Hi! c: I am here today to share with you my idea: a Starbound NPC for the Outpost that could be useful. As you might've guessed, (s)he's called "The Hacker." The Hacker offers upgrades and changes for your Ship's AI/Planet Scanner. If you supply them with core fragment ores and pixels, they will give you little 'patch' items which you upload to your ship. Examples of what they might offer: Change your Ship's AI to a different race's. Change your Ship's AI's speech pattern/appearance. Change what your Ship's AI refers to you as. Enable your Planet Scanner to access the Planet Registry; ie if a planet is occupied/owned (except secret bases) it will tell you what sort of occupants/dungeons there are. Enable your Planet Scanner to detect ores (only if chucklefish makes the tier 5-6 ores come on seperate planets) They could also give AI/Scanner upgrades for things that are currently standard, so you wouldn't be able to see secondary biomes or weather and such until you upgrade. Plus, there's also the possibility they upgrade other parts of your ship, like your teleporter, tech station and 3d printer. (They *could* upgrade your storage, but there's not much to upgrade except space, which doesn't make much sense) What do you guys think? Do you have any other suggestions for things they could do? c:
Hmm I like the i like how they can be used and I like the idea (really, I do) But I have to say one thing, if the hacker can change your races thinking e.i a avian to apex... Wouldn't that make the hacker a neurosurgeon?
Tech upgrades for high costs based on the planet tier the hacker is on, secret/specialty starmaps, coordinates to unique/rare locations, matter manipulator upgrades, UI upgrades / reskins. Would be great. Though with the UI upgrades it'd be nice to have a decent UI in the first place rather than user interface that is merely "passable". (Such as proper scrolling in menus with the slider, a simple delete button for the character menu, recipe sorting, ect).
They're not changing your character's thinking, these are changes to your ship's AI and stuff c: I kinda figured they'd fit better on the Outpost, rather than on random planets. Gives more reason to visit it. And i didn't mean UI upgrades, i meant AI appearance and AI/Scanner abilities. c:
That's right, that location past the Gate is the "Outpost", isn't it? I was thinking of a one of the random lil locations on worlds that was called an outpost. And I meant UI. UI is/can be represented as an in-character object as well in the form of some sort of communications device, and as such be modified in an in-character manner.
This sounds like a great idea! Considering I like to play as an Avian and their AI is just weird changing it would be cool also I really want my AI to call me "fabulous" because that'll be hilarious. But what I find weird are the planet scanner ideas, while they're a good idea I don't think it makes sense for a hacker to do so, maybe an engineer. Because planet scanner features would most likely be hardware upgrades such as improved scanners, a hacker can only affect software, so that wouldn't make much sense But apart from that, I approve! This is one of the better suggestions out there!
Again, no, they give changes to your Ship's AI and Scanner, not your character. Edited OP to clarify.
You know, this might become a thing now that ship crews are coming in an update soon. Definitely would be a helpful member to have around.