Building seems kinda useless....

I've placed a spawn thing in my ship once, so I don't know if the monsters can hurt them. But I sure as hell know that I can. Killed the bastard by accident in 5 seconds.
You can find merchant spawns around and bring them to your ship, but as far as crafting goes I've only seen villager and guard. they sound kinda useless.

 

Very interesting discussion! One the one hand, creative output doesn't need an incentive, and a sandbox game can be fun just by providing you with the possibility of doing stuff. Minecraft is a perfect example. There's no need to build anything bigger than a small hut for crafting and storage and mine away. And yet, people build castles.

On the other hand, I always felt that Minecraft never extended gameplay to its strength: Building was never made more of a "thing". It didn't matter to the game. The game "wanted" me to light a fenced area and fight a huge dragon with a bow. *yawn*. I wanted to build! Why didn't the game go along with that?

In Starbound, I assumed I'd need a base to put all the machines into, to do my research, capture wildlife, have a beaming room, a tech building room... I'm a little puzzled that all this will be possible (if crowded) on the ship. I for one would like to have incentives - not because I won't build anyway, but because it's so very nice to build the surgery table in a tiled room knowing it will grant a bigger bonus that way. Or that having a farm on a planet grows bigger crop. Or whatnot. Anything that plays to the strengths of the building part of the game.

Not to be stoned or anything, but one way to go about it would be less room in the spaceship. Or just a "no open fire" rule on the ship. Or "no dirt". This would increase the attractiveness of planetside bases immediately.

 

While I'm sure this is all coming, I agree. I'll build things anyway. Because building things is fun. But I can't help but feel that everything I make is tragically empty, despite all the decorative items. The buildings are useless. There's no function to anything.

 

Limiting the capabilities of the ship is the lazy man's fix.

They have to make the ground gameplay more enticing. How? I'd make building-sized machines and structures to expand on gameplay.

For example, you have to craft Greenhouse schematics at one of the benches with sand and iron or whatever else, you go to a spot, flatten it, lay down a greenhouse framework/irrigation systems, this allows you to grow plants that your otherwise couldn't, or at a faster rate, then craft a Biologist NPC spawner to drop a biologist in there, he'll tell you about some stuff using plants as materials to craft all sorts of fancy gear/items.

The giant structures you can build can be anything you can think of... A Mining Company, set it over a cave, over time they'll have ores and tools for trade... A Weather Station, they can alter the weather for you. Some sort of Interstellar Trading Company, they can sell you race-specific stuff that changes over time.

Don't make me hate my ship so much that I'm forced to go to the ground that I also hate. Make me love staying on the ground. IMO

 

Well beta is beta it might get better in the future.

 

Wouldn't it be cool if we could upgrade our teleporter, and craft port stations, giving us the ability to beam to places we've placed stations?

 

Solid gold, man! Beautiful reasoning and swell idea. Now that I know why I'm not a game dev, the only question remaining is: Why aren't you?
Seriously, I would love giant structures.

 

Threat 40 is the furthest you can get which is sector X the last sector. Before this, all I've been doing is flying from planet to planet, looting everything I can to upgrade myself and collect really cool dungeon stuff to add to my printer. At this point all I have left is getting the best gear possible and then what? well of course I'm going to claim a level 40 planet and build an amazing base, then create a new character lol.

 

Word on the street is, teleporters are in the works.

Of course, I'd like them to be more complicated than "put down teleporter, it just werks". This was a problem in Minecraft. All the blocks are just *blocks*. Put 'em down, right click, something happens. Even most early minecraft mods followed this approach (looking at you, industrialcraft). More recently, however, the minecraft modding scene has seen mods with *infrastructure*. You want the machine to work? Well, it needs this, that, and the other thing working together to put things in motion. Oh, and the machine also has multiple physical components. Which you have to assemble.

And that's what I think Starbound should have. I don't want my teleporter to run on happy wishes and fairy dust. But I also don't want to just shove coal in it to fuel it. I want to build infrastructure, generators, great works that give me a reason to build structures, that give me a reason to spend time on a planet.

This is something that I haven't seen any sandbox game of this type do to date, other than some minecraft mods. It improves the experience so much and it gives such a great feeling of immersion and accomplishment. It's especially relevant to a science fiction game like Starbound.

 

This is irrelevant, because he's right.

