StarMade Minecraft meets EVE meets Elite, alpha and free

http://star-made.org/

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9VIJHM3a7JE

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hgHgcttS39w

You know how in Minecraft you build a house and practically it makes no real difference if that house is a tiny hovel or a massive castle?

Well StarMade is different, in StarMade your house is a spaceship (although you can also build on planets and make space stations) however the size and the materials from which you make your ship make a difference, as does the location and configuration of the subsystems you place.

You've seen those crazy Minecraft vids and pics where someone recreates the Enterprise or a Star Destroyer right? They just sit there as a monument to effort.

Not in StarMade.

Each part of your ship is composed from blocks just like those models in Minecraft, except some of of those blocks are hull, some are engines, some are weapons systems some are power, shields etc etc. Once your ship is built you jump inside and can fly it and the way it flies and the amount of damage it can do/take is defined by how you built it.

You can build a small fighter or mining vessel, or a huge ship that you can walk around inside, complete with turrets and gravity generator, and both will have their practical advantages and disadvantages based on their design.

The number and arrangement of the blocks makes a difference as well in terms of power output and weapon damage etc, your design can be better or worse depending on the layout of your blocks, bigger ships require more power and accelerate slower but can take more damage, not purely because they bigger but because they are composed of more blocks.

As a weapon hits a block it can damage it and destroy it, this means you can target systems by taking out the blocks that make them up, but you can also defend those systems with good ship design. Your ships life is determined by the health of the ship core which is a special block, taking out this block kills the pilot, but your ships blocks might still be salvageable.

The game is still in alpha but it has Shops, Planets, Asteroids, abandoned space stations, pirate mobs and stations and is multiplayer with a faction system and standalone server exe. The interface is still pretty rough though.

Its pretty good fun but a little daunting at the beginning, a blast could be had with the multiplayer though.

this looks pretty dope