MetalX

I can personally confirm that non-pirate and non-xsotan civilian craft do in fact fight back now. Though, not all of them. I have seen this a few times, rarely, and was pleasantly surprised. This is a newish addition, as in the "old days" they would have just sat there and died. I think the most recent ship was a salesman. The convoys actually defend themselves now too.

I always protect my root block in middle and late game ships. First, I transform the root block into an armor block. Next I scale the root/armor clock into a block twice its starting size, so now, 4X4X4. Lastly I build the rest of the ship around it. First off, armor blocks have huge health totals. Doubling its size in every direction increases that total exponentially. And lastly, the rest of the ship being built around it makes it even harder to get to. Still, it is not impossible to destroy, but now it is much, MUCH more difficult to destroy.

I would also like the block-specific hit points to be displayed in this box, along with, as you said, the color. It makes no sense to me why this has not been implemented already, these are basic stats that they should have no problem including into the UI.

Yeah, they are terrible pirates. How about how they send out the fake distress signal saying that "a freighter is being attacked by pirates, help" Really? Sure, I will hop into my unarmed ship to come and rescue you from the pirates with guns. *wink* Seriously, who do they think will show up to a distress call about pirates? Definitely the worst pirates in the entire history of pirates, for sure, beyond a shadow of a doubt.

This is so ridiculous. The damage from a collision is NOT contained to just the blocks that made physical contact with the object. That damage ripples throughout your ship. It is not just the one area. It is like a cone effect that can even affect internal blocks. That is, with or without an integrity field generator. And the higher your velocity the longer and wider the cone gets. Also, 100 kms is SUPER fast. For instance .75 kilometers per second is how fast a bullet can travel out of the barrel of a rifle. That is a fraction of ONE kilometer. ONE!!! The International SPace station is travelling around our planet now in low Earth Orbit at around 8 kilometers per second. Which is a blistering 17,150, miles per hour. And your ship was going more than TEN TIMES that when it hit the asteroid or space station, or whatever it was you hit. You were travelling more than 170,000 miles per hour or, 273.588 kilometers an hour. There is no material or object known to us at this time, or even likely to know in the future that will be able to take such a massive impact and not get completely obliterated. That said, it you hit anything with that kind of velocity and force it too should be destroyed, even those asteroids should be destroyed in that collision. However, this does not save you, as you should also be destroyed in that collision. If you were to build a space ship out of solid steel, about the size of a school bus, let alone a spaceship the size of some in this game, anyway, the size of a school bus amd you were to send it crashing to the surface of Earth with that kind of speed, provided it was able to stay in one piece and fully intact until collision, it would turn the entire surface of our planet into a raging fire. Due to the friction of the atmosphere at that speed all the air around it would be turned into plasma which would spread until it consumed everything, until it ran out of fuel. So yeah, your complaint is heard, but it was so stupid it must now be ignored.

Last night I was piloting my ship across this sector, just passing through, to get to the gate. I passed out, right here in my chair on the way there. This has happened a few times in the past while mining the large resource asteroids. It is so boring I just nod off.

To be real here, I have done everything in this game that there is to do. I am now literally just mapping the galaxy, going from system to system to system in an endless cycle, revealing everything. And I don't need to tell you just how utterly boring this process is. This will only last for so long. Even if you were to release this game now, all the poor people that buy it will come to this point, as well. If you were to ask me, which we will note that you have not, I would say that this game is ONLY about 20% complete. And I say that because I just feel there should be so much more here, more story, more explanation, more "things", more of EVERYTHING. Seriously, if I started over, in just the span of ONE day, if I tried really hard, I could make my run to the center of the galaxy and see pretty much all there is to see in this game. Derelict repairable ships? The so-called "story" missions, random pirate and Xsotan encounters, the Guardian... Yep, that about sums it up. Seriously, everything there is to do in this game can be summed up in just one sentence.

I start at the front and work my way. But only ship systems at first, generators, thrusters, shields, structural integrity field, gyros, dampeners and finally, engines. Once I have the ship blocked out with the systems I desire to have I then go back over the ship and give it its cosmetic hull plating, making sure to include crew quarters here and there, but enough to house all the crew the ship needs, this will sometimes require me to make additions to the basic shape of the ship, depending on how much crew is necessary.

