Vector Squared -- Starbound Community News, Issue #6

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Greetings, fellow Starbounders, to the sixth issue of Vector Squared! In the previous issue, we covered topics such as the Hat Contest (with the results in a news flash), Chucklefish finally getting a website, Fanfiction news, several interviews, and some nice suggestions to boot. This week, we’re covering several news tidbits given to us by the devs. Mercenary Lord is still going strong with his reviews, and our staff member Strife is getting up a Corporation news network! How exciting...

Table of Contents
Hat Contest -- Finale
Campaign Progress
Ideas for Melee Weapons Modifiers
Art Feature
A New Starbound Community
Member Count
Suggestion Spotlight
Fanfic Review - Merc
Corporation Politics
Science Trivia

The long-running hat contest has finally arrived at it’s spectacular conclusion! With almost 400 entries (around 380, to be exact), the judging process was slow, the creativity amazing, and ten separate winners were chosen. Congratulations to all entrants; all of the entries were fantastic. The ten winners are:

FIRST PLACE:​

THE BOXMAN’S BODACITY​

By Dragonith​

RUNNERS UP:​

COROBOKLE​

By Bietol​

THE STEAMPUNK HELMET​

By DevastoR​

HONORABLE MENTIONS:​

SENSORY SQUID​

By Ymedron​

THE MOTIVATOR​

By NovastarX​

THE THINKING CAP​

By Seiga​

THE SCALPION​

By Darthkitten​

BENEVOLENT FACE LEECH​

By kintsao​

THE PINK EYE PARASTIE​

By andySp​

THE CAUSTIC STAG HELMET​

By Suika Ibuki​

To the creators of these hats- congratulations from the Vector Squared staff! To those who didn’t quite manage to make it, don’t beat yourselves up. The entries were all great.
~Mercenary Lord

Campaign Progress
Forum user slaticus has shared with the community some information granted by Tiy regarding how people may progress throughout the campaign. Tiy’s also mentioned that it’s still a work in progress and, as such, it may be changed at any time...

To start with, we’ll be having a main quest, with an overall objective, that is composed by several different missions. In order to progress between these missions, certain goals/achievements must be met in the open world. Now here’s the fun part - those objectives can be completed in different ways! This means that we will be able to solve quests as we see fit, thus being another element that brings more depth to Starbound. Will you be pillaging and razing NPCs settlements to achieve your own ends? Or will you assist them against whatever difficulties they may be facing instead? Or are you the kind of person who’d rather mind your own business? Not only this, but you may also be out there to hunt down dangerous monsters, build great bases and claim rare treasures. You choose your own playstyle!

To those interested in PvP, Tiy has shared that if you are in PvP servers, people are able to rob other players and... hold them for ransom! That’s right - To all star pirates out there, ready your laser muskets and sharpen your titanium steel sabers! Yo-ho and a bottle of space rum! Still, the question lingers, how will this feature work? The developers will certainly be taking into consideration the trolling factor and will very likely manage to balance it somehow.

A big thanks to Tiy for taking part of his time to share this information with us and another big thanks to slaticus for sharing it with the community!
~Keeper

Source: http://community.playstarbound.com/...-quests-quest-advancement-and-the-plan.12612/


Ideas for Melee Weapons Modifiers
NewLiar has shared an extract from a chat where Tiy refers to melee weapons modifiers and presents a mini challenge to the community. First of all, melee weapons may be tagged in different classes, such as uncommon, rare, legendary, among others. When this happens, they will receive special modifiers, abilities such as being able to send out a shockwave on hit. Now, Tiy has asked the community to share ideas for more modifiers! People have already started sharing their opinions, so feel free to pay NewLiar’s topic a visit and post your suggestions, too. They may even be considered to be implemented in-game!
~Keeper

Source: http://community.playstarbound.com/...on-for-community-ideas-for-weapon-mods.12641/



Cyan’s Art Thread is our art feature for this week! This fine digital art is created by fellow forum user Cyan the Red.


