Enemies destroying terrain? Learn to stop worrying and love the bomb. Do it. The main problem with griefer NPCs in other games like Minecraft or Terraria currently is that we only have 1 world to work with and the enemies spawn in the same dimension as your beautifully-crafted megalopolis of sorts. But Starbound is different, and should be different. Here's why Starbound shouldn't have problems with that (and also why we need more griefer NPCs): Firstly, you spawn in your little piece of heaven up in the sky. So what are the chances of the enemies continuously spawn-killing you? Near-zero. Common enemies "poof" when you die. They disappear when you die. Take the probability of getting spawn-camped to hell from the above point, put it in a Kindergarten-level equation and the answer you will get is in really tiny decimals (the only factor is your bad luck). Enemies and bosses can easily be cheesed with cheap tactics such as "spamming dirt blocks all over them and behind you" so they can't touch you while your arrows fly through that 1 tiny crack in the wall and kill them easily. Terraria has tried to stop these from happening by making them ignore blocks altogether, and it works. But where is the fun in that? Would you like to see a dragon in the sky, the dragon a Dragonborn would respect because it can literally destroy the planet with 1 breath of explosive, anti-planetary, doomsday pepper breath? Or a boss that could summon laser beams from the sky that turns the planet into a massive Swiss cheese? Do you like explosive nuclear devices capable of leveling at least half the planet? If your answer to any of these is a "no", you're a sad person and I do not wish to speak with you further. Oh no, a planet is completely and utterly destroyed! Well, fret not my friends for Starbound is not limited to 1 world/1 dimension. We have probably a billion planets up there waiting for us to land on them, why weep furiously on 1 planet full of exploding, block-crunching jerks when you can just fly away onto another planet? Oh sure, you can argue that it is possible to have all the monsters in said planet to be block-destroying annoy-a-trons which makes mining and gathering resources just to escape the planet a pain. I would say, who cares? Such an occurrence should only be affected by your bad luck. Also, it makes the game much more fun with the added constant fear of monsters digging through blocks and killing you like serial killers they are. But of course, we have counter-measures in the form of blocks. Reinforced-steel blocks that resist damage. Blocks that won't even budge at all from drills (and has to be extracted in some specific way). Starbound is a sci-fi game so it should be possible to research on a High-Tech Nanoweave Harmonic Anti-Disintegration Matter. Even if it's not, there is always space for Really Expensive Magic-Infused Invulnerable Blocks. Here's why it could be a problem because of some limitations Starbound has: Inventory. It will be messed up to hellish extents with a tonne of dirt blocks somehow managing to find a way to slide their way into your backpack. Fast despawning items. This ought to be fixed fast, items currently despawn really quickly. You can't bear to dig or cut trees if you aren't going to immediately pick them up because they disappear within minutes in plain sight! Current possible solutions to the above problems (and why my idea should work): Maybe make some sort of filter that would determine what sort of items would get sucked into your backpack. Maybe make it a craftable tech upgrade that unlocks this option. I don't know, get creative! Give options! This one's obvious, just drastically increase the item despawn time. Starbound already has a neat feature items on the ground will try to stack onto one another to reduce the amount of entities on the screen, so maybe make items more magnetic towards each other so they stack more often! In conclusion, I'd prefer if enemies are able to destroy blocks. Give them a range from weak to devastating: some enemies can destroy blocks but aren't great at it, some can't at all, some could just walk through blocks and break them without worry. alternatively, add some sci-fi holographic ghosts in the game-- make some enemies pass through blocks! Make bosses be able to destroy blocks no matter what, and make them effective at destroying blocks! Variety is important! Make a wide range of enemies, give them different abilities. Increase the amount of species on a planet, even just 1 more can make a difference! Early beta is never too late, so I hope things will improve to incredible levels over time.
