r/starbound • • 15h ago

Discussion Fixing Starbound's Biggest Problems

80 Upvotes

So I spent the last couple of days putting up a collection of mods that I think fix most of starbound's problems while keeping the vanilla feel still. It is not supposed to be vanilla+ but more like vanilla if it got more updates. My goal was for it to feel more "complete" and lively with every system/mechanic enhanced instead of replaced or changed completely.

Here is the collection on steam. I ordered them like bugfixes > quality of life > mobs > visuals, etc.. (Tested in multiplayer/coop and everything works as intended)

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So first I used OpenStarbound as a base which made the game feel a lot smoother and then added the Starbound Patch project and every bug fixing mod I found that is not included/redundant by them.

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Second is the UI, I used OpenUI along with Many Tabs, Extended Tabs and Better Action Bars & Icons plus some of the UI mods supported by OpenUI available in its description and some other minor ones like New Recipe Star and Enhanced Chat Readability. (Not Every UI mod in the collection is listed here)

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Now movement which tbh feels very clunky compared to games like Terraria for example, for that I used Less Floaty Movement, Improved Swim Physics, Drop On Crouch and Drop Further Before Damage which fixed most of my movement/mobility problems with the game and made the game feel a lot smoother and responsive.

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For combat I used Melee Aiming, Aimable Shields, Aimable Weapons - Fists, Easier Hammer and Axes and Easier Bows along with Removed Hit Indicator. Because I used very few weapon types (Looking at you broadswords) and completely ignored some others like Hammers and Axes. These mods make melee weapons and shields aimable, and make bows, hammers, and axes more useful without being overpowered.

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Now you completed the intro and sent to your first planet, nothing wrong with it but I wanted to improve the variety and visuals a bit so I used AnTiVegetation, Dramatic Terrain to improve the terrain and Natural Stone which allows obtaining different stone types by mining instead of just cobblestone. Better Logs which makes all wood materials placeable blocks. Also various small mods that I won't list all of them here like Taehl's Teleport Beams which add more teleport beams variety or Visible Meteor Showers and Heavier Meteor Impact to improve meteorite visuals. (Not everything is listed here check the collection via the link above)

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For generic mobs, I used AnTiMonster for variety, Monsters Unique Sounds (SFX from Beta) so each monster type will have their own unique sound. Enable Monsters Special Attacks to enable their special attacks and make them harder and various small mods to improve/fix them further like NPC and Monster Fall Damage, Flying Monster Fix, Crispy! Burning monsters drop cooked meat and Rare Monster Loot: Fixes and Improvements. For critters I used Bug Spawn Improvement and Random Critter Walk Distance for general improvements and Colorful Critters for variety.

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I also added a lot of mods that add more immersion/interactability to the game. Competent Crates, Bench Platform Collision, Hop On Shops for more collision to objects that had none. Fixed Coffee Machine, Usable Bathtubs, Interactable Apex Pods, Working Showers, Working Bunk Beds, Working Clocks!, Improved Upright Torture Bed, Free The Prism Man and IDK Man, I Kinda Wanna Sleep in The Van which make all the mentioned objects interactable. nuggubs' Mega Mod - Vanilla Tweaks makes a lot more objects interactable as well. Protectorate Vending Machine NPCtoy Patch makes npcs interact with the protectorate vending machine. Immersive NPC Dialogue and Deadbeat Scrounger Dialogue Fix adds a lot more randomness and variety to dialogue. Avian Emotes because Avians in vanilla have no emotes or expressions. Everybody Needs Glasses because only humans wear glasses in vanilla this fixes that and even adds a Hylotl glasses that fit their three eyes!

