Pirates

[Mors_Indecepta]

These guys need a nerf pretty badly.
Spent about 3 hours building a ship to try and get revenge on the bastards after losing 3 previous ships to them (and getting infinitely spawn killed until i just quit and made a new world), and it all went down the drain because i went to fight them, had full shields, was doing a lot of damage...and suddenly I'm staring at the respawn screen.

I went from full shields, full health, to instantly dead in a ship that hadn't even taken a single hit, as far as I could tell.

Am I off-base here, or is everyone in agreement that the pirates are pretty ridiculous in their current state?

[SchnellBier]

Pirates aren´t that strong. I guess that your ship is just too small. The scale of starmade is unique. It´s hard for some players to take the step from minecraft building to starmade building. Think big. You have to build a flying castle not a flying house. Aim for ~100k shields minimum.

[Mors_Indecepta]

Well, now I'm kind of afraid to spend all the time that building that kind of ship would take. I still like this game, but if I spend like 4+ hours trying to build a massive ship only to have the same BS that just happened with my last one happen again...that might ruin this game for me.

What would really help is if there was a way to save a ship that you built, so if you died and it got lost in space somewhere, you could have like 1 saved blueprint of a ship. The idea being that if you lost your ship, all you'd have to do is have the materials to build a new one and you'd be able to have the game auto-build a new one using the blueprint.

If something like that was implemented, then I'd say the pirates should stay at the current difficulty.

[SchnellBier]

The funny part is that starmade uses exactly this sytem and you obviously haven´t found it yet. Look for the catalog button. You can save every ship you have build there. You can even save stations. If you play singleplayer you can use admin commands to spawn your ships instantly or you can buy a blueprints at a shop and fill it with the necessary blocks.

There will be shipyards in the future in which the ships are build.

[CrisstheNightbringer]

You can save your ships. There is no button to go directly to the catalog, but if you open your inventory you will see it at the top of the screen. This is how you save and load and buy ships or stations.

I would suggest you use the command:
/godmode (Name) true

until you are comfortable with the pirates.

[Arsat]

When you dont see ships perhaps you was in the near of a piratestation. One of them have big missiles with 3,5 km range. You control that with looking on your Galactic Map ( with P )

[Njordr]

woorried about making large ships? hold down tab makes it easier to build large things

[ballom]

just saying : somethign like a 100*25*25 ship can be considered a small-medium ship


in starmade you can build over 1000*300*300 (ok , not everybody gonna build a titan ), cause the game provide a lot of tools to make much easier the building of large structure

[Mors_Indecepta]

oh...

I wasn't aware of that, hahaha. Only started playing like 5 days ago, so I'm still learning stuff. Didn't even figure out how shields work until day 4.
I know I could look at guides and stuff, but most of them are based on an older version of the game. Besides, it's fun to discover things on your own sometimes, i think. The only concequence is that you might make an ass out of yourself by complaining about a problem the devs already solved haha.

Thanks everyone for the help, and the dev for making such an interesting game. I've been telling every gamer I know to give it a shot, and I NEVER recommend early access games.

EDIT: By the way, I was so irritated after that last loss that I got back into the game and started work on the craziest ship I've ever built. over 10,000 shields, with MASSIVE amounts of recharge, and I'm not gonna stop until it has enough weapons to destroy planets. Those pirates don't even know the ass-whoopin' I got brewing for em

[Arsat]

this tutorial (three parts) is good. Its with the old gui but understandable.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kqj7HV5RE5Q

[[RG] Lidren]

Your edit proves your worth. Its all about the vengeance against the pirates. It sure does feel good when you finally crater a station to tiny bits. I also recommend playing on a server, having other people to ask immediate questions of is the fastest way to learn the game.

[Moonlightfox]

If they're spawn camping you, you can use console commands to protect the spawn sector. Another option is to build a speeder bike type craft that's nothing but power and engines and bait them away. Then plan your revenge :)

FYI, a few well built BOBBY turrets will eat them for lunch.

