Meaningful Ship Interiors Discussion

[Shabine]

I had originally considered putting this in Suggestions, but this is by no means a fully-formed "suggestion". I feel like it's a topic worth discussing, so I dropped it here, and I would love to see what other forumites think of making ship interiors meaningful (something worthy of development focus) by making the experience truly interactive.

A portion of the Elite Dangerous player base has always been vocal about their desire to see explorable and interactive ship interiors to the game, but we seldom discuss the interactive part. I think that's one of the reasons why Frontier was able to say "Well, we didn't add them in Odyssey because entering and exiting ships on foot is a loop that will eventually get boring and start to feel like a timesink". And fair game to them; it's a reasonable judgement to make, assuming that ship interiors and the enter/exit loop is nothing more than a visual feast.

What got me thinking about interactivity recently is something that CDPR introduced (albeit in a very limited way) to Cyberpunk 2077: apartment buffs.

In CP2077, a player can interact with different things in their apartments. When players interact with these things, they receive temporary buffs...

• Showering: 'Refreshed' status for one hour (regenerates health during combat up to 60%; increases further 20% with the Regeneration perk).
• Sleeping: Applies 'Rested' status for one hour (+20% skill XP) and regenerates health.
• Brewing coffee: 'Energised' status for one hour (+25% Max Stamina, +30% Stamina regen).

This is actually pretty cool. It motivates players to roleplay a little bit in exchange for a tangible reward.

In my opinion, this is a reasonable model to build on for ED's ship interiors. Imagine if you could interact with different parts of your ships and temporarily buff them.

• Engine tuning: Engines and thrusters are X% more efficient, and top speed/maneuverability is improved by X%. Effect slowly degrades.
• Weapon tinkering: Damage increased by X%. Effect slowly degrades.
• Repair by hand: Module and hull damage repaired by hand increases overall module and hull resilience by X%. Effect slowly degrades.

And so on.

On top of that, interacting with that coffee maker in your ship could improve your top speed while running by X% for an amount of time. Interacting with a panel inside your ship could allow you to interact with the system's mission board without you having to dock anywhere (obviously, you'd still need to dock to outfit, refuel, repair, restock, buy, sell, or change up your livery). New panels could be added that highlight certain features of the solar system without players needing to use a nav beacon. And so much more.

If ship interiors are made functional, development of them would be justified. Unfortunately, if their only purpose is eye candy, they're a hard sell in terms of development focus and will likely never happen. They simply aren't worth it if they're just something you walk through and eventually get used to and then bored of.

Maybe I'm barking up a dead tree here, but I would love to hear thoughts.

 

[Ian Doncaster]

I think for me the important thing for a non-cosmetic ship interiors feature is "does it actually require ship interiors" - to give an example of what I mean, I like exobiology as a bit of extra surface exploration gameplay, but there's absolutely nothing in it that needs me to get out on foot other than "it was part of the on foot expansion". They could have added the sales contact to the station screen in the ship under the Cartographics heading, made the sampling an added feature of the Scarab, and it would make absolutely no difference to my experience of it except that there'd be fewer fade-to-black transitions while doing it and two minutes less running about the concourse to hand in (both of which would be an improvement, from my perspective!)

So with that in mind:

In my opinion, this is a reasonable model to build on for ED's ship interiors. Imagine if you could interact with different parts of your ships and temporarily buff them.

• Engine tuning: Engines and thrusters are X% more efficient, and top speed/maneuverability is improved by X%. Effect slowly degrades.
• Weapon tinkering: Damage increased by X%. Effect slowly degrades.
• Repair by hand: Module and hull damage repaired by hand increases overall module and hull resilience by X%. Effect slowly degrades.

I think these fit that pretty well and give a reason as to why you wouldn't just use the AFMU / wait until the next station and click "repair". There probably needs to be some sort of "maintain module" option for undamaged modules to get the same effect to stop the slightly odd effect where you get optimal toughness by deliberately scraping your hull on the docking bay so that you can repair it for the buff.

(A lot of PvPers will probably hate it as - like premium ammo - one more thing which takes absolutely ages to maintain max advantage ... while, conversely, I'm not sure I'd ever use it unless the buff was ridiculously powerful because engineering is enough that I don't need another 20% performance. But it'd probably be useful enough to some people, especially newer players who don't have a full engineering set yet)

Interacting with a panel inside your ship could allow you to interact with the system's mission board without you having to dock anywhere (obviously, you'd still need to dock to outfit, refuel, repair, restock, buy, sell, or change up your livery). New panels could be added that highlight certain features of the solar system without players needing to use a nav beacon.

