There are so many possibilities for the expansion of this game, and so many planned that we haven't seen yet, where to begin? Most of this stream of thought deals with the actual mechanics of the game, but ideas that bleed in to other categories are involved, so, bear with me. Also, I know some of these concepts are already officially in the works, but some of the ideas make more sense with them in the list also, but I'll try to keep it mostly to stuff that hasn't been implemented yet, as things change rapidly in the workflow of game development and ideas get dropped as new ones pop up. Remember how there was going to be siege equipment and a zombie horde mode for Minecraft, mentioned years ago now? Heard anything about that in their dev cycle lately? Yeah, exactly. NOTE: While lack the necessary programming skills to actuate any of these ideas, I have much skill in the way of art and would love to work with someone being that aspect of a project in making some of these ideas come to fruition. So, Starbound. Lets start with the whole intra-galactic exploration aspect. We've got the ability already to go from planet to planet with a grand degree of freedom (supposing you've got the fuel), and home planets. That's pretty awesome already. There's still a lot to improve there, though. For instance, we could: ♦ Have an AI crew that we recruit from the planets we visit that have civilizations rather than suddenly create out of thin pixels. ♦ Be able to assign said crew jobs, like mechanic/engineer, navigator, ship security, planetary survey analyst, biologist, excavator, builder, ect ♦ Have dynamic interplanetary missions using said crew, such as catalog the local fauna/flora, make contact with... ♣ Okay, high-concept: Be Star Trek. You get the idea. On top of that, though, the (as far as I know) pending ship expansions could include upgrades such as planetary scanning, remote control of the ship for various things like orbital laser mining, being able to fly a shuttle to the surface, mapping the major resources of the planet, and scanning structures for reproduction later. That sort of stuff. DEFLECTOR DISH!!! Dynamic missions could be much more than the average go here/get this/kill that fare. There are so many possibilities once your ship is large enough, like moving whole civilizations off of a dying planet, or helping rebuild a city after a asteroid-based cataclysm. Hell, there's possibilities to nail in a few minigames that change up the gameplay a bit And, I know I'm not the only one who would like to be able to determine exactly where beaming down to the planet is going to land my character. Perhaps this could be earned with crafted beacons? ♦ E.V.A. missions/Component Built Ships Among other things, there is already an item ability granting an oxygen supply for space and other hostile environments, as well as suits that protect against temperature extremes. We should be able to go out for a space walk in a proper space suit! Give us an airlock to get outside the ship, let us repair stations and other ships to salvage or save them or, even better, loot them! Let the ship get damaged and be in need of repair, let there be functional components that change the capability and function of the ship. I, for one, want to build my own TARDIS, just as an example. ♦ Travel Log Most importantly, for ease of travel between planets and systems, we need a travel log or planetary 'favorites' list. It would still obviously cost the requisite fuel to get where we're going, but being able to log planets we've visited without having to write down and then type in tedious coordinates would be awesome. ♦ The Blueprint Scanner This would be a ship upgrade that combines the technology of your 3D Scanner and Teleport pad. Upgrades in its tree would allow for faster scanning/printing and allow larger areas to be scanned. To elaborate on the idea of the building schematic scanner, here's how I see that working: With a device that works much like the paint gun, you 'paint' an area to be scanned by your ship as a schematic to be remotely constructed later. Once you've got the area you want scanned all selected, alt fire brings up a menu with what to do. Option 1) detect all blocks and objects used in the selected area and save as a blueprint to use later. Option 2) actually transport the blocks off the planet and stored in a container much like the lockbox you start the game off with on your ship. A secondary option would toggle whether you're grabbing the foreground blocks, background blocks, or both for the blueprint, or if you want to grab the blocks only and leave out the decorative objects. This process would NOT gather anything inside a container, for obvious HAX reasons, so you'd want to get anything you want to keep out of containers first. On the ship, you might have, perhaps after a further upgrade in the tree, the ability to alter the design from your ship once the blueprint is uploaded. So, for instance, if you don't like the slightly uneven look of the steel blocks, you could select all of them and swap that out in the blueprint palette for light metal blocks, or titanium panels. On the other side of things, the whole point of scanning in blueprints of buildings and other arrangements of blocks would be to lay them down somewhere else. I see this as a way to establish a colony more feasibly, but it would be great for setting up a base of operations on each planet you visit also. I'm sure there would be ways to abuse this, but lets pretend users would never, ever do that ;D At the base of the technology, teleporting a building blueprint down to the planet would require that the the ground you were porting the building to would need to match the base of the structure. Oddly shaped structures would take more work to get into place, and simple ones would require that you flatten an area out. At higher levels, you would be able to fudge that a little bit, and even flat out swap block for block and place things wherever you like, and have floating structures if you want. In the instance of a swap, one block will be teleported out as one is being ported in. The initial scanning would require some pixel cost, just like scanning in other objects for print later, and the cost may be prohibitive to most players until mid-to-late game when pixels