In Master of Orion 2 (1996), the presence of sentient species spread across the galaxy, much like Starbound, meant you were never truly alone - Starbound does this similarly, but it's far more random than Master of Orion 2. This is about as far as the parallel runs with both games, but there's a way that Starbound can take notes from Master of Orion 2's (MOO2) book of excellence. So, where I'm going with this whole thing is 'to do with 'Galaxy Placement' - special customized bosses that get placed in certain star systems across the Starbound universe. The photo below shows the idea of galaxy placement when you start a game, in Master of Orion 2 (MOO2). In picture: Different sentient species populated and colonized different star systems in MOO2. Each circled area notes a different species. Now, before you may go thinking "Hold on, what does this have to do with Starbound", this is only to explore the idea of adding a library of custom bosses which get placed in the Starbound map at random, offering more to the core game. This doesn't impact the story, or halt progression of the game, as it'd be entirely optional. I explain this further.. Ifa large number of customized bosses and their minions are programmed into the game, and their goal is to be randomly placed to inhabit (at random) a star system in Starbound's near infinite galactical expanse, this could make for some interesting Bounty Hunting mechanics. This would promote another means to travel the expanses. These customized bosses would come from each playable and non-playable race in the game (Including Frog people), and would range from typical things such as Space Pirates, Mercenaries, Dictators, Terrorists, Pseudo-Freedom Fighters, and many other fitting tropes you'd imagine. Included in this, the Outpost would get a 'Bounty Hunters Den', with a Billboard that offers quests to seek and destroy (Or bring back alive if possible) these customized bosses, a few of unique NPCs in the den that give the vibe of bounty hunters presence, and a shop vendor offering rewards with (currency) 'Bounty Hunting Tokens'. The Bounty Hunter Board that offers you the bounties would give you clues including a description, a photo of the Bounty and its minions (So when you come across you'd recognize), as well as a reward, and info including difficulty and if they prefer things such as Water, Underground, the Surface, climates/biomes etc. You might travel to a star system, and find it's minions and then recognize them... But, you might not necessarily find the boss.. So you'd need to jump to a nearby planet to confront the boss. Many games have a bounty hunting mechanic, such as Monster Hunter, pictured above. Each time the game is loaded up, the Bounty Hunter Board will generate a bunch of new ones from the library of customized bosses, and keep track of the ones you're still progressing, as well as a cap on how many you can track at one time, and any that are completed are checked off so they don't pop up again. So, let that sink in. And then imagine starting up a fresh new game, what would happen is that pool of customized bosses would then be re-drawn and re-distributed acrossed the Starbound universe. So basically, each time you start up a new game, you are highly unlikely to find the customized bosses in the same place twice.
