Hi guys ! Welcome to my little suggestions thread where i want to make my overall opinions on how did our Chucklefish sum up the changes of Starbound so far for this year. I'm a really active follower of the project and i track almost every little changes been made so i thought i might as well share my constructive criticism with the people here on the forums and the developers on the changes and how they should be dealt with and what opportunities this game might have. I decided to try and keep this post updated and gather as much nice ideas mixed with mine or as they are here if they have any realtions to the things the developers pointed out to have an interest in changing. Even though there are many good ideas and things would be nice to have in the game i tried to focus and sort out ones which would actually have a highly positive and strong game changing effect and would be relatively easy to implement to the game as it is. So let's get to it ! Guns do too little damage This isn't necessarily a bad thing. There are many guns which actually output a fair amount of damage. I think the main problem here is with their overall energy consumption. There are many guns which consumes way too much energy even with the highest tier of armour on which is annoying. The idea of making the highest tiers divide into 3 sub tiers is brilliant. It makes a nice touch to how you can personalize your own character even further but these sub tiers could be expanded even further to make an even bigger difference between them. Currently i can run around with the best armour for ranged weapons or staff weapons and still use melee weapons because it's more practical in some cases and it does not make such a big difference. The weapon system has a lot balance issues which has to be dealt with and expanded further. Currently it's hard to relate to a certain combatstyle because there isn't such a clear way between certain weapon types which would make you understand what kind of advantages and disatvantages you would get and which advantage you would more relate to. For example most of the melee weapons in the game right now are ALL THE SAME. The only valuable mechanics are their hit/sec nature whether it will do a huge blow with high charge time or do lots of weaker blows in a short duration and their aoe like in the case of a spear it's a line or in case of a longsword it's aoe is all from the characters head to the ground. However this hit/sec nature of the weapons is spread all over in such an unclear fashion that you simply can't be happy with one type of weapon you found and can't have your own playstyle for long time because you might found a spear with a lower hit/sec nature you like but as you progress and get to higher tiers the spear you would find there may have a completely different hit/sec nature you may don't like but forced to stick with. I don't understand why is this has to be the way it is right now. Why can't every melee weapon types have a fixed hit /sec nature and only differentiate in hit damage. Also why is knockback removed? Knockback is an awesome combat mechanic which could be related to heavier weapons and a really nice utility mechanic. The other combat elements which have unclear overlay are the ranged weapons the guns and the staffs. If you think about it the logical thing is that melee weapons require the wielder to move close to the target which will most likely end up with the wielder taking damage. In this case to balance out the difference between a ranged weapon user and a melee weapon user the melee weapon user should be provided with either higher BURST dps and higher mobility ( where the mobility factor is missing from the game ) OR higher sustain and lower mobility ( where the sustain part only comes up when the highest tier of armours divide into 3 sub tiers where the armour for melee wielders actually have a higher defence multiplier but still totally unbalanced ). ((( This division should start at the beginning tier and clear out the way how a player should set up his/her gear to match his/her combat style and provide the necessary stats he/she should have for specific setups. I will show some example of these setups or builds later. ))) As from the range weapon wielder's view it would be either high mobility with sustained dps and low sustain or low mobility with burst dps and higher sustain. In this wide scale of weapons it would be really necessary to understand what builds you can come up with and what logical nature these build should have in order to maintain balance and have different playstyles presented for the player which he/she can choose from and understand what advantages and disadvantages these styles might have. At this current state of the game to achieve this it would require first of all more combat mechanics to be addad like the knockback and mobility and many many many armour stat changes and weapon nature tweaks. I thought i would share what ideas i have in mind for these different builds which may not even be balanced but could be a good overall example how they should be set up. The point is to find the balance between the DAMAGE the DEFENSE and the UTILITY these certain sets provide. I will include mechanics which are not currently in the game but in time they SHOULD be. I will try to set up these from weapons which are currently in the game. Melee wielders : Two handed weapons : -> Broadswords -> BURST DAMAGE BIG AOE / HIGHER SUSTAIN / MEDIUM MOBILITY / LOW KNOCKBACK / -> Hammers -> BURST DAMAGE BIG AOE/ MEDIUM SUSTAIN / LOWER MOBILITY / HIGH KNOCKBACK -> Axes -> BURST DAMAGE BIG AOE / LOWER SUSTAIN / HIGHER MOBILITY / MEDIUM KNOCKBACK -> Spears -> BURST DAMAGE LONG AOE / LOWER SUSTAIN / HIGHER MOBILITY / LOW KNOCKBACKS