Closed Question about the moons

I was wondering what's up with the new monsters on the moons? They kill the player with one hit and can't seem to be damaged. Kind of makes it really hard to get fuel no matter what level weapons/armor you have. They make buying the fuel at the Outpost look really good. I hope they are a work in progress and will able to be dealt with by the player at some point.

 

Wait, there's monsters on the moons now? YESSS!

 

Large weapons like grenade launchers\rocket launchers push them back some distance, if you happened to find one, but yeah, I suspect that they're literally invincible. I think that they're there to make it more difficult to fill up your fuel hatch, and may be tweaked to make them knock back further with more heavy weapons, but I think they're here to stay.

 

I would hope that they at least make them non-invincible though. Otherwise everybody might as well just /spawnitem plutoniumrod 10 and be done with it.

 

I agree. Make them vary in strength like the other monsters so they hit harder and take more hits to kill the higher level the moon you are on.

 

Assigning levels to moons would also make higher level moons have more fuel and that would be a nice thing, instead of every single moon being "Harmless" and having almost no plutonium ore whatsoever.

And hey, maybe we could start putting other ore on moons too while we're at it.

 

Have no fear fellow Travelers I've figured it out!

After first reading this thread I was like, "There's MONSTERS on the MOON?! AWESOME!"

I took two of my crew members with me to see what was what.

At first there was nothing. I saw nothing on the surface and was about to call 'BS' on it, but I decided to dig and make a simulated run with admin mode on straight to the core. This way I could simulate mining for fuel and running into the creatures, if they existed.

As I got deep I still saw nothing, until I got to a large cavity and followed the glow of what I thought was Erchius crystals. "Damn internet BS!" "I was hoping to see the beast for myself...more rumors." "There's no moon monst- HOLY SH*T!"
The damn thing phased right through the wall. I started shooting at it, but to no avail. My crew tried to tackle it, but being the bums they are they were ineffectual. I used the durasteel assault rifle's grenade launcher to keep it back but this was some HOTEL CALIFORNIA stuff; we just couldn't kill the beast.

I read earlier that these were one-hit wonder kills so I was glad I left admin mode on, just in case. I hadn't unburdened myself of good items and I would hate to lose them there.

I made a beeline for the surface, pretty much abandoning my crew to fight the thing in the process. And that's when I ran into two more. I backpedalled and started another tunnel. My crew finally caught up as we were hounded by the creatures.
"Some sort of Space Ghost Maggots..." I thought to myself. "And invincble too!" "How can you kill one of these things?!" "I didn't know the price at the pump would be this steep."
As we finally breeched the surface, as luck would have it a meteor shower was happening. I scrambled to dig cover but then I saw THEM! MORE of them! Five, Six, SH*T! And NO, the meteors don't hurt them either.

I mean, how do you kill invincible maggot ghosts? You'd have to be a scientist who faced a lot of crap in space. And I mused to myself, "When's the last time I've seen a Krogan Scientist?!?", as the creatures surrounded us.

I used every explosive I had to try to keep them back. My crew seemed like invincible dummies that kept them occupied while I thought of something.

Yeah...I could have just left at this point. I grabbed enough fuel on the run back to the surface to make it far, far away, but now I was pissed.

I wanted to see how invincible they really were.

SO I used every weapon I had brought, which is pretty much my whole arsenal..
Nothing worked at first, and I couldn't die but I certainly acted like I could. If this were a real run I wanted a real solution.

And that's when I found it! I had used everything else; rocket launchers, throwing blocks, a flamethrower, I even threw some bones at them.
So I was like, "F*CK IT! Smoke'em if you got'em!" and pulled out my last "weapon", a Pollen Pump. I had forgotten which world I had gotten it from, but I never threw unique weapons out so I charged up and shot a ghost right in the face...and LO and BEHOLD red numbers started coming out of it!

"NO WAY!! A POLLEN pump!" "Screw it, small miracles!" And as my crew acted as bait I leapt around like flea on meth and squirted the ghosts one at a time and in groups. One finally died and dropped pixels. I screwed up taking a screenshot and I didn't care at first, but for posterity's sake and to proven that these demons CAN be KILLED I did one better.

Since I knew they could die that also meant that they could be captured. So that's what I did. I had some capture pods on me and I beat one down and captured it. I added it to my collection. It will look nice right next to the momma Poptop.

To prove my claims I DID take a snapshot of my computer since it wasn't cooperating with the screenshot business.

And YES, that ghost tore up those convicts like a SyFy Channel movie! It's slow to start but once it gets going it's HELL ON WHEELS!

It was beautifu! And possibly game-breaking. I mean, I could kill all of those prisoners myself, I have plenty of times already. But having a monster pet that's invulnerable to any conventional means of attack that the NPCs have, and that hits for INSTA-DEATH? Yeah, that's powerful. Perhaps too powerful....

