Hey, guys. First, as cliché as this line may sound, I wanted to say that I love Starbound even now. There's nothing else in sandbox games that I enjoy more than building, and Starbound already gives me plenty of options and freedom to do what I like. That said, I find it still a bit lacking in some aspects, and these became clearer when playing on nightly, last week. Not that the nightly is worse than stable, on the contrary, it's just that I was starting a new character with roleplay and took it really easy and slow. From my experience there and things I'd like to see, as a builder, I'd like to point some suggestions (and leave my base screenshot here for reference): - Plant Fiber is an almost non-renewable resource. The first problem I encountered when building my base were the colossal amounts of plant fiber I needed to build the small structures I wanted (for the ones on the screenshot, I think I used over 3000). That would be fine if I didn't care much about building and came to my base only after a long expedition around the planet, but it was annoying to stop building and make long trips just to find plant fiber. I'd suggest for normal trees (since they're easy to farm and renewable) to drop some, even if just a small amount. It's still odd if wood's easier to hoard than plant fiber, but this should at least make it less of a pain for us builders. - Stone is worth as much or even less than dirt. You at least use dirt as scaffolding or to fix holes in your construction spots. Stone does not fit anything quite right, is harder to find and to mine than wood or dirt, and only makes cobblestones, which also don't fit many construction projects (again, you can see how little cobblestone I used in my screenshot, even though I had more than plant fiber). Okay, maybe that stone type is only supposed to be used for cobblestone bricks, but it would maybe we could use them to craft other things. I'm thinking about using it along with cement and water to make lumps of concrete, for example (that would also give us another use for rain water). But we still need more stone options, like marble and limestone being available in most planets (though harder to get), the dark stone used in glitch castles and the soft bricks used in avian villages and painted bricks maybe being crafted with clay bricks + white dye. There is even Dire Stone, Blaststone and Granite currently unused! - Clay is a kinda rare material for no reason. You will rarely ever find clay on the surface of a planet. The clay used in my screenshot was found very very deep underground. The size of the spots of clay was just about right, but why is it so hard to find on the surface, if it is a common material for house construction? And the amount of clay needed for the bricks is a bit high, too. I used around 500 hundred clay brick blocks to build that house at the right corner of the screenshot, which would only be 500 clay on the stable, but turned out being 2000 clay on nightly. I think ~60% of that would be acceptable if it could be found on the surface too, or at least much closer to it. If it could be found more often but in smaller spots, it would also be good, I guess. - You have to dig too much and spend too much time travelling to find the amount of Copper and Iron you need. This one is a bit tricky because it affects the progression. You don't want to be able to find all the materials you need on the surface and go to the next tier right away. On the other hand, you don't want to risk yourself dying underground either, more so if you're on hard-mode. I'm looking for a balance here of how much it would be cool to dig to find those, besides occasionally finding some on the surface, but it's one thing we can't be sure yet until it becomes clear exactly how dependent on metals the progression is. I think it would be cool to have some kind of metal mini-biome not in the actual sense like the rainbow or the slime mini-biomes, but a region where you're much more likely to find that metal (even if in small spots), so that you can build a mine there, instead of having to dig through lots of caves to find a small spot here and there. - Crops now have too low of a chance of dropping seeds. I found those first 4 cotton seeds around the planet and brought them all together in hopes getting enough seeds to have at least 10 plants producing cotton. I lost count of how many times I collected cotton from those, in hopes of dropping a seed. That fifth one there was one seed I found in my inventory much later, but I'm not even sure if it was dropped from the other four or if I found it while walking around the planet again. I'm fine with them having a low chance of dropping a seed, but this low is a bit much. Or at least give me the option to transform whatever they produce into seeds, as if extracting it from the fruit. - More types of wood and more options to work them into would be nice. I personally am satisfied with the currently availability and time to grow wood on a planet. It wasn't hard to farm wood and the recipes use just the right amount. Wood was, obviously, the material I used most. But as a builder I cannot still be satisfied with the variety of wood types and ways to work with it. Being able to craft ornate wood, ornate flooring, ornate walls, ornate tiles, ornate roofing, wooden bridge blocks and wood panelling would be a nice start. Maybe tiered trees would be a good addition, like Teak-like trees being used for the ornate stuff used in oriental-styled objects and blocks and Mahogany-like trees only found in jungles (as in Terraria). Another point that would be nice would be to give more attention to the already in-game Rainbow, Striped and Metal Coated wood. I don't really care about Cactus and Reed, but I am sure there are some that would love more options for them, too.
