New players question about bases

[Malek]

Been playing a bit with my wife and we've been building a base on a starter planet and just hopping from planet to planet getting resources and bringing back to base.

My questions are:
Is there any pros and cons to building a base on land vs using a ship, especially in a multiplayer game?

I read somewhere you can get villagers or something to occupy a land base, is that true?

Is there any reason to have a base on a higher difficulty planet?

Thanks in advance!

[Valentine's Ezelith]

I'm treating you like a new Starbounder, so I'll explain some thingies.
O boi, where do I start.

1st: On land, you have as much space as the planet or materials you have can offer, but on public servers, you can get "griefed": a player or a group of those try to cause as much mayhem as possible (pillaging and destroying, sometimes setting traps) on your hard-earned work. Also, the starter planet MIGHT be the same (maybe not) of other people, so building on deserts or moons with EPPs on the back is a much better option. Just watch out for the ghosts or the ocassional fuel miner, both'll kill you instantly. Mostly the ghosts. They're literally unplayable unkillable.

On ship, you shouldn't get griefed, but your ship's small for doing a fully-branched base. Also, as each ship is unique to the player, you'd had to invite your wife to your group by clicking the + under your character's portrait and then type the name of hers so either you beam up to her ship or vice versa.

2nd: True as hell. On Frögg Furnishing (at the top of the Outpost, after the toilets) they sell Colony Deeds. If you put them on a room and said room has certain requirements, a colonist (that can change depending on the furniture) will teleport. They normally have missions pop up once in a while, like killing a mob, getting a parcel to another colonist, etcetera, and pay a rent for being there (hotels ain't free, you know) when the deed has a gift printed on the screen.

3rd: I think (haven't tested) that having a base on a more difficult player will make the rent pays better, the missions harder (obvious) and the players less frequent, as they'll require better equipment to survive the threats, such as meteor showers, agressive monsters (including Gaston) or terra-forming. And with all the generosity on the world (or universe, or whatever), don't build on the surface of volcanic or acid planets; the ember/acid rain will kill you and your colonists faster than I can speedrun through the Facility.

You're welcome ahead of time. Ask me anything if you ever need it.

[Malek]

Thanks so much! We're playing multiplayer by me just joining her game, so we don't need to worry about griefers but im excited to try out the other stuff.

[lobter]

Originally posted by Malek:

Is there any reason to have a base on a higher difficulty planet?

Thanks in advance!

Higher difficulty planet, the better.

I just started a new account but build a colony on the moon, and am getting either at least 400 pixels a person to level 10 staffs/very good weapons.

The higher the difficulty, the less chance of getting junk and the higher chance of getting really good weapons and stuff.

[Malek]

How are u able to not get eaten by the moon ghost thing haha.

Also are meteors an issue?

[Bast]

Originally posted by Malek:

How are u able to not get eaten by the moon ghost thing haha.

Also are meteors an issue?

I am curious about this as well, i kinda want to start over again as the custom race Avali and build a city on a high tier planet. Cause story mode isn't that long and only half the game

[Valentine's Ezelith]

Erchius Ghosts appear and attack you only when having Erchius Fuel or its mineral equivalent on your inventory. A trick to use is, when looking for some fuel, put any kind of container close to the deposit and when you mine all of it, put it on the container. When you're done, visit the containers you left and take that sweet fuel, without any interruptions. Au yeah.

Meteors ARE an issue. And quite a big one. They destroy your blocks (actually, meteors damage the blocks, blocks get destroyed after some meteor hits) and, if you don't have any kind of protective barrier your colony's gonna lose the colonists, because if the houses get destroyed, the homes don't meet the requirements anymore, the colonists become unhappy and they leave if you don't fix them holes.

However, there's a mod in the Workshop that makes meteors stop damaging blocks. If you install that and put it on the server, they'll just cause health and not structural damage. Still need the barrier though.

[Malek]

I got it, and by barrier do u mean like building a shield of some sort? Or do meteors damage blocks regardless of the type.

[jmido8]

Originally posted by Dickson:

1st: On land, you have as much space as the planet or materials you have can offer, but on public servers, you can get "griefed": a player or a group of those try to cause as much mayhem as possible (pillaging and destroying, sometimes setting traps) on your hard-earned work. Also, the starter planet MIGHT be the same (maybe not) of other people, so building on deserts or moons with EPPs on the back is a much better option. Just watch out for the ghosts or the ocassional fuel miner, both'll kill you instantly. Mostly the ghosts. They're literally unplayable unkillable.

On ship, you shouldn't get griefed, but your ship's small for doing a fully-branched base. Also, as each ship is unique to the player, you'd had to invite your wife to your group by clicking the + under your character's portrait and then type the name of hers so either you beam up to her ship or vice versa.