I've now got three separate bases on three separate planets. :/ Two of them have farms.

I actually chose my home star system because it's got a metric ton of planets in it.

The truth of the matter is that, at least early game, it's far wiser to not build any sort of base and just make whatever use you can of the space inside your ship. Anything that you absolutely need to do on the surface, you do there, with little regard to permanancy, everything else on your ship. ...Of course, I'm not one to follow my own good advice.

Honestly, at the very least, it would be incredibly helpful to be able to gate back to a home planet from your ship, at least until you can get the tech to build a proper gate system. This would also prevent situations where you get stuck on a planet you can't survive on and can't leave because you have no fuel.




...Also, if Avians don't get a Stargate at some point I'mma have some rustled jimmies.

 

Well, after reading all the posts, I am part of the people that need an incentive to build. I mean: building is cool but if there is no reason of it, it gets boring. Why do we build houses ? It's made to keep away beasts and cold (done) , respawn inside of it, to have a place that would protect us from... I don't know... Sand storms, some meteoroids (not sure if its this one or asteroids in English lol the small ones haha), rains (why not acid rains ?), from environment.

Because at the end, i think that there are few reasons to build houses or buildings: to live in (and we starbounders are going to be explorers, so not very stable people), to organize ourselves (so a storage but since we already have one inside of the ship...), to make food (possible in the ship too), to get a protection from environment, or because someone is happening to come in our lives and live with/close to us and we have to build something for him/her/it. He needs a church because he is a priest, a giant base (lol) because he is some sort of general, a home because she is some woman married with some guard etc....

Of course it could be long to make. And I really think we would need some tools to make it more automatic but not too much obviously. Or maybe having NPCs that help building !!! That.would be.awesome ^^ !

 

Nifty and convincing. Funnily enough, Dune 2 came to my mind, the old DOS game. Generators let you build mor stuff at your base, having stuff in your base let's you build more units... I would definitely LOVE some mechanism similar to that. Giant structures, need to be assembled, machines that interact... Oh boy, we're on to something.

 

Holy crap, repressed anger much?

Play how you want, let others play how they want.
Or is that too much to ask?

 

Hot diggity.

I think this sounds great, and would be something I'd appreciate, but I suspect we'll have to keep on looking to find a game that represents believable industrial processes, because this one contains "Coal ore".

 

And *I* suspect that Ill be working on a mod if the devs themselves don't include it.

 

Would love to see more machine like constructions. I love the idea of having generators or collectors that work either well or poorly with the environment, like getting on a cold planet and the power generator has worse performance, or would freeze up if not near a heat source. It would be cool to set up rain collectors for an irrigation system under ground, just a whole slew of things like this, so adding my weight here that I'd like to see buildings and decorative items have more functions if possible.

Also am sneaking in a question here, but what type of building holds heat in? I went to a cold planet last night and tried to construct a cobblestone hut with a campfire in it, back walls, and 2 doors on either side, yet my warmth still dropped when i was far enough away from the fire in the house. Do I have to construct of a certain material, or is there some rule that says heat will fill the area if I build it in a particular way?

 

I like the element of building in sandbox games, even if it wouldn't serve any purpose. Currently I'm just making a showcase of art and random items I've found on my journey. There's a farm next to my house and rooms for the NPCs that I spawn (just found a cook).

I also play with friends so it's fun to sometimes bring them over and hang out for a while. There's also a village not far from my place which increases the immersion for me. The ship is mostly a storage container for me and the home-planet is where I go back to every now and then. Fuel isn't really an issue since coal is so abundant and I've recently started finding uranium.

Here's a screenshot. Hope it works:

http://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=201291717

 

I understand the TC's concern. I realized that building is a problem after making a planet my home. I've stripped most of the coal out of it, which is my primary fuel source. So now what? Well I can move to the next planet in my solar system and take all of it from there. Eventually, travelling home enough will empty all the surrounding planets of fuel, which will strand you on your home planet without any way of leaving.

A renewable resource like bio fuels would allow players to travel a lot without worrying about long term implications of playing around a small area and building.

 

Well, this will be mitigated, in part, when we're able to plant trees. After all, not everyone wants to jump from planet to planet, stripping them of resources like a locust.

 

Lol, I also have a special room for keeping trinkets I find on my travels. Right now, all I have are some artefacts I borrowed from an Avian temple.