Remove Pickaxes, upgrade matter manipulator.(Read first)

After making my very first stone pickaxe, the matter manipulator become pretty much completely obsolete. That felt like a huge waste to me. Why not replace pickaxes with an upgradable matter manipulator instead?

-Pickaxes do not fit into a sci-fi theme.
-Matter Manipulator is a cool concept, and by it becoming obsolete so fast, a huge waste.
-The progressing of pickaxes does not make sense. Why do I need a silver pickaxe to make a gold pickaxe? It's not logical.
-Upgrading the matter manipulator with ore as catalysts sounds more logical and more reasonable.
-Explains better why you need to repair them with ores. It's fuel/battery recharging!
-Can make new basic manipulators with pixels only, and upgrade them in tiers with new ores, just like pickaxes now
-It's just much cooler.

 

That's a cool idea, and makes much more sense than pickaxes. I would however object a little bit, since manipulators are usefull for placing blocks n stuff, so they aren't useless as far as game mechanics go.

Having manipulators become legit multi-purpose tools that could be specialised into, let's say, weapons, mining tools or shields would be cool, and using ores as fuels would give more incentive to mine Copper and Iron when I'm already at Gold or Platinum.

I say we keep pickaxes, since they break 3 x 3 blocks, while manipulators have more reach and can break only 2x2

 

I would agree with Zethariel.
We could have both, having the MM as main and the other tools optional, so that some NPCs would carry them around.

 

I like the idea of pickaxes in the beginning of the game as you are stranded in space and having to build your way back to technology. How about making a progression of tech in mining tools as you reach higher tiers. pickaxes, drills, lasers, multifunctional matter manipulator? this would at least feel more like your making a technological step forward.

 

Yes.. yes I can't see why not.

 

You know there are Sci-Fi movies that have planets with " prehistoric " ( or similar ) level of Technology and some other that still have Pickaxes, etc etc ?! Never watched Star Trek ?! Or any other kind of those TV Movies when they land on a planet without Tech and stuff ?!

And if it's a Sci-Fi game, this doesn't mean that ALL the stuff you can have in Starbound need to be only Sci-Fi and High Tech....

Then you need to remove also Floran race, since they are not Sci Fi ( look how they set up their homes - on trees - look what they use and what they wear... )

Oh, also the Swords, Hmmers, Bows, etc etc are not Sci-Fi themed, remove also them.... And Glitch Castles ? Or houses made with hay for the roofs and bricks / wood for the rest !? Not sci-fi....

The progression of the pickaxes btw is fine and it make sense. You need the previous Pickaxe tier to upgrade it to the next one, instead to throw it away in the bin. The hell ? Pickaxes doesn't use fuel / battery recharging LOL ! And repairing them with the same ore is fine.

With your " idea ", 80% of the game need to be removed....lol

for this thread suggestion : TOTALLY NO.

 

What if the pickaxes were replaced with a shorter range but higher power version of the matter manipulator? Or maybe not replaced, but past a certain point in progression there's a different tool?
Like a short range but higher power MM that breaks blocks in a 3 x 3, but because of the energy dropoff and its power consumption its range is limited to about that of a pickaxe?
I would have to agree that requiring the previous tier of pickaxe makes no logical sense of progression, period. No matter what anyone says, it makes literally no sense to plate a copper pickaxe with silver and then gold. Silver and gold are not very strong metals. There's a reason they're not used for making tools.
As another option to the higher power MM route, have the pickaxes replaced with the short-range MM past a certain tier of progression, while also upgrading the long-range MM along the way to keep them in parallel. (But keep the long-range one to the 2x2 area and slower than the short range of the same tier)
Other mining tools would of course be an option as well, ala prometheusX9.

 

I came here to post nearly the same thing as the OP. Please, please Chucklefish, replace or add a second tech tree (could easily just be a reskin of the pickaxes, axes, and hoes) that are specialized versions of the matter manipulator.