But I am not the one to pontificate on the justified or unjustified means of killing NPCs in a video game, nor on 'suitable' playing styles. I leave that to others.

I have left the method, and shown the way. It is up for you to decide.

Do as thou wilt..and harm(mostly) none. That is the whole of the Law.

GOOD LUCK out there Space Travelers!

 

The monster is called erchius ghost in the files, this is its description:
When it closes its eyes it becomes immune to attacks by entering a different plane of existence.

 

You are truly a legend... and your tale will live on.

 

So they're on moons, nice. I spawned one out of curiosity a few nights ago and it spooked me, but glad to know they can be caught. I'm so hunting a pollen pump from now on.

Edit: AAAAAAAAAAAAAAA THEY SPAWN LIKE FLIES, SEND HELP


This was too intense. Here's hoping they're less numerous at some point, I didn't need this panic.

 

Meanwhile I patched them to use tier 6 stats and forgot about it.

Code:

monsters/ghosts/erchiusghost/erchiusghost.monstertype.patch
-----
[
  {
    "op" : "replace",
    "path" : "/baseParameters/touchDamage/damage",
    "value" : 315
  },
  {
    "op" : "replace",
    "path" : "/baseParameters/statusSettings/stats/maxHealth/baseValue",
    "value" : 845
  },
  {
    "op" : "replace",
    "path" : "/baseParameters/statusSettings/stats/protection/baseValue",
    "value" : 70
  }
]

Because having them be one-hit instant-kills is pretty dumb, but that's IMO, so YMMV.

By the way, their description isn't complete. It's just a copy-paste of the description for the Spookit because that's the monster they copied the general behavior from.

 

imagine playing on hardcore and meeting them for the first time.
KEK.

do they look like the Spookit enemy? thats all i can think of because of ghost.
http://starbounder.org/Spookit

when i first heard i thought of the ghost people from fallout new vegas.
if these ghosts have a special sound that only they used im totally going to replace that with the breathing noises the ghost people from fallout new vegas make!

they sound like this
http://vignette2.wikia.nocookie.net...ious_lp.ogg/revision/latest?cb=20140727143829

 

Well I'm not sleeping well tonight. Thanks.

Also, the ghost's appearance was posted earlier by Space Dandy, and his screenshot (as well as mine) don't do the thing justice. It makes no noise, and just creeps slowly across the screen. It's like the ghost from Spelunky. It really needs some music to accompany its aggro though, like gravitational-collapse.

 

Suddenly, your eyes wander to the bottom of the screen.

"ERCHIUS HORROR"

Multiple boss health bars appear. And then the lasers come.

 

Wonder if this means they are removing the Erchius Horror mission also I assume it's not a bug but most likely an added challenge while I love the fact that moons have no baddies it always struck me as too easy and with how much things hate you in game it felt strange. I assume they will make more weapons harm them or make a new weapon to use against them before 1.0 hits as for me I'm gonna enjoy my monster free moons before 1.0 hits.

 

I don't see why they would, I'm sure a decent amount of work went into that, I don't get why they'd just snip it for no reason.

It would more seem that they want to make moons more interesting and if there are actual dangers there, then they could put more resources on these moons because of the added danger. It's just IMO, the ghosts are not finished and they are just simply overpowered.

Maybe once they're done, the ghosts will actually be reasonable, and there could be higher level moons in higher level star systems which would have more fuel? I mean to be honest, having to spend 30min or more to get a couple tanks worth of fuel later in game feels like such a waste of time. I'd rather go to an ore-laden moon that has aggressive ghosts if it meant getting done and getting out sooner.

Thankfully I use FU so there's alternate sources of fuel, lol.

 

I found it pretty easy to run away from them, they are floating slower than I dig through Moondust. Also, the moon I found them on seemed to have more fuel(orbiting a Lvl. 2 Planet only). Lots of Crystals and larger fuel Lakes.

Also, last time I checked, my patented Liquid Refinery[tm] still worked, so I won't even need to visit moons anymore as soon as I build a new one.

But I really like that moons are more interesting now, although I agree with everyone that they should be nerfed.

 

humorous thought. what if they say mostly unkillable and kill players in one hit?
I mean we roam from planet to planet destroying the wildlife, killing trees, collecting food....and their seeds.
what if these things are just a way of putting a halt to the crazy fun time of wild raiding and murder and instead make things scary and make us feel weak and nervous.

it'd be like amnesia dark descent with a few levels having guns and action.

 

I think it's a nice addition which adds a threatening element on the moon, so it's not all that boring, and makes you hurry and run across caves while gathering as much fuel as you can.

 

Uhh... that's Spookit's description. Kinda like a tiny ghost-ish creature that makes itself invincible only ocassionally when closing its eyes. The actual erichius ghost instantly kills you and is completely invincible

And even if you mod it to make it vunerable, just think about it when someone catches it in a tiny capture pod and destroy whole cities and villages filled with innocent NPCs and insane glitchy guards as of nightly.