Great Engine. Skeptical about Flavor

I have a shortcut that doesn't even need to bring in drills earlier... Just use the matter manipulator. Quest #??? "Like, your matter manipulator is totally awesome, make batteries with ore and stuff"

Step one, get copper, step 2, get (whatever), step three, use pixels + worktable (or the 3d printer or the manipulator itself, idk, Starbound logic) to make up the remaining electronic-y, circuitry, wire-y stuff. "Copper Powered Manipulator" get. Durability is whatever ore you used up being depeleted by the energy-making process, put in more ore to bring it back up to full power.

Simple, makes sense, doesn't break the game. You can still force the players to make a stone pickaxe first, if you're into that sort of thing.

(Damn, got inb4'd)

 

Here's what I was thinking for upgrade names:
Copper Wired
Iron Reinforced
Silver Lined
Gold Circuit
Diamond Crystal

Instead of having them be tiers, have each of them be an upgrade so its not so linear AND it feels more like you're replacing/adding parts.

 

Even better, my man.

Bottom line being, if they wanted to, they could have done it 80 different ways without impacting the story or hurried escape thing at all.

They just wanted pickaxes. Nothing wrong with that. I hate it though.

 

It's not a bad idea, but it does detract from variety and gives the player ranged mining very early on, detracting from progression a little. I've always sort of figured that we'd eventually get mining lasers in the upper tiers.

...With that said, on the other hand, it gives the player a reason to actually use the matter manipulator. Normally pretty much any time you're using it, you're using it through a block item, and never the actual device, making it almost pointless as an actual item. ...Come to think of it, do I even need that thing in my hotbar?

Also, in the case of hotbar clutter, the real fix for that is something we should have had from day 1: A context button, like what Terraria had. There was a lot of stuff you just didn't need to keep in your hotbar ever that you used frequently because holding shift and clicking it in the right place gave it to you. Torches and glow sticks being the most obvious example.

 

But as you said there'll be a mod sooner or later for people who don't like the pickaxe. And they had that very-very nice looking giant drilling machine as a sprite during launch. If that gets into the game, it's bye-bye pickaxing, hello interplanetary drill highway.

 

The only reason I haven't completely thrown the matter manipulator away yet, is because if they add some way to upgrade it later, I don't want to start a new character to get one. It currently resides in my ship locker.

About the first thing though, that's what makes it great! It would make Starbound feel different in that area.

Think about it like this, what if Starbound came out with that same "your character can't swim without special diving gear tech" thing that Terraria does? Imagine if someone was like, "dude, why can't we just swim?". Your automatic response (not you per se, just saying) might have been, "What? That makes water a total non-issue way too early on, making underground excavating way too easy." or if the block placement wasn't as fluid or didn't have the range to it that the matter manipulator provides.

Starbound's devs decided that water and giant caverns don't have to be a pain to explore in that way, and thus changes the meaning of those things for Starbound, and makes them its own.

Now, it's not even something that you think about. "Characters in Starbound swim, and can place blocks across the room, so?"

 

I honestly dont care what direction the devs take the game. So long as it remains highly moddable, i'll mod the snot out of it until it resembles what i believe it should have been from the start

 

I hate when people use tvtropes as the basis for an argument.

 

Probably would argue that Sharun is fantasy, but now that you mentioned it, I had this vision of my character getting wired up with reflex boosters, nanotechnology and hidden switchblades.. and I liked that..

 

Circuitry (greater than copper, less than gold), mirrors, antibiotic coatings, and dental fillings.

Mining lasers plus mirrors could be fun.

 

His basis is that he wants it to be more like Hard Sci-Fi, he's just using tvtropes as support for his argument and to make people understand things easier (hence the hard sci-fi scale). I honestly don't see the problem, it's like saying, "I hate when people use wikipedia as the basis for an argument."

 

Others have already answered your claims about Star Wars and Star Trek, I would like to adress WH40k: Almost every single race uses melee weapons to some extent, and most of them aren't genetically engineered super-soldiers and none of them use them as niche weapons. A game of WH40k can boil down to melee combat pretty easily.

Also, I'd like to remind you of various mecha that use melee weapons. As I said: my examples are only the most well-known.

And to those that abhor Tvtropes I say: You might not like the terminology, but it's a fact that in quite a few story, something isn't done because it's logical, justified or necessary, but simply because it's cool. TVtropes puts a name to that, nothing more.

 

Forgive my wording then, becuase it's 9 am here atm and I barely had any sleep. I mean that I'd argue the claim that Shadowrun is fantasy, as it is Cyberpunk with fantasy elements, rather then fantasy with scifi elements But in the end it doesn't really matter I guess. Starbound is what Chucklefish wants it to be, and if people don't agree with the base theme, they are free to mod it into whatever they want.

I think my overexposure to games like Rogue Galaxy and Star Ocean makes me more forgiving towards swords and pickaxes in space.

 

Exactly, there's no reason at all, in a game with infinite planets, we can't have both. Planets of magic, planets of tech, races of magic, races of tech, various levels of advancement and intel across the galaxy.

Also, I really don't think any of us will have to worry. Game is barely Beta and already we have a very strong modding community. I'll wager whether you want more sci-fi or more fantasy, or less of one than the other, you'll soon have a mod that fits exactly what you want. That's the one reason I don't worry about the flavor

 

Yeah, but you don't know his life. He's been mining in the salt mines, trying to get back to the top of salty bet.

 

TV tropes is no more a reliable basis for "hard sci-fi" than I am. Fundamentally very nearly all sci-fi can be classified as fantasy, despite what an individuals opinion is. You can't attribute a category to a term and refer to that term using an entire web site thats been fundamentally built on opinion.

There's absolutely no reason why someone would use a matter manipulator over a pick-axe if the devs decide they don't. They say "it's slower, but works on everything" and we say "gotcha".

A writer, or designer creates the world (or universe, in this case) and creates the rules of that world(universe). If they decide gravity is a type of jam and lava is candy, that's the fact of this reality. Nothing on TVTropes or wikipedia can tell them/us otherwise, and any reference to ANY OTHER SOURCE is apples to oranges.

Unless of course, he wants the game to be more like a trope. Then the argument stands. But as far as I can tell the entire basis is that it's not fitting into some imaginary category a website made up.

And yeah, referencing wikipedia is not a legitimate reference btw. No university or science department in the world will accept wikipedia references.

 

Starbound is a SCI-FI game.

Technology has to start somewhere. Having a pick starting and working towards something greater is part of that Technology. A pick is a tool, not a fantasy element. Same with a sword. Now, if it were enchanted, or shot fireballs.... yeah, that's fantasy. But gotta look at it from the perspective of a stranded survivor. It's a TOOL.

Do I want to see magic in this game? HELL NO. This is NOT TERRARIA.

And I really wish people would stop campaigning to make it into Terraria 2. Let Chucklefish and their dev team make THEIR OWN GAME WITH THEIR OWN VISION.
Starbound is a unique experience. And it needs to STAY THAT WAY.

 

Offtopic: Just have to point out, that currently it IS pretty much Terraria 2, I've seen nothing that is a big difference between the two.