Newb Inquiries! please and thank you.

[leftharted]

Hello Community,
Just started a few days ago, and im still getting a grasp on things. I only get a few hours a night to actually play, and test the ideas I get from googling/forum trolling while at work. (much like now! Haha.) So, I have a few newb questions that if answered, would save me a ton of tinkering time.
So, ill try to number it out to make it easy on us all 8P

1. I haven’t successfully made a turret yet. It seems pretty straight forward; but can they shoot Up? Or, are they restricted to their obvious 180 degrees?? Would I need front back left right top bottom facing turrets to achieve optimal coverage??? For example, if I made a giant flying saucer with two huge turrets on the top and bottom only, would that craft be vulnerable to fire from directly above/bellow the turret??
   
   
2. I haven’t successfully docked two ships together, but have questions about it. I was considering making an star trek “enterprise” eventually, possibly with the dish portion a separate ship. I understand each ‘piece’ would need independent thrust/shields/power when separate; but when connected, do they share power/shields/thrust??? Also, if one of the two ships has a warp drive; would it take both (connected) ships with it?? or would I need to make independent warp systems in each ‘piece’ of the enterprise? From what ive read, turrets take power from their ‘mother’ craft (if they don’t have power of their own) but I have not read anything about Sharing power. Turret’s I understand, but if docked ships don’t share power/shields and are independent systems (even when attached) then I fear my enterprise compartmental idea wouldn’t work (until I have A LOT more knowledge on crafting efficient ship systems.)
   
   
3. Navigation. Ive been reluctant to make a homeworld/station/factory, for fear of not being able to get back to it. Im starting to learn warp/jump travel; so that helps. Im a bit confused on this principal though. For example, if I remember my ‘home’ is in 16, 4, 7; and I make some 40ish odd warps jumps around, harvesting stuff; could I then reset that waypoint for my home, and theoretically jump keep warp-leaping back home, till I get there??? If that’s correct, maybe I can alleviate my fear of making a space station and never being able to find it again.
   
   
4. Credits. Most of the guide’s I have seen are dated, and when ive tried collecting/selling the items mentioned, they don’t net anywhere near what I thought they would. What is the current best way to earn quick starter money (and legitimately; I take pride in not using console cheats.) With my navigation issues resolved; would it be more efficient for me to save my gathered resources to craft with?? Or, is it roughly the same net as selling them? Also, since ‘derelict’ stations only give me two kinds of scrap; which doesn’t net hardly any credits; would it be wise to throw those into a micro assembler first, and then sell the capsules I get from them??? Or, rather, craft with those capsules???
   
   
5. Abandoned Space Stations. Some aren’t my style, but a few ive come across id like to keep. Of course, they are all scrap though, from harvesting…. But, when I press ‘m’ on the station, it says it would take roughly 4 mil to repair it… my question is, if I save up 4 mil; and repair a derelict station, is it then Mine, and I can then salvage all the materials without them being ‘scrap’?? Or, at that point stick a faction block n it, and protect it as mine??
   
   
6. Moving an asteroid; is it possible??? I understand I could stick a build block on it, but can you drop a ship Core on it, some power/thrust, and actually move it around??? Not quite sure how to accomplish this; if even possible.
   
   
7. Harvesting. I built a pretty good salvager ship; with the ‘honeycomb’ technique that I see all over youtube. It works pretty good thus far, but would it be faster or me to slap a build cube on an asteroid, and ‘deconstruct’ salvage it with the 10x10x10 stylus?? I did this to a few space stations when I first started; which obviously only netter me Scrap.. but asteroid aren’t scrap and don’t need to be repaired… so im wondering if this build cube principal would be a fster way of swallowing asteroids (until I can make asalvager ‘honycomb’ big enough to do it =p)

Thank you all in advance, and I look forward to joining some multiplayer once I have a better understanding of everything!

 

[Soliex]

I have very similar questions, would like to see a response and would also appreciate it.

 

[SkylordLuke]

1. yeap,turrets can shoot up
2.yeap,they would both warp if you dock the engines of the ship to a saucer. im not sure about sharing the power,i know turrets share power
3.i dont see why you are afraid to leave your base and explore,just write down the sector numbers on paper,and you can jump 1000 times in the vast galaxy,when you wanna come back... just write that same sector in your navigation,it will lead you there,your station/base will be there,it wont ever dissapear.
4.we are moving away from credits in this game,and moving towards crafting only,(but some people still want creds so devs left them there)
crafting is now the only right way to play the game. The only thing you need money for is to buy blueprints of your ships,but after that you need to craft blocks to build that blueprint
5.yeap,after you buy decayed stations,you can salvage the blocks,and make it your base
6.yes,you can move asteroids..if you bump them.
no,you cant put ship core on it,
the only way you can move the asteroids is if you build a hauler ship with pull beams to drag that asteroid
7.yes,its faster if you build blocks it. but im not sure you can place them on asteroids anymore.