These classes should be about charged big AOE burst blows with heavy knockbacks and heavy armours but singificantly lower overall mobility. One handed weapons : -> Daggers -> SUSTAINED DAMAGE SMALL AOE / LOW SUSTAIN / HIGH MOBILITY -> Shorstwords -> SUSTAINED DAMAGE MEDIUM AOE / LOW SUSTAIN / MEDIUM MOBILITY -> Shields -> LESS DAMAGE / HIGHER SUSTAIN / LOWER MOBILITY -> also just as an idea with shield equppied you could use it to do a little knockback with it in occasions during fight. These classes can be assasin like dual wielders with more burst like damage but less sustain or tanks with shields to suck up the damage but with lower dps and mobility. The upper hand compared to the two handed weapons is that the other hand is free. Ranged wielders : Two handed weapons : -> Assault Rifles -> SUSTAINED DAMAGE / MEDIUM SUSTAIN / MEDIUM MOBILITY / MEDIUM ACCURACY / MEDIUM RANGE -> Sniper Rifles -> BURST DAMAGE / LOW SUSTAIN / LOW MOBILITY / HIGH ACCURACY / LONG RANGE -> Shotguns -> BURST DAMAGE / MEDIUM SUSTAIN / MEDIUM MOBILITY / LOW ACCURACY / SHORT RANGE -> Bows -> SUSTAINED DAMAGE / LOW SUSTAIN / HIGH MOBILITY / MEDIUM ACCURACY / LONG RANGE -> Rocket Launchers -> BURST DAMAGE BIG AOE / MEDIUM SUSTAIN / LOW MOBILITY / MEDIUM ACCURACY / MEDIUM RANGE -> Flamthrowers -> SUSTAINED DAMAGE / HIGH SUSTAIN / LOW MOBILITY / MEDIUM ACCURACY / SHORT RANGE Ranged weapons wielders compared to melee weapons should have a more sustained damage nature and should give less mobility and sustain. One handed weapons : -> Pistols -> BURST DAMAGE / LOW SUSTAIN / HIGH MOBILITY / MEDIUM ACCURACY / SHORT RANGE -> Machine Pistols -> SUSTAINED DAMAGE / LOW SUSTAIN / HIGH MOBILITY / LOW ACCURACY / SHORT RANGE -> Granade Lanuchers -> BURST SMALL AOE DAMAGE / LOW SUSTAIN / HIGH MOBILITY / LOW ACCURACY / SHORT RANGE This can be mixed with melee weapons to create interesting high dps classes with many different variations. Their overall strength is either their high dps and high mobility or their enchanced sustain. Again the other hand is free. It would be really nice to see these mechanics unfold in the game like the knockback the mobility the accuracy and range. These mechanics could balance out the differences between certain weapon types and how they feel and clear out that how can you utilize different aspects of theirs and create your own combat style or styles. Currently combat in the game lacks from clear advantages from clear styles and obvious balances. Most weapons feel the same sometimes provide less or more than the other. It would be nice to see the monsterts combat to change as well to have more diverse and dynamic attacks which would nicely point out what advantages you can use of your combat style againts them and what disadvantages of your's you need to care for. Many many changes expected on this field and hopefully those changes will come. Mining is a little dull Duh. Of course it is . But for some it is still fun. Even without running into a dungeon after every 2nd cave you find. Of course it's a nice idea to make dungeon encounters more dense but it needs it's golden line too. I think the current problem with random encounters is that they should be more diverse. Both on ground and underground. For example there should be more variations of villages you can find not just for 3 races but for all of the races. The 3 village types i could find currently is the Avian the Floran and the Robot one i think and they were almost all the same. They should be more diverse and the other races should have their villages too ! For example all of the races could have 2 type of villages like a medieval type and a modern type. The villages should have more vendors and could have little sub quests on the planet like gather some of these or find some of that or kill this or that related to the planets capability. I think this would be a huge touch. Another thing is that underground and on ground encounters should have more diverse loot. Finding mostly weapons all the time by exploring the planet surface and exploring the undergound is boring. They should have their own feeling to it like undeground loot should be more related to underground while surface loot should be more related to the surface. Actually another aching thing is that i can't seem to find the underground "alive". Of course there are underground biomes which you can find now but again they lack diversitiy. I'm talking about Terraria level of aliveness now like glowing mushroom biomes and jungle biomes with a lot of roots blocking your vision and alike. I'm sure you guys could make this thing awesome just like everyithing else There’s no reason to build on a planet Depends on whether you are and adventurer type or a builder type. One of the greatest aspect of this game that it has (and it could have a tremendous amount of content for both types. You can be an adventurer who just goes beyond to the farthest places of the galaxy exploring different planets and enviroments or you could be a builder who has a huge repertoar of what he wants to build from. Maybe an ancient like temple or a medieval castle or a modern base name it ! In my opinion this is not a problem and you should not force the adventurer type to build a wooden square on the middle of nowhere and call it as home because maybe that's the most he can do. However there is a huge problem which makes both the adventurer and the builder suffer in some cases and it's the unchangable spawn point on the planets. This is something which i think bothers 90% of the people. You should be able to craft or get something which should make you able to create a "docking point" to your ship which where you will spawn to. In many cases i would explore the planet first to find a nice