So, I am loving the game so far and am really looking forward to when the universe is a bit more alive.
While building some ships I made a list of things that I would like to see improved or that may be bugs or preference differences. I will attempt to explain each item on my list as we go. Sorry if they arent' organized very well, I just jotted things down on a notepad as they came to me. I will attempt to add some order as I type this.
If not otherwise stated assume Grey hull or Hardened Grey Hull for all parts if it makes a difference. I am still getting used to how to build so I am not paying to much attention to color just yet.
? blocks (AKA Half Cubes, Wedges)
If you have Wedge-Light-Wedge it doesn't light throught the wedge properly, instead the light treats the wedge as a full cube block.
The Wedge seems to make the Yellow Cube Reticle™ not appear in the right place sometimes.
I havn't locked down exactly when this happens and when it doesn't but sometimes placeing two or more wedges diagonal from each other (to make a diagonal facing) the the ones below appear shaded or darker.
Sideways wedges sometimes appear more jagged than leaving the face just full cubed. I think it is an optical illusion because of the black outline followed by the lighter grey. This may happen in the up/down wedges too, but I haven't noticed it on the shapes I have built so far.
In ship building mode wedges don't disappear when going through a solid block like other blocks do. This makes it harder to find empty spots while building if you have already added wedges to the outside hull.
I would really like to see an inside corner block for wedges coming in from two sides.
Hull Corners
They don't appear to be symetrical between sideways and up/down. Adding the sideways facing would be appreciated.
Atleast the Hardened Grey Hulls (haven't checked others) look almost like they should be the Black ones. May be that they are in their own shadow?
Turrets (Placement, Enhancement, Building)
You know it was coming. Please let the turret dock with any side being open. I have built upsidedown turrets next to my ship enough times that it is irritating to have to redo it because i forgot to flip the core before starting. A 10 second mistake shouldn't undo 10 minutes of work.
Please auto select the turret on place like Weapon Computers do.
Please make a check box to Auto Activate the turret if someone isn't in it.
I would like to see a block that allows you to set a default orientation to the turrets. It would ideally make them face toward the block, and have an R menu to allow for displacement. This would allow you to have turrets that default to directions like directly forward but 30° up angle and such. This would also help the OCD people (Read as People Like ME) who are bothered enought to want to get out and reset the turrets after each fight.
While placing turret docks in mirror mode they don't appear to actually orient properly.
When placing a turret, It would be nice if it auto selected toward the camera and/or the closest open facing. It seems that most turrets are on solid walls of blocks so that there is only one reasonable facing, it would be nice to see it automated, especially since if you place any solid blocks down (like messing with turret placement visually) it resets the orientation so you need to keep finding it.
It would be nice if we could build a ship core directly onto the Turret Dock and start building the turret as it would sit. Probably by selecting the shipcore as the target anything placed like that would be part of the turret.
I would like to see a block that would be a Turret Coupler or some such, that would allow you to either set by block number or preferablly by R an amount of energy and shield that can be fed to the turret from the main ship. Sometimes having the space taken by the main ship and smaller turrets is more aesthetically appealing and the use of some blocks on turret couplers would make it justified to my thinking.
Saving Buying
Please put an error on attempt to puchase a ship with the same name as one that already exists. My attempt to name all my turrets the same left me wondering why no more turrets were able to be bought for a little bit.
If a ship has a Faction Module on it, please either auto set it to the purchaser's faction or have an option to do so.
Please allow for Stations to be saved. This might need it's own menu, but at the 1 million dollars per station thing, it would probably be reasonable to say you could get a shop to ship the parts out to build it somewhere outside of the normal shopping range.
I would like the ability to update a ship save without having to delete the save then resave it by typing in the same name. This would probably be a Personal Catalog only feature.
Please allow for spaces in the ship names and in the save menu. _ is a decent stopgap but is counter intuitive. Short of allowing this, please specifically call out no spaces in the error that pops up, it can be confusing for new players when it says no symbols and they aren't thinking of spaces as symbols.
Build Mode and Related
Please Please PLEASE do something about the glare off the hull while in build mode. This hurts my eyes to try to place blocks when it decides to glare off my work surface, and it gets tiresome to wait for such slow high mass ships to rotate to get my work space out of the glare..... for five minutes......
I would prefer if the amount of time the ship glows upon entering build mode was decreased a bit, Maybe 2/3 or 1/2 of the current time would be a good amount?