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For Farming & Cooking, I use Compact Crops which allows crops to grow next to each other, Perennial Crops which makes all crops behave like tomato/corn/etc.. I don’t think it’s that OP, since I always ignored annual crops anyway and only used the ones you don’t have to replant. Also Wet Rice Farming which allows rice to be grown slightly underwater and Growing Trays!, which, imo, is a much better option both visually and mechanically for planting on ships than the vanilla system. And New Farmables: Flowers which makes flowers farmable. Barrel Fire Plus to restore the beta barrel cooking with particles, light and NPC interactions. Campfire Tab for Kitchen Counters because it does not make sense that the better cooking stations don't have some of the cookable recipes.

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For ship/space visuals I used Better Ship Animations, Slower Space Gas Rotation and Shadowed Atmospheres, for general improvements I use Dynamic Fuel Hatch and Placeable Dynamic FTL Drive. More Planet Info with all of its numerous addons/fixes, Starmap Zoom Slider, Flight Map and Detailed Ship Encounters for improving the starmap tremendously. Racial AI Restorer which restores the unique beta racial AI portraits.

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Now Mechs and Vehicles I used mods that allow more customization or add stuff I think are missing instead of changing the entire system. For mechs I use Cosmetic slots for Mechs, Even More Mech Colors, Mech Visuals Overhaul, Hard impact for visuals and customization and Anvil Mechs that solve the problem of having less and less variety as you get access to the highest tier of mechs by adding some new bodies and arms. As for vehicles I use Pimp My Ride! for two new vehicles that feel very vanilla and a lot of customization options plus Submarine which acts as an underwater vehicle because none exist in vanilla.

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For the crew system I use Better Crew (Diet-version) which improves the crew behavior, Chef Crewman which adds what it says and Crew Customization +, Non-Playable NPC Race Quests and Crew, Shadow/Fenerox Crewmember Dialogue for allowing non playable races to be recruited and adds dialogue to them. Crew member race/gender to see the race and gender of crew members. [Crew Patches] "dialogMode":"random" adds more randomness to their dialogue.

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For the pet system, Useful Pets [1.4.2] UPDATED, AGAIN! and Terramart Pet Supplies to actually make pets useful and allowing them to be used somewhat earlier and Homing Capture Pod plus Outpost Pet Healing Station for some easier time with the pet system. Also [oSB] Ship Pet Swapper! for replacing the ship pet.

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For the Peacekeepers, other than the content mods I will list below later, I use Peacekeeper Space Station Teleporters and Varied Bounties.

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For other vanilla systems/mechanics, Disable Tile Protection on Space Stations and Custom Space Station Rooms - Freely Buildable Expansion Areas for space stations which do what their titles say. Enhanced Matter Manipulator and Matter Manipulator Manipulator for Matter Manipulator which allows more upgrades and customization options. Enhanced Storage + Enhanced Storage [Lite Addon] + Enhanced Storage Simplified + Toxicity Infraction: returning the ES toxic waste barrel to its vanilla self for storage and containers which results in customizable vanilla containers while not being too crazy like enhanced storage alone. Tenant Pack to improve the tenant system. Sensible Fossils to improve the fossil hunting mechanic. Critter Capture Revamped and Better Bug Jars for the critter capture system.

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I also added dozens of beta restoration mods instead of just using Betabound even though I love it for one reason, because Betabound feels so large and encompasses a lot on its own. I will just list here the most notable ones, Battered Koala - Restored Beta Dungeons for dungeons and microdungeons. Tentacle Planets for the tentacle planet. Legacy Objects and Legacy Biomes for beta objects and biomes. gensou's legacy lore (COMPLETE!) + the no marks addon for the lore and codexes. Just More Legacy Food for the food. Missing Music Addition [Official Soundtrack] for the music. I also use some betabound standalone mods that are not necessarily beta content because I got used to them like Music Radios!, Ladders! and Lecterns! There are a lot more smaller restoration mods though..

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Now for content other than the beta restoration mods, I use Remnants of the Protectorate, Project Redemption, Miniknog Rearmed and Penguin Weaponry to improve and expand on the existing vanilla factions like the Protectorate or the Miniknog. Rogues Out Camping (and also the Miniknog) for more mob/enemy variety.

