Removing wood as a fuel source adds a lot to the game by limiting our bouncing between planets.

That's the core focus of those games. Personally, mining isn't the first thing that came to my mind when I heard the name Starbound, or even looked into it.

 

Well it kind of is seeing as the armors are crafted with ore. But I get what you are saying.

 

I spent about 8 hours playing yesterday, going from tier 1 to setting foot in delta sector for the first time, exclusively by planet hopping and strip mining the surfaces of planets

Maybe I've just been wildly lucky or something, but I don't understand why so many people are saying coal is too scarce to planet hop

 

Because they want Beta to be Creative mode where they don't have to worry about any kind of fuel ever.

 

Maybe because you assume we all play those games. (btw, mining doesn't take longer in minecraft)

I played terraria from start to finish, and the constant grindy nature of the game turned me off quite often. The music kind of made up for the tediousness of it, though. That soundtrack it just genious. But that was one playthrough. Every other character I started was quickly abandoned and forgotten. Even with the new update, I just couldn't stand playing it anymore.

I played minecraft for a long time (since late alpha until early this year), and with great dedication in fact. But minecraft allowed me to enchant an axe and just literally melt trees down. You can also replant trees in convenient ways that you can go on an easy woodcutting frenzy for half an hour and you may literally spend the rest of the month swimming in wood. Same with ores, except diamonds, you can just go strip mining for a while and be done with it for a long time. Since I didn't use diamonds for anything else than tools, it was alright. I don't mind going in a digging frenzy once in a while, there are times when I actually do enjoy caving and mining, it all depends on my mood. Just most of the time I don't.

But the reason why I enjoyed minecraft for so long was really because I didn't have to do that very often. I could spend weeks just building stuff, occasionally having to dig a bit for redstone or something, but nothing too tedious. Enchantments on tools certainly made mining even less of a daunting task. You mine ore blocks with just 2 or 3 hits with a good enchantment. And then when resources were really getting scarce I'd go on another caving frenzy, and spend another month relaxing, enchanting tools and messing around with redstone (which was by far the biggest selling point for me and many others), and exploring the wilds. Sadly, exploration in minecraft is a feeble feature. And building redstone stuff can get old. Eventually I burned out and I don't play it anymore.

Still, things can evolve. Terraria sets the example of how NOT to do a mining oriented game. It's tedious to not end, replayable mostly only by people who really do enjoy mining all the time and do not get impatient with repetitive tasks like such. Minecraft sets an example on how not to neglect the exploration factor. Games that come after this could take some lessons out of the failures of their predecessors. Cube World is doing great in pretty much every aspect of what it's intended to do (namely exploration and especially combat mechanics (there are lessons to be learned from its combat system)) and it's still really early in development. Starbound is doing great in many parts of what it's intended to do as well. Both these games offer me things I enjoy that no other games do. I don't find an endless and unpredictable world in, say, Skyrim. I don't find crafting and mining in skyrim interesting in the slightest (and I really don't understand how anyone ever thought it was...). I find exploration in Skyrim interesting. But its world is a finite constant.

When I voice my opinion on certain issues is because I strongly believe there can be a middle ground that pleases the miners and the explorers and the fighters and the etcs. I'm trying to contribute to a search for solutions that can benefit all of us, regardless of why anyone's playing this game. I don't understand people that don't mind having interstellar traveling made into the luxury it is now. Yet, I'm not questioning their opinion, their reasoning is irrelevant to me, as what I'm trying is to find a solution that doesn't displease them while still pleasing me more. Part of that process involves, of course, exposing my opinion.

 

ok.............

 

In the beta sector you are going to need a lot of coal to make steel bars.
Lets not force the players to use them up when travelling to other planets
otherwise they will not be able to make any armour, weapons or pretty much anything else
they need.

I did not realise you could use wood to fuel your ship
and I have been stuck on the same planet for a good 5 hours now.

 

The issues I was having with is how early on in this thread people were denying the lack of coal in the prior patch. If you see my prior posts about cordinates EVEN post patch there was less coal then normal on the world my char started on. However, alot of people were saying that planet hopping was bad, and how mining was the way to go bla bla bla. The problem is personal play style if you like mining underground for hours on end go ahead. I like exploring and building myself personally so during that coal patch I was borked. its not the wood being fuel part that bothered me.. Heck i was never aware of that in the first place, but just the attitude in general was "The game is becoming my play style SO why are you complaining A£^hole." When in all reality its the freedom, when the freedom and choices are restricted in a game it starts to get dull quickly.

 

I am sure you can mod your playstyle. The whole game should not be retolled because a couple of people don't want to even mine or chop a tree once.

 

After finally making it to the end game, I have to say its highly counter-intuitive that uranium, plutonium and solarium are available at surface levels of planets. Space exploration becomes so much easier at later stages of the game, in a game where exploration is its central theme, the ability to travel should stay the same throughout the game. I think all ores for fuels should be found on tier one planets BUT instead of them being on asteroids they should only be found near the core of the planet. Moving to higher tier planets lets the ore spawn further away from the core.

This way, digging is incentivised as a way to save on coal and also a way to collect ores to keep your ship running a long time if you put the time and effort in to dig down and around the core of a planet.

 

I'm not saying that. Bloody hell its just on my world I needed to get off and struggling for 6 hours to find enough coal for 198 fuel.. Isn't being lazy I mined out a full circle of he top layer looking for it. and manged to find enough hidden in a small hill to get to 204 enough to get the star with other planets on it. Theres a difference between Tedium, and effort. I'm not saying that people shouldn't have to work i'm saying that 6 hours of work to get that little is Fucking bullshit. thankfully they fixed that issue but there were people who were applauding it. Each person has a play style and a game centralized around planet exploration making the elements to do so a chore... Isn't fun. Theres one masochistic miner out there who does enjoy 9 hours of mining dirt, but I aint him.

 

I have to debunk this whole idea of it being unfathomable to just scavenge the top layer of a planet, do the dungeon, and hop away.

Assuming you don't start with an absolutely TERRIBLE seed, you should have at least a moon or something to travel to in the same planetary system as the one you started in. That's at least two map surfaces to explore, costing 1 fuel. From there you should easily have 50 fuel to go to another planet in the same system, again assuming not an absolutely dreadful seed, you should have at least 2 more maps to explore. So far we're at 4 maps explored on 52 fuel. By now you have 200 fuel pretty easily. Take a moment to find a large planet with lots of moons. Preferably, find a star system with lots of large planets with lots of moons each. Jump to a planet in that system, and scav the surface of said planet and it's moons. You will find it impossible to run out of resources like this.

Variety is not expensive in this game. Traveling between stars arbitrarily without much consideration for destinations is expensive, however.

 

one planet, one system the starter planet was the mooon the only planet for the system the next star over had no planets the closet star had a F&*K ton of planets, but cost 200 fuel. Coal was scarce and f&"ked up in that patch. So i had to basically mine off the bottom ten blocks below the surface just to look for it. Most ofi t I found was under an apex village just because of the terrain generation. Granted I got shafted but you're right, and could also the mods just shut down this freaking thread the starting point is from the 3 patches ago, most of it seems to be a statement of playing style vs playing style and almost seems more like pissing contest then anything else. So this thread has little to no value at this point, because Bla bla bla turn wood into charcoal if you need to bla bla bla deforest planet if you hate it. Bla bla bla mining, Bla bla bla planet hopping, bla bla bla my opinions better yours bla bla bla IF YOU DON'T LIKE IT USE MODS, BLa bla bla screw you, bla bla bla No you, bla bla bla That seems to sum up this thread right?