Inspired by DoomZero's thread, Meet Your Other Characters as NPCs, and somewhat compatible with it, I had an idea for holograms. The player could craft Hologram Emitters, probably from iron, glass/lenses, wire, that kind of thing. A Hologram Emitter (HE) would be fairly difficult to craft; not impossible but difficult enough that you'd only have a handful at most. They'd be carry-able. When crafted, the HE displays a humanoid hologram, with basic AI and basic stats. The hologram can be customised (via it's own GUI?) to look however you want, exactly like you'd do with a new character. The hologram then acts as an NPC, following you around like a pet, attacking enemies etc. It cannot pick up items and cannot change it's stats. You can change it's appearance at any time, though. Rather than a random/custom but basic appearance, though, you can set the HE to display a holographic clone of any of your other characters (or even the current character). If there's a multiplayer/friending function, you could holo-clone any of the characters of anyone on your friends list. Visually, you'd be able to tell it's a hologram, but everything about it would be the same. Same weapons, armour, appearance, etc. Again, though, it can't pick things up or change stats. Benefits of this is that, although the stats can't change based on what the hologram does, it does use the current stats of the actual character, so abilities are much better. If your character has multiple HEs, he can holo-clone lots of different characters, or even make multiple copies of himself. It could even be possible to place the HE, in the form of an object. This would prevent the hologram from following you, and essentially force him to guard a specific place. In addition, when set to a specific character, you can talk to the NPC hologram to conduct trade with the actual character. It'd work like this: There'd be a special Trading section in the menus somewhere, in which your character can select items he's willing to trade, along with prices. Whenever someone talks to a hologram of that character, that hologram can sell those items on his behalf, exactly like a normal trade/shopkeeper NPC would do. The only difference is that the stock is set by the player of the actual character, and upon sale the item is given to the buyer and removed from the seller's inventory. (This would probably require a little extra use of the servers, but I really don't know enough about the technical side of things to be able to comment.) As an additional possibility, a Hologram Emitter could be upgraded to a Remote Hologram Control (RHC), allowing a hologram to roam freely. In this case, the RHC would be carried in the inventory, and "using" it would summon the hologram like a Magic Mirror. These freely roaming holograms could be given simple tasks, such as searching for and gathering resources. (This would mean they'd also need to be given something of an inventory). You could probably even directly control them, using them as a kind of Avatar™ in dangerous areas. If the hologram "dies", the HE or RHC would need to be repaired or recharged. Or, if Starbound's NPCs are like Terraria's, and respawn after a little while, then holograms would do the same. It'd be like the HE or RHC has automatic internal repair systems (or solar recharge panels) which slowly work away in the background. That's all I can think of right now. I'll add more if I think of anything else.
Thanks for submitting a new suggestion! Please remember to give your opinion on this suggestion by voting on our suggestions page.
Hmm. Looks like a fairly hefty idea here. You've got some good points to be sure, and nothing stands out as bad, but it is pretty complicated.
There should also be mini-holograms that you place on like, a tiny little column like thing that you put in your base, so they're always there, and if you place multiple, they go to whichever one you're right next to . (totally not inspired from halo ce, pft, haha, what are you talking about >.>)
So, you mean a kind of group of placeable HEs that can be set to display the same, transferable, hologram...? Interesting. Wouldn't it be better just to have the hologram following you like a pet, though...?
that would be cool, but I want one that stays in my base, and when i walk next to one of the things, it pops up with this cool animation thingy. And then you could like, trade with it/use the little hologram as a storage device.