I may be VERY wrong, but I don't think you can. They probably just snapped a picture of the ship's information and edited it into the video or stream. It's a video, hundreds of them if not thousands, on Youtube. Not a screenshot. That particular video was from before the patch that removed the resource quantity totals. No my knowledge there is no way to make those appear again, not without mods.

Placing blocks exceeding 20,000 is not so much of an issue. Things just get kinda slow. The REAL problem comes when you try to delete blocks. You go to delete 100 or so blocks on one side and the game just completely haywire. And keep in mind, this is specific to build mode. Playing with a ship you have built is no problem at all, IF you can build it. What I ended up doing to circumvent this issue is I built the ship in pieces, specifically, the engine packs on the sides at the rear, a set of 3 engines that were long cylindrical and of varying widths up and down the length of the engines. And there was one engine pack on each side of the ship. These engines we constructed of .05X.05 blocks of varying lengths. And they look totally awesome. The problem is that each pack of engines takes about 9,000 blocks, and that is AFTER the merge tool is used. So, I built them separate from the ship, in its own creative mode galaxy. I then copied and pasted it to the build menu and then loaded my ship in its galaxy, opened the build menu, selected the material type and then pasted to the ship. I originally tried to mirror it, but that crashed the game. I figure that the game has a difficult time mirroring 9,000 blocks on a ship that already consisted of 10,000 blocks on it own. Then a new problem. I then tried to paint it. Painting was slow, mirroring was not an option, it was even slower. So I had to paint it block by block. It was slow but it was working. Then I tried to leave build mode. And whoa, game crashed, but the game did not just crash, it took my computer with it. I eventually had to abandon the project, sadly. I ended up going with a much simpler design. And unfortunately I am unable to maintain my interest in it. I really wanted the original ship to work, it broke my heart to not be able to use it. I wish I could share the picture with you, but I just can't bring myself to look upon it anymore.

I would say the method Fox shows here is 'the' method. "Helper blocks", that is an excellent name for them!

Before I go on I would like to say I love this game!(just in case you mistakenly think I am ripping on it here, which I am not.) Seriously, be very wary. When building your ship, should you decide to make a very elaborate ship, and you then exceed 30,000 blocks, as one does when making rounded objects, like tubular shaped engines and other fancy shamancey ship parts, the build mode gets VERY VERY VERY buggy. So buggy, in fact, you may experience crashes that lock your entire computer, leaving you staring at nothing but black screen for what, I assure you, will feel like an eternity, as you don't know if you just killed your GPU/CPU or not. I have even experienced 2 bluescreen errors due to this. Some very scary stuff, especially when we are talking about a thousand dollars of computer hardware. I cannot recommend building a ship with blocks in excess of 10,000 to 15,000 blocks. Yeah, the bugginess begins at around 15,000 and gets progressively worse, the more you add. Just a public service warning.

Or you can use the selector tool, if there are parts of the ship you do not want merged, like a section of the ship that contains multiple thrusters of same sizes but different directions, they will all merge into one thruster of ONE direction. So avoid those if you can, the click and drag selector tool will help you avoid selecting them while still allowing you to select multiple blocks elsewhere.

When I saw this thread title I thought they were going to be asking for a feature that allows for precise snapping of one block that is smaller to the end or edge of another block that is larger or longer. The best way I have figured out to overcome the lack of that feature is to build a block the same size of the block I am trying to place, in a "match block" fashion onto the end of the block I am trying to build on. Then I take a block the same size as the block I am trying to place and place it on top of the new block i just made. I then take the block I want to build and build it onto the second block. Then to finish it off I delete the additional 2 blocks I used to achieve the "joint". This leaves me with exactly the two blocks joined together I wanted, one at the end of another, with no over or underlap. Giving us a snap to edge feature would shorten that process down to dragging the block tot he edge then picking whether you want the inside of the edge or the outside of the, like the way we can pick which block to use for snapping when copy and pasting a set of blocks. This would not be a fundamental change however, it would merely be a quality of life change, as, clearly, we can already work around it. And if you don't know what I am talking about here, well, you just aren't "there" yet. The screenshot in the original post is clearly user error. And not the result of a lack of edge snapping at all. What the original poster is trying to do in that screenshot is actually quite simple and easy to do. I feel kind of insulted that I am here because of a misleading title. Now, if you find a shape you want to make, then make it. This build engine is practically limitless. I have yet to find a shape I wanted to make and then not be able to somehow make it. The ship I am working on right now has taken me over 2 weeks to build and is well over 20,000 blocks now. I am using practically every geometric shape one can think of on this ship. And quite frankly, the only issues I am having now is that the game keeps crashing in build mode for various reasons, including two very scary bluescreen crashes. I even had to stop using mirror mode because the game cannot handle mirroring thousands of blocks. The time it takes the game to place the second block in mirror mode is now almost 3 seconds. I just gave up and am now finishing it in no mirror mode. I estimate that when completely finished the ship is going to consist of over 30,000 blocks. And to be real here, I would not be using blocks as large the ones in that screenshot above, I would have manually created each of those big blocks out of smaller blocks, and instead of being filled with air, I would fill them with generators or thrusters or anything but blank blocks.