Specifically, start the game with some pixels, and rather than getting your first matter manipulator out of storage, have it be the first item in the printer. Have the first quest be to print a new one.

Next, you can go down to the planet, and craft the next tier of manipulator. These would be automatically available craftables, like torches or the like, representing 'feeding' the matter manipulator appropriate materials to get it to upgrade.

• A plant matter manipulator, crafted from a matter manipulator and wood or plant fibers
• A mining manipulator, made from a matter manipulator and cobblestone, upgradeable like the pickaxes with copper, silver, gold, etc
• A farming manipulator, crafted from a matter manipulator and dirt

This would allow for the same basic functionality as the existing primitive items, while giving a much more solid sci-fi feel.

Along the same lines, I think that rather than building/upgrading crafting tables, you should be able to create new 3d printers from base materials. The one aboard your ship would be unique and could be upgraded, and you could you varying quality of mats in addition to pixels to print new printers or other crafting tools that are more compact than the current items.

Why the complaints about the current set of stuff? Because it feels like Terraria. And I don't mean 'plays like terraria, but in space', which I'm fine with, heck, it's exactly what I expected and wanted, and Chucklefish is delivering.

No, I mean it looks just like Terraria for this one aspect. Not in space. Just pseudo-medieval fantasy. I want a metal printer/matter forge, not an iron anvil. I want a digital loom, not a spinning wheel. I want a 3d printer, not a workbench. And I want a replicator on the ship, not a 3d printer. We've got 3d printers today. Making copies of stuff from currency/energy/pixels? That's Star Trek stuff, just make the top of the line be a replicator.

 

As I've said before, what I would like to see, actually, is a mix of things. First of all, weapons and armours have race-specific variants. Why then does everyone use picks and axes? I'd like to see each race make different tools, ones that more reflect their cultures. So, for example, the Florans are actually pretty primitive, and their basic tools might start quite crude, whereas the Apex have used bioengineering to make themselves hyper-intelligent, and so they might "Gilligan's Island" up some sort of mechanical tools out of simple materials.

Beyond that, though, advancing to higher tiers of the same things is sort of silly. I would like to see upgrades to the Matter Manipulator, but I think that more efficient but specialized tools have their place, too. However, I think that they should start out as something crude and primitive (at least by the standards of the race making them) but at higher tiers become increasingly advanced and technological.

 

Yeah. I have some idea about the Matter Manipulator here but seem like nobody cares

http://community.playstarbound.com/index.php?threads/some-item-and-gear-suggestions.43902/

 

At the begining, pick axe make sence for me, since you are lost with nothing. When you leave in a hole with fire camp there is no problem for stone and copper pick axe. But since you have plasma rifle, blink and antigrav tech, and travel through the antire universe, some more high tech tool would be better (at least visually).

And behing able to upgrade the matter manipulator would be cool too. Maybe giving it a better mining speed that the pick axe, but ONLY if there are ore in the block. You dig with the pick axe, and collect resources with the matter manipulator. Or breaking an ore block with the pick axe just don't give ore at all.

It's not for mining, but I was thinking about a feature that allow you to pull broken ore and blocks with the beam of the matter manipulator. New ability would extend the gameplay of the matter manipulator.

 

...
Florans have technology. And their lore make sense in scifi-fantasy.
Weapons: They make sense, since atleast later ones arent ´´common`` swords.
Glitch: They have technology, and are robots. Their lore makes sense in scifi-fantasy.
Pickaxes are... Pickaxes. And you cant say you have no technology because you do U_U.
They dont make sense because what the hell? How do you use earlier one for a new one? It would be like putting layers over layers of ores... Pickaxes dont use fuel, they use ore to repair. If you read, the OP said that the Matter Manipulator would use Ores as fuel to repair itself.

 

Didn't knew that melee weapons they use, furnitures, set home inside big trees, etc etc, are Sci-Fi.. They are like cannibals, lol... Every race then have technology to use by the way... But this doesn't mean everything is Sci-Fi in Starbound...

