Starbound's combat has long been plagued by contact damage ever since it was added way back when, making it so that agro'd non-humanoid enemies would deal damage to the player and NPCs simply by intersecting their hitbox. A practice that dates back to the infancy of video games, back when memory and data storage were at an unthinkable premium, simplicity ruled with an iron fist! As technology advanced things became more complex, and while enemies which hurt the player upon contact still appeared they were largely relegated to platformers, where they took the role of an uplifted environmental hazard, like a conscious spike or a mobile pitfall. Elsewhere, enemies would harm players by attacking, telegraphing their intention to do harm and then following through, giving the player the chance to react and a clear indication that harm was coming their way. While Starbound has platforming elements, it is by no means a platformer, I sincerely doubt anybody boots up Starbound for the purpose of platforming. Perhaps to jump around a beautiful planet like a frog rolled in coke, but not to play a platformer game. Contact damage feels distinctly out of place in Starbound, like a steel nail in a popsicle, not impossible to work around, but certainly something that at the least disrupts the flow. It is my opinion that Starbound would be an improved product if contact damage was removed from the game and enemies that relied on it as their primary damage source instead were given a bull-charge attack to compensate.
