Recently, I was reading the description of the Tech Planets mod, dating back to December of last year. (Wasn't this even before __merge was introduced?) And I noticed this: There have been a number of significant changes to Starbound since last year... Q1: Does the game currently allow dungeon generation to be specific to a certain biome (and only that biome)? Q2: Has microdungeon generation improved to allow buildings that are taller or deeper than before? We do see villages with a certain crop growing in a farm plot, like automatoes in a Glitch village. But is it (still) impossible to have trees "planted" in a specific spot, like he wanted?
I'm not one-hundred percent sure about being able to tie a dungeon to a specific biome, but I know that it is possible to create entirely instanced planets. If I'm not mistaken, that's how the outposts in nightlies work. I haven't heard of any changes to tree placement, but this screenshot leads me to believe that there is a way. Those trees look planned to me.
Well, I found this Version History page on gamepedia's Starbound wiki. I noticed that the Angry Koala update was released on December 22nd and it included: A bunch of new features to world generation Trees can now be planted The Tech Planet mod was released Dec 15, 2013 and was for Beta v. Offended Koala. So, perhaps he could now specify trees to grow in certain spots? (Maybe?) And some world gen things have changed, though it doesn't go into details. I looked through the more recent updates, but I did not find anything else related to world gen or trees. I guess one would have to actually try to see if it's possible... Hold on... I just found the Upcoming features page of the wiki, which summarizes all the (publicized) changes for the next version. It's an amazing read. And it answers more of my questions, including some I haven't asked. It mentions "Dungeon generation changes". (Maybe he'd be able to get those microdungeons to work?) Monsters will have "spawning profiles" and will be "connected to biomes"... So one could have robots and drones defending such a Tech Planet, instead of random fleshy creatures. BTW: Though unrelated to my original post, it also talks about "Revamped Universe Sectors" (answering some questions I had about these changes) and story missions for the bosses (possibly relevant to a mod I was considering). Edit: I got ninja'd! Thanks for the reply! Yes, those trees definitely look placed there. As for a dungeon being specific to a biome: That Upcoming features pages also mentioned: "New Moon Dungeon: A new dungeon found on moon planets." So, whether or not it's possible now, it probably will be in a future version coming soon(-ish)™.