For the first picture, Cyan has created a picture of a Starbound adventurer somewhere on an icy planet, accompanied by two penguins -- one an intelligent fellow (coming with a bowtie!), and the other a rascal pirate penguin. They appear to be standing in the frosty atmosphere, just soaking in the sights (or, in the case of the pirate penguin, looking for something to shoot). Interestingly enough, the main character is wearing clothes that look most similar to that of a penguin -- the hoodie has the same colors, with the white-ish spot being where the white of a penguin chest would be. Raised by the penguins? Well, anyways, this is a fine piece of work for sure.

Be sure to drop by the thread and give Cyan a thanks for such a nice contribution to the community.
~Nababoo


A New Starbound Community
There is a new, Spanish Starbound forum, as reported by the Twitter feed several days ago. The site is brand new, but it is very similar to the current official Starbound forum, with the general feel and layout being the same as the community we all know and love so much. It’s seen only a little bit of activity recently. However, it could prove to be a nice refuge for all those español speakers out there! Drop by and give them a chat (if you have the capacity to do so).

The site can be visited here.
~Slaticus


Member Count
This thread, created and run by forum user Twiginator, is dedicated to showing and measuring the growth of the Starbound community. It does this by counting the number of members existing daily, and he posts it on the thread. As a result, it allows forum members and staff to see the amount of users joining at any time. Also, forum user Shamhas created graphs to measure the average amount of user growth per month, and a line graph measuring the member growth ever since the thread began.

This is really an interesting service -- we can correlate certain events to the change in number count; for example, when the Hat Contest began, we measured a large increase in the number of new members, probably to post and create their entries. Many new users. Quite handy, you may say. And yes. It is.

Now, imagine the influx of members when Starbound finally comes out.
~Nababoo


Suggestion Spotlight
This week, we shall be featuring the Eye Planet Suggestion! This thread, made by artist Suika Ibuki, is an exemplary example of a biome suggestion. The basis of this suggestion is that a planet, or an eye biome, is inhabited by creatures that are made primarily of eyes. They infest all living matter they encounter into more of them -- eventually converting the population of a planet into nothing but sight-obsessed freaks. They also propagate through space in spore-type objects, so no place is safe from these things. Rather like the Zerg, if you ask me. They even have a collective intelligence (only this one is biome-wide)! When they land on a planet, they start converting the nearby biomass into eye-creatures. This is the start of an Eye Biome.

The general feel of it is rather creepy -- what else can such an odd idea do? It’s also well-written and accompanied by several pictures; be sure to check out the full suggestion!
~Nababoo



Fanfic Review is BACK. Welcome, one and all. Today I’m looking over story which recently received an update: ‘We All Make Mistakes’, a tale by forum member Mittgfu. I wasn’t expecting said update, so it was the perfect chance to review it, while it’s still fresh. It’s got several good things going for it, I suppose, but there are a few bad things as well. It’s in the middle, so to speak. But that’s enough idle chit-chat: let’s dive in.

The grammar here is actually surprisingly good. I won’t say it’s perfect, since there were several instances where I lost the flow of the story, and had to reread parts to understand. This isn’t too bad, but it really kind of threw a wrench into my enjoyment. A shame, really, since I was mostly able to enjoy myself as much as I could have.

Spelling and Punctuation: The punctuation was good…the spelling, not so much. I understand the writer’s first language isn’t English, but some of the misspellings could have been caught by a spellchecker. There really isn’t any excuse for those mistakes. This is where the Fic really kind of suffers: I wasn’t able to really get into the story at all. I just kept bouncing off every time I found a misspelling. It wasn’t so bad I had to stop, but I would recommend authors who aren’t sure of their spelling skills ask another author for assistance before posting.

Intrigue. This is always a major factor of any story, and while I was able to follow the story, some of the grammatical and spelling errors made getting really into possible. Even so, the story is a bit confusing. We start off with an unexplained scene, which is always okay, but then we get into another unexplained scene. It isn’t until the third chapter that things sort of fell into place. While we’re on the subject of chapters…most of the later chapters could have been compiled into one part.

