Why I Don't Build Anything in Starbound

Basically We're Nomadic
I've played many characters already on Starbound, and not once have I built any real home, mansion, or cool structure with the blocks I collect or craft. The reason is because the idea of exploring a randomly generated universe does not give us incentive to stay behind on any world. We're basically space nomads, hopping from solar system to solar system, sector to sector.

Why Should I Settle On Any World?
This is a question I find myself asking several times. Sometimes, I'll land on a really nice and cool-looking planet, but the urge to leave and explore other worlds is much stronger. Eventually, I get tired of the world, and do leave, once I've dug deep enough and have spent enough time spelunking. Really, what reasons do I have to settle and build cool laboratories, or stations? I want to build an awesome colony city and spawn all these villagers. But where? Which planet? Once I build it, then what? It serves no other use or purpose, and I'll still end up leaving.

Incentives to Build
I believe Starbound needs to work on a couple incentives for players to really get creative and build stuff.

For one: starships should limit what you can place in it. Starships should not have the capacity to house all my stations, chests, etc. Perhaps a crafting table, but certainly not a stone furnace! or a metalwork station. By creating this limit, players are forced to really have a homeworld, and to build there. With the addition of the homeworld warp, this would work well.

Two: Most stations, and high tech structures, lights, decoration, etc ought to require some form of energy source such as electricity. Perhaps the player can build Generators blocks that emit a radius of "electricity". Stations/blocks/lights/etc that require power can function within the radius of a Generator block, or Generator Station. Some people might suggest wires, but that can become tedious and chore-like imo. Generators should not be able to work on starships, only on planets.

Three: Spawnable NPCs and captured mobs ought to have more complex AI. Of course, Chucklefish is no doubt working on this. I believe that as AI becomes more complex, players will feel more reason to invest time in building structures, colonies, etc, in order to simulate an npc society or village.

 

I play similarly. I'd like to settle but the game is mainly about finding what else is out there. I think maybe a space station as a home would suit the game's feel a little bit better. I'd like to see the team put in some incentives to keep exploring and settle down as well. something such as befriending natives of your home planet will make them follow you and support you. you could recruit 2 people and make a 3 man crew or possibly have a small fleet alongside your ship to aid you in space combat. simple stuff like this.

 

Well hehe that's not that simple when it comes to programming it, especially considering the huge list of things Chucklefish wants to refine and add. But it's a cool idea nevertheless.

You brought up a good point though: the other alternative is that you only really build inside a large starship/station, or you build your own starship/station. Planet structures stay as shelters and quick builds.

 

So, in Terraria we built for 3 main reasons:

1) All the action happened on one world.
2) There was no safe haven like a star-ship already established.
3) NPC's needing homes in order to spawn and stay out of harms way. Invasions of various sorts brought us back to the surface.

I'll build a house on a level 10 planet in the X sector, as I've reached the "end game" for now.. and the introduction of a 'homeworld warp' choice sort-of supports doing so as I don't mind moving my ship around. But the ship is still the best place to place your crafting equipment and chests to store stuff in because there's minimal setup needed (unless your a little ocd like me and wants everything to be pretty). But more importantly there's no monsters to threaten you.. nor NPCs that provide these crafting necessities that you need to appease. There's nothing to gain besides decorative reasons or square footage to drop 3-4 refinery's if your staying on that world for an extended time. And with the new upgradeable ships coming (or are they already here I don't think so?) that sets those back some.

I don't know what dangers could exist for the ship without feeling really out of place. So I look forward to seeing NPC interaction and/or items that can only be used off-ship.

 

Those are good points, Twisted.

There just seems no reason at all to really build anything grand or nice on any planet, considering that it's so much simpler and efficient to place all your needed stations/chests in your starship. There's no reason I should spend hours on end to build pretty buildings when I'm constantly hopping to different worlds.

 

I don't know how it will work later on, but I think there will be incentive in the future. Chucklefish did mention space battles where enemy NPC's could board your ship. If you have a BUNCH of junk on your ship that impedes mobility and other such, there might be less incentive to build on your ship than you would on a single planet you could call home and teleport to at any given point in time.

I mean think about your ship being just FULL of tons of junk you use to craft and whatnot with tables, platforms, and whatever else, and then suddenly a pirate ship boards yours, and tons of enemy NPC's just start spilling in blasting and swinging every which way, and you have absolutely no way to hide or move because you've compacted yourself to so little space. Then your ship's just a floating death trap. I'm sure Chucklefish will think of some clever way to implement this fairly, but at the same time, it just gives a little food for thought that maybe future implementations will inadvertently give you reasons to not build on your ship and actually establish a place on a planet.

 

I believe you are right when it comes to giving us more of an incentive to build land wise. Maybe we can generate much more Pixels and/or inhabitants of a colony we create that help us from things like ship maintenance(When and if that requirement comes) to simply farming.

 

So far, as I see it, this game is not trying to be a Terraria clone, and therefore the incentives for building on planets may no longer apply.
Starbound is about spaceships and space exploration. The planets are used more for resource gathering and monster slaying. If you want to let your creative side loose and build stuff on a planet, then you have the option to do so. However, as this game is about space, it is convenient to have things ready on your spaceship without relying on a home planet. When the space stations and spaceship upgrades come out, there will be even less reason to rely on a planet for all your crafting and survival needs - and I am OK with that.
With that said, I still would not mind getting some incentive to make use of the home planet more.

