JinMs Gameplay and Build Diary

[JinM]

Hi guys, playing solo survival for quite some time now I want to share some of it. For my second station I build since I started playing Starmade, I tried to orient myself on some building rules (explaining those when I will write about some specific building phases).

I am going to post just now, what I did today, and will upload older progression or newer stuff without an specific order. Those separate posts about some stuff I build, will be categorised in my first post and each be linked to the entry in this thread.

If you like some of my stuff and want to test it out: I am happy to upload nearly any blueprint including not finished works and let you modify it (but give me some credit =) ).

Versioning conventions in CC uploads:

(major.minor.internal)= aa.bb.cc; for example SLV Denuvo 1.02.00

aa=major change (e.g. new weapons setup, role changed);
bb=minor change (this change is still noticeable by a user and he should read the change as it has impact on how he uses the vessel or on how he perceives it as it changed visually);
cc=internal change (everything is nearly the same for the user and he doesn't really need to take notice, still it's changed in some way; for example changing rail dockers would not be an internal change but a minor one, as the user needs to know this as he has to adapt his rails - on the other hand fixing some interiour blocks that got rotated wrong, or fixing spelling mistakes in displays is a typical internal update)

Naming Conventions:

(Type prefix)(Name)(Update or versions)
for example: "TUR Rippliex 180225", "FGT Black Bee v15 with new power"

• SPL Supply Entity, ranging from Transporters over Cargocontainers up to Warheads or shooting ranges.
• SCT Scouts, non combat oriented ships with the main purpose of having a good jump drive. Radars or stealth engines are optional.
• SLV Salvager or Miner
• FGT Fighter, those are generally below 50m length in my setups.
• CRV Corvette, generally below 120m length
• GAM Minigame related entities, for example small hover bikes for race tracks, or manually operatable public turrets.
• _s prefix for backups of stations, example: _s OZ 180226 (yymmdd)
• TUR Turrets, best used with modules setup, e.g. "TUR mb 15-14 Rippliex 180228"
• CIT City build related entities, for example a 25x25 build plate that gets docked to the homebase, where lower ranked members can build their house onto.
• STA Station that is not a backup or a WIP and ready to use.
• suffix: poc proof of concept
• CAR Carrier
• TMPL Ship that has templates and schematics, for example a platform with a stockpile of 5x5x5 furniture objects. Ready to be pasted onto new buildings.
• MOD Modell of an entity, often used after prefix e.g. CAR MOD Otzelot
• unused: BTLS - Battleship, FLGS - Flagship

Spoiler: JinMs Survival Progression Diary and some ships

*the start format of this thread
25.09.7016 Settled down and founded "Phoebe Station". Off to a new world and a fresh start.

26.09.7016 Shieldgenerator and Fabrication Hall

26.09.7016 Archives and new Pipeway

27.09.7016 Completed my new scouting ship "Knight": 50mass, 30sec Jump Drive, Overdrive, 4k shields.

28.09.7016 Added Turrets

30.09.7016 Control room redesign

02.10.7016 Hangar, Shipyard and Flight Control Tower

07.10.7016 First Logic: Random Pirate Spawn Timer

08+09.10.7016 Turret Designing and Circular Staircase

10.10.7016 Constructed SLV Fira, a below 50k credits starting salvager

15.10.7016 Multiple Projects in Progress: Cargo Silo, Capacitor Battery, Fighter, Chess

22.10.7016 Level 2 Starter Salvager Progress

12.02.7017 Fighter Colonial Viper mk II and Salvager Fedora

13.02.7017 WIP Donnanger / Rocinante inspired ship

18.02.7017 Progress for the new military ship

23.02.7017 Hangar stuff

26.02.7017 FGT Nioker mk1

02.03.7017 Progress on the military ship and some base extensions

28.03.7017 WIP Update CRV Mantis

29.04.7017 Several new builds and stuff

26.10.7017 Time to come back: Hangarbay with moving docking platform, small medical and factory interior props

04.11.7017 New interior props (ex: med chair, heater, water tank, shield gen), Salvager Fedora update, Brierie station progression