place where i want to build but i won't because i know if i build far from the spawn point every time i go somwhere else and come back i would have to walk and walk back to my house i built which is time consuming and boring especially early game. Making you able to spawn directly from your ship to bookmarked places without travelling to those planets seems a bit "arcade" alike for me and i don't feel like supporting the idea of that. Why do you have a ship if you can just spawn randomly everywhere ? A bookmark system and a little log you could write would be nice to have at the star map navigator tho. There could be a simple crafting station specialized in crafting blocks. If you would want to learn to craft those specific blocks you have to go and find then collect their bluprints just like you would do with the biome related objects. It simply should be this way because it would force builder like players to explore and go on an adventure and have a little different challange in exploring planets and environments other than figuring out what to build. The only stumble would be figuring out what materials would specific blocks require to craft. It certainly should not require pixels like the 3D printing with the ship which i find actually kind of ok with objects but i wish they could be cheaper sometimes. Crafting these blocks could be done with the combinations of other common blocks like dirt cobblestone dry dirt and materials like copper steel iron. For example the light metal from the Ape's dungeouns could be crafted by combining steel and iron or something like that at this crafting station. While we are at topic i would also point out that it's rather annoyes me that you can't get sand and make glass at your spawn planet. You can build a temporary home or little settlement but you can't put windows on it because there isn't a tiny grain of sand on that god damn planet so you would have to go through finding core fragments first to get to a desert planet where you could get sand and glass from ?! OUTRAGEOUS ! WE SHOULD BE ABLE TO FIND SAND ON OUR FIRST PLANET !!!!!!!! Monster path finding is bad Indeed it is. I found my self many times in situations where monsters were just jumping around for some reason trying to get me when they could just do it by a simple jump. Needs a little tweak indeed. Also i found an interesting thread related to monster generation with some nice ideas which can be found here http://community.playstarbound.com/...on-to-create-a-better-sense-of-variety.88626/ This link http://community.playstarbound.com/index.php?threads/evolution.88486/ has some ideas of a form of evolution of different species in the game which would be pretty neat to have and would add further variety to the game. Hunger and/or temperature is gone Yes they are. Actually this is a thing which just got rid of that tiny survival aspect of the game it had. From this point the game has absolutely 0 survival element. You don't need to build a shelter on the planet to survive you don't need to eat to survive or drink you don't have to make decisions on how to progress considering your capabilities.. The previous stable version was a game which seemed to go for a more survival less rpg sandbox while this one is a sandbox with more and more rpg element. This is a thing you the developers should decide wether you want a sandbox rpg or a survival sanbox rpg. If you ask me or any gamer in fact the answer is a survival sanbox rpg. Simple reason is that just by adding some survival elements to a game it can increase the challange and play time of a game tremendously. It also makes the game more alive and makes you be more connected to your own character and care for it more. I don't say the developers should rewamp the whole progression and food system just by trying to add the survival element to the game. The current progression is somewhat fine and i like the direction it's going. I have many many ideas and i'm sure our developers could make things epic on this field too. Hunger could be just solved by lower tier foods or there could be foods which would only be nurturing while other foods would give you the bonuses like they do now. The temperature mechanics from the previous stable update were good and they could be easly adapted to the current version of the game. There could be a more specific temperature nature of every planet like for example not just dangeoursly high but moderatly high or extremely high which could affect the wildlife the random encounters and the planet biomes. There could be also seasons on some planets maybe it could be a planet nature too whether it has seasons or not. On hot planets instead of getting too cold you would get too hot and would need to find an air conditioned place or area to cool down. The temperature could also affect your characters stats and if it gets to dangerous levels you could lose HP. There could also be more gears you could have on your character like a belt which makes a radiation shiled around your character so you can visit planets with high radiation but your clothing would decide how warm or cool you would get. There could be also rings and necklases and such which would give you different bonuses while we are at topic. Character gearing options could be more diverse by that. You could also tinker and advance some of your gears you already have just like previoulsy not always making completely different. There could be many awesome rpg and survival elements which i think would not be an impossible thing to implement to the game as it is in fact they could be simple. It would be an awesome thing to have that survival aspect back. I think this system would be tremendously more interesting if let's say the old temperature