 

I think required buildings with energy source to allow crafting objects/tables to work would be nice. Everything being self powered makes it too easy. Wires could be an optional type of generator. Options are fantastic in games like this as they create artwork variations.

Wires are thin so you could get loads out of just one bar of metal.

This game needs to expand on Terraria and have buildings such as stables/menagerie for pets, greenhouses for crops and even vehicle or turret housing.

Give larger bonuses to buildings on the ground that are set up correctly.

 

My suggestion was to have late game city building where you gain pixels as tax from merchants you set up(though merchants will need certain things before they'll move there). Late game content would be locked behind the requirement of needing a large enough city to spawn a special merchant.

 

The limiting stations idea is really great, but It would slow down exploration, etc., which at this point would be a problem.
I don't think it is interesting for a player to stay longer at a planet than is necessary, the way the game is now. There is not enough variation within a planet itself to keep it interesting for a longer time and there is the problem that sticking on a planet for a long time would slow down progression immensely.

I also feel there is still a lack of decorative blocks for building, a (much) greater amount of decorative blocks would also make building much more attractive as an activity.

 

I'd like to be able to have a true home.
NPCs that explore and hand me cool stuff they may have found when I visit.
A 'base defense' style thing where you have your happy little colony, but outside its walls, things are WAY dangerous. Turrets and traps to defend the citizens. don't judge bros, it's always been a favourite thing for me
Attacks by pirates and other civilizations. Sieges to break through. Imagine returning to your homeworld to find a fleet in orbit for you to smash through. This is where the space combat comes in.
You break through and rush down to the surface to see if your people are safe, only to find chaos; walls being besieged, invaders raining down in drop pods, hell, even anti-air turrets firing tracer rounds into oncoming pods and ships. A fleet of friendly ships comes to investigate distress signals and ends up helping you fight off the invaders.
I dunno, maybe I'm too imaginative. But it'd be cool. True action kinda stuff.

 

I tend to have a home base where I store things that don't fit on my ship... but I do like building cities, and a big base made out of crystal or bricks with violium stuff cause it's pretty. Crap AI or not it is neat to see NPCs wandering about. Sometimes i do leave and with the ship upgrades happening I may put more things on and spend more time on my ship.. but i do still need to gather wood for coal and ores to build nice things. It's all about play style. There should be nothing to force people to build just as there should not be anything to force them not to build.

A limit to what you can put on the ship would be an example of forcing someone to do something. While the idea of building on a planet seems nice the fact of the matter is you have an entire universe to explore and you should do it. If you happen to find a planet you like then set home and make a little or huge city if you so wish. If not then wander the stars.

It's all about how you choose to play the game. no one should be confined to one route in particular.

 

That's a good point about slowing down exploration. I think you ought to be able to place some stations in your ship, but maybe you can't craft lots of decorative objects, or late-game items. Or maybe you're limited in numbers of chests you can place on your starship.

 

A fair point, but currently we have this amazing environment to build and engineer with and we have to say ignore it and any sense of utility, leave it for decorative purposes? That's the vibe I'm getting and I don't really like.

 

I will certainly build a home on a planet somewhere... once there is more to craft with. I feel, and I'm pretty sure that many other's feel the same way, that at this early point in alphabetatestingetc that we're in, the lack of craftable items limits the ingenuity of many of we folks that that hours of enjoyment from creating our own little worlds. Really, at this time we have raw blocks or items we tear-down for the few existing structures in the game. My artisan brain is all a-tingle when I think about the variety of blocks currently available, the ones not yet released, and the plethora of possibilities of crafting that will inevitably follow. Hell, I crafted a crapton of glass blocks just for the sake of it, just to craft.

 

literally the only reason I don't build is that there is going to be another wipe sometime in the near future.
I think enough incentive has been added with the ability to teleport to your home planet for free. As that takes away one of the consequences, and allows you to just go there whenever you want.. which allows you a huge amount of room for storage that no one but you and those you give the coords to can access, access to any minerals on your home planet, merchants, building materials...
Well there's one other reason that I hope will be fixed, the meteorites. I don't mind them destroying blocks if I have some way to counteract that.. like a regenerative forcefield, or something I can build that controls the weather around my area and makes it never rain/meteor shower/asteroid hit. Until then the only things I'll be building will be underground, because there's no easy way to negate the damage incurred by meteorites.

 

I personally don't have the spaceship as my permanent home because it's cramped. There's so little space to put all your stuff AND keep everything neat and evenly spaced.

 

I found me one Nice Jungle Planet and make it as a Home Base (in Beta Sektor) and i like it, cause i have there my Farm and i always Return there from other Planets to Make some Stuff, Farm Food and think about expanding.
Cause of Storming i do have a Nice looking Underground-ish Well. But now i do not Like the "normal" Rain cause it don't creates Water...

So looks like i am not a Nomad, more like a Space Adventurer that always goes Home if he needs to.
But i do like your Idea's of Electricity, it was always Fun to Experiment with the Redstone Mechanics in Minecraft and Build some Traps with it^^

 

I really Like the Electricity idea and understand peoples issues with placing wires. But I feel that what they implemented for connecting doors with control panels would be suitable to connect anything requiring power to a power source. You could maybe even limit the amount of things a generator could power creating tiers of generators that progressively power more and more.