Feedback A long list of things CF should consider for post 1.0

As the title says, these are things I'd like to eventually see in Starbound, even if every single suggestion on this list were to be added after 1.0. CF seems to have a pretty good idea of what they need to get done before 1.0, so expecting any of this to get done within that same time frame would be unrealistic. I was debating whether or not I should post this in the suggestions section, but there's just too many unrelated ideas for it to make sense to post there. I'd also like to see what others think should eventually be added to the game. Anyways, buckle up guys because this is going to be a LONG post.

EQUIPMENT SUGGESTIONS

The way dye is currently implemented is a bit underwhelming. I’d love to see a dedicated dye station with the ability to dye armor and weapons with a primary, secondary and even a tertiary color (helmet visors for example) if it made sense for the weapon or armor piece. There should be a much wider variety of color combinations instead of being limited to 12 or so. MrMagical's Dye Mod had a massive variety of colors and it was amazing. Do something like that for vanilla please.

Let players customize the color of their matter manipulator and its beam color.

Allow players to take apart random generated melee weapons and guns with some sort of disassembling/reassembling station. This would increase incentive to seek out weapons for the collection of different hilts, blades, barrels, stocks, etc to build custom weapons with the parts we think look the coolest.

In the nightly build, certain back items can be enhanced with augments. Add augments for armor that are specific to certain parts (head, chest, legs) like a breathing and night vision augment that can only be used on helmets, protection or health boost augments that can only be used on chestpieces and movement enhancing augments that can only be used on pants like run speed, swim speed, jump height, etc. Augments for weapons that replace secondary ability/elemental type would be welcome too.

Armor and weapons should get progressively more difficult to craft as the player advances through the tiers. Basic stuff like iron should be very straightforward to get while very high tier equipment like impervium should require a vast amount of different resources and processes.

Add automation like liquid pumps for fountains and waterfalls, automated farming, automated item storage, automated mining, etc.

This idea is a bit more controversial, but I'm going to throw it out there anyways. Power collection and management. Higher tier crafting stations should require energy to operate. The player could build solar arrays, wind turbines, watermills, etc and then connect them to a device that stores energy using the wire tool. They could then wire this device to the stations that need power. This would require players to build on planets to craft things. I’d also like to see campfires that use wood, furnaces that use coal, etc.

SHIP SUGGESTIONS

Modular ships. Rather than being forced to use a fixed, pre-made layout, the player should be able to expand their ship with a selection of different parts. The player would be limited to a certain number of parts based on their license or crew size.

Ship expansion parts should come with the option for a blank or filled background (with the pipes and engines and whatnot) so that we can make certain parts of the ship have custom windows using glass tiles.

Add a selection of paint jobs to choose from for ships so if someone wants a black Human ship or a red Hylotl ship, they can have it. Add the ability to switch to a different ship style, like switching to an Apex styled ship from a Human styled ship. If modular ships were a thing, it would just change the exterior textures of the ship parts to the new style while keeping the ship’s layout intact since the parts are universal across all styles.

Prevent players in survival/hardcore mode from beaming up when they’re in danger. The beam up button acts as a get out of jail free card, which makes survival pretty lame. Having an enemy spot and pursue you should temporarily disable the beam up option to prevent players from bailing out when they know they’re in trouble. When the player is safe, a short timer should initiate when the beam up button is pressed and will teleport the player once it reaches 0 without any interruptions.

Players in survival/hardcore mode shouldn’t be allowed to beam up when they’re submerged in liquids either. This will prevent them from getting a free pass when they fall into lava or are about to drown.

Make players take damage on their ship. I’ve noticed that if you’re poisoned, burning, suffering from radiation or anything else, beaming up to your ship instantly makes you invincible and grants immunity to any status effect. This is bad because it further detracts from the survival experience. Players should not be able to use their ship as an emergency safe space. If someone is about to burn to death, beaming up to their ship shouldn’t save them. Make players play more carefully.

Add ship permissions. Make it so you, the owner of the ship, have the ability to grant party members the privilege of breaking and placing things and opening containers. Make it so only the ship owner can do these things by default. This could be an option added to the list that appears next to a party member when you click on their portrait.

PLANET/UNIVERSE SUGGESTIONS

Deep underground should have lots of heat and pressure, no signs of life, lots of lava, lots of spikes, gas pockets, radioactive materials that are harmful up close and other environmental hazards. The deep underground should also have ores and rare materials that are not available near or at the surface of planets.

