In the current state of Starbound, the only things that make your stats better is the tier of your armor. Even the weapon's damage are mostly controlled by that! My suggestions is to find a way of maybe boosting some stats individually. That would make each player's charcacters more unique (because for now, two tier 3 characters got the exact same stats) It doesn't necessarily need to be as complex as a RPG stats system. Just giving more customization on stats would be something really great to add to the game in my thoughts. Feel free to post a reply to this thread!
I mean it could be a bit more complex. Maybe a character who had more points in intelligence is weaker with melee weapons, but magic costs less and they're more likely to find blueprints. Highers strength means less blueprints but higher output damage and maybe higher weapon base damage? Maybe higher chance of finding armour? Or less cost to physical techs? And finally a high charisma, you can get crew faster and townspeople give you better stuff, but you don't have bonuses for finding stuff and your damage outputs are normal. It's three stats that suddenly give space to play styles and strategy, and its something that can be selected earlier on.
Charisma, Strength, Luck, Intelligence, Aim, and Perception would be ones that we would need. Charisma and strength should be similar to above, only strength should only affect melee abilities. Intelligence should affect energy cost for staves and tech, and how many resources are needed to upgrade/fix/build items. Luck is what affects whether you'll get good weapons and blueprints, and how much pixels you find in a container. Aim would affect how much energy guns use and how much damage they do per shot. Perception would mostly give your player a much more prominent, further glow, they get when you are in the dark as well as affect how far away you can place/destroy blocks or move the camera. I would also suggest an agility thing that affects movement speed and jump height but...
i talk about this in a lot of threads, but remember. CFG is a small team. like 16 people total including office staff, sales, marketing, community management, etc etc. just a few stats is easier to code and balance for than a ton of them would be. and starbound is a game that has already been in beta for 2+ years. I have no doubt that at some point in it's development, one of the devs thought about putting in more stats. Maybe they decided that that was something that could be done after the rest of the game's systems were working well (so after launch). Maybe they discarded the idea entirely. that said, it would be cool to have more...if CFG can justify spending time/talent/resources on more
I think they could simply keep the current stats in the game, but just find an other way to boost them than the armor that you wear.
like...rpg-style elements where you level up and get more stat points to allocate how you want? i'm not sure i'd be for this, as it's an artificial gate to progress that would require you to farm monsters to level up far enough to survive more difficult planets. also, it forces you to play a certain way (always looking for ways to earn more exp faster), which is pretty alien to how starbound has done things so far. or do you mean like having more equipment slots that give stat boosts? that'd be interesting...but remember: the more powerful you are, the more powerful they have to make monsters to keep difficult planets and missions a challenge...which is kind of a zero-sum proposition. you're more badass, but so are the things you need to kill. unless you're saying to remove all the stat boosts from armor and put them elsewhere. in which case, what's the point? there should be some reason beyond cosmetic to craft the higher-tier armors, since they take more difficult-to-find materials to create. personally, my preference would be to leave the primary stats to come only from armors, and then add something that gives some mechanical boost. maybe a stat that allows you to place items faster, or further away from your character (as was mentioned for perception). since most of the "endgame" is players entertaining themselves by building stuff, make it faster/easier to build stuff. maybe tie it to the crew system? like...this crew member gives a +10 to "perception" (substitute for whatever this mechanical stat would be named), while this one (earned on a higher difficulty planet) gives +25. so put the higher stat one into your "away team". or something. i dunno.
I think the best would be to keep everything like it is currently, but adding two or three slots where you could put accessories, that give you minimals stats boost. (+5 atk,+5def) With that, it would be possible to characterize more specificly your character than: "every players with this tier of armor got the same exact stats" But hey, that is just my opinion
