Feedback Player made planets

So, as we all know, the story leaves something to be desired. After the story is completed, there's not much of anything to do, no real goal etc. (Because at that point you're likely fully kitted out)

So why haven't the devs added the ability for modders to create entire planets? Planets with unique NPCs and quests, maybe even an entire storyline? It seems to me that's the obvious next step. To be honest I don't really care about about bounties. Instead, why not give the modders the ability to make interesting and well thought out planets to explore, and quests that could affect the fate of said planet?

I'd be willing to pay for that feature as DLC or an expansion.

 

Correct me if I'm wrong, but can't this already be done? You can create instanced hub worlds like the Outpost. You can create quests where you can be sent by an NPC to an instanced location to carry out a mission. You just don't see it being done much because it's hard, time-consuming, and quickly completed. A dungeon you spend months on will take a player a half hour to an hour (at most) to complete.

 

I wasn't referring to an instanced area, I meant a full planet made by a modder.

 

Closest I've seen to this is United Systems Expansion stuff, wherein the devs made at least one mission set on Mars which had several acts to it. However, there were no extra missions to pick up, so it was technically just a really well done dungeon. Instanced hubs are probably the best we can get to having extra missions pop up and such.

 

You could do that, but it'd just be the same thing as an instanced area, although more difficult for the players to install.

 

I think that the devs of Chucklefish would need to code it where you could generate worlds, first. That way you'd be able to create your own unique worlds in any Solar System as opposed to just instanced worlds you can't really fly your ship to. That way, the modders would be able to build off of that with their own unique worlds created from the spawn system.

The idea I had was that you have a kind of gate, and you can craft the schematics of operating this gate or some kind of key to it using a lot of ingredients similar to how you can craft your own space station. THEN, when this world is generated, it lets you generate one of any kind of world we already have in Starbound OR two new world types, Diamond/Crystal planets or Ammonia/Acid planets. I think the mods would be able to work from there if the devs ever implemented it. It'd also prevent from a mod messing up the solar systems we already have.

 

Who said it isn't possible now? There is a mod to place a planet (similar to placing a station). I pretty much have the idea how to do that much too. You can create a "dungeon". The Outpost is technically a dungeon, but placed in an instanced world. You can place dungeons on regular worlds just fine. Which any village is a dungeon for example.

So you could start building a much bigger dungeon in Tiled. More likely it would be pieces though. I never did get around to messing with Tiled myself, so I don't know all the finer details. Anyhow I'm sure making a full mission sized dungeon in Tiled is a lot of work. I'd bet trying to tackle something planet-scaled is more than most would want to do. It would seem more likely to let Starbound generate a planet, and you modify it in game - which is still plenty of work but probably more fun. However there is not currently a way to take a regular generated Starbound planet, and import it into Tiled.

So you might suggest an easier way to take user made planets, and make it easy to upload/download them. But even that isn't simple. The end users will need ALL the mods that affected the planet. Biome mods. Weather mods. Dungeon/mini-dungeon mods. Monster mods. Mods that add blocks and objects (if any exist on the planet). Possibly music mods if they add new tracks to the biome. Any of those being missing could crash the client or otherwise be a big issue. Container contents anyhow aren't as big an issue but things like weapons from weapon mods could become PGIs. And there is no simple way to make a list of where different content came from. Starbound treats the mod content the same as vanilla content - all into one big pool. So you can't simply generate a requirements list.

And really that much you can do today. Just copy your world file onto Dropbox (or similar), and someone else downloads it. The file name contains the coordinates, and sorting files by date makes it easy (last visited planet = most recently updated file). I guess you could make a custom teleporter to that planet too, and make that a custom item sold in the teleporter shop so people don't even need to fly there - but that might take a bit more LUA knowledge than most have. I could throw something together I guess to make it easier.