Starmade

[Ulfengaard]

Alright, so I have a problem. I sometimes get the 'shiny new game' syndrome. I pick up something new, and I get all excited. Then, the novelty wears off, and I find that the game wasn't as great as I thought it was to begin with.

In order to avoid posting too soon, I've taken time with the game Starmade. It is in early development, but that hasn't stopped me from having a ton of fun with it.

The game is voxelized, so it will feel familiar to most of us (if voxels aren't familiar to you... I'm not sure how you arrived on this forum O_o). However, Starmade is a spacefaring game. You build your ship with blocks such as the power core, the thruster, the salvage beam, etc. There are some pretty impressive builds out there, and you can design a huge ship. You can even put together a carrier which can dock smaller ships.

There are things to explore as well: asteroids to mine, planets to land on (and either base on or exploit), starbases to build, pirate bases to conquer, factories to engineer, etc. The game supports factions and faction property on multiplayer servers, leading to an impressive political backdrop. Since the universe is procedural, it is also infinite.

In short, there's a lot to do in this game, and I'm thoroughly hooked after two weeks of play (by which time, I usually get the 'meh' if there's one to be had for me). Consider giving this one a try if you haven't already. It's free to play while in this open alpha, and it's only $3 to prepurchase until the end of the month. Linky: http://star-made.org/

Administrative Note: This thread might serve better as a more general 'Games to Watch' thread. Not sure.

[Gormador]

Seems interesting. Will try it out when I can !

[DaveYanakov]

I've still not had the time to download it but the videos I have seen show that the development is headed in the right direction. $3 really isn't much at all.

[mazer246]

I too have been playing it for the past couple of weeks. Although IMO the dev has too much of a block for everything approach, its still gives you many interesting constraints to design around. My only pet peeve is the blueprint system. Considering that monies are WAY too easy to come by, people build (or steal of the forums) massive ships and spam em. Even if you manage to destroy a huge flagship, there is nothing stopping from its owner spawning another one in at the nearest shop and flying back over.

Edit: Also... god that suggestion forum is absolutely horrifying....

[FlowerChild]

Edit: Also... god that suggestion forum is absolutely horrifying....

Most are man...most are. My eyes generally start to bleed when I browse the suggestion forums for other games. I just know that the developer is then forced to pretty much ignore them entirely, which pretty much entirely defeats the purpose of having a suggestion forum to begin with.

The only thing they're good for at that point is giving players a space in which to vent, rather than as an actual line of communication to the developers. That's fine for some games with massive communities I guess where the devs just want to give people some place to spout nonsense to keep it from leaking into other areas, and to serve for "community building" (at least if your idea of community is screaming idiots drowning out everyone else), but if you're actually interested in receiving feedback from players, not so much.

[DaveYanakov]

I too have been playing it for the past couple of weeks. Although IMO the dev has too much of a block for everything approach, its still gives you many interesting constraints to design around. My only pet peeve is the blueprint system. Considering that monies are WAY too easy to come by, people build (or steal of the forums) massive ships and spam em. Even if you manage to destroy a huge flagship, there is nothing stopping from its owner spawning another one in at the nearest shop and flying back over.

It is still in the early stages. One of the very recent features added was a factory system which I imagine will start taking over from the stores as the way to build ships to blueprints.Between that and resource mining there are the seeds for a proper economy but it's still in test stages.

[Mr_Hosed]

Interesting note, in the vain of Minecraft inspiring Terraria, there's a game in production called Starbound http://playstarbound.com/ that's a 2D version of this... sort of.

[BinoAl]

Interesting note, in the vain of Minecraft inspiring Terraria, there's a game in production called Starbound http://playstarbound.com/ that's a 2D version of this... sort of.

Actually, Starbound is what a few of the Terraria devs jumped ship to when it was discontinued (Then recently recontinued). It's like a spiritual successor to Terraria

[Ulfengaard]

I just wanted to post a follow-up to all the technical facts. I've had many of these stories over the course of my play, but I thought I would just cite one.