 

[der_scheme]

Abandoned Space Stations. Some aren’t my style, but a few ive come across id like to keep. Of course, they are all scrap though, from harvesting…. But, when I press ‘m’ on the station, it says it would take roughly 4 mil to repair it… my question is, if I save up 4 mil; and repair a derelict station, is it then Mine, and I can then salvage all the materials without them being ‘scrap’?? Or, at that point stick a faction block n it, and protect it as mine??

It should be noted that if you salvage a station until there is only one block left, you will only have to pay for that one block. This is obviously only viable if you don't care about keeping the original.

Moving an asteroid; is it possible??? I understand I could stick a build block on it, but can you drop a ship Core on it, some power/thrust, and actually move it around??? Not quite sure how to accomplish this; if even possible.

Neither. Build blocks don't work on asteroids, and ship cores can (legitimately) only be used when spawned as ships.

Harvesting. I built a pretty good salvager ship; with the ‘honeycomb’ technique that I see all over youtube. It works pretty good thus far, but would it be faster or me to slap a build cube on an asteroid, and ‘deconstruct’ salvage it with the 10x10x10 stylus?? I did this to a few space stations when I first started; which obviously only netter me Scrap.. but asteroid aren’t scrap and don’t need to be repaired… so im wondering if this build cube principal would be a fster way of swallowing asteroids (until I can make asalvager ‘honycomb’ big enough to do it =p)

Only salvaging will give you ores, build blocks will yield rocks only and the ores will be lost.

2.yeap,they would both warp if you dock the engines of the ship to a saucer. im not sure about sharing the power,i know turrets share power

I believe everything can draw power from the mother ship, but not the other way round. This is also the reason why docked generators use power supply systems.

6.yes,you can move asteroids..if you bump them.

Only if the server enables it, the option is off by default in the vanilla game.


It should also be noted that claiming a system will give you 12 times the mining yield.

 

[KiloZulu]

1. Turrets can rotate 360° and probably 60° up and down for their firing arcs. Alternatively, you can rotate the weapon computer so that they shoot up from their docked location.
2. A ship or turret that is docked to another vessel will draw power from that vessel if it doesn't have enough power for its own functions. They do not share any other resources (shields, thrusters.) With some logic blocks, you could set up a shield supply beam to regenerate shields on the docked ship, but remember that the docked ship still has to have shields of its own. Anything that is docked will travel with the main vessel it is docked to. Be warned that ship cores on docked vessels are more vulnerable to enemy missiles due to a persistent bug.
3. Locations in the universe are permanent, so if you make a home in a system it will always remain at that point. Either record the coordinates on paper so you can set up a waypoint to return, or if you have a faction you can make the starbase your home base and it will always show up in the faction hub.
4. Credits are still useful but they are no longer the key to everything in the game that they were. It used to be that you could buy a ship through the catalog with credits and it would just blink into existence. Now, you have to have the materials on hand for the ship, meaning you're going to have to do some crafting or buy them from a shop. Shops typically have a limited (and random) supply of blocks and they are slow to be replaced. They are more handy when you want to put a little addition on your ship or make some quick repairs. Of course, you still need credits to buy ship blueprints and space stations. Credits aren't gone, and I haven't heard anything about them being removed altogether, their role has just been scaled back.
5. The money needed to repair a derelict station will indeed repair the station. The cost of repair is meant to be a balancing feature so that players can't simply harvest stations for massive profit as before. Once repaired, it is no longer considered derelict and the blocks will no longer turn to scrap.
6. Yes, asteroids can be moved. They used to be locked in position like a base, and you used a build block to work with them. Now they can be pushed/pulled either with beams or by nudging with a ship. Asteroid football!
7. I haven't tried putting a build block on an asteroid, either. A good harvesting ship would be faster than a build block, but as with the other reply, I don't know if you can put a build block on them. I would think you could, but by the time you get out of your ship, spacewalk to the asteroid, plop down you build block, enter it, adjust the advanced build settings, and remove everything, you could have just turn on your salvage beam array for a few seconds and be done with it. Asteroids aren't space stations - they aren't large enough to make it worth the effort.

 

[leftharted]

Thank you very much for the information thus far, its definitely going to help my up-in-coming hours.
I have another question regarding docking; based on the star trek enterprise ‘splitting’ example I gave above.

