Star-map tiers are...lame

I also agree with this suggestion .

Currently playing through starbound is getting boring. There is no incentive for me to visit any of the other alpha sector planets because I know they will only have gear suitable for alpha sector, and there is no incentive to really explore.

The whole sector map is confusing and hard to understand.

I think we are getting too much information on the navigation screen. We shouldn't know how strong a planet is, so that we actually go there and find out our selves.

I want to start on a planet, and slowly work my way across the galaxy, not jump from one beta sector to the next, only to find my armor and weapons are weaker because it's a new sector/level.

It just seems not fun.

 

It would be so fun if you randomly had a tier10 nextdoor to where you started. When you begin the game you're so curious about what's there. So then when you finally achieve the tier, you head right back home to see what's there.

 

Why are there even surface chest? They should at LEAST be some type of rhyme or reason to these treasure chest, not just a "random chest with great loot"

 

i completely agree with the OP, as it is now, it doesn't feel at all like exploring the universe but more like randomly creating a new world somewhere totally random.

 

So here's my two hundredths-of-a-dosh on the matter.

The tier system is restrictive to the extreme. Me and my buddies have been playing together for a while now. NOBODY BUILDS A BASE. We all just stash everything we have on our ships, because that comes WITH us. If you're gonna be spending fuel traipsing back to the home you set up on a nice planet you found in Alpha, then you're gonna be throwin' coal in that furnace like an Arab in a Russian winter.

I feel like the ludicrous expansiveness of the maps is also a negative, believe it or not. I notice SPAZ was brought up earlier, and that's the best possible example. A planet is not generated by its seed, the GALAXY is. Lower level planets are around the edge, with harder ones towards the middle, where the inevitable endgame story things happen. Maybe the big cities where the big bads live.

Regarding organic progression, I agree that one of the best ways would be ship-based. At your starter planet, you have actually crash-landed. To get off the planet, you need to repair your ship. This opens up the orbit, so you could go to that planet's moons, or space stations, or fight the pirates floating around it, whatever. Depends on the generation. You CAN fly to another planet at this point, but it consumes a lot of fuel to fly there point-to-point, so if you wanna burn the fuel, you can.

A more efficient option is repairing (or installing, whatever) your FTL drive. That lets you jump to other planets more effectively. It also brings in my theory on a good way to limit people jumping all over the shop.

The FTL Drive itself. The further you jump, the more your drive heats up. You can't jump while your Drive is too hot. If your drive overheats, then you immediately drop out of FTL into the gravity well of a nearby planet/thing (It may even need repairs, depending on how hardcore you wanna go). This stops a freshly FTL'd ship from jumping straight to the endgame cities. It'll take time and several jumps.

Additionally, Pirates. Pirates may attack your ship with whatever form space battles may take. They can do it normally, but if your Drive overheats, you become a big glowing target, since you can't Jump away to escape, ala FTL itself. It would then be a wide 'Beef Gate' to hold you back. If you've got the patience, skill, and force of will to beastmode your way through that, then hurrah. You are a champion and you deserve your accolades and the opportunity to get mauled by things on the SURFACE. Beastmode through that? Congratulations again, you successfully drank from the firehose.

With the pirates more likely to target ships that aren't as well equipped or with cooling-down FTL drives, it discourages players from diving into the deep end. You're more likely to hang around the appropriate level, gearing up, finding things, and upgrading your ship, in the ways of arms, armour, size, and the engines, and in the FTL drive, improving things like fuel-efficiency, cooldown times, and max jump distance. In this way, you can have a home planet, and returning there doesn't carry quite so much of a penalty, because by the time you've worked your way through the game, you could make it back in only a couple of jumps.

This also gives a bit more sense to the 'Distress Beacon'. You aren't in distress currently. You can load up your ship with coal and just sod right off. Instead, you should use the parts from the UFO you just smacked down to fix your own ship and get it spaceworthy.