Spoiler: WIP classification - quotes and ideas

Okay if 500m is the biggest, 500m would apply as battleship or carrier. Thats the upper limit. The lower limit is 50m for fighters, because everything smaller doesnt make sense to use in normal pvp when you 1v1. Cruisers are 200-400m and frigattes are up 200m. Corvettes up to 120m.the thing is, that 500m for carrier/battleship, 400m for cruiser, 200m for frigatte, 120 for corvette and 50m for fighter can be scaled down. If a group of people says that 500m is to big for their server they can say 250m is the upper limit and then every ship type gets scaled between 50 and 250m. So corvette goes up to 80m, frigatte up to 120, cruiser 180, battleship 250.
ofcourse when it comes to esport like pvp you need to use reactor sizes and a lot more measurments to equalise out battles
wasnt talking about meta pvp but pvp in general
so you would use 300 as upper limit
Additionally we can keep in mind at what size Schine is building their ships
I think their biggest ships are around 200, they dont want to go bigger
So any crew related stuff will also be able to fit into that.
That got mentioned in a stream by Saber at some point.When I say I want fighters of arond 80m lenght to be able to fit into a carrier, the biggest ship in my own classification would be a carrier of 2x80m+20m hull= 180m wide carrier with a corresponding lenght of at least 450m.
People like to call their builds whatever they feel like, its not bound to any logic. I just say that I want ships of around 80m to fit into my carriers. and that can also be a definition fo rthe upper limit, at around 500m

 

[Gasboy]

Hey, finally! Looking forward to seeing your stuff!

 

[JinM]

27.09.7016
Finished work on the new scout "Knight".

This work is dedicated to my favourite series at the moment: The Expanse. The Knight is an orbital landing shuttle that was docked inside the big mining ship "Canterbury".

Sadly I copied the construction from a scene, where I perceived the ship from a wrong angle. But as no one knows the show anyway I think no one will rant anyway.

The ships intention is to drive me around quickly, either to the next shop when I am missing some parts or for smaller travels.

-30 second load jumpdrive
-48% overdriven speed
-4k shield
-specs: 16x8x9 meter, 53mass
-lightswitch

Spoiler

 

[Gasboy]

Neat little pond hopper.

Remember the Canterbury.

 

[JinM]

25.09.7016
late night



I arrived at some distant solar system, with a sun called Betafripacoras. A red planet, 2 shops and some decent asteroid fields met my expectations for a settlement, and I founded my new station 2 sectors from those points of interest.

Ofc, as I am a big fan of the show "The Expanse", I had to name the station "Phoebe Station". =)

All the pics:

Spoiler

Here you see the current building stage: Top-left is the control room, with an airlock leading to my only docking module for the time beeing. Bottom right I laid out a platform, and later on I wanted to wall this platform of when I got more building block fabricated. The shielding generator was the most important part of the new station, because I feared pirates and that my faction module just resetted the home station setting. If SM one day is balanced, I plan on not using the "home station innuverability" at all, because I like the tension of being vulnerable all the time.

What you get a good sense of is, that I laid out the walkway before I builded other stuff. Thats some thing I allways do if the space between the built objects is not big enough to add stuff later.

Leftmost is my salvager thingy, I am not very willed to spent any time on it because salvager are growing very fast in survival, but the necessary hull blocks and the rest you need to finish such ship are just not present. And as soon as the salvager is finished you need a bigger one. Had that circumstance in my first RP-world, wont do that mistake again because it's a fun killer.

The temporary fabricator and storage setup.

Phoebe Station is under a hard government, starting with simple building rules, expanding over some security and escape walkway regulations.

I try to go into detail, but can not cover all of my requirements (survival/rp build rules).