I was comfortably docked at an ice planet. I had decided, instead of using the salvaging beam, I would walk out of my ship's airlock (yes, I have one of those), and do some manual mining of ice crystal. I finished pulling as much as I was comfortable taking. So, I decided to make my way back to my ship.

Right away, after clearing the atmosphere, I saw three pirates on my nav. They saw me, too, it seems. They whittled away at my hull layers as I raced toward the next planet. I had hoped that landing there would confuse them: they would lose me amongst the crags and pillars of the terrain.

No such luck.

As I dug my way into the planet to adopt a temporary shelter, I could hear my ship being hammered by anti-matter cannons. Layers of the hull were peeled away, revealing my power reactor and engines beneath. I tried to rush out and repair it, but the pirates nearly obliterated my astronaut form. I had no choice but to retreat into my hole in the surface of the planet. I peered out, only to witness the massive bulk of my ship tumbling down the hillside toward my impromptu shelter, holes gaping in its titanium skin.

Here, I wait, hoping the pirates lose their interest in the husk of my ship. If I can save the core and a thruster or two, I can make it to the nearby shop to spend what credits I have rebuilding the Hrafngaard.

It's a decent game already. Could it be improved? Sure. But, I'm already having fun with it, and there's much more to come from the dev.

[TheAnarchitect]

I've been waiting for a decent voxel-based spaceship game. I'm currently put off by the textures and design, preferring something a little more hard sci-fi than "Drop thruster blocks whereever." But I'll at least give it a shot. Thanks for posting this.

[Ulfengaard]

Sure thing, man. I also was confused by this 'wtf-thrusters in the middle of the ship?' thing. I've rationalized it by thinking of them more as subsystems for the thruster assembly rather than the literal thrusters. I make the actual thrusters out of other materials (ice crystals, for instance, for that cool 'blue fire' look).

I'm glad folks are finding some interest in this title. I think it has a lot to offer, and it starts to scratch that 'build your ship and explore the universe' itch that I've had for years.

[Jesar]

I hate everything starmade represents.

I'm a huge sci-fi nut and have been waiting for the perfect space ship simulation to give me the outlet I need to manifest some of my pent up interstellar desires. I've been drooling over star citizen, and hate that I don't have the resources to invest in Eve online. Starmade should have been PERFECT for me.

But they just had to be a programmer and artist team with no designer to speak of. The shops break the game. L5s don't even fit the mineral value line. Pirates drop said l5s. They changed the factory system from needing specialized factory blocks and fixed recipes to one factory block that uses a randomly generated recipe. What is needed to make a block is random and dependant on a recipe item that costs 5000 of the item it makes to purchase said recipe.

The only redeeming factor is the build system that has variable efficiency based on the layout of the blocks in a system. I fucking love that.

[Ulfengaard]

I would encourage a little patience here, man. It is free to play right now, and Schema has openly acknowledged the balance issues. They are on his radar, and he has a couple of really good theorycrafters helping him. We will see what he does with it. It is in open alpha, and even though the meaning behind those terms has been diminished, it is still worth bearing in mind.

Star Citizen has a multimillion dollar budget with a guy at the helm who has years of experience in the industry and several hit games behind him. It is an entirely different sort of situation, I'll admit, but it smells a lot like Molyneux: lots of promises. I am concerned they won't pan out. :(

EDIT: I should clarify that alpha means the game is not feature complete. Balancing comes later.

[Jesar]

EDIT: I should clarify that alpha means the game is not feature complete. Balancing comes later.

I understand what alpha means. However, when you replace a perfectly fine factory system with a totally inferior one that doesn't make any sense other than giving patient/rich/lucky players the ability to make hardened hulls out of frozen bushes, it begs the question of how much of this is "in alpha" and how much is just throwing ideas against a wall to see how people react. I don't see his plan.

I do hope I'm wrong about this though. I really, really want to love this game, and already play it just for the shipbuilding.