A button to temp ignore mirror mode while held would be nice. This would be handy for things like placing weapons computers and asymetrical changes without immediately having to reset the mirror planes.
In Advanced Build Mode I would like to see the ability to click and drag across a an area to build longer sections. Especially useful for things like long cylindrical ships and placing wedges. This might most easily be accomplished by assuming the plane of the face that the first click selects and then using the wheel to do the extra axis and then a second click to fill the area selected. If this is confusing let me know and I can try to explain it better. Key word: Try.
I would like to see a Diagonal batch placement in Advanced Build Mode. This could be introduced to the gui as a set of offset checkboxes next to the size select, +45° and -45°. This would be useful for alot of things including wedge placement and diagonal/hex/wedge shaped hull sections.
A diagonal mirror option would be useful for any attempts at circular stations or ship sections.
An offset mirror option would be handy for large projects or multiple section mirroring. This would behave as such in my mind. You place the first mirror, this is the Master Mirror. You then choose to place a second mirror on the same plane, this is the Child Mirror. What happens now is that everything you build is mirrored as normal by the Master Mirror and then built again with an offset set by the Child Mirror on bothsides of the Master Mirror. So one block placed with a Master Mirror would place the normal 2 blocks and a Master Mirror with a Child Mirror would place 4 as such,(? = Block built by mirrors, ? block placed, | = Master Mirror, || = Child Mirror) ? | ? as normal, ? || ? | ? || ? with child mirrors.
A fill mode would be nice. Ideally this would fill with the selected block the space selected if it is surrounded by blocks.
I would like to have a button to activate things while in build mode. Setting outputs to weapons that are beneath your hull requires you destroy that section of hull, get out go set the output, get back in and then rebuild the area. This would be easily fixed with a second activate button that isn't the same as the one to get out of the ship.
I would like the ability to select a section and copy paste it while in build mode.
When placing blocks that don't have an orientation (like hulls) it resets the orientation of your blocks if you switch back to them (like wedges) which makes using them together to play with the ship shape kind of fustrating.
When doing irregular lines by standing where you want the line to end, and just clicking build from the point of origin, sometimes the Yellow Cube Reticle™ appears behind the block and/or doesn't update to the new block that was placed. This means you have to move to get the Yellow Cube Reticle™ to reset and that can make the line less consistent.
I would like to have ghost templates that can be placed for things like large cubes or circles or spheres. This would ideally be selecting a shape and the relevant dimensions then placing it's center and a ghost of that shape would show up that would not effect the build reticle. In particular having to goto a web based cube circle generator, then alt tabbing between them to slowly replicate it seems unnecessarily complicated? fustrating? I don't know, but I would like to see it replaced with an ingame version regardless.
Sometimes when I start the game and immediately jump into building the mirror mode misses blocks.
Misc
I would like an option to reverse the scroll wheel direction for shortcut toolbar item selection.
I would eventually like to see real doors that can be opened and take space to do so. Something like a modified turret thing where when it is selected it rotates 90° in the selected direction when the Door block was placed. When selected again it rotates 90° back into it's starting location.
Please increase the navigation distance for certain items (Faction things, players and most especially what you have targeted.) I would like to be able to do certain things that I currently can't, such as select the shop/base/station I want to return to, fly to that planet I see X sectors away and be able to still see where i need to go to get back after my mining trip. I would also like to not lose where my friend is when we play and get more than a sector away from each other because we were going diagonal. In particular the selected item should never get timed out by distance I guess is what I really want.
This game's launcher should have an Icon. Like this one that I made from the Starmade Logo on this website. Sorry I can't host it as a picture, but apparently I can't find an image host that allows .ico files.... For those that don't trust the download (don't blame you) this is how it was made in Windows 7. First download the Starmade image, that one in the upper left. No, up higher..... yes that one. Now open that in paint. Click the select tool and click and drag that around the black square surrounding the ship, then copy. Now close the open paint and reopen it with no image loaded. shrink the white box back ground or set the canvas size to like 1 by 1. Now paste. Save that somewhere and upload it to here to convert it to an ico. Download that ico and place it somewhere safe, i like the game's install folder. Now just go into the shortcut or actual file's properties and hit change icon and select the new ico. Congrats,now you have an icon for starmade.
