Like the topic says.

Starting to get into it but just to begin is there a goal, do I need a shelter, and am I giant pussy for playing with the food requirements turned off?

Yes, yes, and yes.

Thanks. XD

Your spaceship is your shelter, there's no need to create a house for survival reasons. ;) However, building stuff for the sake of roleplaying or simply because you like building is enjoyable in itself.

I have noticed that the ship isn't exactly big enough for all of the workbenches, looms, anvils etc etc etc.

The ship can be upgraded, and on the last level it becomes ginormous.

Would you consider it a waste of time to build anything on the planet to make room until you can upgrade the ship?

And again, is there a plot other than just buzzing around the universe? :P

Well, anything one does is a means to waste time. xD

I've also placed everything on my starting planet's spawn point before upgrading the ship, so that's fine, I guess. At least there are no giant meteor showers on lush planets.

Do you even need a plot? Minecraft didn't have one and was THE THING back when it became big...

Hint: You must save the universe. Destruction awaits - well, not yet. It doesn't really happen. ^^

You probably figured all that out by now, but I'm bored at work so I'll answer anyway ^^

You can have a nice planetside base, put a flag on it (they're used as teleport beacons), and then return to the base anytime even if you're half a galaxy away, so I wouldn't call it useless even once the ship is big. Especially since you can attract settlers to your buildings.

And there is a plot with story missions, so there is a point, even if I don't find it THAT interesting and prefer to just mess around and explore

Nice game, even though I prefer Terraria (the lack of an automap and of a pause is really annoying, and ironically I don't find exploration as fu in this one. Even with all those planets, it does feel a little empty compared with the biomes and extensive cave systems of its elder. I don't get as excited about "knowing the place and going to see what's just around the corner" as I was in T. Maybe I'm jaded?)

(Oh, and I'm a giant pussy too. It was irritating to starve every time I went away from the keyboard for 5 minutes, especially combined with the lack of a proper pause)

Thanks Kardwill. :D I did figure a lot of that out but I always want to hear more about how people play and their opinions on the game itself, so much appreciated.

You can kind-of get around that.

Key point: your fullness doesn't decrease while you're sleeping.
So: enclose yourself in blocks (for safety against monsters), put down a bed, and go to sleep.
Now you can go AFK as long as you want with no risk of dying of hunger.

It's a pain in the... neck, but sometimes useful.

Unlike Terraria, the game also saves your location and probably dropped items and such (stil need to test this), so unless you're in the middle of combat, you could also simply exit to the main menu

I do agree that a pause would be better, but I've heard that their code is strictly server-client, with you being both in SP. I guess they don't think it's worth their time to add separate functionality for singleplayer :(

I also agree that Terraria is better :)

I'm using a mod that halts hunger when the pc is in a static sphere (on standstill), which enables afk sessions if something urgent comes up.

Helps a lot.

http://community.playstarbound.com/resources/stasis-simply-afk.3980/

Pausing is in the next update.