If anyone has played the game cobalt, you'll know that the combat system is quite awesome. I think if you added something like it to Starbound, it may be an awesome feature. For those of you whom haven't played cobalt, how the combat system works is like this: it allows for many movements with only a few keys, and some of these movements are standard movement, jumps, double jumps, rolls, back rolls, flips, slides, and repelling (also, rolling into a bullet bounces it, because you're a robot) Adding something like that could be quite awesome, and it would make combat easier if mastered, but harder originally because your enemy would also have more mobility. Another awesome feature that cobalt has is that when you are being shot at or attacked, time slows down, allowing for super precise movements to avoid getting hit. This would be awesome, but this may be better as a tech/cape/armor set. I think a balanced inclusion of some or all of these features would be awesome. Just imagine you run off a cliff and do a flip and make a 180 snipe, or when something jumps at you, you slide under it, dodge with a shield, and counter attack in slow motion. (Also, if anyone who's skilled in Lua would like to try making this a mod, go right ahead. *wink wink*)
More interesting combat is almost universally a good thing, IMO. I have a feeling messing with the timestep can get a bit weird when you've got multiplayer going on. If you've got a bunch of people together you want their time to slow down at the same time, but what about someone halfway across the map? Slowing down their time if they're just digging out rocks is going to be super-annoying, but if you have different parts of the same world running at different time rates, it might get a bit hairy.
I think a lot of things will need to be changed fundamentally in the game, if a system like this were to implemented. Everything would have to move Much faster to add that intensive feeling of Cobalt combat. But cobalt has a Really badass combat system, I think it could be worth looking into, to perhaps snatch a few of its features, because the combat in this game currently is horrifyingly generic tbh. The slowmotion effect could just affect a planet, and then the other person would just have to deal with it, or go mining someplanet else > Besides the slowmotion usually only lasts for a few secs.
You quoted my concerns about the difficulties of time dilation in multiplayer, but didn't seem to respond