Asteroid fields should be very cold and have zero gravity. Some sort of booster or jetpack-like item should be required to traverse them. Asteroid fields could contain lots of ores in the floating chunks of rock and derelict ships and space stations with loot.

There’s too many habitable planets and not enough extreme ones. We need resource-rich planets with no life, but volatile weather and environments. Extremely hot or cold barren planets with storms that are deadly enough to kill the player would be awesome.

Planets with structures and npcs above and below the surface should be the exception, not the rule. The majority of planets should have no signs of past or present civilization (dungeons, micro dungeons, etc). Underground structures also shouldn’t go any deeper than the layer below the subsurface. Underground structures should also be influenced by the structures at the surface for consistency. Seeing a dirt cavern with plank houses and flowers near the molten core is just ridiculous. The underground needs to get more brutal as you descend.

Nebulae. I’m pretty sure this is a planned feature, but I haven’t seen word of it in a while and I think it’s worth bringing up again. Once the player has successfully traversed through all tiers, they should unlock the ability to pass through nebulae. These will contain planets of every type and of varying difficulty. All planets will be above threat level 6 (extreme).

MONSTER SUGGESTIONS

Bring minibosses back. They should be able to appear at the surface (ground and flying), underground and underwater. They should be rare, much larger than your average monster and have unique monster parts. They should also drop unique items that can be turned in for a reward.

More dynamic monsters. They’re currently way too predictable and all behave the same way. I want to see random generated monsters that:

• stick together in groups
• help each other
• attack each other (predator vs predator)
• prey on others (predator vs prey)
• flee when near death
• become extra aggressive when near death
• have projectile attacks (this was removed for some reason)
• call for help when attacked
• warn players when they’re too close
• flee from players upon being approached
• pretend to play dead

Bring back night monsters. They should pose a greater threat than daytime monsters and blend in with the night using dark color palettes. Make nighttime spooky again.

Bring back monster sounds. They made the game feel much more alive. Instead of making monsters shriek when they're poisoned or burning like they used to, make then grunt.

Make unique monsters less common. They need to be spread thin more in order for them to truly feel like a good find.

ECONOMY SUGGESTIONS

Make it so capsules drop pixels and nothing else. Item drops like torches, flares and climbing rope are a nuisance to players who have already progressed up to mid game.

Pixels are so abundant that they practically have no value. Monsters should not drop pixels. The amount of pixels in chests should be reduced. Make it so players have to actually earn the majority of their pixels through rent or selling goods to merchants.

Merchants should not have unlimited items and pixels. Make it so they have to restock over time. Make it so that the player cannot dump all their useless stuff into one merchant. Make specialized merchants who offer more pixels for the kinds of goods that they sell, like a doctor paying you extra for medkits and stim packs.

Tenants should always pay the player in pixels with the chance of a small gift on the side. More often than not, tenants give the player items they don’t even need or want, so please make every tenant pay in pixels.

OTHER SUGGESTIONS

Add a proper temperature mechanic. I’d like to see the old thermometer come back with a hot and cold end. The middle would be the ideal temperature. Allow insulated buildings to block the heat, cold and radiation from outside using certain devices.

Instead of just having backpacks that completely nullify environmental hazards, they should reduce how much the environment affects the player by a certain amount. Clothing items and augments should also help reduce the environment’s effects on the player which can stack up to a 100% resistance with the right gear.

Things like nighttime and storms should affect the temperature. Being wet would be deadly in cold environments.

Radiation should build up over time, getting more and more deadly as the player accumulates it. Have ways to slow down, reduce and prevent radiation poisoning with equipment and consumables. Also, add a Geiger counter sound because it would be cool.

Furniture sets are way too limited. Expand upon them. I want to see sinks, cupboards, cabinets, wardrobes, dressers, desks, lamps, nightstands, bookcases, fridges, toilets, tubs and a bunch of other stuff for a lot of the furniture sets currently in the game. (see: Pixel Goods Store mod) Themed tiles to go with the furniture sets would be awesome too.

Add a mech, submarine, aircraft and bulldozer to the vehicle shop at the outpost and offer more colors for all of the vehicles. Make vehicles require fuel or energy (not energy bar) to use.

Handmade cities that the player discovers throughout Starbound's story. Much like the outpost, these would be places that the player would visit by teleporting to from the ancient gate. After scanning enough of the related objects for Esther Bright, she would locate the coordinates of a certain place in the universe that the player would need to visit to progress. These cities could be full of interesting characters, side quests, bits of lore, merchants and other goodies. The player would have to talk to NPCs about the whereabouts of the artifact of that city's inhabitants. After searching and helping out enough, the player would eventually get the information they need to start the mission. I feel like this would make Starbound's story much more exciting.