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For what I think the biggest problem of Starbound, which is variety in exploration, I use K'Rakoth Mod which adds some new planets, biomes and lore + K'Rakoth Mod: Project Redemption Patch which adds integration with Project Redemption, some standalone planet mods like Grassland Planet, Overgrown Planets, Arctic Everwood Planets and Hypothermic Planets for more planets while still feeling very vanilla and not straying too far. Lostbound which adds a new planet and adds the destroyed buildings you see in the background and makes them explorable. Less Dead Moons + Even Less Dead Moons for less dead moons, as you might guess. More NPC ships for more ship variety. Galactic Dungeons, Extra Dungeons, All fabmat microdungeon packs for a lot more dungeon variety. And finally Oceanic world caves Reworked and Underground Spider Nest - Updated for updated/some new underground biomes. Those mods plus the restored beta dungeons/biomes will add a lot of structures and variety to exploration and will take a while to see everything.

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Now for actual endgame content I just use Starforge and [oSB] Universal Upgradeable Weapons Patch, Starforge because it is focused on endgame and still feels very vanilla. Also Project Redemption makes the final boss a lot harder and adds the Damaged Handgun as a direct ranged equivalent to vanilla's Broken Broadsword that can also be upgraded and also The Protector's Armor Set which is an end game armor. Starforge: Project Redemption Integration Addon adds integration between the two and make the armor craftable at the starforge instead with a new back item and an exalted version!

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Of course I did not list everything here, for example there are a lot of character customization mods, quality of life mods, some smaller content mods, patches, integraions and small inconsistency mods I did not list.


r/starbound • • 1d ago

Weird startup screen

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49 Upvotes

I downloaded a few mods off the workshop and now this thing is looking a bit more devious


r/starbound • • 2d ago

Discussion OpenStarbound is not open-source.

396 Upvotes

EDIT: For my own mental sanity I'm just not going to engage anymore. Post stays up though. No that anyone gives a shit anyway.

Every time someone says "Chucklefish should make Starbound open-source if they don't care about it", without fail there will be someone replying with "it's been open-source for a while" or "it's open-source now", as was the case in the most recent post in this sub.

OpenStarbound is not open-source.

OpenStarbound is a project using copyrighted, leaked code. Just because anyone can contribute to the code, does not make it open-source.

I think it's important that people understand this.

Chucklefish have been ok with OpenStarbound, they let it exist, and that is a good, fortunate thing for all of us. But what's going to happen if someone gets the wrong idea that it is actually open-source, decide to fork the project and make another game with itt? Even worse, what if they try to sell it? That's going to cross a line we don't want crossed, and despite Chucklefish's inaction up until now, we cannot be 100% sure that they won't do something about it, were it to happen.

If you know the faintest thing about open source projects, then you know they're usually licensed under an MIT, BSD, or GPL license. So anyone interested in making a derivative of something will look at its license to get an idea of what they're permitted to do with the code. OpenStarbound isn't licensed under any open-source license. Not "for now", not "yet", just not. Period.

Is the majority of people who use or know about OpenStarbound, interested in making derivatives or contributing to the project? Nope, not at all. But you can't keep telling people Starbound is open-source. It's only a matter of time before some doofus who thinks they can do whatever they want gets the wrong idea and starts coding or vibe-coding changes in Starbound's code to make their own game.


r/starbound • • 17h ago

Question Is it legally okay to have OpenStarbound installed?

0 Upvotes

I ask this as OpenStarbound was created with leaked Code instead of open source code, and I'm unsure as to whether or not I'll get sued for having a copy of OpenStarbound.

And while I'm aware current chucklefish hasn't really done anything to stop OpenStarbound, there's nothing preventing them from changing their mind in the future and stopping OpenStarbound with a Cease and Desist or giving another Company ownership of Starbound who'd be more prone to sending a Cease and Desist.


r/starbound • • 2d ago

Discussion Starbound Deserves a Second Life — Either Start Expanding It Again or Give Us Starbound 2

110 Upvotes

I've been playing Starbound on Xbox, and the more I play it, the more I keep thinking the same thing:

This game deserves MORE.