This isn't true. Random people are not able to join your game unless they are on your friends list or you specifically give out your server IP. There is no feature in this game to just jump into multiplayer and play with people you don't know. As long as your friends aren't aholes then you won't have to worry about players griefing you.

But let's say a friend does decide to randomly join you for the sole purpose of griefing. They would need the coordinates of the planet with your base to actually visit that planet and do any type of griefing. Your planet is one of 400 quadrillion + planets in this game. The likely hood of them just randomly finding your planet without the coordinates is almost 0. Also, even if they join your game, you need to actively invite them into a party for them to have the ability to teleport to your location. So you don't need to worry about people joining and then just warping to your location.

Anyways....

1.
Land: You have infinite space to build a huge base and huge settlement. If you need more materials for building more, then there are resources all around you. Monsters will occasionally come through your base/settlement so you'll need guards to help defend your base/city if it's really big, otherwise some of your settlers might die as they can't defend themselves. If you build a teleporter/flag in your base, then you don't ever need to waste fuel flying back to your old planet to visit your base. However, if you don't built a flag/teleporter then you'll need to actively fly back to your old planet to visit the base.

Ship: You're limited to the size of your ship for building stuff. The ship is a safe zone and can't have monsters so you don't need to worry about getting attacked. You can still build a base/settlement on your ship but it'll be indescribably smaller than what you can build on land. Also, if you need more supplies to keep building, you'll need to warp to a planet and collect them. The nice thing about a base ship is that when you beam up, you're always right back at your base. However, this really isn't that great of a benefit once you build a teleporter/flag on a planet base.

2. You gain villagers by setting up a room for someone and placing a colony deed on the wall, at this point a villager will beam into the room. They're usually not happy with their living arrangements until they have a closed in room with doors, and a bed, the type of decorations in the room and the quality of furniture influence the race/tier of villager that you get.

Villagers aren't limited to land bases, you can also have villagers (non-crew) living on your ship. However, ships are small and you can only build a limited amount of stuff, which also limits how many villagers you can have. Once you have villagers, they'll start offering you quests. Sometimes, after completing a quest they'll ask to join your ship crew (both land and ship villagers will do this). If you let them join, then they can follow you in combat and depending on their job, they can provide enhancements to your ship (ex: make your ships fuel tank larger, make your fuel usage more efficient so you use less per trip, etc). Also, if a villager is happy, they'll occasionally offer you a gift. Usually money or bandages and other small stuff.

3. Planets have tiers, which is indicated by it's difficulty. The gifts and quest rewards that villagers give you scale with planet tier. So the harder planet they're living on, the more money you get and the better weapons you can get. Meteor storms can destroy blocks and kill your villagers so building on a fire planet is a little hard unless you A) build underground or B) download a mod that lets you generate an unbreakable shield around your settlement buildings. You can probably find a fire planet without meteor storms, you'll just have to search for a while.

At the moment, there is a "glitch" where moons are classified as tier 10 (4 tiers above the hardest planet) and villagers on the moon will give much better loot than even the hardest fire planet types. The moon ghost apparently doesn't chase you if you don't have any fuel in your inventory so people have been cheesing this to get tier 10 weapons (the hardest fire planets only have tier 6 weapons). I consider it a bug/glitch, but if you want to do it and become really OP then it's just your own experience you're messing with.

[Malek]

Thanks for the replys!

So to clearify, do all moons have to deal with meteors? And will meteors on planets and on moon spawn even if I am not on the planet?

[Cake for Mumm-Ra]

Originally posted by Malek:

Thanks for the replys!

So to clearify, do all moons have to deal with meteors? And will meteors on planets and on moon spawn even if I am not on the planet?

Next time you're in the cockpit, take a closer look at the planet details. In addition to the ores that planet has, you'll see environmental hazards listed if the planet has any. So for lush planets you'll see rains or snow, etc. Some moons have meteorites and some don't. But yea, you can expect environmental effects to happen even when you're not on the planet. This is good because it will rain on your crops even when you're off doing something else. (Or bad because you built on a planet that is now experiencing brief showers of armageddon with a chance of apocalypse).

[Malek]

Ok ive scanned a lot of moons and so far all seem to have meteorite showers.

Can someone confirm that in vanilla current version there are moons without meteorites?

[vernicom]

I dont play on servers, but y think, if u make ur base in the sky grieffers cant destroy it? Because they cant see ur base. Make ur base 200 blocks above the ground.

[Valentine's Ezelith]

Originally posted by vernicom:

I dont play on servers, but y think, if u make ur base in the sky grieffers cant destroy it? Because they cant see ur base. Make ur base 200 blocks above the ground.

Malek already said that him and his wife are by themselves. There're no griefers.

[Rio]

Originally posted by Malek:

Ok ive scanned a lot of moons and so far all seem to have meteorite showers.

Can someone confirm that in vanilla current version there are moons without meteorites?

They all have meteors. Just don't build on the moon's surface or near the surface.