Perhaps I haven't. It seems like you're saying there shouldn't be any kind of standard elements, in which case it seems the number of materials will be quite high, leading to having an insufficient amount each of several of them, rather than enough of one of them to make armor. Though in the first place, for all we know we may just be digging stuff up to sell and then just buy our armor and tools from an NPC.
I'm guessing that if (and there is supposed to be right?) variations in the things you mine up to use as raw material, so long as they are the right type (IE: Iron), the quality would merely affect the resulting armor's quality. The quality of the materials would be averaged out, or something.
Again, from what I'm envisioning, there needn't be "iron," "copper," etc. You simply would find materials which when used to create armors, weapons, building materials, etc would simply imbue their properties unto said items. For example, if you mixed some Tempered Abstractium which has high high durability and high heat resistance with Hardended Strangite which has low heat resistance but high durability, you get armor/weapon/building mats with high durability and medium heat resistance.
The procedurally created materials with types sounds to me like a must in this game since there are gonna be recipes for all sorta things this would allow the use of more types of materials for stronger versions of craftable items. Also this could add to the games environments if some of the material came from specific sources like petrified wood from dead trees near a heat source or underground somewhere.
The majorly complicated part of this is indeed in crafting and ESPECIALLY in block placement for custom building making. The problem is that this would generate a bajillion materials to use. The solution is my proposal - item categories. So lets say you find SolarIron. It's a cool glowing yellow version of Iron that doesn't rust easy and is really heat resistant. You then use it to make an Iron Spacesuit - but instead of just being Iron Spacesuit, it's Solar Iron Spacesuit, and instead of being "Armor +2" or what have you, it'd be "Armor + 3, Weight + 3, Heat Resistance + 5" effectively gaining the ability to make "higher quality" or per other types of games, "enchanted" or "magical" materials. That's just for armor and weapons, possibly mechs and whatnot. Adding things like oxidation and conductivity, I'm honestly not 100% about, I delve further into the equipment realm than I do practical item realm.
I support this idea. There is a similar suggestion posted in Blocks and Crafting: http://community.playstarbound.com/index.php?threads/on-the-topic-of-mining.265/
A very good idea. And in game terms, it could give us more quests. Like: "A rumor says that in planet Y have X type Wood, and it grows between y¹ and y² heights." It's like, go find you stuff there. Maybe there's an NPC that study where things grow and stuff.
I think this is a great idea, albeit a little too involved. No need to throw extensive stats on everything, especially for a game the devs are pushing as accessible and user friendly. Even something as simple as randomized name, color and texture would be fine though, and add a lot of longevity to building materials.
The point is to make mining exciting as to what you're gonna get. Changing appearance and names wouldn't do this. All you'd have is "Yay... I found green gold... now blue gold..." instead of "I found some awesome ore that has really high hardness for defense and is super light!" or "These trees give me stronger wood for building than what my old metal building blocks did!" You can see that Tiy and Co. really wanna make the game deep in more than just looks. For instance, they've said that enemies will vary in more than appearance, including behavior, stats, etc. It's the same things for materials, they need some variance or depth or they'll merely be recolors.
Hanging literally a dozen stats on every block you mine is not the same thing as adding depth. You have to appreciate that while having some variation and reason to explore is good, bogging down every single thing you pick up with stuff like "Ductility" and "Oxidation Resistance" is not going to appeal to most people. It's a lot of bloat. Having more than just "Wood", that's fine. Having to compare a dozen numbers on a dozen different wood types to see which one has the best flammability resistance or whatever while still not losing hardness, that's adding in a kind of resource slog that belongs in a game like Dwarf Fortress more than it does here. Hell, not even Dwarf Fortress is that picky.
The stats are examples, of course. The main point of the thread I want people to get is that variation within materials is what I'm suggesting. The exact stats, relative powers, etc are irrelevant. The point is that we shouldn't simply go to the forested planet Abbraxes to find wood and copper and then we go to the fire planet Sulfuria to get even more wood and copper. And the variation needs to be more than names and appearance. More than aesthetics, in other words. The problem of many variations can be managed with the right crafting UI where one could simply choose the stats one desires to be best with the current mats and the game could pick them for you. HOWEVER, for more advanced players, the option should be there to pick and choose your mats to allow you to create custom items to your liking.
That's not randomely generated though, because there will always be Stonewood, Stonebark, etc.. Other than that good ideas.
I like this idea. It'll make mining and chopping wood much less annoying, to put variation into ores like this.
Maybe something simpler could be thrown in. Perhaps a system where different materials have different descriptors that are mostly self explanatory. For example, Electronicum could have the descriptor Conductive. Ironwood might have the descriptor Hard. Napalmsap might have the descriptors Flammable and Sticky. Also, under the hood, certain things could automatically have implied/hidden descriptors. For example, metals could always have Conductive and Hard. Wood could always have the properties of Flammable. I also believe that every material should at least have a numerical Quality stat. Personally, I'm all for a dozen stats to every material. But I realize that I'm probably a minority, and I would be ecstatic if even something with as much depth as I proposed above were to be implemented.
