Starbound (I can't believe it's not Terraria 2) is coming!

[Pagz]

Tried to log in with the "brigyoudork" password and it wouldn't let me in, I assume it's been changed again?

If anyone goes to the snow planet the starter planet is orbiting, well, you'll be in for a surprise!

[Kail]

If anyone goes to the snow planet the starter planet is orbiting, well, you'll be in for a surprise!

AFAIK the starter planet is randomly picked, you'd have to give the coordinates for them to find it.

In case anyone hasn't seen it, the general (non-exhaustive) flist of features the dev team is working on was posted a few days ago to their blog:

[Logain]

The password has actually since been removed. Just leave account and password blank and you'll be able to connect.

[Pagz]

ehh double post.

[Pagz]

AFAIK the starter planet is randomly picked, you'd have to give the coordinates for them to find it.

I think the starter planet for each server is the same, since the one I started on already had quite a lot of work done to it. Anyway, the co-ordinates are x49808943 y4850948 Alpha Glados Minoris I, I've just been stashing singleplayer bank overflow here, everyone is welcome to take what they need/add their own!

[Nija]

The starter planet for each server is not the same.

The starter planet for each PATCH is the same.

[Kail]

The starter planet for each server is not the same.

The starter planet for each PATCH is the same.

Ah, I see.   Sorry, my bad.

[Falconeer]

I have a question: what are the biggest differences between this and Terraria?

[Kail]

I have a question: what are the biggest differences between this and Terraria?

Thematically, Starbound is more sci-fi than Terraria.  It's about aliens and space ships and blasters and stuff.  There are multiple alien races to play as, you're flying around space, guns are more common, etc.

Gameplay wise, the biggest difference is probably that in Starbound, you're hopping from planet to planet while in Terraria you're (basically) confined to one world.  This means that in Terraria, you really develop the hell out of your game world, while in Starbound, you just grab whatever you want and move on to the next planet when you feel like it.  There's less incentive to build a really complex and well mapped mine in Starbound, but there's more wandering around exploring new places and finding weird dungeons and stuff.  In Terraria, you build a village to get NPC merchants to move in, while in Starbound, currently, there's no real reason to build a village (most players I know of keep all their gear on their ship rather than building anything planetside).

In the proposed final features list, there are more differences, like ship-to-ship combat and a quest system and so on, but most of that's not in the game yet, so take it as tentative.  In the present, Terraria feels more fleshed out and content complete, while Starbound is still developing and has tons of holes.

At least, that's how I see it.

[TheDreamr]

Anyone else finding the lack of futuristic core features vs. "because Terraria did it this way" worrying?

I get that it's effectively alpha right now and a lot of the systems may still be in flux, but I'd have though the early mechanics would have been pinned down by now -- little things like the picks & the axe existing when they could have been upgrades for the matter manipulator (currently a nice concept but has zero usefulness as a tool after the first five minutes) and ranged weapons not being given equal footing to melee.

[Quinton]

I figured the picks and such were tier one -- you're stranded and you're bootstrapping yourself back to fancier technologies.  I haven't really played a single game long enough to see where things go, but I certainly hope by the time that they're done that you won't be using bows and pickaxes the entire game.  I believe there are already drills (fancier mining) and upgrades for the matter manipulator in the tech tree somewhere, no?

[rattran]

Drills are in, they upgrade just like the picks, but I've not found any upgrades to the matter manipulator. And like everyone else, haven't used it since the first 5 minutes except as a more precision furniture remover.

[TheDreamr]

In previous versions there were multiple tiers of picks and drills, possibly even some kind of mining laser.   There's quite a nice mod that does tiered matter manips, but it's third party.

Latest patch looks promising, I'm curious how they're planning to approach outer space & air supply.  Also turrets!

[Quinton]

In the latest patch moon and asteroid field biomes have no air, so you get an air gauge that ticks down in addition to the temperature.

I assume there must be space suits or the like that you can craft or obtain?  I haven't gotten very far into the tech tree yet.

[Sky]

a more precision furniture remover.

Just use the shift key with a pick to target a single block. The matter manipulator seems truly useless after you have an axe and pick.

[Yegolev]

Unless you are very stingy.

[Kail]

Anyone else finding the lack of futuristic core features vs. "because Terraria did it this way" worrying?

I get that it's effectively alpha right now and a lot of the systems may still be in flux, but I'd have though the early mechanics would have been pinned down by now -- little things like the picks & the axe existing when they could have been upgrades for the matter manipulator (currently a nice concept but has zero usefulness as a tool after the first five minutes) and ranged weapons not being given equal footing to melee.

I don't mind starting with stone axes and stuff, I really like the idea of the tech tree starting with nothing (basically) and building up to the super high tech stuff.  It makes it feel more impressive, somehow.