 

I love this thread, thank you! Just so you know, I fully support and agree with these ideas; they're very well thought out.

One thing I would just die to see is a dynamic armor/weapon crafting system. For example, instead of everything being a static value, each individual stat on each piece of armor or weapon would have a range.

How that could work could be as follows; let's say that a certain dagger you want to craft has a range of 20 attack to 80. In game, it could be displayed as; Attack: +20 ~ +80. Hoping to hit that awesome +80 attack, you craft the dagger, and end up with +50 attack instead. The next dagger you craft ends up as +30 attack, so on and so forth, you get the idea (the same would apply to armors [stats such as energy and defense would be affected by this system]). If this were implemented, I would love it for it to be truly random for each time you craft a weapon/armor part.

Adding to this dynamic system, I would love to see gem/utility slots added to weapon/armors as well. Imagine that if in the game, gems/materials dropped from mobs and you could dig them up too (would be great as a part of fossil rewards). After you crafted your perfect weapon or armor, you could manually add a utility and gem slot to said equipment using an NPC (or crafting station). This NPC or crafting station would also allow for safe removal of gems/utilities without consequence (except your used gem/material would disappear and would have to find more). All of this, for a fee of course (great money sink).

What could you put into a gem or utility slot, you ask? Why, practically anything within the game's dimensions! Want fire damage added to your physical damage? Add a fire orb (just a crude example of what a gem could be) to your gem slot. Want faster run speed? Simply add a phoenix feather (another crude material example) to your material slot. Each gem and material should have it's own unique properties, and there should be a wide variance for a truly customizable experience. Be the character you want to be and build it as (this would be a great RP experience IMO as well).

To add to the dynamic crafting system even further, weapon and armors could be tiered as well. Let's say that there's an upgrade NPC or crafting station; each weapon or armor you craft should start out at tier 1, and you could upgrade all the way to whatever tier would be reasonable (I'm thinking a tier of 15 would be reasonable for a max tier). I believe this system should be dynamic as well for money sink reasons, and it would have a great sense of accomplishment and progression.

How this could work could be as follows; let's say that you crafted a level 1 dagger that you were happy with (the max being +20 attack, and you hit +18 attack). Now, you want to upgrade it. For the level 1 dagger, each tier could give you an upgrade anywhere between +2 and +8 attack. Tier 1 -> Tier 2 has a success rate of 95%, with a pixel fee of 50 to upgrade. You hit the "UPGRADE" button, and poof, it failed to upgrade. Shrugging this randomly insane unlucky roll off, you try to upgrade it again for another 50 pixels; success, it worked! However, the level 1 dagger that you just upgraded to tier 2 with just became; Attack: +18 (+3). Not liking that the tier 1 -> tier 2 upgrade was so weak, you hit that "RETRY UPGRADE" button (costing another 50 pixels). This time, your level 1 (tier 2) dagger became; Attack: +18 (+8). Jumping for joy, you happily accept this tier 2 upgrade by hitting that "ACCEPT UPGRADE" button. Of course, for armors, stats like energy and defense would be affected (just an example).

 

look, a lot of these ideas are really cool, but here is my own 2 cents:
1. can this NOT become a massive, rng-clogged gear grind? I have terraria for that.
seriously, why???? I don't want to spend three hours reforging just so I can have the gear that the boss is being balanced around. If this feature is present, it should be only on the higher-tier armors (durasteel and higher) so I'm not stuck in my starting system for a week/character. Also spending all of my pixels upgrading something I'm gonna ditch after the next boss fight grinds my gears.
2. SOME survival mechanics are alright, but
a. CF may not have the time/resources to implement them
b. Some players would prefer a more casual experience
so this could be better done by mods

also, a serious question: why should you still take damage on your ship? there's no way to fight something dangerous up there, so the only reason this applies is
1. you're low health
2. you're affected by a dot and beam up
in which case I think free invul would be alright, because honestly you're out of danger. you escaped. you shouldn't lose anything because it'll be right there in your ship.

I think it'd be better to restrict when you can beam up, maybe only while out of combat or something.

It would be wonderful to be able to dissassemble/reassenmble weapons. maybe each piece had its own stats, so that when you put it together you had a whole weapon for the tier? I'd love to be able to splice Energy Whirl onto every spear I came across, for example.
I'd also like a mode (maybe a "hardcore survival mode") where you didn't start with a ship, just a shipwreck on-planet, and you had to salvage it and find parts for the ship's systems, FTL, and whatever. IDK if this is within the stuff that CF can provide, tho.

also you should be able to paint/dye way more stuff, especially cobblestone and cobble bricks, and wood furniture.