Thanks for reading the wall of text. Hope the Icon made up for it.
While building some ships I made a list of things that I would like to see improved or that may be bugs or preference differences. I will attempt to explain each item on my list as we go. Sorry if they arent' organized very well, I just jotted things down on a notepad as they came to me. I will attempt to add some order as I type this.
If not otherwise stated assume Grey hull or Hardened Grey Hull for all parts if it makes a difference. I am still getting used to how to build so I am not paying to much attention to color just yet.
? blocks (AKA Half Cubes, Wedges)
If you have Wedge-Light-Wedge it doesn't light throught the wedge properly, instead the light treats the wedge as a full cube block.
The Wedge seems to make the Yellow Cube Reticle™ not appear in the right place sometimes.
I havn't locked down exactly when this happens and when it doesn't but sometimes placeing two or more wedges diagonal from each other (to make a diagonal facing) the the ones below appear shaded or darker.
Sideways wedges sometimes appear more jagged than leaving the face just full cubed. I think it is an optical illusion because of the black outline followed by the lighter grey. This may happen in the up/down wedges too, but I haven't noticed it on the shapes I have built so far.
In ship building mode wedges don't disappear when going through a solid block like other blocks do. This makes it harder to find empty spots while building if you have already added wedges to the outside hull.
I would really like to see an inside corner block for wedges coming in from two sides.
Hull Corners
They don't appear to be symetrical between sideways and up/down. Adding the sideways facing would be appreciated.
Atleast the Hardened Grey Hulls (haven't checked others) look almost like they should be the Black ones. May be that they are in their own shadow?
Turrets (Placement, Enhancement, Building)
You know it was coming. Please let the turret dock with any side being open. I have built upsidedown turrets next to my ship enough times that it is irritating to have to redo it because i forgot to flip the core before starting. A 10 second mistake shouldn't undo 10 minutes of work.
Please auto select the turret on place like Weapon Computers do.
Please make a check box to Auto Activate the turret if someone isn't in it.
I would like to see a block that allows you to set a default orientation to the turrets. It would ideally make them face toward the block, and have an R menu to allow for displacement. This would allow you to have turrets that default to directions like directly forward but 30° up angle and such. This would also help the OCD people (Read as People Like ME) who are bothered enought to want to get out and reset the turrets after each fight.
While placing turret docks in mirror mode they don't appear to actually orient properly.
When placing a turret, It would be nice if it auto selected toward the camera and/or the closest open facing. It seems that most turrets are on solid walls of blocks so that there is only one reasonable facing, it would be nice to see it automated, especially since if you place any solid blocks down (like messing with turret placement visually) it resets the orientation so you need to keep finding it.
It would be nice if we could build a ship core directly onto the Turret Dock and start building the turret as it would sit. Probably by selecting the shipcore as the target anything placed like that would be part of the turret.
I would like to see a block that would be a Turret Coupler or some such, that would allow you to either set by block number or preferablly by R an amount of energy and shield that can be fed to the turret from the main ship. Sometimes having the space taken by the main ship and smaller turrets is more aesthetically appealing and the use of some blocks on turret couplers would make it justified to my thinking.
Saving Buying
Please put an error on attempt to puchase a ship with the same name as one that already exists. My attempt to name all my turrets the same left me wondering why no more turrets were able to be bought for a little bit.
If a ship has a Faction Module on it, please either auto set it to the purchaser's faction or have an option to do so.
Please allow for Stations to be saved. This might need it's own menu, but at the 1 million dollars per station thing, it would probably be reasonable to say you could get a shop to ship the parts out to build it somewhere outside of the normal shopping range.
I would like the ability to update a ship save without having to delete the save then resave it by typing in the same name. This would probably be a Personal Catalog only feature.
Please allow for spaces in the ship names and in the save menu. _ is a decent stopgap but is counter intuitive. Short of allowing this, please specifically call out no spaces in the error that pops up, it can be confusing for new players when it says no symbols and they aren't thinking of spaces as symbols.
Build Mode and Related
Please Please PLEASE do something about the glare off the hull while in build mode. This hurts my eyes to try to place blocks when it decides to glare off my work surface, and it gets tiresome to wait for such slow high mass ships to rotate to get my work space out of the glare..... for five minutes......
I would prefer if the amount of time the ship glows upon entering build mode was decreased a bit, Maybe 2/3 or 1/2 of the current time would be a good amount?