Multiplayer would obviously need changes too. For one, the server has its own galaxy. Where each player ends up is a thing requiring though. Friends jumping in wanting to play together and finding themselves on the opposite ends of the galaxy with the beeline blocked by the high-level (assuming SPAZs concentric rings of difficulty) is something to avoid. I think a great option would be the ability to party up BEFORE you crash-land. You and your friends can share one ship as you bugger around the cosmos. All party members need to be on-board before the ship can leave. While a person is offline, their character could be like, sleeping or wandering the ship on basic AI.

I think I'm digressing.

But yes, the FTL drive having upgradeable limits deals with both your established base becoming unreachable in an efficient manner, and combined with pirates targetting those out of their depth would form what I think is a pretty organic progression, especially if it's not 'I need this item, then I can upgrade my ship'. It should be a combination of numerous other items that you could potentially use for something else. Hell, don't upgrade your FTL if you don't want to. Don't even GET the FTL. You could cruise around point-to-point if you want. You'd have to deal with the things inbetween, run away the old-fashioned way and use more fuel, but if you want to, then more power to you. Use those resources on a bigger gun instead if you want. Make it ORGANIC.

Making ship upgrades occupy space that could otherwise be used for furniture and crafting tools also encourages a home base. Want your creature comforts? Sure. That'll be less space for guns and stuff, doubly so if you want it to look nice, but go nuts.

And I'm not even done yet! With generatable galaxies, comes the opportunity for Generation Options. Ore density, population density, galaxy size, minimum and maximum difficulties, treasure frequency, the list goes on. Even whether you want the story to play out or not, for people who don't want to play what the story says you are. And when you've exhausted what your galaxy can give you?

You make another one. The final boss could provide you with an item (or recipe for one) that enables you to consume a vast amount of fuel jump to a completely new galaxy IF YOU WANT TO. This wouldn't be the sectors we have now. This would be NewGame+. Entirely optional, and you get all the galaxy generation options from before. Maybe even more of them. You take everything you're carrying and what's on your ship to your new galaxy. Not sure if the item should be one-use only, probably not. Sort of a 'final upgrade' (Although it's not necessary to have everything upgraded before using it. I think just having the drive would be enough.) In any case, you would also be able to return to your old galaxy if you so chose.

Well, less of a 'two-cents' and more of like, $3.50. Go buy yourself a slushie or something.

 

The big map also makes it extremely hard to find the planets I want. I've been trying to find Oceanic planets and/or Hylotl and I can't find any. I assume they aren't in the game yet but if the map was easier to read or had less stuff on it, I'd know exactly whether or not I'm wasting my time.

 

(Also, if you could see all of the Galaxy Map, then it'd give a better sense of progression since you'd be able to see the path of planets you've been on. Just sayin'.)

 

I love the SPAZ idea. That would make exploring and finding tech awesome.

The other side of that is that it further pushes away from needing to establish a main base.

 

I think the only two things that influence base-building is how easy it is to get back to it, and how viable your ship is as a complete base.

If we're going by the 'upgrading your FTL drive' thing, then by the time you've explored the planets around you, you'd have upgraded your FTL enough to get back home from the planets further out without too much trouble.

And if upgrading your ship to defend better against pirates and stuff takes up space within your ship, then that's less space for base. If you use too many decorations or storage, then you're using space that you could have filled with a gun to blow up those pirates.

 

im kinda interested in this starmap idea. it seems to be like the galactic level in spore. where you start from your home planet and adventure out wards.. and just not find random planets to fly too. Interesting Idea. I like it

 

As an Addition to OP's Idea they could eliminate Surface chests. They should spawn in Special places that are guarded by Monsters. Like a Special room that you can't mine and where you have to kill the guards.

If you kill an overpowered guard then you deserve to get the loot, no matter what the Level difference is...and the chest should then contain atleast 1 valuable item...similar to terraria.

 

It would be nice to see more chests placed with some sort of sense to them as opposed to out in the middle of nowhere. I for one would be okay with less chests spawning overall if they also spawned with some building or enemies to make them more interesting and a better chance of good stuff.

 

Frankly the aboveground chests that aren't in dungeons shouldn't contain anything more than random mining tools and basic ores, maybe biome blueprints, like the loot of an adventurer who never made it back to his base. But the rest should be in high threat areas with high threat guards, who will actually defend the chest, so it's not 'run across surface of planet until I find a level-appropriate weapon'.

