This ^ Just moved to tier 2 on the floran, Crafted full set of steel (BoneSmith armor) The brain extractor, a 2H weapon, Diamond Pickaxe, And half of the robot parts just from refining my gold ore. (I had way over the 400 mark) Pixel gain is easy if you know exactly how to do it
On tier 2-3 planets I average about 150-200 pixels for every couple of enemies I kill. The pixel costs are fine (And if I recall, they were already dropped from a previous amount). Just explore around a bit more, find some interesting planets to explore and you'll be rolling in pixels.
Okay, well, let me re do this thing, since I just got battered, okay, I suppose the pixel cost is okay, I'm just a bit nooby, sorry about that. But I still think that pixels shouldn't be involved in crafting, I think they should be more focused on 3d printing alone. (Thanks for all the input guys, sorry if I came out sounding like a whining moron.)
I think I agree. I don't really like how pixels are required for crafting. Maybe they could remove that requirement, but slightly raise the pixel prices for everything else.
I agree, to me I don't think pixels are all that well integrated into the game; they're not technically material as we would understand wood or leather, but they're not exactly currency since, for some inexplicable reason, some crafting recipes call for pixels like it calls for hard material, and it's not exactly an immaterial resource like the essence of ideas that needs to be used up for crafting and are dropped when stuff is killed either, since you can trade it for stuff, and there's no real reason why making an exact same copy of something that costs 100 pixels that you just made earlier would need more idea fuel when the procedure of making something is already thought up and stamped out. I think to me and others I think the whole purpose of pixels can be substituted by rebalancing the ores and material required for crafting. I don't think the OP or the people who agree with him think this is artificial difficulty, but I think they're trying to say that its existence is frivolous relative to what's already in the game. A diamond pickaxe has diamonds in in the recipe because there's diamonds in it, and wood due to the wooden shaft, where exactly do pixels go? If currency is required, a barter system will work, or just have it so that the player could sell their stuff and acquire some other form of (recognizable) money. If you require balance for progression, there's nothing that I can think of right now where balancing the spawn frequency and threat level that the material is acquired from doing that very same job. As Litagano said, the only thing required to balance in crafting is upping the other material costs, as well as introducing materials that drop from monsters if combat is deemed to be an indispensable part of the progression.
Simply obtain enough fuel for your ship to head to a harder difficulty planet (I'm assuming that you have decent enough armor/weapon for at least a threat level 2 planet). Monsters will drop more pixels. You can also build a refinery to convert metal ores/bars into pixels. It's not too difficult to obtain money, but to be lucrative you'll want to explore once an awhile. Don't worry about leaving your home planet behind as you can just set your current planet as your home planet and head back there whenever. As to why pixels are a material, it really doesn't make too much since. I guess that it is indeed a form of money dump, but realistically, throwing a few quarters at some iron bars that are sitting ontop of an anvil/metal working station isn't going to make you a sword, lol.
Why not just call it glue instead? If not, how in the world do pixels fix the head on the shaft anyway? We don't even know what it is.
just to say what everyone else had been saying there had to be a cost for death, a lot of games make that cost inventory loss but in starbound that would be very hard to balance. having an in game currency such as pixels allows for trading and other neat mechanics, having it play a role in crafting upgrades (I.e. tools, armor, boss summons, ect) means that the cost of death could be the money you need for your next upgrade. great system in my opinion it just needs balancing which is exactly what a beta is for.
Should it be possible to just find the glue to substitute the pixels? In the game there's a differentiation between outright printing the object with pixels, and fabricating it with the raw materials, and I find it extremely strange why you can't just craft the object outright with the materials and must use pixels for something that ought to be simple to find. There's a fuzziness about why pixels should be included in the crafting recipe at all. It makes about as much sense as requiring 10 pieces of meat to craft the diamond pick axe. There can be ways to justify this, it might use the proteins in the meat to make glue, or the sinew, etc. but these explanations are frivolous and I don't think any of us would find such an explanation acceptable. It has no place in the crafting recipe if it is inconsistent with what that object immediately is. If a certain part is required for the crafting recipe that can't be found, by all means use the pixels in the 3D printer to create the part instead. What is basically happening is that there's something in the recipe for certain items in the game that seemingly has no bearing on what that item requires to exist, nor do we have any idea about how it's used in the recipe.
Really now? Because I've found dozens of labs and temples and I've gotten less than 500 pixels from all of them combined. The only times I even find ANYTHING of use anywhere is when there are guards that drop weapons, and those weaponsare worse than the ROCK TIED TO A STICK I'VE BEEN USING SINCE TIER 2.