The characters were interesting enough, although I felt they were extremely arrogant. I sincerely hope something is made of that. Nothing is more boring, at least to me, than a cocky dude who never has any dangerous challenges he can’t handle. It just doesn’t happen in the real world. Life sucks. A guy might keep up the confident bravado, but on the inside, unless he’s an idiot or a jerk, he definitely would feel some emotion change.

The lasting effect is slightly below average. I’m just attracted to this story too much. The characters were standard, the story is confusing as of right now, and the spelling was just off. I do enjoy the premise, however, and so I believe that as Mittgfu writes more, I’ll like this fic more.

If you want a quick read that’s fairly entertaining, then this is definitely for you. The individual parts were good, but the overarching criteria were lacking a bit.

-------------------
---SCORES---
-------------------
PARTS
-
1: 7.2
2: 7.4
3: 7
4: 7.6
5: 7.5
6: 8
7: 7.5
8: 7.7
9: 7
AVERAGE: 7.4

CATEGORIES
-
Grammar: 8.5
Punctuation And Spelling: 5
Intrigue: 7.5
Characters: 7.5
Lasting Effects: 6
AVERAGE: 6.9

FINAL AVERAGE
7.2/10
--------

~Mercenary Lord, Written at 2 A.M. on a Saturday

Corporation Politics
Forum user Strife has volunteered to create a news service specifically for Corporations. It would be much more in-depth than this little “Corporation Politics” section in Vector Squared -- covering events such as riots, warfare, and other interesting events. The idea is that this would allow for more dynamic roleplaying in the Corporation section. And boy, it sure will be. Here is a short article on the recent introduction of the Robots to the Galactic Council.

Article:
Conflict broke out in the latest Galactic Council yesterday, forcing negotiations to end early as peacekeeping forces subdued the rambunctious crowd. Creating over two million pixels in damages, the conflict was caused by a vote cast by the Council in regards on whether or not Robots would be officially welcomed as the sixth species to have an official delegate. As you may remember, a similar vote was done several months ago regarding the same situation, which ended in the final count of 4-1 against.

Hylotl, Florans, and Apex voted in favor of the Robots, while both the Avians and Humans voting against. More modern regulations only require a majority rule to be the deciding factor on any Council decisions, but the Crimson Alliance, which represents the Human vote, were quick to point out the Traditional Laws require a 75% minimum for adding new members to the Galactic Council.

Generally, the Traditional Laws are not observed, but a small section in the Modern Law states “In cases of extreme importance, the old laws may be observed to preserve Council integrity.” It was with this clause that the Traditional Law was used and the vote then rejected with the new percentage requirement. The use of such unorthodox methods is what helped spark an already building conflict on the planet.

Robots have always been a controversial topic, with both supporters and opponents. A member from the Human delegation stated, “[Robots] are a non-organic entity and have origins based in programmed intelligence. The Crimson Alliance does not recognize artificial intelligence as being a sentient species, or a species at all.” Our source wished to remain anonymous.

We interviewed the other delegations, but none had any official commentary, except the Florans, who had this to say; “Before we reached beyond our planet, we did not think life to exist outside of plant form, but were surprised to see “animals” in the universe. Other species seem to see Robots as not being a species because they are mechanical, but Florans see them as just another classification of life.”

It is expected that another vote will take place on the matter some time in the future, but in a more private setting, to prevent further open conflict.
~Strife



Walking on Water

Water is essential to life on Earth, so much so that about 75% of the human body is water. Water also has some pretty unique properties, like surface tension. First, water is a cohesive substance, meaning it sticks to itself. It is this cohesion that makes surface tension possible. That’s because surface tension is a kind of film that the water creates due to stronger cohesive forces at the surface.

So, what’s so cool about surface tension? Well, there are animals and insects that have adapted to actually use surface tension to move across a body of water without entering it. One of the prerequisites for this is that the creature in question be fairly small, no bigger than a relatively small lizard (there are some pretty big lizards). The other prerequisite is that the water is fairly calm as surface tension cannot be maintained in turbulent water. One of the most known animals to use this tactic is actually a lizard, often known as the Jesus Lizard. By running fast enough and only using its hind legs this lizard is able to literally walk across the surface of a body of water. The key here is moving its legs at speeds no human being could ever achieve and minimizing the downward force it exerts when its feet hit the water. It also helps that it is not very heavy either.