system comes back and there would be planets which like i told earlier have various temperatures based on how close they are to their sun. Here I just came up with some of the variations there could possibly be. Around Gently Stars : Moderatly Low Temperature -> Sometimes snow would fall on these planets. Day time with standard clothing on you would be fine without getting too cold. Night time with standard clothing on you would start to cool down after a while and would need a heat source. ( Lust and Forest planets ) Moderate Temperature - > These planets could have seasons so sometimes you would get cold in the winter and get a little hot in the summer but you would be fine with standard clothing 80% of the time. ( Lust Forest and Desert Planets ) Moderatly High Temperature -> Sometimes dusk storms would appear on these planets. Day time with standard clothing on you would start to heat up after a while and would need an air-conditioned place to cool down. Night time with standard clothing on you would be fine without getting too hot. ( Forest and Desert Planets ) Around Eccentric Stars : All of the previous temperature variations would appear around these stars depending on their distance to their sun but mostly you would find planets : Moderatly Cold -> More snow would fall on these planets sometime with heavy storms. Day time with standard clothing on you would get cold after a while and would need a heat source. Night time with standard clothing on you would get cold quickly and would require a continuous heat source. ( Forest and Snow Planets ) Moderatly Hot -> More dusk stroms would appear on these planets. Day time with standard clothing on you would get hot qiuckly and would require continuous air conditioning. Night time with standard clothing on you would get hot after a while and would need and air-conditioned place to cool down. ( Desert Arid and Ocean Planets ) Around Radioactive Stars : All of the previous temperature variations would appear around these stars depending on their distance to their sun but mostly you would find planets : Here you would encounter the Tropical flora Alien and Poisinuous Ocean Planets and somtimes stumble to any of the previuous variation of planets with their appropriate temperature. Also these new "radioactive" planets could have any of the previous temperature natures depending on their distance to their sun. Around Frozen Stars : Just like previously sometimes you could stumble into a planet with Moderatly Low Temperature or Moderatly Cold but mostly you would find planets : Cold -> Heavy snow would fall on these planets with more storms. Day time with !!! appropriate clothing !!! on you would be fine without getting too cold. Night time with !!! appropriate clothing !!! on you would start to cool down and would have to find a heat soruce. Exrtemely Cold -> Extreme amount of snow would fall on these planets with frequent heavy storms. Day time with !!! appropriate clothing !!! on you would get cold after a while and would need to find a heat source. Night time with !!! appropriate clothing !!! on you would get cold quickly and would need a continuous heat source. Around Fiery Stars : Just like previuosly sometimes you could stumble into a planet with Moderatly High Temperature or Moderatly Hot but mostly you would find planets : Hot -> Heavy dusk storms would appear on these planets sometimes with meteor rains and earthquakes. Day time with !!! appropriate clothing !!! ( naked ? or with a heat shield ) on you would get hot after a while and would need ti find an air-conditioned place to cool down. Nightime with !!! appropriate clothing !!! you would be fine without getting too hot. Extremely Hot -> Heavy dusk storms and frequent meteor rains hot liquid rains and earhtquakes would appear on these planets ( a true hell ) Day time with !!! appropriate clothing !!! on you would get hot quickly and would require continuous air-conditioning. Night time with !!! appropriate clothing !!! on your would get hot after a while and would need to find an air-conditioned place to cool down. Creating some good algorithms and teaching the engine how to generate the universe using different planet overlays with different temperature natures depending on sun-planet distance might be a task but i think this is a pretty reasonable layering of the tiers and nicely spreads the difficulty around the game as the player progresses. I think replacing the temperature system would be the most effecient with a system like this or a very similar if we want to create more content challange and diversity with one hit. This little system could change and pump extreme amount of life and realism into the game. There’s only one path through the game Why is that a problem ? Of course like i said there are different types of players who would play differently but this is not that significant which would make it necessary to create different paths for them. Right now a builder like player has more time to get to the adventure element of the game and an adventurer like player has more time to do with the building element. This isn't a bad thing. In fact you don't want your player to finish your game faster because you give him/her the path he/she can finish it faster. Players should have their own challange in all of the content a game gives. Of course you could make both type of players life easier with some tweaks but it should not be such a big thing like a whole progression path. For example there are many biomes which have their own biome related objects which you can craft by collecting their blueprints from the chests in those specific biomes. For a builder like player who would like to have those blueprints to build more and more things it's a