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[BigD145]

How do I log into the server, and how the hell do I make stuff?

Watch the official tutorials.

[Greiger]

If you want simply the basics you start with enough parts to make a very simple ship and enough money to buy any additional parts that may be available.(Note:  Chances are the spawn shop is out of anything even remotely of use to a new player.)

There are two ways to start, build your own ship, or purchase a ship off the catalog.

Spoiler: Building your own ship: (click to show/hide)

You spawn into the game with all the stuff you need to make a vary small ship, capable of flying around at a reasonable speed and shooting.  You start with one ship core.  That is always the first thing placed, and if your ship core is too heavily damaged your ship is disabled, and if you were piloting it at the time you are killed, yet at the same time you cannot pilot your ship unless you are able to reach your ship's core, so you must balance accessibility with protection.  To place a ship core (and thus start a ship) you hit X, then you can name your ship an it will appear. 
You then hit R on the core and you will enter.  You can fly around in just a core or you can enter build mode (Space switches modes) and add more blocks to the core.

Blocks (that you start with)

Weapons computer: You need one of these placed to use any antimatter cannons you have.  And when placed in build mode it will conveniently select itself so any antimatter cannons you place are automatically linked to it.  (otherwise you have to hit C while looking at the computer, and then V on the gun blocks to link them)

Grey Hull: These blocks more or less determine the look of your ship.  They also serve as armor, as they are a little tougher than non-hull blocks, but you are eventually going to want some shields (which you don't start with).

Energy Generator:These blocks generate ship power, without these those fancy AM cannons, shields, and thrusters don't work.  They are very complicated to set up efficiently but until you get larger ships you don't have to worry about that much.

Antimatter cannons:These shoot bullets when linked to a weapons computer.  If two antimatter cannon blocks are touching they act as one larger gun.  You can block them up in one big array for one big gun or spread them out for a rain of mostly harmless death, or someplace in between.  People have different preferences.

Thrusters: These make your ship zoom around.  While a core by itself is capable of generating enough thrust to move itself around, once you add more than a couple blocks you are going to need some thrusters to go anywhere.  All ships share the same max speed unless they are severely low on thrust, so thrusters are all about acceleration, how long it takes you to get to that max speed. (and being able to lift your fat ship off of a planet again when you land on one.)

Blocks you probably want (but don't start with)

Shield Dispenser: Shields keep you alive and your ship undamaged.  Even a single shield block can add a ton of survivability to a small ship.  When driving a shielded ship your current shield status will be indicated by a blue line over your health bar.  When your shields are above 50% your ship is fully protected, but below 50% some damage will start to leak through to damage blocks.  Also when your shields hit 0% they are completely disabled for FIFTEEN SECONDS before they begin reggening again.  Don't let yer shields hit 0.

Salvage computer and salvage beams: These work similarly to weapons computers and antimatter cannons, you place the computer and any blocks placed after will try to link to the computer.  Salvage cannons can allow for quicker block removal for mining asteroids and planets and the like.  Otherwise you have to get out and collect manually.  Like AM cannons the larger the group of blocks the stronger the salvage beam, which reduces how long the beam has to be in a block for it to be collected.  While multiple beams allow for salvaging more blocks at once.

Spoiler: Buying a ship: (click to show/hide)

While you will want to learn to build and customize your own ships eventually, you may want to just use a prebuilt ship.  To do that you need to be near a shop (those huge tall grey pilliar things) and either open the shop window or open your inventory.  Then you click the bottom of that window where it says catalog.

The window that comes up will list all the ships you made on the server and saved to the catalog.   ...it is probably empty... but if you click on available near the top of that window you will see all the ships other people made and allowed the shops to sell (or they simply forgot to tell the shop not to sell them).  You can scroll through the ist of ships that are likely far beyond your budget, and when you find one you have the money for you can click on buy to buy it.  It will ask you to name the ship and the ship should appear next to you ready to explore the galaxy.

There are at least two ships available in the catalog that cost less than the starting cash.  I know because I built them, but there are probably more.  Be careful not to pick a turret or sentrygun though, those are specialized immobile ships meant to be docked to a larger vessel, and they lack thrusters.

[Eric Blank]

Beeeeeeeeeess!!

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

Bee ship! ~170 or something mass, but shoddy firepower from the AMC cannons. It can wreck a target with the two missile systems, but it'll need help bringing down the shields first.

[Greiger]

Bees make everything better.   Or worse... I forget which nowadays.

[Shadowlord]

Looks more like its namesake than my Bee-class light fighter, and probably more effective too (which the pirates on the bay12 server still can't hurt, because they are sad pirates).