[Ulfengaard]

I don't see his plan.

I respect that, man. It's just that, being in a creative field myself, I tend to be more sympathetic, I suppose. So, I just thought I'd toss out there that it may not yet be time to break out the hate. There are plenty of good experiences to be had. After all, it's not like it costs anything to play it, so he's obviously aware that he isn't exactly putting out high quality product, yet.

I suppose my point is the same as yours in that we don't always have a full understanding of the dev's vision for a game. So, some of the choices may not make sense, yet.

[Jesar]

I don't see his plan.

I just thought I'd toss out there that it may not yet be time to break out the hate.

I can agree with that, it is still early for hate. I do hope that this "thinking like a scientist" thing I saw mention of in regards to the recipe system does pan out in the future. I really don't want to see this game become a free to play creative mode mmo when it can be so much more.

[devak]

I've been playing this game a bit. The potential is there, and the basis is fun. But yea, a ton of stuff is still broken and i seriously doubt the current recipe system will remain. For example, a scavbeam is god. Hulls are useless (pretty much every block has 100HP so you could just coat your ship in rock), stations provide a TON of hullmaterial&reactors in their construction, pirate stations provide over 40 different items with 100+ of each, and planets are a mineral goldmine (just dig from the bottom).

In general it feels like a very early Alpha. (which it is).

[Bevanz]

Yeah, I enjoyed Starmade for a bit, but the lack of features and incompleteness of the features that are there made me decide to take a break from it until it is developed a bit more. I did pay for the full license or key or however they'll handle it, though (IDK why someone interested in voxel games and space wouldn't for $3). I am very interested to see where it goes.

stations provide a TON of hullmaterial&reactors in their construction, pirate stations provide over 40 different items with 100+ of each, and planets are a mineral goldmine (just dig from the bottom).

In addition to your points, I'd like to point out that, currently, by using the build block on a station or planet one can simply set the cursor to 10x10x10 and hoover up a thousand blocks per click. Combine with a simple click-macro to take complete care of a planet in a matter of seconds. Additionally, due to latancy (even on a local game), using the click macros one can duplicate blocks. I really hope that they nerf build blocks soon, and that they fix the issues involved with repeat-click macros, as it pretty much removes value for any placeable items in the game.

[devak]

In addition to your points, I'd like to point out that, currently, by using the build block on a station or planet one can simply set the cursor to 10x10x10 and hoover up a thousand blocks per click.

I didn't know that.

Yea i made a couple of thousands selling ore, then i sold my (manually) salvaged hull and made over 400K in one fell swoop.

I've played it a bit, i've already cheated in items to build a big spaceship and while cool and all, it's a toy that bores pretty quickly. There's definitely potential for a lot of fun and depth etc but yea i'll probably shelve this one for a while.

[Jesar]

I just read a thread on SM forums where someone said that blueprints need to be nerfed because people could make solid resource cubes ships and buy them repeatedly to get lots of an item without having to find enough in stock normally or manufacture it. The community response was "if they have the money, then so what?"

I'm sad right now. :(

Edit:

On the bright side, I just logged in to find a missile nerf that makes armor useful now. :D

[Calo290]

Yea i made a couple of thousands selling ore, then i sold my (manually) salvaged hull and made over 400K in one fell swoop.

You think that's bad, I killed a pirate with my 90k worth ship.

He dropped 46 mil worth of items.

[devak]

I just read a thread on SM forums where someone said that blueprints need to be nerfed because people could make solid resource cubes ships and buy them repeatedly to get lots of an item without having to find enough in stock normally or manufacture it. The community response was "if they have the money, then so what?"

I'm sad right now. :(

This is mostly a thing of expectations. Similar to MC's mobs, who cares about mob balance when you can just skip them. Who cares if you can get a ton of resources at a good price when you can get free resources by mining a space station, or more cheatingly, using a build block to collect tons.

Like FC did to mobs, Starmade would need changes across the board to get proper economics.