Hello there! Me again, sorry. I see Tiy updated the front page to included Biome Hazards and Macro Terrain Changes on the agenda list! Awesome! Cool! Other synonymous words for awesome and cool! That got me thinking about all kinds of additional planet traits that might mix things up and give planets more character. I'm sure the devs have lots of ideas of their own, but it can't hurt to have others thinking up things too, right? And maybe they'll like some of the ideas that come up here and we'll see them put into the game somehow! This isn't about specific Biomes or 'objects found on a planet'...but quirks, traits, boons, or hazards, that could be applied to almost any planet, that effect some part of how the planet spawns or how things function on it. Differing gravity, storms, meteors, toxic atmospheres, airless atmospheres, and acid rain have already been confirmed in the works! So no need to list those here. Planet Traits Dominant Species - All life on the planet shares a recent genetic ancestor to one that dominated the globe. All monsters spawned on this planet will have 1 body part the same (resulting in wonderful names like Piggy Planet, Turtle Moon, Walrus World, "Dude, I just found a planet of cats." etc.) Unstable Tectonics - The tectonic plates of this planet fracture easily, resulting in lava that spawns in vertical columns underground about 2/3rds up from the planet's magma level. Diggers will encounter "walls" of lava much closer to the planet's surface, and have to dig up and over or find clever ways to drain the lava to get around them. Ancient Collision - A large object collided with this planet late in its formation, creating an asymmetrical surface with a massive crater that leads half way (or more) to the core of the planet. Tidal Locked - The planet is stuck in captured rotation around its star. It does not have a day/night cycle, instead, half the planet is always day and the other half is always night. (If one cares about realism, this would only make sense for the primary planet, as a tidally locked satellite, like our moon, would still have day/night cycles relative to the sun.) Polar Terra - This planet has two biome extremes. Desert/Ice, Forest/Lava, etc. Titans - Life on this planet has evolved to dwarf name giving species. Spawn rate is decreased, but those that do spawn (at least on the surface) are huge and buffed. Hunted monsters drop twice as much meat/leather/pixels. Swarms - Efficiency was the key to evolutionary dominance on this planet. Monsters are half the size but spawn at twice (or more) the rate. Hunted monsters are 50% less likely to drop loot when hunted (since they're weaker and there's so many of them.) Hostile Fauna - It's an eat or be eaten world. Everything is out to eat everything else - but especially you. All monsters spawn as hostile. Passive Fauna - Predation never quite caught on in the food chain, as a result, all monsters spawn as passive. But maybe there's a reason there are no predators - all the meat is poison, or monsters explode when they die. Living Lithosphere - Whether sand, rock, dirt, meat, or magma - when a specific kind of tile type is disturbed, it spawns creatures made of that material out of the earth itself. Lava blobs, rock golems, sand specters, etc. Perhaps digging too much of that particular tile summons a boss to welcome the player to the planet! Inner Planet - One of the rock layers doesn't spawn at all, creating a planet within a planet. It could be the second layer, or the fourth--or the one right above the magma core. What's more, the rock layer below the 'missing' layer could have surface-like terrain and similar structures on it, and be like a second, much darker world within a world. Regenerating Microbes - Tiny micro-organisms in the air have adapted to integrating themselves into the cellular structure of other organisms for survival, resulting in all life on the planet (players AND monsters) rapidly regenerating when wounded. It's only cool until you fight a boss with way more HP than you. Explosive Flora - For some reason, plant life has evolved a tendency to explode fire/acid/lava/jelly monsters/gas whenever someone tries to touch it. On the bright side, there's plenty of career openings for lumberjacks. Sentient Planet - The planet is 'alive' and life on it has evolved similar to a multi cellular body. Attacking one thing (even cutting trees) results in life in the area becoming hostile towards the player, as well 'antibody' monsters attack in swarms if somone tries to sleep on the planet. Lunacy Sanguis Luna-- Something about the electromagnetics emitted by the moon(s) at night makes all life turn hostile. Chance of 'blood moon' style/zombie apocalypse monster swarms appearing at night, all hungering for otherworldly meat (that's you!) What's worse, these same nightly electromagnetics interfere with ship teleportation - meaning anyone caught on the planet during such a lunar event is going to have to bunker down and fight off the hordes until dawn breaks. Hope you brought a shotgun! Unchartered - No civilized race has ever been on this planet before. Cities, towns, shacks, temples, ruins, merchants, civilized dungeons, or man-made loot objects will NOT spawn on this planet. You're the first one to set foot here. Time to find some underwear and make a flag! Bioluminescence - All life on this planet glows and/or blinks light. Macro Predator - Godzilla lives here! Tsunami Moon - powerful gravitational forces result in a constant "wave" of water that sweeps around the globe. This has the result of the planet regularly being flooded with water... or worse, what if it's lava? More ideas welcome! Remember to stay on topic and be polite - Santa is watching like a hawk this time of year and coal points are tripled.
I want all of these to be a thing. Dear god, bioluminescence would be beautiful. Here I come Pandora!
You are a fountain of good ideas. Will planets have a single trait, or a range of traits? I can see some traits conflicting with others, so maybe they should be categorized.
There are a high number of traits that I can see working together, and as long as the rules only say, "This conflicts with these", et cetera, I can definitely guarantee that somewhere, a planet would exist with the largest combination of traits ever.
Thank you for the compliments! How much does an idea guy get? If it's more than two bags of Doritoes, I might consider such a career move. But as the saying goes, "There's no such thing as an original thought" and these are just my personal interpretations of them. I know I've seen the Tidal Locked suggestion being kicked around these forums before (although without the actual name!) My hope in displaying them is to inspire other people's ideas. 'Sanguis Luna-' sounds awesomer! I changed Lunacy to that, plus it's more descriptive. Obviously some are mutually exclusive (Titans and Swarms for example), but how such ideas got translated into the game - if they even do - is totally not my call. Ideally, it'd be something like - a random die-roll of how many quirks a planet spawns with. Each time it picks one out of the list, it checks it see if doing so excludes others from the random pick list - then it picks another one after excluding the ones that would contradict whatever it's already grabbed. Either way this is less about mechanics and more about inspiration - just in case a programmer is looking for ideas!