Just because weapons have special effects / powers, this doesn't mean they are sci-fi... Never player RPG ? Dungeons & Dragons and games like that ?! There are the same weapons with special effects... A Sci Fi melee weapon can be a Light Sabre...

About the Glitch... I've talked about CASTLES and buildings made of HAY / WOOD, not of the race, you can find castles in Fantasy games, not in Sci Fi...

The OP said the pickaxes needed to be removed ( and this WILL NOT HAPPEN ) because they are not sci fi... So ?! What's the problem to upgrade your pickaxe to a new and better one, using the previous ore ?! IT'S A GAME, not a real life simulator...

" -Explains better why you need to repair them with ores. It's fuel/battery recharging! " - If i read about pickaxes there and there, this I think is linked to them... plural... And I've typed " repairing the pickaxes with the same ore is fine " - where the hell I've said that pickaxes don't use ore to get repaired ?!

Matter Manipulator does not use fuel or battery stuff, nor, does not break when you use it.

IE : Pickaxes and Matter Manipulator are good, no need to remove or change their proprieties.

 

You should read some more about the SCI-FI Genre, or in this case SCIENCE FANTASY (Sword and Planet)

 

Sure.

 

I think pickaxes should go stone, copper, iron, and then switch back to the MM. Do you know what happens when you hit a rock with silver, gold, diamond? The pickaxe would break. Those two metals are soft and weaker than most stones. Diamond, while hard, is a crystal. Striking with it will chip and shatter it. Diamonds that are used in drills are trash grade chips and splinters of diamond that are spun and ground against the rock to wear it down. That works. A diamond drill would work. A diamond pickaxe would just be expensive, heavy, and fragile.

Now on the other hand, silver, gold? You know what those ARE used for? Improving the quality of electronics as conductors and capacitors. It'd make perfect sense to upgrade the MM with those two materials. Steel? New, sturdier casing. Platinum? Also used in circuits and all sorts of electronics. Diamond? New focusing gem. All those materials would be awesome components in the MM, but are terrible in pickaxes. Just make the MM mine a 3 x 3 at a shorter distance after the upgrade, since it's now using more power, and you're all set.

 

This is actually an excellent suggestion. It still uses tiered upgrades, so it's in keeping with the existing mechanics, it still has the concept of having to make do with primitive tools early on, but the later tools would feel more thematically and logically consistent for the setting. Certainly gets my vote.

 

I like this idea. I like this a lot. Everything except for the range reduction on the upgraded MM, unless the range can be steadily increased with progressive upgrades.

 

Great feedback guys!

I like your idea a lot as well.




@Psygnosis

Primitive tools early on is all nice and dandy, but on other hand, we start out with a matter manipulator, a spaceship capable of traveling anywhere in the universe within ~ 20 seconds, and instant teleportation devices.
So with all that, the first thing we do is put a stone on a stick and call it PROGRESS!

Really now.

My main concern is that the matter manipulator, and arguably the stone axe (ones you reach diamond pickaxe) are just garbage, ready to rot in your storage or just to be thrown away.
Talking about the stone axe and stone hoe, we could also get rid of those while we're at it. Axes don't even have upgrades, pickaxes can just chop trees as well (again, with a matter manipulator would make more sense with this!) and stone hoe is kinda.. well, useless. If we removed the stone hoe and just transform the ground when we put plants on, we have the same effect. How are we going to see upgrades of it anyway? What would a silver hoe do? And the stone axe is already so fast at chopping trees, upgrades are meh. Once you have the diamond pickaxe, it has the same "chopping" speed as the stone axe.

 

There's been a few posts about this already, including in the Game Mechanics section. What we really need is to consolidate into one megathread, get the replies/likes skyrocketing, make it a permanent front page feature deal - there's some people who poo-poo the idea, but I think an improved MM is the way to go.

( From http://community.playstarbound.com/index.php?threads/alternatives-to-the-pickaxe-axe-system.40149/ )



This is what I'm thinking; opened with the M key, the Matter Manipulator tool allows for multiple functions and finer control.

