Sup, While testing out the current unstable build, i stumbled upon a crafting-station, which lets you craft items to spawn NPC's at your hearts content for the purpose of populating villages with them. I personally find that to be an unsatisfying way to get NPC to live at the structures, i've build. I feel, there is a big opportunity here, which has a high risk to be missed. Suggestion: - Random NPC's throughout the world can join you through various ways. (max 1 NPC at a time) - You can make them follow you, either through RNG'ed quests, freeing them from prisons or helping them getting out of the underground or helping them in any other way. Maybe some villager on a random planets just wants to join you, because they're bored of their hometown. - These NPC's of course have all kinds of purposes, such as guarding, vending, making music, etc, among simple villagers, withouth anything special about them. - You decide, wether the NPC, you've helped can join you or not, if you want only a village of a certain race, for example. (or maybe, because you just don't like the look on his/her face) - Once following you, you can can command them to "stay" and a befriended NPC who stays put can be commanded to follow you. - Some followers will fight alongside you, while some simply scream and run about during fights. - A following NPC must be taken to the surface level and you have to beam yourself to your ship, in order to (literally) "save" him/her or alternatively, you can beam up a following NPC, without you. (perhaps with the use of a craftable device) - If a following NPC dies on a high difficulty, he's done for, but on lower difficulties, he leaves behind a "Holotag", which you can use to revive him via a (craftable?) device. - NPC's reveal their specialties, such as guarding, vending, etc, through dialog, but won't be doing any of these, unless they moved into a house/village. I see much potential with NPC interactions in Starbound. This game already got the perfect platforms (faction-prisons, underground structures, like sewers, etc and of course, quests), to make finding new little NPC amigos a worthwhile time. What do you guys think of that? A good idea? A bad idea? Maybe you all do like things, as they currently are? Discuss.
i think you are right and the NPCs are going somewhat under utilized in starbound. the game is still in dev so i am hoping that they become more interactive as the details of the game become realized. However i think there is a lot that could be done with them, one of which is to work out the commerce of the game a little more. i want to be able to sell for pixels or trade for goods. This morning while playing i had a great idea for an NPC ... or maybe it is an idea for another crafting table. anyway i found your post while looking for the right place to post it. The Architect's Drafting Table It is a crafting table that gets linked to a series of NPCs and a series of containers... similarly to how the wiring system works. you place the crafting table and the supply crates (any container will work) somewhere near by. you link the crates and load in the building materials required for the structure.(any number of crates may be attached to the table to accommodate any scale project.) you load in a blueprint at the table, and craft some hard hats. There are two options for the hard hats; white and orange, foreman and construction worker. to hire a foreman or construction worker. you right click on a commoner with the hard hat. they are re-spawned as defined by their hat color. this would give you a reason to create commoners aside from aesthetics. (this may also be a way to "train" NPC doctors that heal you, give them a hat with a cross on it) In the menu for the table it will have a slot for a blueprint and a materials definition list. in the form of an inventory. when you load a blueprint int the table the inventory slots fill with grayed out icons of the materials used in the blueprint. you can magnifier click them for their names and descriptions. if you want you can load in another block of the same type ( if it requires a platform type any type of platform can be put in that slot) over the greyed out images. this tells the table to replace all instances of the original material with the one you loaded in (only one block fits in the slot like the scanner in the 3d printer) so if you like the architecture of a castle blueprint but want to build it out of race specific blocks or just want the castle to be built out of sand in stead of bricks, you can do that. The Foreman is really just a pixel sink, but his function is to call the laborers to the job site in the morning and dismiss them in the evening. there should be a whistle on the end of the crafting table that the foreman interacts with to change the shifts. As soon as there is the perscribed type of material in the linked container the forman will blow the whistle to start the shift. The Foreman can have up to four workers. The Construction Worker builds the structure described in the blueprint on the drafting table. the workers retain their original home locations that they were spawned in so if you have a town going already you can have the workers return home at the end of the day. when the foreman blows the whistle they go to the build site and start taking materials out of the crates (which are linked to the drafting table) and building them wherever that material is found in the blueprint working outward from the surveyors level. (the blocks that the drafting table, surveyors level and linked crates set on are excluded from the blueprint so the workers don't mine under them disabling the system) They should be capable of using wood platforms as scaffolding to reach blocks they could not otherwise. if this is too difficult for the AI the scaffolding may just have to be included in the blueprint. whenever the workers run out of materials they report back to the foreman and the foreman blows the whistle dismissing them. The construction worker will have his own inventory for holding the blocks he is placing and the ones he is mining before he can start building. the latter he will return to the supply crates. (possible secondary use as an auto-miner). equipment like drills or pickaxes should still need to be maintained. perhaps the worker returns it to the crates when its durability drops below a threshold. The Blueprint is crafted and then activated by selecting it in the hot key list. The player avatar displays a large piece of paper and pencil. With this active you go to a structure that you have seen on a planet or built yourself and "paint it". clicking on a block with the left mouse button selects (foreground and background layers are both selected) and the right deselects. When all of the structure you wish to include in the blueprint has been painted in this way you return to the Drafting table and name the blueprint. after it is named you may not add or subtract from the schematic but it may be loaded into the table for building. A possible way to use this is to transfer buildings to a friend in multiplayer mode. The Surveyors Level is the last piece of the puzzle. (crafted at the drafting table,) it is used to set the origin on the blueprint. Before you start painting a structure you have to place the surveyors level. it is one of those tripods with the telescope and a level on the side. when you are finished remember to take it with you. it is reusable. when you mean to build something you have a blueprint for the level is placed to indicate what the start position and ground level should be. well what do you think? it may be off topic a bit but not by far. i want to see more interactive options in the world and Jellypuff is right the NPCs are a good place to start.
Sorry, I haven't read everything yet. But something like this is planned, not? I remember reading some time ago that players could progress in different ways in the vanilla version. Like... Be an explorer, an galactic farmer or a kind of property owner. In the last choice players could make pixels renting houses for NPCs, smarter NPCs. (And the pixel amount would be calculated by several parameters such as location, size, furniture quality and stuff.) The NPCs already fight on our side depending on the situation and some take some basic commands such "Follow Me" / "Stay Here", but they're like... Ashigarus. Apparently only serve to activate traps, as baits or "meat" shields. Not sure if the devs can make them clever as you want. But it would be great, no doubt.
I'm down with this idea. I've always thought the NPC's were quite useless in the current stable version. I was thinking about the possibility of there being like a sort of "crew dynamic" to the game where, like in the OP, you can choose people to follow you after you've rescued them or befriended them.
sorry about that ... i didn't mean to hijack your thread. i decided to post as a reply to your thread because i completely agree with you in your view that the NPCs would be better if they had even as much interactive behavior as a captured mob. Also the idea i had is perhaps driving at the same point as the one you were making. the illusion that the NPCs are existing in a functioning society it too weak to suspend my disbelief about it. they are little more than people shaped mob, docile for the most part but ultimately without purpose or personality. Your proposition leans heavily on how a NPC may interact with the PC in simple command structures which is realistic, but i also want to see them looking as if they are moving around with a purpose when i am not actively directing them. when i walk threw a randomly spawned town i want to see some building still being constructed by NPCs. i want to see that same town later looking like a different town perhaps with a few tech advances to work with. lol obviously i am not a programer 'cause if i was i would say what i am suggesting is a little far off the map but certainly you are right about needing more NPC options. i especially like the idea of having a NPC buddy to follow you around and fend off gnarly mob if you are attacked and then have him pull out a harmonica and play a tune while you are walking around.
