Planet difficulty - Mix it up! ("It might be radioactive, but it never rains!")

TL;DR: Starbound should mix all the things up that create difficulty and tie their presence to the tiers to allow for very diverse planets of the same threat level. This would mean, e.g., that not all tier 4 planets would be radioactive. They'd just be hard.

Introduction and basic premise
Now, I've been playing Starbound a lot the last few weeks, the winter update is quite a hit. Yay!

Reading through this thread about planetary variety, I realized I shared the sentiment of the planets being to samey and was much in favor of more variety. Right now, difficulty is roughly based on climate (lush, forest, desert // arid // snow // volcanic). But climate is not actually what makes these planets harder: It's mainly the monsters, and partly environment like the pools of lava/ acid or the meteors. But all the planets are the same: Tier 3 monster, Tier 3 biomes, Tier 3 weather, Tier 3 loot, Tier 3 ores.

What *is* difficult, really?
I would much enjoy a system where the difficulty of a planet would be based on a variety of things - there ARE a lot of things in the game that actually determine difficulty, it's just that they all change simultaneously. Here's a list of things in the game that affect how threatening I perceive a planet, roughly sorted by my whim:

• Very large threats: Meteors. Oceans of acid or lava. Perpetual darkness. Tier 5-Monsters.
• Large threats: Hostile gunmen. Radioactivity. Pools of acid or lava. Tier 4-Monsters.
• Medium threats: Acid Rain. Fiery Rain. Heat. Heavy gravity. Tier 3-Monsters.
• Small threats: Boss monsters. Stronger gravity. Difficult terrain/ ground. Cold. Tier 2-Monsters.
• No threats: Tier 1-Monsters

• Thinkable threat influences: Fewer/more hostile birds. Monsters have a little less/more health. Monsters deal a little less/more damage. One less/ additional hostile species. Positive/ Negative weather is most common condition. Ore are less/more frequent.
  

My suggestion is to mix those threats randomly and to then determine what threat level/ tier the planet is. This threat level would be the basis for the available ores and the quality of the loot.

Now, at tier 1 you'd expect almost no threats, so planets will be roughly the same. Some might have rain, some might have monsters that are oh so slightly tougher/ weaker, but that's it. (Note that they could be any biome, because biome would not be linked to difficulty. Snow planets could be easy difficulty if it's not dangerously cold. Arid planets are pretty nice. Even alien planets could be full of cute kittens and have only iron ore, making it a tier 1 planet)

The harder, the better!
The further you advance, though, the more colorful your options become:

• Look, this planet has NO meteors, it never rains, and the landscape is full of pools of healing water. Unfortunately, all 3 of the monster species are hostile and they're absurdly powerful. We need a bunker.

• And what about this planet? Seems to have no monsters, and the loot is pretty nice... but oh my god, frequent meteor showers!

• And here: The place is riddled with lava and acid, and I'm freezing, but the monsters are really cute. They barely harm me, and only 1 species is hostile!
• And this: It's too good to be true, there's no monsters and no meteors. But wait... the ground is all obsidian, mining for ores here is terrible. And there's surprisingly almost no uranium!

All these 4 last example planets could be same threat level. But they would be very different.

Final remarks
I imagine this would take a giant list of things that determine the appeal/ danger of a place with +/- values. If it has the beautiful shooting stars and fuzzy trees as well as metal trees, it should get another threat to balance this. If it has many ores, it needs a certain threat level to make it fair. But the universe would be SO diverse! Exploration would be great, because all planets of one tier would still be very different. Various biomes and threat. Interestingly, I even believe that it would be great to see new threats. Yay, I'm now tier 4, the planets will be even crazier! More that could go wrong!
And different folks need different strokes: I need a mining planet, I can deal with tough monsters. I want to look for pirate ships, I need a nice weather planet. I want to build, acid and lava pools are terrible. I want to build the meanest castle ever, I'd love fiery rain!

I hope I could bring across what I mean. What do you think?