Before I start one thing: I use the materials I have at the actual survival stage I am at in the survival progression. So when I start a new world, what I get in masses is dolom, and with some luck enough glass. Also I could use some of my spare money for blue hull, so my starting control room had some sort of fine carpet. =) But that this stuff locks somewhat "ugly" is intended! Later on I will be able to have plenty of better locking materials, and even later on, I have a lot of different materials to be even more detailed when I get creative on my buildings. The "cheapness" of some objects you see at the moment, resemble the actuall buidling phase. They are meant to stay, and other parts of the station then will look new, and some are going to look incredibly cool and modern. Thats the plan. If I can motivate myself to. =)

First of all, building some stuff, without the neccessary connection walkways, is not recommended. I experienced some strong problems, when pirates sieged my first station. And its not fun at all if you "teleport" yourself from docked enitity to docked entitiy. Throws away a big portion of the immersion.

Secondly: Power and Shields. They each should have separate objects to store and generate themselfes. So if those objects are hit, you can say: "Shit they blew a big hole in my shield batteries, but my generators are still fine. Though I have to fix those one day."

Power is generated in my RP-world within pipes. You see those in later posts. If those pipes are hit, it resembles a big power loss in one part of a station the pipes connected to.Pipes are weak, and if they are floating all around my station as planned, they will be hit. Ofcourse I can't design a station where parts loose power, but if a pipe is hit, and maybe in the middle of its way, the power loss will be really big and fearsome. So I don't loose a part of the station, but such a big chunk of powergenearation, that it resembles loosing like a quarter of the station.

Powerstorage will happen with some battery or tank like objects. Those are not designed jet.

But the shields and recharger are lockated inside an extra building as well. Going to write later about this one.

Escape hatches or something to get inside often: I try to make entry points at many points, so if I am ever outside of my station, I am not stranded forever and can never find in again. Flying without any ship to the next airlock from any point of the station should not take longer than 30 seconds.

Also: Air and security if one facility explodes. In Starmade stuff does not explode, but if I made a station in real life, I would not place each object next to the other when the content might be sensitive to fire or explosions. So thats one reason so many stuff is not touching each other on my station. But when the station will grow bigger, many stuff is going to be inside one bigger object, and some stuff will not be seperated as well. But for now I am going with this idea. Ofcourse the main reason is, that this modular building style is easy to build and you can finish some buildings without taking ages to plan a station at once. It's more satisfying like this for me.

Purpose objects: This might be obvious. But for each game mechanic purpose, I add a seperate object:
Cargo will get an extra hall, the first fabric hall is an extra object, an archive gets added later, where I store some of the most important milestones in the history of this survival world. I add a small landing platfarm, and later I plan on adding a bigger hangar where I can build big ships peacefully shielded from sieging pirates.
The reasoning behind this, that then you get this feeling when you watch over the station, and get some special sense of its strenght, its properties and how big some stuff is like the library, compared to other like the hangar having 5 small ships in it. And you can compare some older objects to newer ones, or compare an old shipyard in the middle of the station with a new bigger one at some new part at the edge of the station.

 

[Gasboy]

In that image of your control room, what are the columns made of? Carved dolom?

 

[JinM]

Yes its carved dolom. The glass frames are larimar and carved larimar.

 

[JinM]

26.09.7016
Shieldgenerator and Fabrication Hall

The second day in my survival world, I opted to get my shield generator going and after that finish the walls of my fabrication hall. You still see the sparce ressources I am supplied with. The later builds are going to be looking a little bit more advanced, allways equal the ressources that I can gather. (No, I don't fly around more like 15 minutes mining, I think thats just tedious and even with the ressources I would have a long task refining and setting up a big production chain - I plan on make a small production chain and later on expand the production. It's just more fun like this for me and not such hard and uncreative "lets do that uninteresting fabric and mining task once and never look at it again" work.)

