I want to build a planet-wide city!

One of the cool sci-fi tropes that I feel is really missing from Starbound are the cool planet-spanning cities, the huge metropolises full of sky scrapers, seedy underbellies, and tons of varied and interesting characters. It's especially glaring since we have evidence of these existing (Ruined Planets) but none in their glory and prime. So I want to do the annoyingly difficult and time consuming process of creating my own. I figure before I really get started with such a huge project though I'd get some feedback, suggestions, and advice from the community.

The biggest issue is figuring out: What kind of planet do I build on? Barren would be easiest, Toxic or Ruined would provide probably the best backgrounds, but there's something to be said for many of the others as well I'm sure. I'm leaning towards a 3,000 - 4,000 size planet, just to keep it manageable.

Another big issue is... what do I fill this city with? I kind of like using the Hylotl Underwater Cities as inspiration since they seem varied and are basically already in a sky-scraper type of set up, but I certainly don't want to have the world feel too repetitious. I may make like different sectors for the different races with varying themes but I want all of it to have a very futuristic city look so it may be interesting trying to figure out how to do Novakid or Glitch areas without making them too medieval or rustic. Then of course there's tenants, I have a feeling I'll have to make liberal use of the colony system.

Also I've read that large bases tend to get very laggy. Is this due to the number of NPCs? Is it tied more into the game or your system specs? Just curious of ways I could design it big and look big without making the planet run at 5 FPS.

Any thoughts or advice welcome.

 

Ah, that would explain my own problem on one of my planets. I made a big city-tower that goes high enough to leave the atmosphere. And there are about 14 tenants PER FLOOR. It functions... but screen loading can be quite laggy. Oops.

 

I'm gonna put a vote in for the toxic planet. I had avoided them because of, y'know, flesh-melting rain and all, but then decided that it would be a cool place for a secret Apex laboratory. It was a little annoying to constantly refresh my poison antidote, but I kind of came to love the biome. 1) It's gorgeous, especially when the sun is just starting to rise, and 2) it has some of the prettiest music in the game. If I was gonna do a big city planet, I'd go toxic ocean for sure.

 

For your information, Poison Resist augment completely negates damage from acid rain and poison.

 

I'm working on a planet-wide Floran village at the moment. And devouring all non-Florans. On and off the planet. Much fun, LOTS of work, though. While I was gathering materials from asteroids above the moon's surface... along came a small meteor - BOOM, 400 damage and allll my items exploded into a huge, mile-high mess. I had to go build a sky tower just to reach them, since they were so far from the surface they wouldn't fall on their own.

 

Thanks for the advice everyone. I did check out a Toxic Planet, and I absolutely love the background for a city-planet, but not too keen on the poison ocean, I know I can build over it but this seems an even more monumental job than flattening terrain.

Just curious, is there a Toxic Planet Terraformer I could use on a Barren Planet?

 

Based on what the wiki shows, that doesnt seem to be an option: http://starbounder.org/Terraforming
Other ocean-type biomes dont seem to be included either.

 

There isn't, but writing a hack for it is trivial.


Albeit I have to warn that background becomes kind of trippy when below where waterline would have been

 

Weird! But also kind of cool. I guess I never really realized that the poison was part of the background image and not separate from it. I imagine it's the same on other planets. Could make it possible to do a very cool under-lava-themed build without all the, y'know, all the burning to death and stuff.

 

There's a mod on the Steam Workshop called "citybound" which replaces the default background of lush worlds with a really cool futuristic cityscape. It'd look a lot better than a city on a toxic planet, and it'd also be a lot safer for you and your tenants.

 

I think you should do it in the flattest 3000 sector lush-snow planet you find. You could also do it in a barren planet but i think it feels too lonely there. Anyway, I don't think the biome matters too much. Just make sure you're on a low tier(tier 1,2,3,4) and pretty flat planet before building. Also, you can make it look like the protectorate base. Put cultural buildings and make sure every room's owner has their own race's cultural design in their room/building. Other than that, just use your creativity! You will work a lot and need a lot of materials so give yourself a reason to stay determined! Good luck, hope you can make it!

 

If you are still looking for more building styles, Outpost buildings on snow worlds or the main outpost itself may work (Just be ready to make a lot of concrete), or emulate the style of buildings found on the toxic worlds if your are constructing things there, or try to think of a style that might look good on that planet type.

I may not be making city planets myself, but I am building themed fishing huts for each of the four ocean world types, a beach hut style for normal ocean worlds (Mostly wicker and bamboo), industrial large crate for toxic (iron blocks and girders), outpost styled structure for frozen oceans (Uses the same blocks as outpost buildings), and I plan a stone fort for magma worlds (based on Glitch castles and Fortresses). I will post images of my buildings once I have all four finished.

 

That's a really ambitious project, to build city over an entire planet. And if you populate it with enough colonists to make it feel like a crowded city planet, that's going to be very laggy.

Also, the background on Scorched planets might also work, if you can figure out a way to deal with the weather effects.

 

1: Lag only happens when a large number of sprites are within about 40 blocks from a player.
2: Barren planets are the best for building, if you need it flat, use /spawnitem superfishaxe

So don't worry about lag unless they live in closets.