What I would like to see in Starbound is the implementation of block physics. Floating geometry always puzzled me in Terraria and while it was fun I always thought there was something missing regarding building construction. To give you an idea of what I'm talking about I'd like to link to a physics demonstration video of a game called "King Arthur's Gold" (YouTube Video Link) which has a similar style as Terraria / Starbound and while it's obviously using an entirely different game engine and gameplay approach I find the block physics more interesting. Terraria had randomly dropping "loose materials" (mud, sand, etc.) but the feature for randomly dropping loose matrerials while digging (except for sand) was sadly removed in a later patch. The video in the link above shows pretty much what I'd like to suggest. As long as building blocks are connected to one another and / or background blocks they have stability. Horizontal extension has its limitations depending on material type (can't build indefinitely long horizontal bridges) and different materials allow for differently long extensions (wood is lighter than stone so can be extended farther than stone for example) From a gameplay perspective, to give players enough time to reinforce "weak links" before structures collapse, the blocks could start to "shake" / vibrate in place for a given time before they break. To keep it optional because I understand not every player might want these building restrictions to always apply, perhaps there could be a world option for "building hardmode" or similar to enable / disable on world creation. Let me know what you think of this idea. (Comes from a long time Terraria player, but I haven't been active on the forums yet)
So essentially you want there to be a possibility for cave-ins and the such. That, sir, is a good idea! i thought of it... just never posted about it. So i'll help you on yours! lets get to discussing!
Not necessarily cave-ins only, but also physics for above-ground blocks (buildings you create and the like). My thoughts about these block physics / building hardmode would be to make digging and construction more challenging. I absolutely see a major uproar coming if you'd have to place a support structure every X blocks while digging a tunnel, this is not what this suggestion was about and would be more frustrating than fun. To avoid the pregenerated world to drop and still allow for things like "floating islands" there could be a background behind the buildable background that "holds" the initially generated world blocks in place, but things you build and add to the world would need to attach to the buildable background or other blocks at least. If the tunnel ceiling is made of a solid material (rock and such), there's no cave-in. If the tunnel ceiling is made of more loose material (earth, mud and such), there's a small chance for partial cave-in (like in the terraria build which version number I can't remember where every now and then loose blocks would fall when digging near them), that code was already written and would "only" need to be reimplemented. (perhaps with the before mentioned "wiggling" of the block to indicate its instability before it drops) The new idea here would be that no "floating geometry" could exist, but drop to the ground and to go a more physical approach. I'll make some screenshots in Terraria when I get back from work and update the initial post to better visualize what I mean. (English is not my native language so it's sometimes a bit troublesome for me to briefly explain what I mean)
Some one was talking about this, Here. They even mentioned the supports to keep the cave-ins from happening and Earthquakes =) I hear ya there. Not to mention the chain effect chaos this could cause. But there are a lot of people who would enjoy this, for the same reason you figure the major uproar would come. Which is right? I don't know to be honest but I agree with ya this would be a major frustration, not to mention the chaos of chain effects that could come from collapsing tunnels... Imagine you built your tunnel 1000 tiles down, and 1000 tiles wide... You would then have to move 1 Million blocks. Sure not by much but each one of those would have to fall, and then check their new status.
I support partial block physics and example follows: What I would like to see, is flowing sand, so if your tunnel has a hole in the sealing, it would flow down realisticly. That way, sloped holes would form in the ground above, and a mound of sand would be generated inside the tunnel. You would then have to pluck the hole with some material before more flow down. However, I do not like the idea of having to support your structures above ground, as Starbound already has you collecting and carrying loads of items with you, it would be a pain to have to carry support structuring just because you happened to find resource X under your house that you want. EDIT: Typoes etc
