From what I observe you pilot characters don't get to do much pilotin' save for jumping from planet to planet. That must be suffering. I offer you my services in giving pilot's something to do. It would require time, and input to refine but it's better than nothing until space combat is implemented. I propose we band together to create a series of pirate vessels. We can either use in game assets, or ask sen to divulge the knowledge of importing pngs into blocks. Plz sen. Plz. Once we have the visual representation, we can assign attributes and descriptions to each ship. You can fight them at random and RP it out in space, with a GM giving off what the pirate ship is doing based on it's behaviours and attributes. It's nothing fancy, and it will probably fall flat. But I figure if a captain with a crew is bored, they can stop in an asteroid field and pick a fight with a space pirate to RP "check the main battery!" or "We're losing power to engine A, get down there!". I will give you a little example below. Human Space Pirate Vessel- Weaponized Cargoship A ship not built for combat, but none the less has garnered enough kills to be outfitted with enough guns to make an Admiral sweat. The crew is composed of pirate veterans, and their tactics are brutal. They aim for life support then board ships rather than stick around for a stand up fight. They rely on catching a ship by surprise, as a Cargoship isn't built for speed or manoeuvring. It is recommended that you use high powered weapons to disable their weapons as quickly as possible. This will render them crippled. Crew Size: 5-10 Crew Species: Mostly human, some exceptions Crew Skill: Veterans Strengths: Surprise attacks, boarding, precision firing Weaknesses: Ship-to-ship combat, agility, energy based weaponry Ship Type: Cargoship Weapons: idk big guns, that shoot missiles n stuff Armour: relatively weak, so I'd say steel? Titanium? realism or in game tiers? Engine Strength: Weak, built for efficiency Armour Strength: Built to withstand attacks from smaller raid ships Weapon Strength: High powered slow firing weapons Ship Schematics: (this is where the picture would go) I will say this now. I dislike dice rolls. However, I am simply providing an avenue of space combat. How captain's decide to use it is completely up to them. If there is an interest, we can all compile a list together of enemy ships. The more the merrier Edit: I would post what the weapons are and what the hull is made of and all that, but tired/lazy + its only an example.
It's pretty easy, just take a look in the assets/ships/[race]/dropshipblocks.png and dropship.structure. Basically, colors are replaced on the png file with blocks, based on the .structure file. http://community.playstarbound.com/index.php?threads/starstructor-the-starbound-toolset.51473/ I think you can use this tool to generate the .png / .structure files.
I've already built a cargo ship designed for smuggling and such, and actually started putting together a band of pirates a while ago. Gonna open a settlement designed around the idea of piracy when it's ready, too.
