Our ships are our homes, really. Having persistent space from one world to the next is what gives the game continuity. Unfortunately, there's very little customization with them and I think we can all agree that they're kinda dinky by the time you get to tier 2 and start wanting a good space to plonk some farmland, storage, and crafting stations down. I figured I'd outline my ideas on an approach that might fix it. Expanding the ship should be tied to game progression. My biggest problem with all of the "bigger ship" mods available is that they're really a whole lot of space with no effort to get it. The current size of the ship is fine for a starting ship... it needs room to grow is all. Ship modules should be player-crafted with a variety of options available from the moment you hit tier 2. Choice in modules should not be restricted. If someone wants to spend the ore and pixels needed to make a gigantic cargo hold before anything else, that should be their option. Tiers should instead limit how many crafted modules players can add to their ship. Some modules should be tall and narrow, others short and squat, some might be huge, bulky cargo areas and others could be small observation domes with clear backgrounds. This should give players room to mix and match between utility and aesthetics. Each ship module would have defined pathing areas in its edges that define which parts people can move through when connected to other modules. Cheap modules would have four-block pathing areas along their surfaces, while higher-end modules might have entire sides be available for pathing. Anywhere two pathing zones meet would be an open space between the modules (for example, the four block open area between the engine room and the main chamber of the base ship) The base ship would be made of three modules - the engine/teleporter room, the main room, and the bridge. The main room's top and bottom edges would all be total pathing zones. In order to move or delete a module, there must be no placed items in the module. The base three modules cannot be deleted entirely, but it should be possible to move them around and put new modules between them. The ship design UI should allow some purely aesthetic customization of the ship exterior - mainly some controls over where the engines are displayed or where certain doodads might be located (like the cogs and such on the Glitch ship). This would allow the system to generate the rough exterior of the ship based on established patterns but give the player the freedom to fine-tune the procedural generation to their liking. Opening the ship modification UI should involve a consumable item that essentially creates a "drydock" for the ship around the ship. While the ship is in drydock, no other player should be allowed to teleport to the ship.
I was honestly just thinking this same thing basically. Building a home on each new planet is time consuming and costly material-wise, especially when we travel from sector to sector and not just planet to planet. If we are supposed to be nomads of the stars and therefore "Starbound" (hurr hurr) then why shouldn't we have some option to customize or expand our ships and truly make them our homes? Hope some of the mods or developers see this idea.