Most insects generally use the same technique for moving along the surface of a body of water (any insect that can do this is generalized as a water strider). In a much simpler and considerably more graceful manner than the Jesus Lizard, these insects can literally stand on the surface of a body of water. This is achieved by distributing their weight across six long legs and by making their entire body hydrophobic (that means it literally repels water). Then, water striders just walk across the water without any need to hurry. Well, unless there’s a storm coming.

Questions, comments, concerns? I’ll gladly answer them all. And if you’ve got any suggestions or ideas for future topics post those as well.
~That Guy



Q: If there were to be a weapon of mass destruction (Starbound-themed, of course), what would it be?
A: Post in the thread!

Closing Comments

• We’ve changed our staff list -- some were inactive, and others wanted to join. So, welcome Strife and Slaticus to the Vector Squared team!
• We don’t really need anymore help -- with a combination of good planning and more help, we can accomplish this relatively easily.
• Unless you're a banner artist. We need more of those.

Staff
Nababoo -- Manager/Writer
Keeper -- Wordsmith
Mercenary Lord -- Lector Ficta
That Guy -- Scientific Consultant
MahBucket -- Nerd With a Microphone
Strife -- Prince of Some Trades
Slaticus -- Author from the Shadows

Credits
blind sniper -- Banner

Previous Issues:
Issue #1 [] Issue #2 [] Issue #3 [] Issue #4 [] Issue #5

 

Hiiiiii Strife and Slaticus...

 

Ohh nice new header! And graphics!

 

New one's more... pixel-y.

 

SHUT UP

 

Congratulations to the winners of the Hat contest and welcome to the team, Strife and Slaticus! :alien:

 

Totally glad to be here guys.

 

Pirates? We just got excited again. Lol somebody make a madalorian mod and we will all be happy. Haha

 

Woops. Fixed!

 

Weapon of mass destruction, eh?

I can really only think of ONE at the moment.
The Improbability Bomb.

This idea stems from the Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy series by Douglas Adams and the Improbability Drive. The Drive causes the probability of improbable events occurring to increase dramatically and sporadically and was used to propel a ship in the series. The Improbability Bomb functions much the same way, but in a radial effect that is irreversible. The 'random' events that occur in an improbability field differ from one another infinitely. They are quite chaotic and can cause mass destruction, depending on what actually happens in the field. The chaos can render objects and machinery completely useless or more useful, as the probability of them working correctly changes entirely.

Facing an improbability Bomb would most likely be extremely difficult and catastrophic. A Sperm Whale might fall from orbit or you could get brained by a bowl of petunias. It's literally impossible to predict.

 

Pure genius.

"Increasing entropy since 1978"

 

Thank you

Obviously a giant orbital-based magnifying glass TO BURN EVERYTHING!!!
MUAHAHAHAHAHAHA!!!!

 

Q: If there were to be a weapon of mass destruction (Starbound-themed, of course), what would it be?

A: The all mighty narrating voice inside your head...

 

A new edition sweet...
but
I already read the most important news in the newsflash oh well.

KEEP UP THE GOOD WORK

and continue feeding me more of these goodies

 

If there were to be a weapon of mass destruction (Starbound-themed, of course), what would it be?

A rocket launcher that fires rainbows, ponies and cats... wut did I just write?

 

Q: If there were to be a weapon of mass destruction (Starbound-themed, of course), what would it be?

Wave-Motion Gun​

​

Because there is nothing like mining a whole planet at once.​

 

Another great read, thanks for the mention of the thread (Now Ill have more submissions to put in the list... ). Cant wait for the next one!

 

It took a reeeally long time for them to get that thing ready. Also:

that's ok...

 

Keep up the good work everyone; I really enjoy this!