I do agree that the content that falls under "super high tech stuff" is a bit thin at the moment, but I assume the higher tier stuff is incomplete.  Currently, there's nothing to do with bronze/silver/gold after you've made the armor, and nothing to do with platinum at all, except make the one pick and the one drill of each material you'll need.  But you keep finding the stuff all the way to the endgame.  Plus, stuff like uranium and solarium can be smelted in to rods, which currently have no use.  I assume they have plans for this stuff, I dunno.

They did just introduce more stuff to do with the wiring tool in this latest patch, maybe that will help, I haven't checked yet.

[TheDreamr]

Matter manipulator can be nice when modded (or made vastly overpowered, not that I'd do such a thing when faced with an impending wipe) but vanilla its only real use is to scan around your current location to discover ore in the darkness or to act as a backup tool in case all else has worn out.

Re: Space suits, there's an unfinished item that appears when you search for "air" that looks a bit like an astronauts EVA pack - silver with a little comms dish on top.  Haven't tried it yet as it needs durasteel and I'm an unlock or two away from that and presents needed wrapping!

[schild]

When they are done doing wipes, I think I'm gonna setup my Alienware laptop as an f13 server unless someone has an actual box sitting somewhere not being used.

[schild]

Last wipe comes with the next patch. Yay!

[CaptainNapkin]

Cool, time to pick this up soon then.

[Tebonas]

So, finally pulled the trigger and awaiting the final wipe now. 

[Sky]

It's funny, I didn't mind playing with impending wipes, but now that we know it's the final wipe I have no urge to play until after that.

[Amarr HM]

Not sure if it's the case for upcoming wipe, but on the last one I didn't lose anything in my inventory.

[Yegolev]

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yQ5rbPlsdHw

[Kail]

*tumbleweed rolls past*

So, if you haven't been intently following the game, you might not know that they just pushed an update to their unstable build.  Which is their first non-nightly update in... shit, ten months?  Something like that.  But, on the bright side, it looks to be kind of a big patch, with a lot of changes and new content.  You do have to opt in to the unstable build to check it out, though.  Should be rolling out to stable in January, allegedly.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4Sz2zr3pZEo

[Soulflame]

Did this ever reach "finished", or is it still in a pre-released state?

[Kail]

Still pre-release.  The unstable branch especially is for working the kinks out of the systems (and there are already a fair number of glitches/incomplete content flags), but even barring that I don't think this is supposed to be their 1.0 release.

I haven't had much chance to play around with it so far, so I can't comment on how complete this version specifically is, but I suspect it's still got a long way to go.  It's one of those slow burn sandbox games, so I'm not begrudging them the long dev time but YMMV (though hopefully we won't have to wait until October 2015 for the next patch).

Also:

If you choose to switch to the unstable branch, please know that your characters and worlds will not yet be compatible with the latest version of the game.  Your old characters and worlds will still be there, but the unstable branch will use a different storage location than the stable branch for the time being, while we work out how to upgrade old characters.

[Kail]

Necro!

Another new patch hits stable today, this time adding the colony system.  You can build buildings and rent them out to tenants for cash, apparently.  Sounds like Terraria, but without the specific vendors and things.  There's also some other minor stuff with weapon generation and another full combat rebalance.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=f6db4718sRY

[Soulflame]

I have this (someone gifted it to me) but I can't seem to stick with it.  It has some neat ideas.  Some (many?) of which immediately made it into Terraria.  So, from that perspective, I'm glad for its existence.

[Kail]

They've announced a release date for 1.0: goes live in two weeks, on July 22.

http://playstarbound.com/starbound-release-announcement/

[Soulflame]

Man I'm trying this, and it is reasonably fun, but the platformer first boss is annoying as fuck.

[Sky]

The platformer combat is what kills both this and Terraria for me. Love both games otherwise.

[Kail]

I don't mind the combat so much in the wandering around bit of Starbound.  It's not super great, but it isn't bad enough to be offensive or anything and it gives some direction to the crafting.

What I don't like is the combat missions they've shoehorned in to the game where your matter manipulator is disabled so you can't cheese the jumping puzzles or build barricades or whatever and they're these MASSIVE maps with no checkpoints and no health pickups so the map is just a tedious slog as you HOPE you can get to the end before you use up all your health consumables because if you die you respawn back at the beginning and spend seriously no joke about five minutes walking through the empty hallways you already cleared to get back to where you were.  And hey, sometimes there's some massively bullshit boss who can kill you in three hits but takes maybe two hundred hits to kill if you're using the best weapons available.  And the crafting is gated behind those bosses so you can't overgear yourself and come back and stomp them, you HAVE to kill them to progress.  The devs have claimed that they're adding alternate progression so the combat isn't required but unless there's been a patch I missed it isn't in yet, and I'm worried about them revamping the entire progression system in two weeks.

I mean, I don't mind the combat, but I don't think it's particularly engaging, either, and seeing so much emphasis on it (as opposed to building and crafting) is kind of worrying.  But I guess we'll see in a few weeks.

[Soulflame]

Totally agree, Kail.  Maybe the patch in two weeks will fix that.  I guess we'll see.