Now, for me to dock the bottom-half and saucer section together, would I need to keep the Ship cores relatively close to each other? Instead of in the ‘middle’ of the ship, for protection??

Or, could I keep the ship cores deep inside of each Ship; and each of them dock together where I place the Docking cube?? I thought I read that the ‘docked’ ship will try to align its core to the docking module on the Mother craft. But, does this mean I need to keep the ship core somewhat exposed?? Or, if it is deep inside my ship; will it try to align directly above/beneath the core, as ‘close as it can get’ ?

Im trying to imagine in my head how im going to get the two pieces to ‘seam’ together just right, and I predict its going to take some keen measuring to align them just right. Is to Core to Core? Core to Dock? Dock to Dock? And, if I give them both relatively flat surfaces to ‘dock’ to, do they seam together just right? Or will their be a small gap, no matter how hard I try?

Thanks again in advance, trying to keep my trolling time down while im here at work; so may not have time to reply =)

 

[K10wN]

7. I haven't tried putting a build block on an asteroid, either. A good harvesting ship would be faster than a build block, but as with the other reply, I don't know if you can put a build block on them. I would think you could, but by the time you get out of your ship, spacewalk to the asteroid, plop down you build block, enter it, adjust the advanced build settings, and remove everything, you could have just turn on your salvage beam array for a few seconds and be done with it. Asteroids aren't space stations - they aren't large enough to make it worth the effort.

At the moment it is possible to place the Build Block down on an asteroid, but you are prevented from entering the block to use build mode.

 

[KiloZulu]

Thank you very much for the information thus far, its definitely going to help my up-in-coming hours.
I have another question regarding docking; based on the star trek enterprise ‘splitting’ example I gave above.

Now, for me to dock the bottom-half and saucer section together, would I need to keep the Ship cores relatively close to each other? Instead of in the ‘middle’ of the ship, for protection??

Or, could I keep the ship cores deep inside of each Ship; and each of them dock together where I place the Docking cube?? I thought I read that the ‘docked’ ship will try to align its core to the docking module on the Mother craft. But, does this mean I need to keep the ship core somewhat exposed?? Or, if it is deep inside my ship; will it try to align directly above/beneath the core, as ‘close as it can get’ ?

Im trying to imagine in my head how im going to get the two pieces to ‘seam’ together just right, and I predict its going to take some keen measuring to align them just right. Is to Core to Core? Core to Dock? Dock to Dock? And, if I give them both relatively flat surfaces to ‘dock’ to, do they seam together just right? Or will their be a small gap, no matter how hard I try?

Thanks again in advance, trying to keep my trolling time down while im here at work; so may not have time to reply =)

The docking ship is going to have it's ship core positioned over the docking module of the mother ship. The docking ship will position itself above the docking module so that the lowest point on the ship is just above the height of the module. So, in the example of your Star Trek ship, the ship core on the saucer section will have to be placed far enough back that it will be able to properly center on the interconnecting dorsal. If you were looking for the classic Enterprise shape you may have a problem, however, in that the domed shape of the lower saucer will create a large gap between the dorsal and the point where it connects to the saucer.

You might be better off making it on a small scale to get a better sense of how it will fit together - try to make the shape of the ship in 10-20 blocks and see what problems you encounter.

 

[jayman38]

Thank you very much for the information thus far, its definitely going to help my up-in-coming hours.
I have another question regarding docking; based on the star trek enterprise ‘splitting’ example I gave above.

Now, for me to dock the bottom-half and saucer section together, would I need to keep the Ship cores relatively close to each other? Instead of in the ‘middle’ of the ship, for protection??

Or, could I keep the ship cores deep inside of each Ship; and each of them dock together where I place the Docking cube?? I thought I read that the ‘docked’ ship will try to align its core to the docking module on the Mother craft. But, does this mean I need to keep the ship core somewhat exposed?? Or, if it is deep inside my ship; will it try to align directly above/beneath the core, as ‘close as it can get’ ?

Im trying to imagine in my head how im going to get the two pieces to ‘seam’ together just right, and I predict its going to take some keen measuring to align them just right. Is to Core to Core? Core to Dock? Dock to Dock? And, if I give them both relatively flat surfaces to ‘dock’ to, do they seam together just right? Or will their be a small gap, no matter how hard I try?

Thanks again in advance, trying to keep my trolling time down while im here at work; so may not have time to reply =)

I could be mistaken, but I think the core of the child ship is placed directly above the docking unit of the mother ship. (By the way, you'll want to pick which ship is the mother ship and which will be the child. The mother ship will need to have all the thrusters. The child ship could have the weapons, driven by an AI module and programmed to only attack the selected target.)