For these, on the other hand, I think I'd always be thinking "why is this panel positioned five metres down the corridor when the Powerplay and Engineers panels which I use far less often are accessible from the comfort of my chair?". I like the idea of having these features - being able to get read-only access to system news, markets, mission boards, etc. while in flight would be very neat and solve a lot of the "what do I do for the straight-line minute of supercruise?" question - but they only solve that "one minute" problem if they're chair-accessible. If I have to walk a minute down the corridor, use the panel, and come back again, I'll have overshot the planet.

 

[djadjok]

Sounds reasonable - some "manual" tweaking/work for kind of "premium" time-limited effects....
And, who knows, probably a "manual override" of the scarab deployment while still airborne?=)

 

[Rhaazerus Orzhov]

Me like ships, me like ship insides, me like go stomp-stomp inside pretty ship insides....

But seriously,
interesting proposals and ideas.
It definitely seems like a difficult thing to balance out the pros and cons of ship interiors.
Having the "cool factor" and visual aesthetic but avoiding tedious and boring game interaction & then having a purpose and function that's reasonable and not tedious and boring game interaction, are the biggest challenges I see with the big question of (Ship Interiors?).

If there even is any consideration of this within FDev, I'm just glad I'm not one of those who would have to figure it all out.

 

[DjVortex]

Sleeping: Applies 'Rested' status for one hour (+20% skill XP) and regenerates health.

The thing is that ED is a simulator where in-game time passes 1:1 to real-life time. It would be unrealistic for you to be able to "sleep" for just a few seconds and it counting for anything.

Granted, ED is more like a "light-sim" (not as in that it simulates light, but in that it's a "lightweight" simulator) where some things that should take a long time are shortcut, such as loading and unloading cargo and passengers, repairing and refueling the ship, etc. Certainly these are acceptable breaks from reality for the sake of the game not being too frustrating. However, other things could stretch willing suspension of disbelief perhaps a bit too much. Such as "sleeping" for just a few seconds counting as if you had slept for 8 hours... even though only a few seconds have passed even by the in-universe clock.

There's also the thing that in real life you can't just sleep whenever you want. Normally sleep patterns go like 16 hours awake, 8 hours sleep, give or take. You can sleep too little and then be all sleepy, but usually you can't just sleep too often, because you just won't fall asleep.

I suppose a more realistic "sleeping simulation" could be implemented where you actually sleep as much as are willing to wait (assuming enough time has passed since the last time), and you could in fact log out of the game and then log in many hours later, and it could count as you having slept for that period of time. But I don't know if this actually makes much sense as a game mechanic.

 

[Shabine]

I suppose a more realistic "sleeping simulation" could be implemented where you actually sleep as much as are willing to wait (assuming enough time has passed since the last time), and you could in fact log out of the game and then log in many hours later, and it could count as you having slept for that period of time. But I don't know if this actually makes much sense as a game mechanic.

Yeah, I don't think the sleeping thing will work here. I just listed the Cyberpunk interactions as examples of buffs. The buffs ED players would recieve would need to come from other activities.

 

[CMDR Karrde Sun]

This is how to do ship interiors..

Hey frontier, and any elite only player who's put their foot down that ship interiors will be useless. Here's an excellent example of what i would personally like to do with ship interiors. In the example below, replace water with space, and the submarine with a python. Also use your...

forums.frontier.co.uk

Just saying.

 

[CMDR Karrde Sun]

For these, on the other hand, I think I'd always be thinking "why is this panel positioned five metres down the corridor when the Powerplay and Engineers panels which I use far less often are accessible from the comfort of my chair?". I like the idea of having these features - being able to get read-only access to system news, markets, mission boards, etc. while in flight would be very neat and solve a lot of the "what do I do for the straight-line minute of supercruise?" question - but they only solve that "one minute" problem if they're chair-accessible. If I have to walk a minute down the corridor, use the panel, and come back again, I'll have overshot the planet.

Have you tried supercruise assist? Some acceptable default of auto applying this or not could solve that. Also you would expect some player agency in getting out the seat.. its not always mandatory once you get going. Its seems very reasonable on shorter trips to not do it and use the existing functionality instead. Personally id probably only get out while stopped... and not having it there when stopped will always be a serious omission.

 

[Jmanis]

For these, on the other hand, I think I'd always be thinking "why is this panel positioned five metres down the corridor when the Powerplay and Engineers panels which I use far less often are accessible from the comfort of my chair?". I like the idea of having these features - being able to get read-only access to system news, markets, mission boards, etc. while in flight would be very neat and solve a lot of the "what do I do for the straight-line minute of supercruise?" question - but they only solve that "one minute" problem if they're chair-accessible. If I have to walk a minute down the corridor, use the panel, and come back again, I'll have overshot the planet.