different challange to find those bluprints which will involve some adventure. This is perfect the way it is but for example it is annoying that even thought one can find many bluprints of things to craft there are still many blocks one would have to go and collect so one can build from those blocks. For a builder like player this is more plaguy than challenging. What i want to say that more blocks should be made able to craft either by progressing or finding blueprints. These are the tweaks i was talking about erlier. Although the idea of different paths is not bad. In fact it could make progression more personalized but it should not be made for different types of players have faster gameplay. Quests are too fetchy/there aren’t enough quests Indeed. Of course this was just kind of an engine demo so i think nobody expected more than this in fact the developers did a good job. The sound of procedurally generated quests sounds good too and it could be the way i told that for example villages could give you some quests on planets. Under this link http://community.playstarbound.com/index.php?threads/race-controlled-sectors-of-space.88716/ There are some really awesome ideas about the procedural quests and some really neat race-universe relation mechanics and such worth checking out and would be really nice to have in the game. To sum it up the game is progressing in a good way. I like the ideas behind most of the changes and mechanics been added but there are many things which would be nice to have back like the survival aspect and things the players still waiting for. This game has many many opportunities and one of the games i have the highest hopes for.
I like your idea for differentiating weapon types by general characteristics. Very logical. The same weapon type can actually have different hit/sec within certain bounds. Think of the size of the weapon, the centre of gravity (for hammers), the material it's made of (weight / density)... Having one spear be .2 hits / sec vs another at 1.5 hits / sec would be pushing it though. Doesn't need to be the exact same. Just have specific ranges for each weapon type that better define their identify / experience of use. Legendary weapons could obviously break all of these rules. Another problem that this game suffers from with the progression system is the same as Borderlands does. Weapons become obsolete way too quickly due to how extreme the damage scaling is. You start doing 4 damage and end up doing 400. When you have a weapon doing 350, finding one that does 280 even if it is interesting is never worth it. In Terraria damage per hit ranges from 4-80 (obviously certain weapons exceed that), and as such you can use interesting 50-60 damage weapons well into the end game. Similarly, any tiered weapon will remain viable much longer because damage doesn't scale as quickly. Don't mind these numbers. They're just blind comparisons that might not work well. --- -- - - - - - - - - -- - - - - - - - - - - - I think the lack of variety in loot is mostly due to a lack of content in the game. Same goes for the villages and encounters. More just haven't been made yet. It will happen, especially with an active mod community. That being said, one thing Terraria has going for it is the equipment and things like umbrellas and breathing reeds: a third type of desirable loot (utility items) aside from weapons and armor. SB has techs and the cool vanity item / crafting discovery system, but blank tech cards don't really hold the appeal of a horseshoe in early game, or water walking shoes. Biome / world / star / whatever -specific techs that you CANNOT craft in the ship would help with that, as well as other utility or energy-using items. Also in Terraria there are many biome-specific loot drops. Those just have yet to be further developed into SB. It should happen with time, once the core systems have been better finished. -- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -- - - - - I'm with you about the changing spawn time and recommending care with implementing the bookmark system. I like the idea of having to travel from system to system. Anything to bypass that beyond a certain extent would take away from the atmosphere. - - - - - - -- - - - - - - - - -- - - - - - - - - As for your last point I would like to note that there are different kinds of quest systems. I will explain with a self-quote from this thread, which you might also want to check out. The main quest should not feel fetchy. Procedurally generated quests are mainly just there to fill space. Having a good deal of variety is very good for them, but they will mostly be one-off quests. go there and kill this thing, get me so much ore and I'll make you a special weapon out of it, craft me this crazy thing, take me to the beach and play volleyball, build me a nice house to move into, find me this specific item (mainly for high level quests like Indiana Jones), go to this quest-specific dungeon instance at [coordinates] and kill everyone / rescue survivors / free prisoners / get this item without killing anyone, talk to my neighbors and tell them to quiet down, deliver my building permit to the mayor, kill 50 Florans (from a Hylotl), go kill the bandits that have been plaguing our village, and bring out lost food / supplies back, help me set up a farm (alternatively, with these exotic seeds that you also have to get me), get this report on our colony's development to our governing body at [coordinates] . . . ) Doing procedurally generated quests for a particular race can increase your reputation with that race, allowing for progression with the non-procedurally generated RACE (faction) quests that end with getting to go to their homeworld, or meet well-known NPCs, or whatever.