PS: I know this would make the suits kinda obsolete or more of a flavour item, because not all tier 4 planets would necessarily be radioactive and not all tier 5 planets would be hot. To that I say: Goodbye, suits as a gateway mechanic, Hello suits as a quest reward that enables more exploration: Yay, I can visit a radioactive planet! Maybe I'll find one just like my home one with all the nice ores, but without the stupid acid rain and the aggro-monsters!

 

That actually sounds pretty interesting. I'm curious how it'd work in practice.

 

I think that it would make for great planet variety, but I also think that climate should not entirely be a factor in difficulty, like, I would like to be able to visit something other than volcanic type worlds and find a decent challenge there, etc.

 

I think this is a good idea. In the current version, once you've seen one type of plnet you've seen them all. My one question is how do you determine what ores are on each planet? Will a planet have violium/aegisalt/rubium, or will it only have iron and silver?

 

I would hope that mixing everything around would make exactly that possible - what makes a volcanic planet so dangerous? Sure, there's lava pools, but apart from that, there's nothing inherent to volcanic planets that make them so dangerous. My proposal is exactly about making climate less of a determinant, but to also make monster strength and scarcity a factor in how dangerous a planet is.
A lush planet with killer monsters and acid rain can be just as much of a challenge.

Thanks! Ore would come with a certain difficulty. Once a planet is of medium difficulty, it has Titanium, regardless of why that planet is so dangerous: Does it have lava pools? Strong enemies? Meteors? You don't know, but the game would tell you it's medium difficulty, so there'd be Titanium.

As an old pen and paper roleplayer, I think of it in terms of difficulty modifiers.

Very tough monsters? +1
Are monsters high damage dealers? +1
Is there acid rain? +1
Are there pools of acid? +2
No atmosphere? +2
Additional aggressive mob type? +2
Meteors? +3
Radioactive? +3
Always sunny? -1​

Once a number X is reached, it's a medium planet. Once a number Y is reached, it's a hard planet.

 

OP has nailed it really:

Planet diversity is now pretty bad.

Go to a fiery star: only volcanic/lava planets, hardest monsters and a hard time digging.
Go to a Frozen star: Only snow/ice planets, hard monsters etc.

The microdungeons make it worse really, they feel copy/pasted along each biome. Which just feels weird.

So ontopic: Please increase planet diversity, OP has some great ideas on how to accomplish this.

 

Agree with OP. My ideal planet is a forest planet with some really tough monsters and meteors. It makes me bend my construction to overcome a harsh reality. Step outside, breathe the fresh air, take in the sun, and get eaten .

 

Im not too fond of the tier scaling of the planets and would welcome more diversity. Once that is achieved, they can randomize the starting world to be something OTHER than a "Garden" world.

Literally, these are the requirements for all starting systems. Zero diversity.

Code:

"findStarterWorldParameters" : {
    "tries" : 100,
    "range" : 300,
    "starterWorld" : {
      "terrestrialBiome" : "garden",
      "terrestrialSize" : "small"
    },
    "requiredSystemWorlds" : [
      {
        "terrestrialBiome" : "forest"
      },
      {
        "terrestrialBiome" : "desert"
      },
      {
        "floatingDungeon" : "ancientgateway"
      }
    ]
  }

I was on a crusade to mix up system composition by having hot planets close to stars and ice planets further away, but I grew tired of that. Too much balancing of probabilities.

Fun fact(s), There can only be up to 9 planets per system (Including astroid fields), and the second to last planet is always a moon. Despite there being files for 12 orbitals, the first ring is not used, so systems with innermost orbitals are actually #2.

 

Woo, that's a pretty awesome idea. That's been a long-time issue for the game. Would it call for a massive update to the game that would wipe out current universes and everything in them? That wouldn't bother me much since I'm more interested in how awesome this game can become.

 

Yeah, any change would need a universe reset.

My personal favorite minor edit is to decrease the number of stars. Makes the space feel bigger.