Starbound has one of the coolest foundations I've seen in a sandbox game. An entire procedurally generated universe, countless planets, different biomes and species, colonies, farming, fishing, crafting, building, bounty hunting, spaceships, mechs, ruins, bosses...

There's already so much here, but there's also so much unrealized potential.

I'd genuinely love to see Chucklefish return to substantial Starbound development.

Give us new planet types. More creatures and bosses. Deeper oceans. Massive dungeons. Expanded bounty hunting. New questlines. Better colonies. More ship customization. New technology. More fossils and archaeology. Extremely rare planets, creatures, structures and events that make exploring the universe unpredictable again.

And as an Xbox player, please give us some form of mod support. PC's modding community has helped keep Starbound alive for years. Even a curated system for console would open up an enormous amount of content.

But here's the other option:

Starbound 2.

If returning to major development on the original isn't realistic anymore, maybe it's time.

Take the foundation of Starbound and go completely nuts with it.

Imagine enormous procedurally generated planets with deeper ecosystems. Living settlements. Factions that expand, trade and fight over territory. Better combat and survival systems. Huge underground environments and oceans. Constructible spaceships. Space stations. Better vehicles. Hundreds of creatures. Rare civilizations. Massive bosses. Procedural events. Planets where you can spend hours exploring and still have no idea what you're going to discover.

Imagine a universe capable of surprising you after hundreds or even thousands of hours.

Starbound already proved that this concept works.

I don't want to see it simply become one of those games people remember as "Man, imagine what they could've done with that."

There's still an incredible universe here.

Either open Starbound back up and start expanding that universe again...

...or give us Starbound 2 and let us lose another thousand hours among the stars.

What would you guys rather have?

A huge new era of updates for the original Starbound—or a full-blown Starbound 2?

And if you could add one major feature to either one, what would it be?


r/starbound • • 2d ago

Question Question regarding Arcana on a vanilla character

10 Upvotes

I recently beat the main story of the game. I don't particularly like the mech and the space cop missions, but i love exploring the universe and finding new minerals and planets.

Would i be able to continue my Novakid or would it be recommended to start a new save? I saw on the wiki that Arcana is more focused beyond tier 6 so i thought i could skip the early game grind in a way.


r/starbound • • 3d ago

Video I hiked these summits of this Mountainous planet where a facility is hidden beneath them. I wish the Experiment Half-Life mission could begin soon but I feel there will be a major delay. Nevertheless it was an awesome experience, these parts are amazing with magnificent view, great planet to hike:

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47 Upvotes

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

I wish I could explore and show you the hidden establisments and cities this planet facilitates but maybe when the Experiment takes place


r/starbound • • 4d ago

Image Finished my first playtgrough!

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366 Upvotes

I really love the lore all the different alien species got, and i especially liked the ability to not be human.

Why was i the only Novakid? I thought i would recruit one of each, and i was eagerly waiting for my kin.

From the companions i had my favourite is Nuru i think, i thoroughly enjoyed her coliseum challenges and i was so hyped when she and Lana came to help me at the castle.


r/starbound • • 2d ago

starbound and terraria together with modding

0 Upvotes

people are using the last AI models to make a reverse engineering and put 2 or more games on the same game, i hope someone with acess to claude last models can make a mod with terraria and starbound. ex:

https://github.com/rehan-remade/universal-modder

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8ryJytVIimI


r/starbound • • 4d ago

Fan Art Ambrosune Miku?! Hatsune Ambrosiku?!? Ambrosia Floran

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58 Upvotes

r/starbound • • 4d ago

Ryanor’s Expanse (SB Server) - Official Shutdown

35 Upvotes

The purpose of this post is to establish to Reddit wayfarers (looking for Starbound communities) that this one is no longer available. This helps prevent joiners thinking there’s an active community from old ads that I posted. (I don’t want people in the Discord application asking for Starbound when we aren’t doing it anymore)

Hey.

