What Do You Actually "Do" In Starbound?

I imagine mining will still be a significant part of game play due to its importance to resource gathering. These resources are of course necessary to craft items, create building materials etc. The extent to which resources vary from planet to planet etc is not yet known but hopefully there will be a difference between wood taken from a tree on one planet to wood taken on another. Not wanting to speculate, we'll just have to see how the devs handle it! But I agree with everyone who posted the "do whatever you want" response. That's part of the allure to sandbox games. Starbound has SO MUCH potential because of the vast amount of variety we'll be subjected to. From creatures to weapons to the very planets themselves. With a properly implemented story playing out in the pseudo-background, there is a lot of possibility for interesting things to happen to guide us (more like nudge us) towards attempting to reach certain goals. There will be no forcing us to do any particular thing at any particular time. The possibilities are endless. And gaining a homeworld for ones self is certainly a large carrot on a stick (as it has been said that it will take vast resources to do so!) And then we can search the cosmos for good folk to inhabit our world (I believe these to be things to devs stated would be possible). I look forward to discovering a blueprint for an amazing piece of tech or machinery. Searching the depths of a planet to find the resources necessary to create it. Only to find that one of the materials needed is not present on this planet. So off to another world I go, searching for this special ingredient. Leaving outposts on each planet and dealing with the creatures and inhabitants. Discovering more and more things on each world. And by the time I find that elusive material, I have four more creations I need to research and construct. So I leave behind Outpost LV426 and I'm off to find more materials and more discoveries...

 

asking that question is like asking what to do in minecraft. There dosent have to be a specific purpose like how in minecraft you dont NEED to build that many buildings or NEED to create a mob farm or even NEED to get diamond tools for that matter.

 

I don't think anyone has pointed out yet that you need to focus on surviving first. Since for the most part you will most likely start with little to nothing as the story starts with you

fleeing your home planet and finding an abandoned space station which you declare home.

Depending on your settings you will have to feed yourself, keep yourself warm, and defend yourself from aggressive monsters and/or NPCs. Hunger and body temperature may be optional features of game play in the final product but we'll see. Once you get your hunger, temperature, and self defense under control you can start to move onto bigger and better things such as "what do I do now?" This should be a seamless transition however since as you are trying to survive you will also be considering how to better enhance your living conditions. This is where material gathering comes into play. farm building, monster taming, trading, improved transportation, etc. Personally I love to challenge myself so when I heard that there would be bosses and planets that would be hard for even the best geared it caught my attention even more.

Quests and a main story will be interesting additions I'll be looking forward to explore as well. Hopefully the dialog is well done and some dramatic memories will be born from this game but I'll try not to get my expectations up lol.

 

If sentry turrets or similar exist, I imagine they'll be helpful / essential in helping to hold your ... holdings, once your base grows to a certain size.

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I've got it. Sentry turrets you can actually place spare weapons in. Upgrade to a new bad-ass machine gun? Toss the old one in a turret mount and let it keep working for you.