 

I dont like this idea either. Why to unlock planets when you can instead unlock (or get) a technology that alows you to survive in this planets?. This is for me there real experience of exploration: next to my planet there is a very cold planet and with toxic air, I can extract some data about the surface of this planet from my current planet, enough to know if the gravity/temperature/air are ok for surviving (only if i have the right technology, but this one is easy to get at the beginning), if I go there with my spaceship then i can get some more interesting data (maybe about what resources can I get or even a very simple map with some important points of the planet), and with all this i can make a bookmark and some annotations, so the trip was worth it and i can leave it for when i get stronger / the right technology.

Then if even knowing that this planet is cold and toxic i want to go there and beam down without the right technology, I CAN, and i will last for a few seconds before dying either of cold or of unbreathable air!. Or I can leave it for when I am ready (with the right technologies and weapons). This is how in real life will work, its more fun, and you have the progression and the "tiers" anyway.

The situation of this planets should be totally random, like in a real universe. But not senless random like now... i don't ask for a super realistic game, but come on, it is not so hard to make cold planets the ones that are far from the start and hotter the ones that are close to it, and earth like the ones that are somewhere in the middle and have a earth (or superearth) kind of size... and taking into account the size of the star too! So you can guess how hot a planet is just looking at how far is from the star and how big the star is, and you can guess the gravity of the planet by its size and you can even get a clue of what kind of planet it is with the color of it without having to clic in the planet. I can't avoid feeling bad when i find a snow planet that is really really close to a very big star!! or a very cold planet that is very far from the start but with satellites that are really hot!

And having a map like NeedsLoomis showed at the beginning "slowly growing out our little area of space into a big map of conquered and explored planets" its a must have for me, it really makes you want to explore and be proud of your progress.

Also with this system, wonderful things can be added once we go from beta to realease, planets should grow and grow on variety: planets without a living thing, too hot, where you can survie a minute or two but you can get an unknown mineral from its surface, not present in any other planet; a planet with giant monters that drop amazing things but you can't even try to kill them now, so you beam down and think "what the heck..." and make your annotation and 2 months later you come back with a crazy powerful weapon or some mech; a planet with a gravity so strong that you walk really really slow and suffere damage so you can only go down with the right mech...

The first planet should be easy of course, and they can make it that the moon/moons of this first planet are quite habitable too, and maybe this first solar system has 2 - 3 planets in the "habitable zone"... and then, for the rest of space, randomness as I described before.

And of course in the future diferent races should have more/less tolerance to some kind of environments.... I could go on like that forever, this game have too much potential, and possibilities, but its my opinion that they are choosing the wrong aproach and wasting this chance of feeling like you are really lost out there, in space as it is, and having a natural progression in a "real" agressive universe.

 

Somehow the devs decided against heat... strange decisions indeed.

 

You make a good point, but I question why this is a problem. If they choose to do that, and are able to pull it off, why not let them? They would still be subject to organic progression as discussed previously, ie: can't breath on a toxic planet without a respirator, or can't mine the best minerals/break the strongest blocks without a high tier pick. Terraria pulled this off pretty well and it is FAR superior to 10 arbitrary sectors with a generic difficulty curve if you ask me.

Very well said my friend, it's worth quoting.

 

OPs idea is great. I don't know how this could fit into development, but I'd love the dev team to take note

 

This is a really awesome idea, I would LOVE to try this system out. Exploration is kind of bland at the moment after all, and I would have to keep a notebook of coordinates in order to know where I've been, not that it matters since I can just jump to random stars in random places without actually knowing WHERE it is in relation to where I just was. I hope this gets looked at and considered.

 

I just thought of this right after posting, but hey OP, why don't you take this to the suggestions area?

 

I think it is becoming difficult for the dislike of the tier system to be ignored by the developers. I've found several threads with the same general idea. Here's a link to a thread that is of the same idea. Make sure you "like" all the threads you agree with as a sort of vote.

http://community.playstarbound.com/index.php?threads/the-game-we-want.48657/