Yeah, the economy is harder.
You can\'t buy L5 minerals at one shop, coarse it down, and refine it back ten times over, and sell that at shops everywhere to make a fortune. Shops only deal in L1 minerals.
You actually do need to scavenge and scrounge materials out of pirate wrecks, or, do some mining work to pay for parts, to assemble a good starting ship.
You can\'t use Cubatom.
You have to build a shipyard of your own to build ships bigger than fighters or corvettes (4M cost).
You are required to build detailed IC interiors and crew accomodations for your ships based on their tier, and the tiers do not extend to infinity.
You will need to limit your use of shields, AMCs, and thrusters, as these things have very high costs and greatly influence a ship\'s tier.
You cannot build Titans. 256M is the top of the tiers (currently). Plus it would take someone months to build fully IC interior accomodations for a crew of three thousand...
You will need armor, since the pirates love their goddamn missile launchers so much. The resistance of armor has been improved quite a bit, and ship cores as well, though.
However... all this being said...
The server is now at the point where there are several players operating living breathing economies, manufacturing their own blocks and building great big ships.
There are factions that will hire new people.
There are two navy factions that will hire new officers and assign them ships immediately, and bigger ships as they gain rank.
If you care to mine asteroids, there are player shops buying all asteroid minables at high prices, including dirt and rocks, and providing public-use factories for coarsing minerals down to L1 where you can sell them at the best prices.
There are some new and very interesting custom blocks due to hit player inventories soon.
In my opinion, it\'s not as [hardcore] as it all sounds. It\'s just a different way to play Starmade. It may not be for everyone, but it certainly is for some of us.