In normal star trek, the engine pods/nacelles are directly behind the saucer section. This won't work for StarMade with a docked saucer section. Here's why:

Docking area primer:
When placing a docking block, you will need to place enough docking enhancers to fit the child ship in the docking area.
When placing docking enhancers, it helps to think of the side-to-side dimension as the X dimension, the forward and back dimension as the Y dimension and the direction out from the docking block as the Z dimension.
Furthermore, when placing docking enhancers, enhancing the docking X dimension widens the area in both directions at once.
Enhancing the docking Y dimension also widens the area in both directions at once. (This will interfere with the nacelle placement!)
Enhancing the docking Z dimension only pushes in one direction; out away from the docking block, but at double the size per enhancer.

So, normally, a Federation starship has the following overhead view.

EEEEEEEE    SSS
     PP    SSSSS
    BBBBBBSSSSSSS
   BBBBBBBSSSSSSS
    BBBBBBSSSSSSS
     PP    SSSSS
EEEEEEEE    SSS

Legend: B: Body; E: Engine; P: Pylon; S: Saucer

Now, you are going to need to place your docking unit at the top fore of the saucer pylon. The farther forward, the better. To match up, you are probably going to need to place the saucer section's core near the rear of the saucer section. (You can't really "place" a core; you are just going to have to plan your build to build the center of the saucer far forward of the saucer's ship core block.)

However, the docking area for the saucer section is generally going to overlap where the engine nacelles go. Therefore, you'll need to find a different place for the nacelles. There are plenty of options. A little lower than the saucer section. Farther out to the side. Bottom line: you can't put any blocks at all in the docking area where the child ship will dock, even if you know they won't intersect with the child ship when docked.

Docking area reminder: Any block built inside the docking area will deactivate the dock, unless it belongs to the docked child ship.

Here's the reworked overhead view with the engines farther out than the saucer section.

EEEEEEEEEE
     PP     SSS
      PP   SSSSS
    BBBBBBSSSSSSS
   BBBBBBBSSSSSSS
    BBBBBBSSSSSSS
      PP   SSSSS
     PP     SSS
EEEEEEEEEE

Not too terribly awkward. However, it is something to think about and might encourage some different designs.

Another design choice would be to build forward and create the bottom bulge of the saucer as part of the body. (You can remove any connecting blocks between the pylon and the bulge, to maintain a good shape.) Then you can place the dock in the lower saucer bulge at the center of the circle and keep the saucer section's ship core in its juicy center. The problem with this design compromise is when you pop the saucer off the ship, that lower bulge is hanging awkwardly in space, still firmly attached to the main body.

The Miranda (Think: Reliant from Wrath of Khan) has a design where the saucer section is offset from the nacelles. However, that particular design doesn't really encourage a saucer separation. Maybe ejectable nacelles instead.

Generally, these starships are designed that two nacelles with at least 80% line-of-sight between them are most efficient. (I read the 80% line-of-sight thing from a non-canon starship design tech readout book of the next-generation era, so you don't have to follow these conventions.)

I broke with tradition for my Star Trek design. (Look for "Theatrical" in the Community Content area to see it.) I created an angular "saucer section", doing away with the saucer shape completely, and integrating the structure with the front of the nacelles, creating one big angular shape that reached from stem to stern.

tl;dr: reconsider the use of docking for Star Trek designs. It just doesn't work very well with the current StarMade docking system because of structure placement versus docking area.

 

[Ithirahad]

Im trying to imagine in my head how im going to get the two pieces to ‘seam’ together just right, and I predict its going to take some keen measuring to align them just right. Is to Core to Core? Core to Dock? Dock to Dock? And, if I give them both relatively flat surfaces to ‘dock’ to, do they seam together just right? Or will their be a small gap, no matter how hard I try?

It's dock Y axis to core XZ coords, basically... Your core will be directly above (Or below, or to the side of, depending on orientation) of whatever you dock to. As for the small gap, a docked ship is always a half of a block above what it's docked to.

 

[KiloZulu]

You could make something more resembling the Voyager, with the nacelles out to the side rather than up at an angle. Alternatively, just wait a bit for Schema to finish the new docking system. Perhaps that will finally do away with the docking area limitations.

 

[explicittv]

The best way I've seen to earn credits is still repairing a station and salvaging all the parts. I bought one for 22mil and sold all the parts for over 50mil. You will have to go to multiple shops to sell all the parts.