The Game We Want

Just wanted to say well done "clap". I love the time you put into your post. Anyway, i would love to see something similar to what the op has posted. This is a great idea. The new patch really made each sector the same difficulty. I actually like the way the planets used to scale from 1-10 in each sector. It made me feel like i was progressing in tiers through the game, and extended its longevity. This would be a creative way to have multiple difficulties within the same sectors like before. I love it. Now i understand the later sectors are, for the most part, unfinished, but just wanted to leave my post agreeing with the idea the OP had.

 

Wow, um... yeah, this idea. It's kinda amazing, and it's a lot like how I was kinda envisioning Starbound to be prior to the beta's release. Right now, the only real environmental hazards are lava, toxic pools, and cold, and even the latter isn't implemented entirely. Rain happens, but it's meaningless and just serves to hog my system's resources.

Most planets have an identity to them, (jungle planets have destructible groundcover that provides plant fibers, grassland planets lack trees, tentacle worlds have corrupt dirt & tentacles for trees) but the only real difficulty is the ever-ongoing train of increasingly-powerful hostile wildlife.

I'd like to see the game's challenge lie less with the mobs that spawn, and more with the environment as a whole, mobs included. You can wind up with exceedingly dangerous worlds with native creatures that are pitiful, or you can find worlds that are idyllic save for their nasty hostile wildlife. You might even find worlds that have no life, or abundant life. Let the player determine whether or not a world is worth landing on by providing a basic summary of planetary factors before the trip is made.

While normally, I'm against anything that makes race more than a cosmetic decision, I've been mulling on how the game is currently designed, and I've come to the realization that honestly, race is not entirely cosmetic as it stands. For instance, while right now just about any food can be eaten by any race, when food restrictions are implemented, there's going to be some food that's toxic to some races but not others. Yet there's enough of a variety of food types that everyone can find some overlap between their diet and that of another race (with the possible exception of the Glitch and their semi-mechanized food). There's already race-oriented quirks, such as the attitude NPCs have to you based on your race and the foods you can or can't eat - so long as the racial quirks are kept subtle and carefully balanced against one another, there's no real harm in them, IMO.

All in all, I'd support this idea.

 

I agree with you with the "removing the Planet Level"-idea. But the Anomalies... it spoils most of the exploration fun. I like to land on a planet and suddenly find an Apex-Lab not knowing there was one. It's the surprise factor that keeps me exploring.
Maybe they could add a Craftable Item for your ship in the Lategame where you can scan a Planets surface! to detect intelligent Lifeforms, but it should still be unknown what it is. A Space-Pirate Enclave, a peaceful Village so on and so forth.

 

It wouldn't be hard to hide some 'anomaly' information from the player. Perhaps there's scanner upgrades for your ship - the better the scanner, the more you can discover about a world besides its gross climate statistics. But no scanner's fullproof, so there's always room for a little surprise, like a little primitive village that your scans missed, or an underground temple, or a cloaked pirate base.

 

Hey, this idea of having the planets all close to each other, and you don't know how dangerous a planet is (until you explore or scan it) also gets rid of the fuel problem. It's no longer a question of randomly picking your new target planet, but you will automatically stay close to your starting system, slowly expanding, because you won't spend all that fuel to jump to some distant planet that might be too bland or too dangerous. You'd explore around.

In Multiplayer, this would likely create pockets of civilization. Maybe you'd save fuel for the first big lucky jump to get somewhere, to escape spawn space, and then you stay in that area, having all the different difficulties around you to journey through the tech tree.

Much more realistic, too!

 

Thanks for writing all this up! Have to say that this would be amazing if the Dev's implemented this (they must do this!!!!)

 

Thanks, that make me have more hope that the game will not end up "grind-boss-next sector-grind-boss-next sector"

 

I came here to try and put my ideas into words, but you sir have already done it perfectly. I don't think you are exaggerating when you say that this is the "Game we want". The details all being subject to change of course, this is indeed the game I want! The tier system needs to go!

The only downside of your post is that now, playing the game as it currently is feels rather disappointing, when I consider what it COULD BE. However, it is not released yet, and this is just the sort of feedback they need to listen to.

 

I liked the suggestions, what can be made through modding to attend those ideas??

 

We need this! RIGHT NAOW! As it stands, the different planets currently are very similar aside from their looks. That needs to change.

Also, here is another parameter that can be played around with to individualize planets and their hazards: Daytime / Nighttime.


In reality, depending on how fast or slow a planet spins around itself and moves around it's own sun, the planet can have day and night cycles that last years or mere hours. This should make it into the game, too.

 

I strongly agree. Bump this thread.

 

That's about what we all expected from this game, bump
Now we just have to find a solution for planet leveling and removing star map sectors.

 

Replace the separate map sectors with regions of the same map, stellar nurseries, clusters, nebula all can be defined chunks.

 

This is pretty much how I envisionned Starbound to begin with. I really hope they lean in that general direction ! I'd also add that fuel should scale on how far you travel. Maybe travelling between sectors is a high fix cost. But traveling between stars and planets within a star should vary on the distance between a star. This would also complement your system, if by navigating the starmap you find some very interesting star system, maybe it's a lot further away from your current one than an other and it's going to cost you to get there !

I think that the idea of anomalies are great. I know a lot of people like the feel of exploring a planet and finding something unexpected. Maybe they could keep your idea but make the given information even more vague. Could even just be "anomaly detected" to mean anything from a dungeon to a town. It would simply help not to waste your time spending 15 minutes walking around a planet in hopes of finding a town or dungeon only to find nothing.

I'd also like to see all of this information hidden on startup, requiring you to upgrade your ship and add modules for it to be displayed, without making the whole process a huge grind for minerals.

 

This is a great suggestion! This reminds me a lot of the Dwarf Fortress embark location finder.

 

I was thinking about something like this but yours is better. PLEASE DO THIS DEVS! Thanks you

 

I can get down with this.

 

i really want to see some reaction from the devs on this topic...

 

Brilliant! I hope this gets implemented. This kind of thinking is really what the game needs.

 

Any Dev replied to this yet?