The basic idea is you represent something (a Faction) and when you go on a planet you try to convert the natives to your empire. So let say, at some point during the game you encounter some factions and you get to either join them or create your own. Then when you go on a planet and find a village, you could help them (maybe through side quest. i.e. Defeat a boss on the planet, give them new technology, etc). When you gain enough notoriety with them, they would join your Faction. It could be an alternate way to unlock a new sector rather than the current "summon boos -> build upgrade -> travel to new sector". By helping a village to grow into something much bigger, it could develop new technologies for you to learn or simply upgrade your ship. At the same time it's a nice incentive to build structures on a planet. If you add stargates, you could link your empire together for something more ? You could add a system to start developing a village when you encounter a random npc alone in his house on a planet. Or have an option to bring him on board to settle somewhere else. I hope you get the idea.
This is at the top of my want list. The NPC spawners are good placeholders but they completely destroy any illusion of your home's inhabitants being real people/ birds/ whatever.. I've said in another thread - I don't think a home base should grant anything that cant be attained otherwise but it could be a fun change. For example, you could pay to upgrade your ship at a space station or you could go to the trouble of gathering materials and finding experts to have a space port of your own. The idea of your actions influencing other settlements is cool as well and something only a generated world type game can do right. You could be peaceful and bring prosperity with you or be space reavers and leave only ashes behind.
Hold up dude this idea would turn starbound into a game it isn't.It is NOT a strategy game so building an empire and research tech sounds way different than the game the devs want to make,and that game is a space adventure game.
So you know exactly what the Devs want Starbound to be and what every other player wants from the game? Adding the ability to research tech and befriend other factions wouldn't turn Starbound into a strategy game any more than the ability to build houses and add NPCs make it a City Sim. I don't see how additions like this could hurt the game, especially if players are not forced to forced to use them.
This is a cool idea, but it seems more like mod territory than something that will officially be added to the game
Sure are a lot of really interesting ideas that I think could be really epic for the game, However I fail to see how some of them could be executed. And indeed the empire thingy sounds like a total grind-fest :S Maybe if you gave more thought into the actual mechanics and processes of how they should make this possible, then they'd might be able to salvage something really neat from all of this.
