Asteroid Belts, or Asteroid Clusters, are a biome I would like to see included in Starbound. So say that when you're looking around for new planets, you could find a bunch of random little (relative to planets, at least) rocks floating around. You would be able to hop from rock to rock, mine through them, as they would contain rare ores occasionally, or perhaps even be made out of them. You might run into mobs, such as the asteroid worm in Star Wars, (I forget which movie) And the little freakish bat things they ran into. Hopefully there could be a feature with your shuttle/spaceship that could suck in a bunch of asteroids and you could build your own moon for you Home Planet. Update - I came up with another idea I want to add to the environment: Radioactive Asteroid Belts: When you enter an asteroid belt, it may come up with a message like, "You feel weakened..." This means that there is a radioactive asteroid, or Murnium Asteroid, in the belt. A radioactive asteroid slowly damages you constantly, and slows your movement a little, just by being in the same asteroid belt as it. In order to end this effect, you need to find the radioactive asteroid, and mine it away. Once there are only 10 or less blocks in the radioactive asteroid, the effect ends. Radioactive asteroid blocks are quite useful, as they can be forged into a tier of Murnium Weaponry. Murnium weaponry has enormous power, and only uses a fraction as much of the battery as other similar weapons. The drawback to these, is that though it only uses a quarter as much of the battery, they also cost health to use. But, if you also create the Murnium Mask, it makes the health cost into a possible health cost. i.e. whenever you use the Murnium weapons, it has a 50% chance of paying the health cost. Tell me what you think!
an actual "landable/tame-able" environment is what I imagine. instead of a Starmap travel-to-planet or whatever we'll get, I imagine a slot where instead there will be an asteroid field. unlike a normal planet there will be little to no gravity, and the bottom of the map will be gone to represent "falling into space", although directional "gravity" may be provided via tools to "grip" asteroids. Players could have the option of harvesting entire asteroid-fields for resources, or moving directly to a large one and treating it like a regular planet, only smaller. I'd love an experience different from a planets, and requiring a completely different outfit/tool-set to succeed in. nice job bringing it up, Dawnk!
Thank you! I'm glad you elaborated on the physics of the Asteroid Belt, I didn't think about the fact that there are no directions in space, such as "Up" or "Down", other than the ones we conceive. Perhaps a very weak gravity always focused on the largest, nearest, asteroid? There would be a greatly reduced risk of, "Falling into Space", then, right?
pretty much, but I think a better choice would be "Space" gear that would allow gravity to just be cut out completely given the size of the objects in question... unless they are really dense, the Gravity would be negligible given that they are classified as "Asteroids" and not "Moon Sized Objects" (yes, I know this is a broad and inaccurate generalization) I imagine that a space-suit that would cause the player to either "attract" towards the nearest surface regardless of wall/ceiling/floor status, or a simple jetpack would be among the easier solutions. Adding a limiter that prevented the gear from being used in an environment that had breathable atmosphere (for whatever reason) would make it even more interesting to see how players transitioned between the environments.
Heres an idea, how about instead of having the option to go straight to them, when you are traveling between planets you have a chance of a notification popping up saying "You have encountered an asteroid belt, sensors detect the presence of valuable minerals, would you like to stop and mine them?" It just makes it a bit more exciting to find one.
I was thinking of something more like miner wars, go check out the trailer because I can't explain it all too well. radiation might happen but in a game I think nobody wants to deal with it.
Great idea, but I have a suggestion. Maybe in the Asteroid Belts you may rarely find life forms that are in the future era of tech living in the asteroid belt. Thats my two cents anyway. *edit*Yes Grue. Exactly that.
Like... Space Pirates with Parrot/Virorb Hybrids on their shoulders? Squawk, Polly want TO EAT YOUR FACE!
I think it would be cool to colonize asteroids but you would need to make an oxygen storage area and things like that as there's no atmosphere. I've always dreamed of making a mining operation on an asteroid like Polis Massa in Star Wars. Or maybe just a diner for spacegoers to rest like in Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy anyway... asteroid exploration/colonization is a great idea. Thumbs up from me pal.
Very old topic, but since I was thinking of posting a similar suggestion, I'll give this one a free bump instead. I was more thinking of gas giants with asteroid belts. The gas giants themselves would be impossible to land on, and they would often have moons further out which you can land on. Sometimes, however, gas giants would generate with an inner ring of asteroids. These are mostly empty of anything interesting besides rock , ice and the occasional mineral clusters. They would have incredibly low gravity, though falling through the bottom of the map will instantly kill you. The background art of asteroid rings are the same as when your ship hovers above the planet, with the horizon of the planet in question showing at the lower part of the screen, only with background asteroids flying by. Asteroid rings can house pre generated space stations, and you could also build a colony in one of them, though this would require a special 'double-door' item to keep the air from leaking out. This mechanic would likely be hard to code, as a map type that normally require one to wear space suits will need to be able to host players and NPC's not wearing those items under the circumstances of being within 'valid housing', so I don't think it's something we'll see upon release.