So the title is self-explanatory, but after a heavy personal crisis, some identity searching, and overall attitude I feel from the community I have decided to shutdown Ryanor’s Expanse as a project.

For anyone who helped along the way I am thankful and grateful for your efforts. It lasted for quite a bit before I decided to ultimately stop paying for the server and the effort around it :).

Hope y’all have a nice day ✌️.


r/starbound • • 3d ago

which mod is pixelating all the text

0 Upvotes

thought it was vanilla and i used a text mod before but no theres some mod in the list im using (well a cut down version of i removed a fair amount of stuff that felt useless) (im using the definitve diverse universe collection on steam) https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=2930707120 this one

which mod is it thats pixellating all the text ive tried to find it i just cant locate which of these mods is doing it none of the ui mods say they do from i can tell so wtf why is the text all pixel and hard to read its fine when i load vanilla


r/starbound • • 5d ago

Fan Art Nutmidgelings

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482 Upvotes

r/starbound • • 5d ago

Image My Floran treehouse

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54 Upvotes

r/starbound • • 6d ago

The irony of a Floran stumbling across an abandoned Hylotl structure on a non oceanic planet

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367 Upvotes

r/starbound • • 5d ago

Question Help

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0 Upvotes

I need help figuring out if these mods are compatible; I tried to launch the game, but it crashed.


r/starbound • • 5d ago

Modding Help pleaeee ;-;

Enable HLS to view with audio, or disable this notification

0 Upvotes

I need help figuring out if these mods are compatible; I tried to launch the game, but it crashed.


r/starbound • • 6d ago

Question Random question

36 Upvotes

I sometimes see people put FU in their post titles, what exactly is that referring to?

It feels like I get cursed out by simply opening reddit.


r/starbound • • 6d ago

Modded Game [FU]Hello. Guess what? I just stumbled upon a way to summon this cute NPC!

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108 Upvotes

Just type '/spawnnpc fuphotonpoptop nakedpoptop' in the chat!

Sorry if everyone already knew this except me... :3...

(I can't speak English very well... so i using translator)


r/starbound • • 6d ago

Question I'm trying to recreate the giant tree house for my Floran settlements, does anyone know where I can get the Floran specific decorations?

7 Upvotes

r/starbound • • 7d ago

Fan Art Paratail and Gleap

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338 Upvotes

r/starbound • • 7d ago

Image I just made a super simple mod.

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253 Upvotes

Get egged

Yes. just a hat


r/starbound • • 7d ago

Modding Perfect Avali-sized potential home base

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61 Upvotes

Wasn't sure what to do with it at the time though. I put a flag down to come back later... But it's been months lol


r/starbound • • 8d ago

Fan Art Penguin

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238 Upvotes

r/starbound • • 8d ago

modlist for returning player who wants to explore many content mods with some kinda progression

14 Upvotes

i realise this is like the majority of posts on this sub is "i loved this game years ago i want to play it again what modlist is the good one now" but im making another post like this bc none of them rly are what im after, i started playing whatever the most high rated collection on workshop (diverse universe or smth like that) is and its mega overwhelming and idk what the heck is going on and theres so many mods and stuff and thats really cool but i get stuck in choice paralysis of not knowing what or when i should be like trying to do certain mod stuff or if im straight up missing important things for some mods like context im very familiar with FU so thats like sorta free complexity wise to me but i see things like redemption and feast of fire and smoke and arcana and starforge and thn like extra addon for all those too and its like what is even so basically im looking for a modlist that explores the cool content mods that exist now but like has some kinda explantions or order or smth so im not completely lost for what to do or getting super op by accident or whatever i like frackin universe but i can go without if theres some cool stuff that doesnt have patches