Hi, there! To appease my nerd sensibilities, I am compelled to post this. Please forgive me if these suggestions have already been considered. Firstly, I'd like to suggest that star colors in the game be more representative of what they actually are. Red stars are cool and blue stars are hottest. The opposite is implied in Starbound! Wikipedia has a good article detailing stellar classification: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stellar_classification 2) Is it too late in the game's development to include binary stars? This star configuration is more common than not, but it’s theoretically rarer for planets to orbit them. 3) When considering star rarity, red dwarfs are, by a considerable margin, the most common stars. Blue supergiants are the rarest. 4) Planets harboring organic life should be within a “Goldilocks zone”, which should be relevant to its host’s size and type. I wouldn’t put an earth like planet within 1AU of a blue supergiant. Although, a blue supergiant probably wouldn’t host planets with life since their own lifespan is too short for evolution to occur. 5) Life harboring planets feel far too common. 6) Not every planet / moon has to have value. I believe a significant portion of planets in any given solar system should be garbage, irrespective to the star it orbits or its proximity. Starbound feels too “rich” with planets. 7) A planet’s difficulty level shouldn’t be determined from star type (unless you add blacks holes, neutron stars, or some kind of variable star). It should be determined by the planet’s proximity to its host. Proximity values may change relevant to the star type. Thanks!
Fun fact: In the present stable release, star color actually is more realistic to the planets therein: Blue stars tend to have hotter planets and red stars have mostly colder planets. I briefly spoke with @metadept about this change on the nightly feedback channel (so he can correct me if I get this wrong) and he said that this change was made so that the colors are better coordinated with the planets therein--red for fire, blue for ice. In other words, the stars are now Colour-Coded for Your Convenience. It's the same reason you can place torches on an airless moon and heal a burn with a simple bandage: Accessibility and fun over realism. If you want something more realistic, I recommend Kerbal Space Program. Personally, I'll stick with medieval robots coexisting with sentient plants.
Thanks, Dinoyipi. I contend that color coding for convenience is unnecessary. What exactly becomes more accessible by using a naming convention that is completely counter-intuitive to 3rd grade science? Kerbal Space Program looks fun. I might try that out after I finish FTL.
Simply put, it's for those who may not have learned about real life star colors in 3rd grade, or have forgotten it over the years. I don't see the point in letting such a small lack of astronomical know-how affect a game which emphasizes fun over fact. Same with some of your other points, like the "Goldilocks zone" and having not as many habitable worlds: Such changes may make the game more accurate to real life, but it wouldn't be as much fun to explore. Of course, there's always mods, which I've heard will be easier to make in the next stable release. You could probably find or make a mod that makes Starbound as realistic as you want it to be.
Thanks for your feedback, but my recommendation to change the naming convention to real-world use is worthwhile. You assert that it is detrimental to someone who may not know stellar classification, but I doubt that anyone who "needs" it dumbed-down would care one way or another. As far as exploration, the game is so rich with planets and resources so close to home, there's really no reason to go more than 1000 clicks from your starting sector. What fun is that? That's not exploration at all. It's seeing everything the world has to offer in your back yard. I would love it if the developers forced the gamer to visit all corners of their universe to see all the awesome stuff.
The Upbeat Giraffe update brought this issue to my attention when the frozen stars were shown as blue and the fiery stars are red. All things considered if it were a frozen star you might consider making it a feint purpleish-pink to represent a brown dwarf. But this is a problem that needs fixing. If only to make it so I don't roll my eyes every time I try to find a specific planet type and therefore star type.
