Hey everyone, I’ve been planning out some mods, and now have a clear idea of where I’d like to go in future developments. To that end, I’d like to address something that I haven’t yet seen mentioned by the devs outside of strict ship upgrades: additional ship choices, construction and fleet management. Of course, it’s so early in beta that my suggestions might be useless or redundant out of the gate, that the developers have something similar or even much more robust already planned out - but if not I think these ideas would be fairly simple to implement, and would require only a little expansion of the .shipworlds system Fleet management interface: (a quick mockup) I propose allowing characters access to different, persistent ships, accessible via a crafted item or inherent interface. Characters could buy ship “deeds” from NPC vendors, side quests, optional bosses, or find them in dungeons. In the simplest iteration of this idea, PCs consume deeds like Starmap upgrades, and the appropriate ship appears on the management interface. The PC can set his or her current ship, and a new .shipworld file is created. The PC can build within the current ship and all changes made to the .shipworld will persist. Without making too many assumptions about how Starbound handles plants and ships, this may be very similar to how Starbound already manages persistent planet data, and so might not be difficult to implement. At this point it would be largely cosmetic for the player - but collection and decoration is both fun (really fun!) and in-line with Starbound’s gameplay, I feel. --- Now, if we want to get more complex with this: (another quick mockup, the icons would be representative of size, fuel, etc. "upgrade" button hover would note costs) The fleet management interface might serve as an appropriate vehicle (ha!) for ship upgrades and even sidegrades. With the ship selected, PCs might see a small icon or even ship layout, with configuration or upgrade options. Changing ship colors or interior layouts and ship sizes (as seen posted from Tiy already) should be possible, along with useful in-game upgrades: such as fuel capacity and efficiency, sector access, cargo space, etc. Upgrades could be found, crafted, crafted but requiring rare blueprints, or bought at a pixel cost, depending on how the developers would want to balance/introduce content. At this point, PCs have an in-game reason to pursue new ships and their upgrades, which is very important to some players. Rare ships, when fully upgraded, might have massive cargo bays, generate their own fuel, and have conveniently placed fixtures. Or they might just look really cool. Finding and upgrading ships by completing quest lines or hunting throughout the galaxy would add significant content for a significant reward. --- Finally, ship development and construction could be a big part of Starbound’s endgame. Essentially a resource sink, players could construct a design lab and research new ship designs at a cost of rare materials, and potentially sidequests or boss battles. Players could then craft themselves a new ship. It could be as simple as using a “shipyard uplink” and tossing in the required (tons of) materials, or maybe players could contract out the work, giving various ratios of materials and pixels to NPCs. Maybe these NPCs could only (or most often) be found on shipyards or starbases (or simply in shipyard dungeons made for the already-completed “asteroid field” planet type). Perhaps PCs could even construct their own shipyards, constructing tiers of machinery to produce bigger and better ships. PCs on a multiplayer server who have invested lots of time into shipyard development could sell ships to other players for fun and profit. Maybe ships created by another player could be somewhat customized, or have special stats that the constructor personally selected. I’m going a bit wild here, but as you can see expanding the ship system allows for lots and lots of additional content and PC-NPC and PC-PC interaction. Of course, this could all go much further if/when ship combat is implemented. Multiple ships in a fleet might be a possibility, and there may be room to hire NPCs as staff. Outfitting a fleet of ships for protection or conquest would add quite a lot to Starbound. I’ll hold off on speculating about this too much until there’s more information about ship combat/boarding/etc.
I like this idea very much! Especially if it involves you making more ships like your logistics frigate to aquire/craft/upgrade through this, even if they don't implement ship to ship combat or anything like that I think I can safely say everyone would love to see more ships of your design and a streamlined, ingame way to change your ships out. Maybe a way to have all the ships you own docked to a central point such as a orbit-level station or planet-level docking base would be something to think on, I know there are a few people with that idea already.
agreed an amazing idea it is. it also allows more intense space fights witch are an upcoming feature it also give your flagship a more homely, inviting, spacious feel i think we all long for. also it pave way for an automatic mining ship to keep them pixels and ores coming. it give players more things to do and it makes multiplayer more interesting. but when it comes to distribution i think it should be available at any large settlement you find on a planet. the pixel cost should be high though. this idea is the freshest clay in witch all of us will mold into the perfect masterpeice
One word, YES. It would be pretty nice to if you'd have multiple ships where you can get followers or npcs to fly them along side you when space battles are added.
I need to live up to my Commander title, so I APPROVE!!! I'd love to send you some input on this but I'd like your approval first. just send a conversation to me.
.[/quote] This is from another one of my threads, but i find it to be relevant to this: I think that they could do both, like trying to fend off boarding parties from the other team with a fighter escort to protect them from enemy fighters. say that the space station had possibly two docking bays, the people attacking could have their transport ship or what have you and the people on board the station could defend the person or persons (i'm thinking three people on different levels of a long vertical corridor who have to push buttons in descending order to fire the gun.) maybe there could be doors that have to be activated by consoles in the ship through a wire link. this way you could shut down the orbital gun.
hey there Mr. Beeftime, I have a proposition for you. here's the address to the thread I've been working with. http://community.playstarbound.com/index.php?threads/wars-and-village-raids.65147/ show up and give some input please. we'd like to make this into a mod and I think you have what it takes.
If Chucklefish implements this into Starbound, along with the Cats-in-mechs race, I could have an army of robots to save the galaxy from-whatever it is that's threatening it!
This would be AMAZING! Imagine entire fleets at your player's command, led by your personal custom flagship! Support!
I like the core concept of this idea. I wouldn't touch the blueprint or upgrade mechanic, but NPC AI may kill resources (server memory on multiplayer, local memory on single player) if done right. Depending on how ship combat will be implemented in the future, would you have these ships stack tandem with the flagship? You could have them stack like in Raiden with side-by-side escort ships, perhaps? I'm not telling you how to run your idea, but I can foresee you having obstacles I respect.
Well thought out! Of course, it would take a while for them to design all of the art, but it's a good idea for ship upgrades. Question: If you change the inside of your ship, or store stuff, will it disappear when you change it?
I like this idea. It'd be awesome to be able to deploy the other ships on missions like frigates in No Man's Sky.