A button to temp ignore mirror mode while held would be nice. This would be handy for things like placing weapons computers and asymetrical changes without immediately having to reset the mirror planes.
In Advanced Build Mode I would like to see the ability to click and drag across a an area to build longer sections. Especially useful for things like long cylindrical ships and placing wedges. This might most easily be accomplished by assuming the plane of the face that the first click selects and then using the wheel to do the extra axis and then a second click to fill the area selected. If this is confusing let me know and I can try to explain it better. Key word: Try.
I would like to see a Diagonal batch placement in Advanced Build Mode. This could be introduced to the gui as a set of offset checkboxes next to the size select, +45° and -45°. This would be useful for alot of things including wedge placement and diagonal/hex/wedge shaped hull sections.
A diagonal mirror option would be useful for any attempts at circular stations or ship sections.
An offset mirror option would be handy for large projects or multiple section mirroring. This would behave as such in my mind. You place the first mirror, this is the Master Mirror. You then choose to place a second mirror on the same plane, this is the Child Mirror. What happens now is that everything you build is mirrored as normal by the Master Mirror and then built again with an offset set by the Child Mirror on bothsides of the Master Mirror. So one block placed with a Master Mirror would place the normal 2 blocks and a Master Mirror with a Child Mirror would place 4 as such,(? = Block built by mirrors, ? block placed, | = Master Mirror, || = Child Mirror) ? | ? as normal, ? || ? | ? || ? with child mirrors.
A fill mode would be nice. Ideally this would fill with the selected block the space selected if it is surrounded by blocks.
I would like to have a button to activate things while in build mode. Setting outputs to weapons that are beneath your hull requires you destroy that section of hull, get out go set the output, get back in and then rebuild the area. This would be easily fixed with a second activate button that isn't the same as the one to get out of the ship.
I would like the ability to select a section and copy paste it while in build mode.
When placing blocks that don't have an orientation (like hulls) it resets the orientation of your blocks if you switch back to them (like wedges) which makes using them together to play with the ship shape kind of fustrating.
When doing irregular lines by standing where you want the line to end, and just clicking build from the point of origin, sometimes the Yellow Cube Reticle™ appears behind the block and/or doesn't update to the new block that was placed. This means you have to move to get the Yellow Cube Reticle™ to reset and that can make the line less consistent.
I would like to have ghost templates that can be placed for things like large cubes or circles or spheres. This would ideally be selecting a shape and the relevant dimensions then placing it's center and a ghost of that shape would show up that would not effect the build reticle. In particular having to goto a web based cube circle generator, then alt tabbing between them to slowly replicate it seems unnecessarily complicated? fustrating? I don't know, but I would like to see it replaced with an ingame version regardless.
Sometimes when I start the game and immediately jump into building the mirror mode misses blocks.
Misc
I would like an option to reverse the scroll wheel direction for shortcut toolbar item selection.
I would eventually like to see real doors that can be opened and take space to do so. Something like a modified turret thing where when it is selected it rotates 90° in the selected direction when the Door block was placed. When selected again it rotates 90° back into it's starting location.
Please increase the navigation distance for certain items (Faction things, players and most especially what you have targeted.) I would like to be able to do certain things that I currently can't, such as select the shop/base/station I want to return to, fly to that planet I see X sectors away and be able to still see where i need to go to get back after my mining trip. I would also like to not lose where my friend is when we play and get more than a sector away from each other because we were going diagonal. In particular the selected item should never get timed out by distance I guess is what I really want.
This game's launcher should have an Icon. Like this one that I made from the Starmade Logo on this website. Sorry I can't host it as a picture, but apparently I can't find an image host that allows .ico files.... For those that don't trust the download (don't blame you) this is how it was made in Windows 7. First download the Starmade image, that one in the upper left. No, up higher..... yes that one. Now open that in paint. Click the select tool and click and drag that around the black square surrounding the ship, then copy. Now close the open paint and reopen it with no image loaded. shrink the white box back ground or set the canvas size to like 1 by 1. Now paste. Save that somewhere and upload it to here to convert it to an ico. Download that ico and place it somewhere safe, i like the game's install folder. Now just go into the shortcut or actual file's properties and hit change icon and select the new ico. Congrats,now you have an icon for starmade.
Thanks for reading the wall of text. Hope the Icon made up for it.