Given that Starbound is somewhat continuation of Terraria, i thought: How about learning some lessons about Terraria and how about not repeating the same mistakes made, eh? In this study, the main focus should be things like design, balance and features rather than terrarian content. NPCs: All of the NPCs lacked the means to defend themselves. With some NPCs i get that, but it is ridiculous that the Arms Dealer would sell ammunation and weapons, but couldn't fend for himself even against lowest possible level enemies. Suggestion: Security Guard NPCs for hire to defend your base in a hostile enviroment (note the difference to mercenaries) It was awfully hard to get the NPCs to move to their intended rooms. Best way of course was to move so far that they would simply spawn in the right place, but that was still quite problematic in multiplayer, as at least one of the players would be staying near the NPC town most of the time and having all of the players go far away from the base to get the NPCs to spawn isn't all that convenient. Suggestion: Having some well established furniture like ladders and standardized stairs that NPCs could use. NPCs lacked the instinct of self-preservation and kept opening random doors at random times. This of course lead to base designs in which NPCs keep dying to traps (that were intended against creatures) and opening doors to invading creatures or to (logical conclusion) bases, in which NPC areas were more like prisons/containers and player areas would be isolated from the unintentionally harmful NPCs. Suggestion: better NPC AI to keep them from making suicides and to, say, close the door after them. Perhaps even making way for the players (that would for example want to access a chest).
Creatures: Some creatures could maneuver in ways that go so far way from what the player could do, that it counts as the AI cheating. Suggestion: Things like "wall hack" (ability to move through walls) or shooting through walls should, for the most part, be paired with similar/"as practical" player abilities and/or weapons and/or means to block attacks (Shields are confirmed!) AND / OR Good enough creature AI so that they don't have to cheat! Creature spawning results creatures stacking in inaccessible places or unbearable concentrations of stationary Creatures (in doorways and choke points) or ridiculous swarming of indestructible defenses in the Dungeon. --> Resulting either too little or too many Creatures to actually reaching the player. Suggestion: Having the trapped Creatures to spawn to a different random location after some sensible time of 'being trapped'/'not being able to do anything' and perhaps having some kind of limit as to how many stationary Creatures there may be in the surrounding area. --> Further developed suggestion: Having somewhat variable spawn rates: times of lower spawn rates (also known as 'good luck'), times of higher spawn rates (also known as 'bad luck'), lower spawn rates after beating lots of enemies in a short period of time (reward for being awesome & time to heal the wounds) possibly even having some creature types to form packs/herds/flocks (overriding random spawning of random types of Cretures) Thats all i had in mind, please: continue the discussion below.
Good ideas, those npcs in terraria were annoying sometimes i dont know if the npcs will have to fight on your space station and the doors will be automatic i guess, but good suggetion
