Hello, I'm Jonas Walker. I've been playing StarMade on and off for some time now and even purchased it back when it was three bucks as I felt the game showed great promise. Usually giving it a try for a bit whenever a major new update to the mechanics came out but always deciding to wait for a bit more polish before diving into a proper SSP/SMP play-through. While SSP has kept my interest SMP still needs more work I feel before being worth finding a server. I did post once or twice on the old forums but I don't recall ever making a proper introduction.
I have a fair bit of Minecraft experience and while I enjoy it the vanilla game always felt empty to me especially after experiencing SMP. After building all those structures I generally wanted to fill them full of stuff that actually worked, and mods such as Industrial Craft and the like helped at least. Which I think is a large part of StarMades attraction as what you make is can actually be functional rather than just ascetically pleasing.
There's been only one proper ship I've actually finished named the TinCan Mk1 and was made close to a year ago. Surprisingly for a 'Newb' first ship it had an actual interior and some basic styling though still amounted to a not so threatening doombrick (I think somewhere around 100 meters in length) in the overall shape of a photon torpedo from StarTrek save with a sheer vertical stern. Having to manually count the rounded bow for each layer was a huge pita as either symmetry wasn't in the game at the time or didn't know how to use it. Either way I didn't really understand how the power system or shield systems worked so most of that interior ended up filled in desperate attempt to stave off the issues I had with power generation and shields that still folded under a stiff breeze but never the less to me it was amazing as it was my doombrick. While the actual blueprint is now long lost I still might rebuild it as the TinCan Mk2 some day with what I've learned since for old times sake. Now perhaps with actual doom flavor.
So far most of my play has been in SP using admin commands to spawn material for prototyping and testing purposes to both see what new feature was added and exactly how it works. Its been great fun so far and I've actually been recently working on prototyping system modules for what I hope to be my next proper build. Strangely I've been finding it easier to start with what I plan to stuff into the hull based on the intended mission profile and then wrap everything else around it rather than start with a 'cool' looking hull and stuff it like a death-sausage. I'm curious to see where this build will actually end up.