Repost of my earlier suggestions from temp forum. 1. Sonic screwdriver. We had Doctor's clothes in Terraria, and Starbound setting is way better suited for DW homage. It could activate switches from distance and maybe unlock various locks (damn these locksmiths who insist to make wooden locks!) 2. Make anything called "Laser" emit rays which travel instantly (well, v=c - instant for any practical purpose at this scale). They can be visible, because in this case realism is less awesome. Their power should be related to their wavelength: red lasers suck, green are average, blue and especially purple are extremely powerful. 3. If you need fantastic-looking laser-like weapon with slower projectile, just call it "Blaster" (although it should probably explode stuff as in "blast") or "Phaser" (yeah, I know what it is supposed to be in Star Trek, but it is better this way). Or anything other really, but not "Laser". 4. Very high-tier ray weapon, outclassing any lasers: "Particle Beam". Could be multicolored, thick beam of really scary power, exploding whatever it hits (blocks should fly a bit). Basically it is supposed to be a stream of fermions (particles with noticeable mass), accelerated to relativistic speeds. Drain battery as you wish, this weapon makes sense in "I need you to die here, right now" department. 5. Gravity / Anti-gravity Field. Grenade-like weapon (more like utility tool than weapon) of two kinds and probably different magnitude variations. You throw it and in 3 seconds it activates, radiating shimmering circular field of more/less powerful gravity. It may be redundant if game does not care about gravity while calculating kinetic energy blast from falling to really deep holes, but if it does - this could be interesting gadget. Oh, and it could stop flying enemies used to their native planet gravity from flying. That Space Wyvern could be very surprised being crushed by his own weight. And maybe some/all g/a-g field emitters could be reusable, or even being permanent structures / semi-permanent devices, powered via wires and probably some fuel.
I personally find the reusable gravity field to be an interesting idea. Instead of a 3 second wait perhaps it could deploy the moment it makes contact with anything or even deploy where you clicked. If it worked in the latter way, the uses would vary greatly being anything from causing a boosted jump by deploying mid air anti-grav fields or using one to float if deployed at an opportune moment. And the gravity multiplying variant could find application within battle using it against flying enemies to cause a plummeting death or perhaps using it near a long range enemy could curve projectile attacks away from you. I could make a list of the applications for such a thing.
In fact, most important is the core of the idea: appliances of various form and power with similar function: local alteration of gravity. Said appliances could and should be in very different packages, including both mine variations and yours, RPPanda.
I agree with that in whole, there is no reason for there to be only a single type of gravity changing device. There could be many sorts of ways to change the gravity. For full planet alterations previously mentioned pre-built buildings could be deployed that act much like the confirmed weather station possibly allowing you to set the exact magnitude of the gravity. For large area changes that cover maybe a biome's worth of an area(by Terraria standards) a possibility would be small deployable satellite-esque bot or something like it. For small area there could be something placed alike to a torch with a small radius of effect. And back to the original idea, there could be temporary ways to change the gravity such as the aforementioned grenades and perhaps a gun could be obtained that could shoot these grenades where you clicked. This is of course just me spit-balling ideas, but I really think some variation of this should be in the game. I would appreciate any constructive/destructive criticism on the idea.