[Psy_Commando -=SF-O=-]

Ah, that reminds me my first time playing. I was flying happily heading towards asteroids to mine in my brand new mining ship, when suddenly, boom! Spawn screen... And that other time, when I built another better mining ship, and I was trying it out on my home planet, and they hit it with a few missiles and all that was left was the overheating core and about five misc blocks ;_;
Pirates are ♥♥♥♥♥..

But yeah, some missiles systems on pirate crafts and stations can do around 5,000-10,000 HPs worth of damage, and can easily dig through ~3-5+ layer of regular, non-armored hull or other blocks..
So yeah, anything under 15,000 and you're screwed when you're hit with a missile during a battle. (In my opinion, that is a little ridiculous.. It makes all other craft weapons inferior and flying small ship suicidal, given you increase your chances of surviving a hit the farther from a missile impact point the core is.. And besides you just can't fit that much shields on a small ship.. Hopefully, they'll rebalance the game before it goes beta..)

Its worth noting that, all the Isanth pirate ship have 0 shield. Which means they're particularily weak to missiles. Some actually carry shield capacitors however, but have no rechargers..(They're under the pilot "seat" made of advanced black armor, when the ship variant has them) So you can just collect shield capacitors and other goodies from those bastards by claiming their ships and removing all the useful bits in build mode, or using a salvage beam on them while the core is overheating. And then you'll eventually have enough stuff to build a good pirate killer ship.

My first ship design that could take on pirate ships 1 on 3 + had ~31,000 shields, and I had to retreat when my shields were getting low. I put a defensive ion effect system so that my shields were much more effective too. And, I had 2 lock-on missiles systems(80 single block missile tubes mounted on the roof! and 4, 20 blocks long front mounted launchers ), and an array of 16 blocks long canons with an explosive effect applied to it, plus another canon system 3/4 the size of the first slaved to it ! That made it fire faster, while not turning it into a peashooter. I called it the killer shoebox.. It was ugly as hell, and had about 1x4x4 blocks of space to move inside.. But it did work damn well.

Basically, to win, you need missiles. The canons are useless at any range but nearly point blank, and they're just there to mainly take out incoming missiles. Same with the beams, though, they got an even shorter range.. And the damage pulse just doesn't do much at all on its own, it might be good to take out an incoming missile swarm though..

I say that, but right now, my main ship got a siege canon that fully deplete any pirate station's shields in a single shot, except Alphas. According to the entity menu it does 445,000 damage per projectile! (1860 canon blocks + 1860 damage pulse blocks + 1860 explosive effect block :D It uses ~5,000,000e per shot though D: )

[ballom]

Originally posted by Psy_Commando -=SF-O=-:

I say that, but right now, my main ship got a siege canon that fully deplete any pirate station's shields in a single shot, except Alphas. According to the entity menu it does 445,000 damage per projectile! (1860 canon blocks + 1860 damage pulse blocks + 1860 explosive effect block :D It uses ~5,000,000e per shot though D: )

how many shot?

[Psy_Commando -=SF-O=-]

Originally posted by ballom:

how many shot?

One
http://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=425303978

[Aurelia]

I'm alright with the pirates being badasses, except one minor detail... They're the only enemies currently. If there were minor enemies flying around that shot pea shooters, even if destroying/looting them yielded little to nothing, it would be atleast some alternative to being battle itchy early game and not being able to engage in combat until you're super prepared...

But the fact is that right now they are the only option, and anyone looking to leap into combat when they begin play are digging their own grave along with everyone else on the server, as with me and my friend's playing experience was that if you don't have a ship that can survive their onslaught, it's too easy to be unlucky to a point that a server remake is the only option, because you will continuously die as you spawn.

It's been said that these missiles can only hit from 3.5km. I can believe that to a point, but again, that must be where the "unlucky" bit comes from, as even planets that do not have a pirate station around them are unsafe. Additionally, the fact that these missiles can lock onto a human on the surface of a planet like that is a bit farfetched. They should be ship targetting ONLY.