The StarStrider 200 is absolutely awesome! I love it, everything about it. I even like the turret hardpoints. I absolutely hate putting the turrets directly on the hull, doing so makes the ship look cheap, in my opinion. So you get +1 for turret hardpoints on that one. The maneuverability looks legit as well. Thing is, I can't tell if that was pre or post patch. Grr, I hate how they merged the posts, makes it nearly impossible to tell when each ship was posted. I don't even pay any attention at all to ships that were created before the patch and were never updated to reflect the changes in the patch. My main focus when choosing to like a ship or not is functionality, first, THEN looks after.

I actually like the top one. It rolls, it turns, it pitches and it does those things very well. It even has a bit of "get up and go" to it as well. In addition, it has 7 system slots, which, when handled properly, could yield 35 turrets and 2 additional systems, like an item detector and a hyperdrive system, which I would alternate with a radar, using the radar to find a sector, then swap to hyperdrive system to make the jump. Furthermore, it has enough shields and hull to make it even when things are tough. There are somethings I would change, like thrusters, I like to hide thrusters, so that giant thruster sticking out on top is something I would alter a bit to hide it. Maybe shrink it slightly and then cover it with armor or hull blocks, maybe even make some holes in whatever I cover it with to allow the jet-fire to still poke through. But that is just personal taste. I give the top ship a 10/10, with the originality of it being what pushes it to maximum value. End logical analysis. Now, feelings... I could find myself getting attached to that ship. Well, appears I am not good with feelings, but I tried!

The wiki does not say at all. When does a crew member receive experience? Is it after killing ships for gunners? Is it after mining for miners? Is it gradually and constantly over time for mechanics? When you engage your engines and thrusters for engineers? I am not understanding this mechanic in the game and it is never explained in-game or on the wiki. So if you are enlightened, please advise me on this. Thank you.

My experience with these is the same as Sin's here, but I have seen some YouTubers, Lathrix to be specific, who have gotten some ship systems from them. He had a very large ship and he would just ram through these things, at least when he had first started. I think he thought that they were not even worth his time after that and skipped them from then on. I do as well, I skip them, not even worth my time or effort.

Thank you for that. Now, back to building!

I have to agree with Sin here, this is purely pilot error.

I am a bit confused on the optimal placement of the gyros. Should they be placed near the thrusters they are meant to affect? Should they be placed near the center of mass of the ship? I am aware we can rotate them to get the proper function of them working, but their placement is what is confounding me. And the tooltip does not say anything about placement location. I usually make my new ships from the bow and work my way back to the aft. This is presenting me with an issue when it comes to gyros and their most efficient placement. I have just started using them after a few days away, and since I have been away I have not worked with them at all since the patch. So pardon my ignorance, please.

Realistic? Seriously? You want realism? Okay! How about I fire a laser at you from 100,000 kilometers away and it hits you with pinpoint accuracy? How is that for realism? Howabout I launch 100 nuclear warheads at you from 100,000 kilometers away and still hit you with poin poin accuracy with every single one of them? Projectiles in space will travel in the direction they are sent and with the same initial velocity throughout their entire course of travel, until acted upon by another source, because there is no resistance in space. Similarly, laser light, while it may diffuse at VERY long ranges, in space it travels MUCH further because there is nothing out there. Space is mostly nothing. If it ever came down to space combat, no weapons would ever be fired unless you had a "firing solution". Which basically means a guaranteed hit 100% of the time. Trajectory is math, it is a science. There is much that NEEDS to be sacrificed to make games fun. You want realism? No, no you don't. This game would be epically boring if it were as close to real as is possible. Space is boring. Space is mostly nothing, emptiness and void. Look at how plentiful the asteroid fields are, asteroid fields are nowhere near as plentiful as they are in this game. And nowhere near as dense either. But we need a large quantity of asteroids and we need many asteroids in those asteroid fields so we can do our mining. You don't want realism. So stop asking for it.