Higher-tier chipsets allow for higher ranges of effect, from the starting 2x2, to 3x 3, 1x1, 1x2, 4x4... Heck, add another range of chips for 'specialty designs' like 4x1 or 10x10.

The grade of the tool, plus the shape of effect, results in it's 'energy usage'. Mining out a massive vein in one go with a speedy pick may save time but will drain your power significantly, and if you hit 0 power the speed drops significantly - I'm thinking, at 0 power, it maintains the shape that you've been working on but reduces effectiveness to base-matter-manipulator levels. Of course, that's assuming that you have a higher power drain than your power is restored, which currently is insanely fast.

And of course, you get cutesy acronyms, like Aboretum, Xeno, Extractor and High-speed Organic Environment chipsets.

Other 'additional' or upgrade chips could include the 3rd Dimension Destabilizer, allowing for faster background tile collection, or a host of range boosting mods, energy efficiency mods, and so forth.

Now, the early chipsets would be exceptionally crude - extruded copper wire on the spinning wheel, perhaps an iron bar for Crude Connectors on an anvil, sand crafted (4:1) to Silicon Piles for Crude Silicon Chips from the furnace, and the grade of material of the tool. Chipset levels could match the current system - common level are Crude, Legendary are Perfect, etc. The higher the 'quality', the longer they last and the less energy they use. Later on, you get actual chip-working tools, a chip construction station, and can make your own higher-end chips. I'd also argue for a more robust crafting system, so you can add elements to a chip to make them more effective, but that's beyond the scope of this suggestion.

By all means, leave the original tools in - they'd be needed to collect the basic material for making the chipsets. It just seems like resource bloat, however, tools taking up space where this intends to replace them.

[...]

Alright, a compromise.



You begin the game with an old, broken down piece of tech that your [insert varied family/work/crew relationship here] pressed into your hands before you never saw them again, and it was amazingly useful at first but started breaking, piece by piece, during your flight.

When you finally arrive at Deathplanet VI-VI-VI and decide it's a lovely place to set down, it's basically a pile of junk, barely holding together - much like it is right now. It has components, but they break one by one within minutes of landing, allowing you to see the awesome might of a fully functional MM - mining out a 5x5 section in seconds, reaching a full screen length away, etc.

Then the projector breaks, and you can't reach as far. Then the generator, and it's chewing through power faster than you can replenish it. Then the tool slots break, and you're left with 1 slot, a diamond P.I.C.K. chip on .5% durability - soon enough, that breaks too. It's Useful for collecting the starting, basic material, wood and surface ores, but you could literally put a rock on a stick and mine better than this thing can by the end.

Thus, you have this tool, you get to experience it's might when it's fully applied - only to watch it get drained away. You have to rely on hand tools, clumsy and 'so last century!' until you can form your own components/find some/buy some.

The crude components can be made with copper, iron, sand, and a few work benches, and are more placeholders than anything else - they stop the thing from draining power like a sink, boost it's reach from 4 spaces to 6 or so, for example. With the full Crude set in hand, you're basically back to the MM we have now - functional, but useless compared to the tools you've crafted in the meantime. And may as well drop the chipsets at Tier 1; while a nice thought, they stretched even my believability. You're stranded in a solar system, and unless you find a research facility/are an Apex super genius master race, you have to wait to get your silicone board extruder.

THEN you get your upgraded components from the bosses, reach the next tech levels, start exploring, and finding more designer components, or making your own. To balance it out, hand tools don't use energy from your pool at all - they're physically driven. The MM, even on it's lowest setting, drains power. Perhaps while using it, power can't be restored, so even if your drain is 1/sec you'll run flat eventually. And to reach that 1/sec power drain, you have to use a cheap P.I.C.K. chip on a 1x1 setting with an upgraded generator.

The MM, thus, is much more powerful but not sustainable; picks can be used non stop, but can't be modified beyond digging power.

How does that sound?

EDIT: Replaced second image with PNG format, enhanced to show crispness.