Starmade cannon mod#
Starmade cannon free#

It’s all a bit esoteric to be perfectly honest, but once you get over the oddness of it, you can make some pretty amazing setups. The same thing applies to missiles and even the power-blocks you place to power your ships systems. Five touching cannon-blocks will do more damage than many blocks spread out, and there is a weird kind of science regarding block-placement, one that I have yet to figure out. Take the cannon – the damage dealt is directly proportional to the number of blocks adjacent to the first one. None, however, work they way you would expect. There is only one laser – the Antimatter Cannon – and a handful of missile systems ranging from dumb-fire rockets to fully-guided harbingers of death. The weapons are clearly not finished in Starmade, which is fine given that it’s only in its Alpha state a the moment. The shop is massive, sells lots of cool stuff and offers shelter from the pirates. And so, armed with a few credits, a holey ship, and a vague feeling of frustration, I set about building a ship capable of dealing with the buggers now sitting a ways away, waiting patiently for me to move from the protective aura of the shop. They also – as I discovered by accident – shield you from pirate aggression, provided you stay close by. You can buy hull blocks, weapons, shields, and lots of other stuff from these giant structures using credits you earn from selling stuff. There are shops floating around the sector you start in too. It may just have been bad luck on my part – they aren’t scripted or anything – but I had my first fight terribly early, and long before I had a ship even close to being able to deal with the barrage of weapon-fire the three rather large pirate ships flung my way. Then the pirates start blowing holes in you. It’s all familiar, and soon you are swinging around the cosmos in a gunmetal-grey splat of blocks, firing lasers and feeling triumphant. Not immediately of course, it gently (and vaguely) tugs you through a tutorial about making your first ship and the basic controls.

Starmade cannon free#

But where Minecraft sets you free in an essentially unchanging landscape with the tools to settle in and build pretty things, Starmade plops you in an endlessly moving universe with the bare essentials required to build a ship, then throws pirates at you.

Starmade cannon mod#

It looks like an overly ambitious mod for the latter, and often even feels like it. I am making the connection between Starmade and Minecraft early because… well, look at it. And it makes you use the word “blocks” uncomfortably often. It lets you build fully functioning star-ships, stations and planetary complexes, fight pirates and other players, all in an infinite void. At least with Lego you can at least pretend the things you build have function, but in the almost-endless forests of Notch’s masterpiece, it’s a case of build and move on. Eventually though, after the final blocks are placed in my wood and stone villa overlooking the sea, the sad truth of my endeavor starts to sink in – it’s all utterly pointless.