I mentioned this before quite a while back, but it was an aside to some other suggestion I was making and now I think it merits its own thread. Currently, travelling between any two bodies in the universe uses an FTL sequence of static length--whether it is between a planet and its satellites, or between planetary bodies in the same system. I feel (in my own personal opinion) that travel of this scale can be handled elegantly and help to preserve sense of immersion (as opposed to spooling up the FTL drive on the itty-bitty amounts of fuel used for such distances). I'll separate this into multiple points to keep this concise: -The core of this suggestion, which I hope is reasonable enough, is a pair of alternatives to the FTL sequence; one that doesn't involve whizzing past stars to make small hops whilst still engaging the FTL drive (to simulate travel between bodies in a star system), and another that just burns engines conventionally for intra-planetary shenanigans. -While not necessary, it would be boring to travel without having something fancy happening in the background, so I propose a panning cinematic that rearranges the bodies on-screen for small-scale travel. Sort of like orbiting the host body once and having a perspective change in other bodies that makes sense (which could still be acceptably tide-locked to the camera to keep its cutesy 2D charm). -(Optional) If the case should be that Starbound is not be buying time to work the game engine during travel sequences, perhaps making travel times dynamic might not be an issue? Given the size of the universe, a shallow logarithmic curve would suit potential travel-scale vs. willingness to wait for traversal of ungodly distances.