For my fleet ships, should I use them at all, I usually just use the autogenerated ships you can buy at the shipyards. The AI seems to not have too many problems operating those ships. And if you place the turrets in the places the AI would, on top of blocks that stick out, the AI should not have a problem with making sure to get the turrets facing the enemy targets. You will still get the occasional AI that does nothing. Which is unfortunate, but it IS early access, maybe they will fix it? I am giving the AI in this game a major free pass right now because the game is still in early access. Not to mention the fact that AI seems to be a major sticking point for pretty much ALL developers. You ever played Civilization VI? That game is newer and had a team make it that has been working on Civ games for many years now. And even they could not get the AI right. In some cases the AI will just auto-fail. Never make an army, never get any production, never produce culture or gold, nothing, just straight up auto-fail. Stellaris had the same issues. And in other games like some shooters or whatever, it is common to find the AI in those games constantly running into walls and other obstacles or just being, in general, confused. AI is, apparently, a very tricky thing. I would criticize AI but I would stop short of being rude about it, myself.

This is highly recognizable. So you did good, I think. I bought that ship(mirror version) off the exchange ages ago and equipped it with all mission rewards as an example to those who get discouraged and think that that game is pay to win, like the grind is just too much to ever get to a "useful" state. It deals in excess of 20k DPS in only a mediocre team. The fact that I was able to recognize it says a lot about your ability to manipulate the building tools in this game. And yeah, this game completely stole me away from star trek online.

I like this idea. "Pay 100,000,000 credits, 500,000 iron(or whatever material is appropriate) and this system is now yours." The 100m credits would be a founder fee and the 500,000 iron could be for the founding station that comes with the system, very much the same as the capital station you find in prime systems. Then, from then on, that system is yours, for good, and it is always active. Your stations always operate and your ships always patrol/mine etc. Then with modding, we may even be able to ship asteroids to the system, for a fee of course. So your ships have stuff to do while you are away. And the system events scale with the player's..... Ship? Weapon tech level? Artifact missions completed? Hmmm... I am actually not aware of any scaling in this game that has anything to do with the player, if any at all. I don't think anything in this game does scale with the player... But something, I am sure, if one gets creative, can be worked out so that the system needs frequent maintenance by the player, something to keep them coming back over and over again. "You cannot just found a system, make it awesome then never return ever again, while it simultaneously gives you everything you ever wanted or needed." And as for AFk farming... well, I don't much care for multiplayer experiences myself, so I don't really care about how others play. BUT, server admins could potentially have a setting where they can turn the option to settle and own systems off. Something of a middle ground? I get the concern, I do, but the manner in which it is being dealt with seems "heavy handed", perhaps limiting in certain aspects, hurting the gameplay potential of this game in the long run. Solving the issue, but hurting everything else. "I got a sliver in my finger this morning, so I cut off my hand and now my sliver problem is solved." Also, I would like to inform you that if the players on a server are studious enough, they can mine the entire galaxy out in a week right now as it is. In my single player game I have single handedly cleared about 10% of my current running galaxy. Leaving only things that may have missed my attention, those tiny asteroids that yield only like 500-900, maybe they were hiding behind another asteroid or something. Point is, unless you implement a respawn mechanic of some sort, the galaxies are going to get completely mined out anyway. 100x100 seems really big at first, but only at first. If you were to get 5 players on a server, players like myself, in under a year there would be literally nothing left on that server, nothing, no scrap yards, no asteroids, no abandoned ships, nothing but random spawn in events, like Xsotan attacks, and maybe pirates? Don't know about pirates though, could pirates be entirely wiped out? Are pirate factions infinite? If one went through the entire galaxy and destroyed every pirate station there is, would random pirates still spawn in? It isn't like 15 years when we were just figuring this stuff out. Gamers know how to farm now, we know the grind, we are experts at it now. And those who are new to gaming now have wikis and forums to get them caught up and up to speed with the latest and greatest techniques. The days where you could say "Let's make this big world and hope it takes them a while to chew through it." are over. The genie is out of the bottle and there is no way to bottle it back up again.