I offer this tentatively, knowing that Starbound's emphasis is on manual space exploration. We know from the Starbound building demo that you can establish bases, other than your central hub station. If this idea follows as such, you can establish a hundred bases on a hundred different planets. What if you need some iron, but the planets in this system are depleted of iron? Just hop into a teleporter, and fly away to your iron mine in another galaxy. Yes, with this logic you could just hop around to each system and use it as a fast-travel, if there is none. However I think that the following might deter people from creating teleporters willy-nilly. 1. Teleporters cost a lot to build. Why waste all your materials when you're not going to use it? 2. Teleporters need parameters to be built. Like moving in an NPC in Terraria, teleporters can only be placed in certain areas. Some ideas of those parameters would be: Can only be placed in houses (floor, walls, light, roof) with higher level technology inside, and maybe an NPC. 3. Teleporters cannot be built on/near colonized areas, unless given special permission. You can't have a teleporter in an Avian city, unless they allow it. This parameter can be either to colonized planets (can't build teles on colonized planets) or to cities. 4. Teleporters require a cooldown. Jumping through space requires a lot of energy. It's gonna be hot before you can step onto it again. 5. Your ship needs to get to you before you can travel through space. Depending on the distance traveled, your ship will have to catch up with you, before you can fly again. 6. Teleporters require an external item to operate. Like the quantum relay nonsense in Mass Effect 2 with the communication, teleporters need to be linked together, and depending on the tier of linking system, the teleporter can have x amount of possible destinations, unless it's only one teleporter can link to another.
This simply replaces the already FTL Jumps. Simply a function to easy share and bookmark coordinates would be nice to share and travel everywhere. Something similar would be FAST Teleport System between planets in the same solar system for example.
I like it. Cooldowns and external item dependencies would prevent the teleporter from becoming a "replacement" for the ship seeing as though the priceless element "uranium"(or whatever powers it) would be harder to come by than fuel, and it wouldn't be far-fetched to implement seeing as though teleportation already exists in the game(beaming to and from the ship). On the other hand the utility wouldn't be counterproductive either. Say you find one planet abundant in many useful/peerless elements and metals, but it turns out to be toxic or just flat-out dangerous(lvl 70+). If that isn't bad enough, said planet is on the other side of the galaxy from where your homeworld or supply depot is. So you can either waste all the money you earn off said materials just buying fuel for the trip... or you can set up a two-way node between your treasure trove planet and a moon orbiting around Tallon IV(Metroid reference FTW) upon which you've built a huge supply depot. Now you have fast, safe, easy access to an assortment of materials that can make tier 7-9 weapons/armor. Cast my vote in please.
Yeah i think it would be a valuable asset to have in the game If not tho. There's always moding it >D Muhahahhahahha But seriously can't Wait for this game woot ^.^
Probably one of the most practical ways I can think of a teleporter being useful, but I agree with OP, the resources necessary to construct would have to be kinda vast to deter abuse, but I'd be down for this in game.