 

I agree with 99% of the suggestions the OP posted, except for one.
I personally think that, if a player wants to beam up to escape danger, then he should be able to do so. 1) Its their choice and 2) if you don't want to use it because you consider it 'cheaty' then that's your prerogative, simply don't use it. There was a point in the older versions where you couldn't beam up unless you were on the surface, or close to it - I think that's good enough to counter-balance its usage.

 

The devs are aware that people have different ideas of what hardcore should be like.



Here an image from their blog of possible default settings they have in mind though it is always possilbe to change with 1.0 release of course. Pretty clear what the options do and it seem like the devs will allow you to pick and choose what you want somehow. So hopefully at the end of the day 1.0 will let you have it however you want.

 

Sorry for the late reply, but here it is.

Starbound always had RNG elements in it since the day its EA launched on Steam. I don't see what the problem is. The idea I posted about armor is exactly how you described it. Low tier sets would be very easy and straightforward to get while the higher tier sets would require some extra work. I want the game to feel different at higher tiers rather than just collect x amount of this ore. As for the pixels thing, that was only present in the koala versions. Pixels aren't used in crafting recipes anymore.

That's why I suggested these ideas as things to consider for post (after) 1.0.

That's what casual mode is for. Players who want more of a challenge have the option to try survival or hardcore mode. I just want those modes to be more distinct from casual mode.

What exactly is there to fight on your ship? I don't quite understand. The reason I suggested damage on ships is because I don't like how it acts a safe zone when your character is afflicted with status effects. Maybe in casual mode that's fine, but for a survival or hardcore experience, I want negative status effects to actually have some weight to them. Pressing a single button to cast all your problems away is pretty lame if you ask me. Also, you have to remember that the player loses 30% of their pixels when they die, so even if you died on your ship, you'd still lose those pixels.

That's what I suggested, but this penalty wouldn't apply on casual mode.

Sounds like an interesting idea to me.

Agreed.

 

I would like to see a proper dashing animation. and a proper after image for dashing while in morphball mode.

Oooh and bisection death animation when a slashing attack kills a thing.

A use for the ship cannons. Maybe a FTL style minigame, orbital strikes, Funstuff.

Beaming in other stuff.

 

I'd like a release date.

 

You know what's really missing in Starbound? Splash sound when you fall into water.

Or acid.

Or lava.

 

teleporter lock in combat should be a thing, much like how people in combat or movement require more time to lock down for transport in star trek.

It kinda helps that during the transport one has a few extra seconds to get hits in to prevent someone using it to flee at low health.

 

Beautiful list. Many of the things listed here are things I've wanted myself.

 

I want to build an inn, a casino, a bar, a fight club, a travel company, a school, a hospital, a police station, a fire station, a prison, a clothing store, a farm, a military base and a mansion for me... with employees, I think the tenants system should be more complex.

 

The Monster Suggestion part, is just EXACKTLY what i myself want into the game, and the rest of the list have great suggestions!

 

For the record, players were made invulnerable on their ships because there was a spate of people joining parties in multiplayer and then setting traps around their party members' ship teleporters/filling their ships with magma/etc. in order to trap them in a spawn-death loop.

 

I completely agree, solid post. One of the best and well thought out I've seen.

In my opinion, if there's one of many things that is missing from this game right now, it is bounty hunting. The mechanics required are already in the game now, and I'd hope it'd be something that gets added at a later date. In my opinion, the combat update would really be enhanced if something like bounty hunting was added to accentuate how good and fun the combat is now (In my opinion).

It got me thinking, what if Starbound had bounty hunting? Bounty Hunting is present in many games, including Monster Hunter, Witcher 3, Oddworld: Strangers Wrath, and many more. How would it play out in Starbound? What would you do? How would it work?

Since there are dynamic quests, random unique monsters, procedurally generated galaxy map, and many other things, I reckon bounty hunting would fit, as an addition to the core game. Who else would agree? I'm just looking for a general discussion on peoples thoughts..

I'll start off with painting a little picture for people so it can be comprehended as to how it can be adapted.

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.


Oddworld: Strangers Wrath made bounty hunting extremely fun, with an option to capture bounties dead or alive.

Included in this bounty hunting mechanic in Starbound, 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.


Oddworld: Strangers Wrath bounty menu excerpt.


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.