So I don't know if there's already a suggestion about this type of thing yet but... So the tentacle planet for a second made me think it was a living monster planet and maybe it has plans to be but currently isn't. Then I was reminded of this possibility again when I dug to a center of a planet to find flesh(?)... so... what about living planets? Possibly with different traits. I'm going to toss out a couple of ideas that may or may not be good/probable as the possibilities with living planets are pretty limitless : Tentacle planets : 99.5% chance hostile planet, tries to attack you when you land... Low probability might try to attack your ship pre-land(?) shakes the ship to startle the player but doesn't actually do any damage to it(or could do damage...whatever. Different tentacle planets could do different things.) 0.5% chance friendly tentacle planet. Hidden monster planet : Dig low enough, maybe the planet is actually a giant monster and has numerous eyes glaring at you. Environment may change to become hostile when the planet wakes up due to mining as it gets hurt. There's also the possibility of planets being healthy or unhealthy due to the players actions. This could lead to planets having multiple possible states or something such as altered weather patterns and intensities, altered monster patterns, or even temperature though oxygen would be a tad bit mean could also be a possibility which could work in the reverse order too : have planets originally without oxygen become healthy and produce oxygen due to players tinkering with the planet. Sorry if this is kinda weird... first time doing a suggestion thing on here and I really wanted to bring up living planets since I saw the tentacle planets.
It would be pretty cool if you could head to the core of a tentacle planet, and battle the monster in an enormous cavernous pit. Defeating it would cleanse the planet and give you some rare materials, or a small chance to destroy the planet.
I'm pretty sure that something like this is planned. How this battle will be is what worries me. Maybe: Go to the Tentacle Planet core while fighting against minions, face 2 or 3 Boss forms (Mega Man X?), set a bomb and then go to the surface in just few seconds or die trying.
I like the idea of a living planet masked as a regular planet, as the flesh blocks and bone blocks suggest. As you explore the planet, you would go deeper and discover more tissue - perhaps the exterior of it is a sloughed-off dead layer and deeper is the actual living organism (the planet's surface etc would actually be decayed and broken-down monster planet husk, compost at its finest!). Once you reach the living planet layer and deeper, you encounter tunnels of blood and bile, as well as pulsating organ systems. You will then be treated as an infection or invasive body any time you damage the blocks around you through mining or weapon-use. The planet then releases antibodies to deal with you, the forms of which could be anything from slug-like creatures to floating amoeba things in the blood channels. Up to the writers if they want to treat the planet as something evil or something more benign. Maybe if you reach the center and combat or commune with the planet's brain, you can get some sort of coordinates for a special mission, or a new tech only available from doing the planet-delve (summon an antibody to your side maybe). One idea is to have the monster-planet give you a mission in which you need to go to another less-concealed monster-planet, perhaps the first planet's offspring. There you would encounter hordes of parasite creatures in the blood channels of the planet and have to eradicate them and their nests. Upon saving the fledgling monster planet, maybe you get a tech or item or similar (like the antibody thing I mentioned). Parasites could also be present in regular star-map monster-planets, which would lead to flare's idea once again, wherein the health of the planet fluctuates based on what is happening on it. I'd even go so far as to say that at a certain level of damage to the planet, or destroying its central brain, the planet gets reworked into a "dead" monster planet. Its tissue would break down and collapse and the whole thing would go greyish in color. Re-generate the planet with any buildings on it flagged and then reduced to ruins as it collapses on itself slightly. Antibody strength could vary depending on planet health with sickly planets throwing more numerous and stronger antibodies at anything deemed a threat. The level of concealment for a monster planet could vary as well, depending on size, perhaps. The bigger and therefor older a planet is, the more concealed it is. On the surface, the only thing that would give away a monster planet would be follicles that look like trees (if present at all) a giant mouth for devouring space debris (present in younger planets, represented by a giant conical cleft with "teeth" and flesh blocks) and, oddly enough, a seldom-appearing cult that worships the planet and is all about sacrificing strangers in its name (not present on every monster planet - most civs on a planet will be just like any other settlement you encounter). Taking off on the idea of evil vs. benign. There's a chance of using both ideas in the game. Perhaps some planets are just drifting through the void, minding their own business, but not opposed to communing with those who seek them out. Perhaps others have been deemed an abomination by one race or another and a war has been declared on them. These planets will have been bombed with explosives and chemicals and will be in whole-sale battle mode. Beaming down to them will be to face the full might of their antibody swarms right on the surface with resistance only increasing as you go deeper. Maybe some planets appear to be quiet, but when you reach their depths, you find only malice in their thoughts, and you have to fight them to the death. Random encounter ideas for a monster-planet include parasite swarms, bodily systems (stomach acid, tentacles, giant mouths etc.), lost explorers, campsites and swallowed spacecraft. Those are just some of my ideas to add to the concept at the moment.
Oh my god, Precise Calibre... I love your ideas. I can only imagine a high tech civilization having been built on a colossal monster planet that's been dormant for ages. To add on the benign vs evil, it would be nice having benign planets which provide springs with healing water and go out of their way to help you, while Evil Tentacle ones would spout acid, cause earthquakes, landslides, etc just to kill you. Maybe we could also have planets like Gaia, which aren't a huge monster per say, but has a life force of some sort throughout. These could be hostile or friendly. However, certain actions can make them go one way or another. Like if you have a planet once lush with life until it was corrupted by some individuals taking without giving back, like by deforestation and building megacities with no consideration for the planet, the planet will turn hostile against those responsible and will do whatever possible to eradicate the corrupting it, by creating earthquakes, creating devastating storms, etc. However, if you are responsible for bringing life back, by destroying said megacities and/or bringing back its life, the planet will be friendly towards you and give you, and possibly your crew bonuses whenever you're on it. Depending on the planet, it could be hostile to: 1. Just the individuals responsible for corruption. 2. The species of the individual responsible until they prove otherwise. 3. All species. The bonuses could be dealt with the same way. Maybe some life planets prefer to be lush with natural life, while others prefer to be barren, or others prefer to have lots of artificial life. Maybe some want life, but don't mind civilization as long as a certain amount of green is kept, whether its by leaving many forests intact, creating artificial forests, or just having mini plants all over buildings, cities, etc. The exact percentage or amount differs from planet to planet. This is probably waaaay to much to code for one kind of planet so it will probably never happen.
If it were to destroy the planet, why would anyone want to kill it? It would be more useful to strip-mine it and make a huge colony to get a lot of pixels from that. As for the basic idea, it sort of reminds me of the Atropus worlds from Frackin' Universe, which are made out of flesh and various tissues; and which is overall so disturbing it outright inflicts Insanity (As a status effect) to be there.
I was about to say this, I think a living planet, as in a completely functional living planet with realistic kinds of blocks in places, like the external is a ton of flesh and the trees are something like hair or feathers, and as you go deeper you approach the organs and stuff, and at the core is a beating heart