Lets be honest, all the temperature system did was force new players to sit around fire all night, whilst having absolutely zero impact on late game. There was no "survival aspect", just a "punish starting players" aspect.
Actually i meant a similar thing you just said about the certain weapon types having a fixed hit/sec ratio depending on the overall nature of that certain weapon type ( heaviness and such ) and yes the point is to reduce the hit/sec nature difference between same types of weapons. Like you said .2 and 1.5 hit/sec is kind of an annyoing and mechanic breaking difference and unfortunately not as drasticly thought but these differences can be found in the game right now and they are super annoying for me. The point is in giving these weapon types prominent unique feels and attributions which could be easily achieved by implementing new combat mechanics i mentioned and spread them out in a balanced fashion. In terms of utility tools i see a more positive change with having grapling hooks climbing ropes and such but indeed possibilities are endless on this field too and it would be nice to have a bigger variety of gadgets. My idea was making rings and necklaces avaible to be worn and provide different utility mechanics. Maybe not as modern space game like but there may be better ways to create this like the way you descriped. Creating territories ruled by certain races which you could explore is an awesome idea. I'm actually pretty excited about such. The more detailed and more territory and race related nature of procedurally generated side quests of which completed by the player would affect the race-character relationship is a HUMONGOUSLY AWESOME idea. Even though this would be actually a hard thing to implement to the game as it is aside the various other things which would or rather SHOULD be implemented i find this idea a really huge game changing thing. Also it could work really nice in multiplayer and such. I will put this link to the main thread post under the Quests are too fetchy/there aren’t enough quests. This is a really well thought idea. Pretty neat
I agree with most of your points on the weapons, but there should be a variant on the Shotgun, that is 1 handed, sortof like a pseudo-sawed off shotgun. call it a Scatterblaster. whatever the name, I think that it should exist, because it would be useful, and I would use it for my gun toting main character.
Actually the previous temperature system was pretty wierd indeed and it should have a more balanced and natural feel to it the way i descriped. For example this "punish starting players" thing could be easily avioded if there is simply not much temperature difference which would create such a big challange at the start of the game on lower tier planets. More challenging temperature natures would only start to appear on higher level planets. In addition the transition itself would be slower as well and be more balanced. On higher tier early game planets like around eccentric stars the temperature nature of the planets would actually be kind of a thing which would teach you how you can proceed in a more challenging environment where sometimes you would have to care for your body temperature as well. When i say on specific planets in specific time of the day you would start to get cold or get hot after a while i mean a more realistic thing which would be like a slow cooling or heat-up of your body temperature which could sometimes take half of the nighttime or day time to reach alerting levels depending how long a day is on a specific planet. I think with this smooth transition the temperature thing would be an even awesomer survival aspect than before and i would extremely love to see a similar thing unfold in the game.
How so? A game should start out easy and get harder, not the other way around. Yeah, if they actually do it right it would be a nice feature (and by "do it right", I mean "not affect new characters at all, gradually becoming more and more of an issue as the planets (or biomes) increase in difficulty.")
To be honest this idea sounds like a bit OP for me The short range high burst nature of the shotgun is actaully can easly be similar having dual wilded pistols or machine pistols so i don't think it would be necessary and in fact i didn't hear about any kind of such weapon to exist even IRL I think the amount and veriety of weapons is good the way it is right now. It's already a challange to create more variety of the exsisting weapons not to mention balancing them out in a fashion i descriped.