become much more accessible with the use of refineries and the hunting of stronger monsters. Teleportation would offer a bit of leeway, though. When printing/teleporting a blueprint, there would be a bin to put materials in for your ship to use when building a structure. Block by block, if the materials are there, you wouldn't be charged for the building of the structure. Once you run out though, you'll be burning through precious pixels to finish the job. You could build it all through the power of the pixel, but you'd better hope you've got deep pockets to do so, especially as your structures get bigger and bigger. Production would not be instant, especially at lower levels of the technology. Blocks would port in, one at a time, regardless of whether they are in the hopper or if you're paying with pixels. Successive levels of technology would port them faster. As you did with the scanning gun, you would point and click to place the building to be built. ♦ Repair Platform And one last thought, possibly completely unnecessary depending on your skill, but also possibly very, very useful: A tech upgrade with the nominal title of "Repair Platform" It's exactly what it says. Like the racial mechs and the jeep, it is technically a vehicle. It's fairly slow, it's summoned with 'F', and it doesn't have any weapons. Why? Because it's not a combat or even exploration vehicle. The sole purpose is to make it easier to build structures and tear down blocks without having to f'ing dolphin jump all over the goddamn place or temper your build time with your energy level. Basically, it's a summonable, pilotable platform to putt around your structure so you can build details out of your build-beam's range and make things more interesting, a bit more easily. While you're moving it (by hitting 'E'), you can't do anything else, but when you stop moving it (by hitting 'E' again), it doesn't disappear. It produces a little bit of light via its pulsing antigrav panel on the bottom, and just sort of sticks where you stop it, letting you go about your work. That's it. ♦ Dynamic Body Types Okay, one more thing. It would be really, really nice to have different body types, like taller/shorter overall characters, wider/broader shouldered characters, skinny/fat torsos... You get the idea. Having that sort of character variety would be great, but is also possibly one of the least necessary additions. We've already got six great customizable options with an official seventh on the way. Not a complaint, just an interest. Appended EDITS: ♦ Moveable, usable water Water is dynamic and wet. Awesome! Yay for drowning! How about we also be able to use it to put ourselves out when we're on fire, but be electrocuted when lightning or other shock source runs through it? Also, we've got wire powered drains, why not pumps? I would love to make waterfalls or move water (and lava, for that matter) to tanks for convenient use later. ♦ Bot Helpers It's one thing to have a town full of NPC's, which will soon be augmented by the settlements that have a lot more intractability than the ones we run across now, but wouldn't it be great to have programmable, constructible bots to help do the daily grind? So, my concept is this: Once you get to the point where you can build a nanoforge, one should be able to use their various classes of materials to build individually purposed robot parts. An Auto Hoe, Articulated Ammo Belt Feed (for resupplying turrets), Ore Detector, things along that line. You would also be able to build various chassis to accommodate these tools and personality CPU's to drive them, with varying intelligence as you get high tech levels. There would also be a beacon/border item, placed on the wire layer, that gives an absolute range the bots could operate and move around in, so they don't go wandering off. A restraining bolt, if you will. As for programming them, you could have a simple drag and drop interface, much like that found on Scratch, and a Point-to-target system to lay out what their job goals are, like "managed this patch of plants and replant as necessary". A more detailed description of parts: Geo-Query: A bot with this equipped would wander around and use its sensors to detect ores, chests, and other objects of interest, and related them to positions on a viewable map. Upgraded versions would be able to detect at greater distances and through denser materials, and even be able to give you an idea of what is in a particular undiscovered chest/beacon/pod. Articulated Ammo Belt: As turrets run out of ammunition, this bot will attempt to get to them and resupply them. Auto Hoe: After 'painting' a designated area for this bot to tend, the Auto Hoe attachment will reap matured plants and replant the seeds in its place, storing the goods in a designated container(s), as well as re-sowing the land if it becomes unsuitable for planting for some reason, even to the point of replacing dirt if you have put it in the bot's inventory. Higher levels of tech mean it would be able to work larger areas. One caveat would be that it will stop working if the designated container becomes full and can't hold any further materials. Anti-Barn Door: SHUT THE F'ING DOOR BEHIND YOU (supposing you don't have it hooked up to a pressure plate circuit). Pixel Sweep: Pickin' up that sweet, sweet money off the ground. Auto-fix lights: Do your light poles keep falling over because of the rain? This attachment will help make that less annoying. Box Organizer: This attachment will cause your bot to look around and compare the contents of you various containers, and put smaller piles of the same material/decoration/...THING in with larger volumes of the like, thus cutting down on duplicate piles in different locations. You would, of course, be able to designate boxes that are off limits, as well as drop-off boxes that the bot would look in first to gather from and take to your store room. ...AND MOER!!!1
Alas, were I more adept at programming, I might be able to nudge things in that direction with a mod or two. I'm great when it comes to sprite and graphic design, even 3D modeling, but shite when it comes to anything above programming a potato to run a clock
I like that, I'll add it to the list in a bit. Perhaps with basic drag 'n' drop programming functionality, ala Scratch?
