One of the biggest problems facing most players is that there is almost no reason to create a homebase other than for aesthetics. While this appeals to some, building one doesnt serve any functional purpose in the game right now, however hopefully this will change as the beta progresses. My idea to prompt players to hang around in planets that they enjoy is to give more 'personality' to the planets. Planet Variety As of now, we have plenty of differing planet biomes to visit and each offers a nicely themed tileset to accompany the biome. That, unfortunately, is where uniqueness stops. There is no difference from going to a jungle planet and mining for ore than there is going to an ice planet and mining for ore. Furthermore, once you dig down into each planet they become increasingly similar regardless of what type you landed on, this encourages surface exploration more than it does digging (we all know whats down there!). Each planet carries the same ore dependent on their threat level (or as it is now, what system they are in) and this doesnt reward the players that gear up to go to ice biomes or moons. Perhaps when tiers of armor and weaponry are fleshed out we will see materials that can only be required by going to places that require more preperation and are deadlier than other planets. Uniqueness shouldnt stop at the types of tiles present in certain biomes but also the types of ores. You develop the planet and the planet develops you A homebase is something that should be encouraged to be built early on but because of the speed of progression, the player finds themselves jumping away all too soon never to return and for the most part living in their ship. My idea is that characters have stats (not your usual agility, strength etc.), say you spend so much time in an ice biome or spend time killing enemies there, your resistance to cold would go up. Have these stats for each type of biome: Ice - resistance to cold Magma - Burn damage reduced Volcano - (if it gets implemented) resistance to heat Arid - Light radius increased Moon - Jump distance increased Jungle - Poison damage reduced Forest - Fall damage reduced Desert - Mining speed increased These are just what I've come up with off the top of my head so some probably seem a lot better than others but thats the general idea. These stats would level up over time increasing the potency of the effects they give but it takes quite a long time to do that and a lot of interaction with certain types of planet to see a good difference in your character. Even stats for sub-biomes would be interesting. Other than just adding this to a character, you might have adaptive armor that takes on these qualities the more time you spend in a specific environment, this would allow you to customize for yourself a unique armor set. This would all encourage people to build homebases early as the time they spend doing it is also the time that they develop stats relevant to that biome, thus they impact on the planet and the planet impacts them. Planetary events This would be events that aren't limited to the planet you are on but planets on your solar system, perhaps a comet passes by with an abundance of resources which rain down on planets in the form of a meteor shower, a volcano erupts or an earthquake happens which causes a massive fissure to form in the shape of a cave leading down to the core. We might be told of these events through text if they are happening on other planets or even better we might get a little animation on the planets in the background, say the volcano sprouting or the fissure appearing. This encourages the player to hang around in the solar system they're in to profit off of these events. Conclusion Starbound cant be faulted on its variety of things to do, there's a universe to explore and someones gotta do it. But this comes at the cost at having a functional hub to operate from. Giving the player more incentive to stay and explore each world will encourage players to create a hub and meld creative gameplay with progressive gameplay, as it is now those two aspects are distinctly seperate. Upcoming additions may help add more depth into gameplay rather than variety, we can only wait and see. tl;dr Planets need mechanics that reward the player depending on the biome they are in and need to have more of an individual presence right through to the very core of the planet rather than just the surface and their tilesets. Events would be cool too.
