Hello. This is my first suggestion for this great game of yours. I love the whole idea that you all have going with completely random generation for everything. Diversity in a game brings it closer to life. So, as my first suggestion, I would like to propose something for bosses in the game. Instead of making bosses that do the same stuff every time you fight them, what if bosses themselves were also random? I don't yet know what you're planning to do in terms of bosses and planets, but for now I'll just say each planet has at least one boss. When the planet is generated, the boss would be generated uniquely as well, in accordance with the style of the planet. So, if you were traveling to that tentacle planet you've posted pictured of, the boss there might look like a giant octopus or something. Whatever the case, the boss would also generate something else other than appearance. Each boss would generate its own individual fight mechanics! Fight mechanics make a boss fight what it is. What would Ragnaros from World of Warcraft be without his giant flaming hammer Sulfuras? So, when it comes to generating fight mechanics for a boss, you could make a massive list of all kinds functions that handle unique boss mechanics ideas. This way, you could encompass everyone's ideas for boss fights into the game! For instance, someone might think that it would be cool for a boss to gradually grow larger and more powerful as the fight progresses. In addition, someone else might think that a boss should spawn more and more minions as the fight goes on. You could take these two suggestions, produce chunks of code that would have the boss do those things, and then throw them into the boss mechanics list. Then, when a boss goes to choose its mechanics, it would randomly decide a combination of them from the list. It doesn't just stop there. Randomly generated bosses could also be tied into radiant quests from the dwellers of its specific planet. Bosses could chose a certain number of mechanics in its combination depending on the difficulty of its planet. Bosses could drop infinite numbers of rare and powerful equipment. The items that a boss drops could relate to that boss's unique mechanics. Planets could even have more than one boss! With this idea, the possibilities for a boss would be absolutely endless. Your development team alone can only think of a limited number of different boss fight mechanics, but the ideas of the entire community around this game could make the challenges of a boss limitless. I urge you to consider using this idea. I believe it would be invaluable towards making a more diverse universe in Starbound.
Thank you very much for your support! I really hope that this feature will be added to the game. A truly diverse game must have aspects of individuality in all things, including bosses.
Not necessarily. While taking the time to gather a sufficient number of good boss mechanics might take some time, it most likely would not take much to actually program the functions. Most mechanics are simple and revolve mostly around the current health or periods of time. So, if you wanted a boss to spawn 5 little monsters when he reaches 75%, 50%, and 25% health, you could just attach a mechanics function that would perform health checks on the boss to see whether or not it was time to spawn the enemies.