Spoiler

Small workstation, so this room has some flavour. I can imagine adding some shield logic blocks, telling me the shield charge and have some flashing lights if all goes wrong. But I think thats something I would build a new generator for. I just like walking into build objects and have some stuff in there. Otherwise I never would have a reason to revisit the rooms. Also it adds so much, when you see that the ice has a hole in it, and you then hop by and find some more stuff than just some shields there.

Yeah there are youtubers out there who just do that stuff over the top. But I think thats nonsense. No one actually plays like that if he plays solo. Its meant to give some fun, no one is as autistic as some youtubers try to make us believe survival is meant to be played. (my opinion, and ofcourse there are talented guys out there - but I don't think the majority plays like the youtubers do) =)


You see the new fabrication hall to the bottom, and the day one build room for the shield generator to the top right got their interiour today. Also note the "in build" themed walkway. It looks more natural to me if they are not just cut away but have this cluttered open end. The empty fabrication hall, small space, but for a starter enough to get going. Back in the control room: the ship core will later be used to control an antenna via button and have an entity besides turrets to hop to.

 

[Gasboy]

Dolom actually looks pretty darn good in that lighting and situation. Almost like marble. Nicely done.

 

[JinM]

Thanks for the support man.

Ya, every block the devs provided is usefull for the building and can be combined very nice with others. Even Larimar works well, if you use it right. I allways just try around and look what works together.

 

[Gasboy]

Thanks for the support man.

Ya, every block the devs provided is able to be used. I allways just try around and look what works together.

Well, those blocks (all the asteroid blocks really) don't usually get used by me except to make into paint. :P But now I am seriously considering redoing some of my space station to use them.

 

[JinM]

Well, those blocks (all the asteroid blocks really) don't usually get used by me except to make into paint. :p

I think the majority of people ignore those blocks, because many build ships first. Using the more natural blocks, espcecially rocks is just something thats a bit off road in a modern sci fi game.

 

[Lord_Greyscale]

I certainly agree with that. I've neglected those blocks quite a lot myself.

Never been a fan of white though, but that Cinnabar, the Tekt, and the yellow stuff (I cannot recall it's name for some reason, But I use it often enough as carpeting) all see some use, even if only as carpeting/wall tiles.

 

[JinM]

26.09.7016 late night

The Archives and new Pipeway

Some thing I learned is, that some sort of history collection in a sandbox world really adds to the gameplay. Half a year later you just hit the library (or archives, or hall of fame with sculptures) and be happy to notice when what happend.

So I try to add this history database as early as possible to the game, so I can allways write on it when something important happend or a building stage got completed. I did not use it jet, because I just take screenshots with a timestamp. But when I feel like doing so, I just can add the notes into the display modules.

Also take note: this is another room you actually walk to and can "do some stuff that has to do with the gameplay" and not just nice to look at. I allways try to give rooms a purpose, so you not just build them and then never have a reason to revisit them. Ofcourse I do add pure decorative rooms like a sleeping bunk hall or a mess hall as well, but if I can, I try to embeed gamemechanics and purposes into objects, rooms or part of a room.


Also I designed a new walkway, for being able to get rid of the dolom cube way as soon as I have enough production going to spam this new sort of pipe. This new pipe does not fully envision what I had in mind, but later I definitely plan on using a bigger walkway version: Cross section would show a oval, the bottom half is stuffed with power grid lines and a maintenance tunnel, and the top half is mostly glass, so you feel like walking on a broadwalk and be able to look at some skyscraping station parts. Also you get that feel that you are not walking in the air but on hard ground if the bottom half is "concrete" because you use non transparent blocks and put some stuff into it.

Spoiler

 

[JinM]

30.09.7016

Control room redesign

So you guys don't think my building style will aways be this plain.

Spoiler

 

[Gasboy]

I like that way of making a table. Better than the floating flat square. :D

 

[Lord_Greyscale]

Agreed, though I normally use Corners. I like my tables that slight bit bigger, ya'know?

