I'd hope for mods to be able to have at least read-only access to game data so that scripts could be used to generate useful UI elements and such.
A way to customize the player/humanoid renderer would also be nice. Stuff like adding spinners to the character creator and layers to characters.
There will be. Jordo and I have started documenting lua functions. Hes kinda been running circles around me since he has access to the source code of the game... This is all we have so far: https://gist.github.com/jordoh/7864154
API = Application programming interface. Basically, without an API, programmable mods would not be available. The only mods that would be available are the ones now that is simple graphical changes & creations with some file editing. If we look at Minecraft, as an easy example of an API, the main API that all mod developers use for servers is Bukkit. If on Singleplayer/client side (Optifine) you use Forge as an API. What's seen there is LUA coding, aka, the API for Starbound which'll allow developers to make mods.
Well, I was looking around, and have only located one mod so far (might be others) which uses its own Lua script. In its JSON file, it specifies the script as part of an object, but as I am looking at UI components, this is not the script entry point I'm interested in. I suppose I'll keep looking for an example or asking around.
Thus, it's most likely using the API as posted in this thread or it's using the raw dump of Starbound APIs on the wiki.
That really depends on how much functionality the developers decide to expose with the API. They will have a list of the functions and such that modders can access, and those may or may not give you the freedom to create everything under the sun. The development team seems open to a lot of modding from what I have seen. This bodes well in my opinion, but I don't know how open they will be (or are. I haven't read all of the API that is currently known). A lot of functions could provide exploitation avenues.
Exploits are already an issue, and will always be an issue as long as servers allow clients to bring in their own modded weapons and items. I'd put that on hold, and focus more on allowing modders to expand the game in unexpected ways and add their own stuff to it. Worked for ZDoom.
Not sure what you're trying to say -- can you try and rephrase it? I just didn't understand or I re-read it so much that it sunk in as something confusing.
Will it allow for a proper way to tweak the behavior of things? Will it give us the possibility of scaling graphics in-game? Will we be able to modify guns to our heart's content?
Short answer is yes. An easy to refer to game would be Minecraft if you notice how moddable it is with Minecraft API, Bukkit as the server-sided API, and other dependencies for client sided such as Forge, etc. Now, we also have to remember that right now the game is incomplete in it's client : server and server : client ratio as the server does not check the packets sent by the client allowing mods to be so heavy right now. I can change something on my computer, IE the fuelAmount of coalore, and it'd affect everyone on the server if I restarted my client, the server, and we got back on. If I went on a server, I could have a pickaxe with tileDamage of 1000 and there's no server protection or check to verify my packets that I'm sending. Nonetheless, the API will make modding much more advanced than it is now, and will make us be able to change major aspects of the game, like you said, tweak the behavior of things, and basically tweak the whole game just like Minecraft.
