figured it out... rest of the time get a life

 

[JinM]

play something else lurk any every 3/4 of a year check by

this.

if you want to play Starmade play it like building only game. I wrapped my head around it alot of times, its not possible to include any gameplay into it in the current state.

I mean it could be possible if players were some swarm consciousness that decided to only trade against blocks and abandon money, and to only use cannons and abandon lasers and missiles, and to only build in a general consensus about size and system to roleplay interiour ratio...but this aint happening.

 

[TrainDodger]

I did some really big stuff back when I was deep into Starmade. I even experimented with creating my own models from scratch in 3DS Max, Binvoxing them, and then detailing and painting them in-game. I've done some curved parts by hand, but they were always on quite large ships. I'm not that good at micro-builds. I like monster-scale stuff. One build that I kinda gave up on (due to patches changing systems and needing to refit the whole thing) was like 14 million blocks and a good kilometer long. What happened during the build? The new turret system was introduced, and punch-through was nerfed. That was like 5 years ago, IIRC. The last time I fiddled with it, I was experimenting with creating a Paternoster-style continuous elevator using rails, but I found that sector transitions and other loads would desync the whole thing, causing the cars to pile up. Kind of disappointing, but oh well.

The key is to first imagine the overall shape you want to build your ship in. Then, sketch it out. Don't start off by doing high detail. Just build long lines of blocks, ("frames" or "sprues"), until you see the shape and proportions that you want. Do it in multiple axes. Create a wireframe profile side-on and top-down, at the very least. Then, get to building.

Think of shapes that would be cool in each area, but also, think about what they're supposed to do. What is this thing? Is it a vent? A fuel tank? A radiator? A turret mounting point? A fighter deck? A winglet or stabilizer? A keel/frame part? Maybe it's for storage purposes or for dockable modules? Think about what your "signature" is. Most of my larger ships have a downward-protruding "keel spar". This is not actually for flotation or directional stability in water or any such nonsense. Rather, I imagined that it contained radiators and a sophisticated reactionless thrust system for directional control and applying rotational torque to the entire hull. Think about what each part is for, before you build it. Think up imaginary reasons why a part might look a certain way. Go for verisimilitude, but never let your art be bound by strict rules. If something looks very cool but serves no purpose otherwise, that is also a purpose unto itself. Create real elements, and then decorate around them.

Don't just think about elements in isolation. Think of the whole. Think about the ship hull as a work of art. As the player approaches from each angle, what do they see? Make something interesting for them to see no matter where they're coming from. As they enter, they shouldn't be assaulted with very intense light. There should be pools of light and shadow used strategically. Use light and shadow to create depth. Use light hull colors on dark under-structures to make the hull pop out. Use nooks and enclaves in your interiors to create depth and interest.

That Nautilus concept is very cool, keep at it! A good thing to do is to have a sketch of the design you want to make before you start laying down frames. I keep my sketches in my head, basically, but some people prefer to draw them and work off that.

 

[Agame3]

You said everyone else starts with a hull. It's perfectly true. When you redesign again your miner ship you already know where cargo pods will land, their dimensions, how much energy your ship will use, how many salvage blocks arranged how, etc.

First time you build something that you need to be useful, not just beautiful, you start with systems and add beauty last. And by the time it is built and useful you already know what could be improved and how. After a while you realize it could be improved so much that you start to hate the poor thing for being so ugly and inefficient. So you build it's next version, knowing what to expect from it.

Or you build just for the sake of it, shape first, usefulness later or never. In which case it's hull first and systems never.

Anyway, after your first prototypes of anything, you build starting with the hull. But not before you already have built your first prototypes.