So I noticed that all of the large NPC cities (apex, florian, avian, and glitch for now) have the same layout as each other. I was very excited to find my first apex city, then the second too, by the third one I noticed that all the buildings and layout were the same as the last two I found. The Glitch seem to have a little more variety in their towns, but not much yet (some are castles and some are villages, i think). Even the smaller features (bandit camps, random single houses, etc...) are mostly the same. Right now it seems like a planet can have one main feature (that being an npc city, research lab, airship, sewers, prison, etc...) (of which there can be more than one of) and a number of smaller features (bandit camps, some random house, a caged monkey, etc...), but the random features are always the same more or less. My first thought on this subject was kind of the same thing as the planets in the game, that is, to procedurally generate towns and cities with different layouts and looks. My idea on this is to have "building plots" where different buildings would go, with a list of many different buildings/structures that could be placed in each plot, then the game uses to sort of generation method to somewhat randomly place buildings throughout the city. The same can be said for smaller features, like houses, have many different basic house designs to be placed on a planet, so it's not just another avian household with a bed and bookcase. I don't know anything about coding or programming so I don't even know if something like that is possible. Another, less dynamic idea, is to have several city layouts that the game chooses from to place onto a planet where a city would normally be. This would not necessarily change anything in the game other than the general look and feel of civilized settlements, but I feel like it would be more enjoyable to explore new planets, even if it's just another florian settlement, it wont feel like the last one you visited. I've seen many amazing designs by other members on this forum of their own homes/bases, many that I would love to visit myself given the chance. I think my first thought on changing towns would add a lot more variety and make exploring new planets a much more unique experience. instead of adding several new cities to choose from, it would add thousands of possible layouts depending on how many premade structures there were to fill in the town. There would obviously have to be some kind of limits as to what made sense as far as building placement so that it wouldn't look completely random and houses wouldn't be out of place. I'd love to add some pictures of existing settlements that people have already made, but I haven't asked permission from any of the creators so I'll just suggest that you take a minute and check out the screenshots section http://community.playstarbound.com/index.php?forums/screenshots.105/ and look for yourself at some of the amazing designs other people have made, and imagine how great it would be to stumble into one of them on a random scouting mission.
