Hello everyone, I played Starbound since the start of the beta and came up with this suggestion. It is something what I believe would make it a better game and would be another thing that encourages exploring, fighting bosses, talking with NPCs, doing quests and most importantly - having fun. Why I believe change is needed. Let's start with why I think some changes are needed. I will start with my experiences in Starbound. I played for already 23 hours in total and experienced a nice bit of content. Even managed to find a few dungeons. And this was how this idea was born. I killed a lot of dungeon monsters and got various weapons as drops. Weapons that cluttered my inventory and seemed not to be that good to begin with. Now, devs of game are already addressing part of this problem by changing stats around and so on, but I feel that the issue here is that weapons aren't interesting enough. Each of the weapons I got were not that useful. All I could really do was to delete them since they cluttered my inventory. Weapon I got from one of mini bosses was unmatched in my slaughtering of dungeon monsters and I didn't really got anything from dungeon except from some items to burn in 3D printer. If I explore challenging and interesting dungeon, I want to be awarded for it. So far that wasn't the case, but beta is beta and that will most likely change soon. Now, my idea is making a system for crafting custom weapons, using resources and things found in dungeons, villages or by doing quests. The game already has a system for procedurally generated weapons - why not let players to use the system to make their own? How is this going to work? Well, firstly, what I believe is needed is a new crafting table, used just for crafting custom weapons. It would be a combination of 3D printer and regular crafting table. How it is going to work? Simple: You put weapons you get from dungeons into a slot like 3D printer. The table scans the weapon, destroys is and saves the skin (look) of the weapon in it's database. Next is crafting process. In different tab you have an option to craft your custom weapon. This could cost pixels. Crafting process could go like this: * You select a type of weapon you want to craft. Guns, 1h swords, 2h swords etc. * Next you are asked to select the skin on how you wish the weapon to look. Of course skins should be restricted to weapon types. Don't want to make a sword that looks like a spear, right? (though if you do - it is possible. Up to devs though ) * You select material the weapon will be made from. This should set the weapon's base statistics according to material that is being used to it's making. * Modifiers. Now this is where things are getting interesting and this is the core of the suggestion I'm trying to make. Schematics and knowledge of modifiers should be found in dungeon chests, as drops from bosses or rewards of quests. More challenging tasks reward better modifiers. What modifiers could there be? Anything. It could be as simple as adding poison damage to weapon. Adding special visual effect (like shooting skulls as you swing weapon). Adding special looking projectiles (like pistol that shoots bubbles that poison you on contact.) And so on and on. I think this fits well with game's spirit and could be very fun and interesting. The amount of modifiers that can be added to weapon should be restricted by material you are making it from. For example the basic materials maybe could only get some visual modifiers (like sparkling or glowing as you swing), the higher tier materials, on other hand, could accept modifiers that increase weapon damage, speed, add some additional property etc. You click 'compile' or something and the crafting table makes a one-time use schematic (or several uses on it if you want to produce weapons for your friends) that is then inserted into third and final tab of crafting interface in top slot. Then schematic requires you to provide all materials needed to make the weapon, which you put into inventory bellow. Once you provide everything, you click craft and enjoy brand new weapon, made by your specifications. What would this do if it is implemented into game? Well, several things. Advantages of this are: * Encourages dungeon exploring and adds things that would make dungeon feel rewarding. * Adds an ability to add your personal touch to weapons in game and make some wicked stuff that suits your character. You are like a reaper and your base looks like graveyard? With this you can make yourself a wicked scythe to slay monsters with. Of course it would need you to have found scythe before to begin with. But why make skins to be acquired only by destroying weapons? Let's take a step further and make schematics of skins! Hell, let's take it even further and make it so players could add their own schematics to game as mods. Possibilities are endless and my suggestion can be taken a step (or several) further. * This gives a use to previously useless procedurally generated common weapons. Again, it is possible to increase their use beyond that of using their skins. Add additional functionality to refinery to destroy weapons for materials to make custom ones and every dungeon run will feel worthwhile. Disadvantages: * Potential balance issues. Players are clever. It won't take much time until someone finds the best combinations of materials to make strongest weapons. Of course it could be subdued, making drops from bosses still best weapons period, but balancing this may be tough nonetheless. I don't know how the current weapon system works exactly and if devs can use what they already have to make this work, but this may very well be a lot of coding work. * Same rewards. You can only make so many modifiers and in millions of planets you are bound to run accross the ones you already have. This can be fixed in part once again by adding more functionality to refinery to refine modifier schematics into some kind of materials. That is about all I can think from the top of my head, but I'm sure there are a lot more advantages and disadvantages to this. Thank you. Thank you all for taking your time to read through this, and I hope I made sense in my rambling. I am sorry for long post and any grammar mistakes I made. Even though I don't expect any of this to be added to the game, I hope devs of Starbound read this and that this will help to make it a better game, even if by tiny bit. Again, thank you for reading and I'm looking forward to the complete game. Austea~