Corners allso let me have some "non-sitting" tables with four-legs, instead of the central pillar.

 

[JinM]

07.10.7016

First Logic: Random Pirate Spawn Timer



So after plenty days of not having any pirate attacks, I got more and more suspicious. Where are they? When will they come? Will they prepare extra carefully to ambush me with all the forces they can gather?

Nope. A bug. And I found no way of fixing, so I decided to have my survival and RP exitment in the oldschool way:

I added some logic that counts down from 300 seconds, and everytime its finished I route the signal over some randomizers and with a 25% chance the logic triggers, flashing my alarms and the base.

If the alarms flash my rule for the first tries will be to spawn a wave with /initiate_wave 1 1 -1. If those waves get boring I plan to roll a real =) dice for the parameters. Maybe I even have an event-table one day I pick pick from? For now I am just happy that I have this mechanic going, and later I can easily expand it. Setting up the initial logic was the hardest part, now I only have to modify it if I want some special gamerule.

I picked a bigger housing brick right from the start, for adding some other logic later as well.

How it works: One chest with 1000 blocks gets emptied into the other 300 blocks at once, then the former picks 1 block up until it has 1000 again. If there are 1000 block in the chest the sensor activates the block pulling of 300 blocks and also sends a signal to the randomiser which is set to 25% at the moment. If the randomiser evaluates true the alarm loop gets activated via a flip-flop and does not switch off again even if the counter randomises the event again.

Spoiler

Yes, if my alarm goes of, a red light flashes at my secretaries desc. =)
Ofcourse the hallway and the fabricator hall have the alarm lights as well.
For the logic I really had to think long and considered how to design its housing walls. Its the inside that counts, I hope the beauty of this magnificient construction does not distract from its inner values.

Btw. if someone has regular pirate attacks and knows why: Please tell me, I want to fix this so badly.

 

[Gasboy]

Hehe. It can get lonesome, even on survival. You could always go and poke a pirate base...

 

[JinM]

Yeah sure, but raiding pirate bases does not really exite me. Don't know, I have seen all the designs allready. Maybe I try to change my blueprints one day so I have more to explore.
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28.09.7016
Turrets

Nothing much to say. Well the long one was inspired from the rail gun in the tv-show The Expanse (again). For now this one has a 90 beam - 90 beam weapon, designed to destory 5 standard armor blocks with one shot.

I am not very happy about the diversity the weapon mechanics provide me to design turrets. If I want to use turrets against fighters, the only usefull ones are smartmissiles: Cannon-Beam are using power for targets 3 sectors away and hit no fighter, instead of waiting until a fighter is close and benefit from the fast 20x server projectile speed. Cannon-Cannon is okayish but a really size consuming setup, and missile-missile does not count because it targets friendly units too. And all beam setups don't count because beams don't penetrate more than one block at the moment (block gets not pierced bug - only cannons destory multiple blocks at once in my test world).

The smaller one has 35 missile 35 beam setup, and some purple shells. =)

Spoiler

02.10.7016

Hangar, Shipyard and Flight Control Tower

In my old survival world I once tried to design a big salvager and all of a sudden pirates attacked, beating some big holes into my contruction. The ship was not finished and thus I did not save any blueprint at all.

After this I thought: hey as long as you have no big fleet you need some save place to construct, so pirates don't blow away the most fragile constructions right at the start of an ambush.

Ofcourse I just could do it the easy way, and maximize my shield regen up to heaven or just set the station to my home base. I also could use the totally unbalanced economy and just mine, sell and buy every stuff until I have enough money to afford a 300 block missile ship and turrets. But where is the thrill?

After the hangar, I still was not totally satisfied with my base and added a flight control tower as well. The flight control tower oversees, advises and regulates ships who want to visit the temporary shipyard and other parts of the planned harbour. I plan on adding some sort of guarding or military tower, and other towers like a hotel tower as well. But this for now.

Spoiler