What are the stats for yours, if you don't mind my asking?

Mine's about 10 times lighter:

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

Bee Light Fighter
15.9 mass, 8m x 8m x 8m
1822.65 DPS, 47 AMCs
20ke, 632.8 e/sec, 25 thrust
Shields: 8300 (521 s/sec); Blocks 33; Recovery 0.5

Of course if I'm flying a fighter I prefer to fly this one instead (which has 128 mass and looks even less like its namesake ):

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

Wasp Medium Fighter
128.3 mass, 12m x 12m x 12m
~9300 DPS, ~240 AMCs
20 ke, 13879.1 e/sec, 150.5 thrust
Shields: 39609 (1605 s/sec); Blocks 344; Recovery 1.0

Picture showing the control room

[Eric Blank]

Mine's a lot heavier, for sure:

149.7 mass, 234.9 thrust, 31x23x22 meters, 29134 shields with 1286 e/sec recharge. Not completely sure of a good equation for DPS, but using (1/[miliseconds]*[#guns]*[#damage]) I get 1014.7 dps, ignoring the turrets. I fully acknowledge that it's AMC cannons, existing solely in the head, are not cut out for breaking shields on their own. If another supporting craft can break the shields it could at least make some holes in the hull with the missiles.

Overall it's a mostly-cosmetic bomber-frigate-something.

[Greiger]

I think I noticed a bug with the new update, recipes won't level up, instead insisting that they have "~0 out of 0" to level.

Er nevermind, it seems if the % is 0 the game just weirds out and says that there is no level.  Once I got over 1% to 2nd level it became 64 of 6400.  Still seems like a 0 error of some kind for new recipes.

[Shadowlord]

Not completely sure of a good equation for DPS, but using (1/[miliseconds]*[#guns]*[#damage]) I get 1014.7 dps, ignoring the turrets.

For AMCs, guns*damage/(reload/1000) if all your guns are identical, or if not, just sum damage/(reload/1000) for all of them. (Missiles' reload times are in seconds, rather than milliseconds, on the other hand)

Those turrets may be a significant contribution to your firepower - provided they actually target who you're trying to kill, which could be tricky since they can't all aim in the same direction at the same time (because of firing/aiming arcs).

I'd call it a gunship because of the turrets coupled with the low mass. (But I have the line between very heavy fighters and corvettes at 686 mass, which corresponds to 19^3 blocks, and the upper limit on heavy fighters at the mass of 15^3 blocks, medium fighters at the mass of 11^3 blocks, and light fighters at 16 mass (because of turning speed decreases above that).)

[jc6036]

This game is amazing. It's a shame that any time I go near a planet the game drops down to 3 FPS and becomes unplayable.

[Eric Blank]

That is a fun-killer, I've found. Best I could do about it while I was restricted to a slower machine was reduce the draw distance to 3 and try not to look directly at it.

In bee related news: Queen bee!

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

I haven't really decided what I'm going to DO with all that space, besides obviously using a large portion of the abdomen as a fighter bay. I'm also debating whether or not to make the head it's own independent turret. It'd obviously be absolutely enormous for a turret, and could probably stand to hold quite a bit of firepower. However, it would then be vulnerable to being blown off. The thorax is currently entirely hollow save for the ship core and surrounding power block and shield components.

[Shadowlord]

My experiments with carriers/fighters were not encouraging, mostly because (a) AI fighters get confused by enemies on the other side of sector boundaries and frequently fail to follow enemies, and (b) you have to manually dock every single one, and then get out and turn the AI back on, which is a pain in the ass even if you have the core and bobby easily accessible after they're docked.

Also the docked ship orientation. If they docked nose-first it would be much easier to fit a bunch of long thin ships (which are harder to hit when facing nose to the enemy).

[Eric Blank]

I said it would have hangar space, I didn't say I'd try to deploy them!

[Gamerlord]

Fuck yeah! Anyway, I have a problem; I try opening the Bay12 server address in the OP when I open StarMade, but it doesn't work.

[BuriBuriZaemon]

I'm creating a 1:1 scale of this. Just the skeletal frame so far...

Spoiler: "SolForce Cruiser-class Armor configuration" (click to show/hide)

[Mech#4]

Hm, I'd like at some point to be able to make ground based vehicles. Even if it's mostly space exploration, if the planets were bigger you could make scout cars to cover ground faster, patrol vehicles to defend land bases.


Ok, I want to be able to make walker mechs, speeder bikes and/or the Mako. Especially if I could drop them from orbit.