Yesterday I found a dungeon and walked away with 2k worth of pixels before I found a tree. I think it wont be as much of a issue if your able to bank the pixels away somewhere in your ship as well as being able to sell junk you don't want. I'm still pretty undecided when it comes to needing pixels for crafting though.
I prefer to use pixel than to have 25865 things like glue, rubber, leather strip, etc etc etc in my inventory.
Why not go one further? Remove pixel cost and bump up the other materials that are needed and save yourself trouble of acquiring yet another material (And a superfluous one at that). Or call it scraps or something? Taking a step back though, this game is primarily about the acquisition of material wealth; there are a lot of differently named items in the game already and no one has complained about there being too much named stuff having its own individual name instead of an abstracted material as far as I can see (aside from the ones arising in defense of unrelated factors of the game).
You could remove pixel cost from crafting and any new person that joins the game wouldn't feel something is missing. It's a tacked-on, generic, arbitrary resource. Any balance it could bring, can easily be substituted by requiring more base materials. (or special materials) It brings little flavor to crafting, what is it used for anyway? Every recipe needs it, making it very generic. It's easy to gather. If it doesn't do anything meaningful, it shouldn't be there. Don't get me wrong, I like the concept of pixels. It's like breaking the 4th wall. I just don't think it works for crafting. (It does for 3D printing and trading)
Again though, what would be the cost of death if you didn't need pixels to level up? Inventory loss? That would suck, who would want to loose their diamond drill and full set of armor way underground in some cave system in which you will never be able to find again. If all you needed pixels for was 3d printing and trading then I wouldn't have any reason to fear death at all. I have fought 3 bosses and have done mining, upgrading my armor, tools, weapons, ect and I have yet used the 3d printer. I'm sure its neat, but I have had no use for it, no reason to spend pixels to dupe things. As far as trading goes, well there have been a few aesthetic items I could have bought, but meh. Any tools or weapon I have found at trading stations have been so underpowered that there was no reason to purchase them. if they left pixels in and used it as purely a form of currency to purchase things, 3d print things, ect it would be come so useless that death wouldn't even be something to worry about. To make death even remotely worth worrying about they would have to nerf pixel drop so far that you would only get maybe 1 max from a monster, and maybe a range of 1-3 from smashables (vases, containers, ect) just so you would have to actually work to be able to print/buy something. And then guess what, people would complain about this as well.A more balanced solution would be to completely rework death costs, pixel uses, balance for crafting, ore gen, monster spawn rates, trade prices, printing prices, everything would have to be reworked to balance it so that the people that think that its stupid to require "pixels" to craft a piece of gold on a stick doesnt make any sense so everything should be changed because this isnt just a game, it has to be real. If we are going to make this more realistic then lets add ship taxes, mining taxes, Mining permits, hunting restrictions, police that put you in jail if you rob a village, Fee's to get out of jail, Old age, slower movement, arthritis, sickness, food shortage, corrupt governments, thousands of laws and restrictions, building permits, property tax, building codes, um lets see what else could we add because I mean this has to be as real as possible we cant just simply be allowed to play a game and enjoy ourselves now can we. If you cant get over the fact that using "pixels" to craft things makes no sense then you shouldn't be playing a game, especially a science fiction game. I mean have the devs every told you the exact science behind how that shiny gravity manipulator of yours works? If not then you probably shouldn't be using it because it doesnt make sense that you can move such large amounts of mass around with such a small tool with no power supply. Pixels are used in crafting, just get over it. For the rest of the people that feel its not balanced well enough, "Pixel cost needs to be raised cause its to easy!", "I raided an entire planet and only got 500 pixels! This is to hard it needs to be increased!" ect, ect. This is a beta, I know its been said 800,452,123,59 times but the fact is that the game is not yet properly balanced and its going to take a good amount of time before that balance comes about because it takes a lot of time, tweaking, and testing before that can happen. I can assure you that by the time this reaches full release the difficulty curve, the amount of ores, the amount of pixels found/droped, the amount of time it takes to level up will be exactly how the devs want it. For now what we need to do is give our thoughts. "Spent a few hours today pixel hunting, only came out with half what I needed to craft that robot. Wish it didnt take so long to collect pixels" "Searched a new planet today, raided 1 village and came out with enough pixels to craft an entire new tier of armor and tools, maybe a little to high of a drop count." That kind of thing. Suggestions not demands. Facts not opinions, leave the rest up to them. Its their game, or rather its their art, its their craft. Let them decide the rest of the specifics as to how they want to balance it.