Holy heck, if i could use the extant contacts panel to review and accept missions in- flight, pending them going active by me arriving at the station to avoid some problematic issues, i would... well... be very excited.

 

[Shabine]

This is how to do ship interiors..

Hey frontier, and any elite only player who's put their foot down that ship interiors will be useless. Here's an excellent example of what i would personally like to do with ship interiors. In the example below, replace water with space, and the submarine with a python. Also use your...

forums.frontier.co.uk

Just saying.

I love that thread. We should bring it back from the dead. You hit the nail on the head. And something else that rhymes.

Now I miss playing Subnautica. Dammit, Karrde.

 

[zimms]

I think the reason Frontier haven't added ship interiors isn't because Frontier think they wouldn't add anything to the game, or because Frontier couldn't come up with ideas for interactivity. It's simply because they are a TON of work. It's simply not feasible with the current team size.

 

[Navigare Necesse Est]

I like to play my games in my own time and not on stupid timers I have to refresh all the time. If you think I should do more redundant jobs to get decent progress I think I rather play something else.

 

[Ian Doncaster]

It's simply because they are a TON of work. It's simply not feasible with the current team size.

They have tens of millions in cash reserves. They could expand the team if they were convinced that enough people would pay for ship interiors to justify the development cost in the long run.

It's probably not a surprise that they aren't convinced of this, though.

 

[Navigare Necesse Est]

Meaningful interiors can only be gameplay. But what can be gameplay if you have hands full flying a ship already?
Nothing coming to mind right there.
Meaningful is multicrew systems. But what a solo player do then? So it might require a NPC doing the job.and that wouldnt need interiors either.

 

[Pville_Piper]

What I have never understood, is why I have to walk to the station elevators, but I can't walk back to the doors at the back of the cockpit and have them open either to an elevator that (for now) takes you to the top of the stairs or the lift in the back of the ship. In larger ships the door at the rear of the cockpit could lead an elevator and a second door that is (for now) nonfunctional but in the future, leads to the interior of the ship. The interiors could be added a ship at a time and expanded, starting with the most popular ships. With this as the setup, you wouldn't have to walk the entire length of the ship to get to/from the surface to the cockpit. For anyone who says that this would add nothing to the game I say you should be screaming to get rid of the walk to the elevators in a non-interactive hanger deck in the stations as it adds nothing to the game.

Having played Star Citizen, I never felt that having to walk through ship, or climb into the cockpit by a ladder was an imposition in any way, shape, or form. You feel like you are playing a game, not running from cut scene to cut scene, fading to black along the way as you do in Elite.

As far as the OPs suggestions, I think they are interesting and would add a bit to the game.

 

[Navigare Necesse Est]

....

Having played Star Citizen, I never felt that having to walk through ship, or climb into the cockpit by a ladder was an imposition in any way, shape, or form. You feel like you are playing a game, not running from cut scene to cut scene, fading to black along the way as you do in Elite.

...

A game? SC isn't a game. It's a broken piece of trash. I mean yeah, you'll infallibly notice you are trying to play something that pretends to be a game (but is in reality just a milking machine for gullible people) when you fall through the floor while climbing the cockpit ladder, throw an empty bottle on the floor or are trying to get off a chair you're somehow glued to.

 

[Gut]

I would rather have ' Space walks ' So i can clean the ' Windscreen ' when on long Exploration honestly .

 

[Pville_Piper]

I think these fit that pretty well and give a reason as to why you wouldn't just use the AFMU / wait until the next station and click "repair". There probably needs to be some sort of "maintain module" option for undamaged modules to get the same effect to stop the slightly odd effect where you get optimal toughness by deliberately scraping your hull on the docking bay so that you can repair it for the buff.

Simple, raise the repair rate at stations to where is should be instead of the nuisance payment that it now is. Then, if you decide to do the repairs, the cost is significantly cheaper.

Secondly, make the AFMU more costly to use repeatedly. AFMUs should require mats to operate (Initial purchase has x amount of reloads) then you either need to purchase more mats from a station or farm them from a planet/asteroids. The farming of the mats required should be relatively easy, maybe certain ring types would have all the mats required and say, a high metal planet would have the spawn rate of the required surface mining higher and take 15-30 minutes of driving to acquire a reasonable load.

 

[Pville_Piper]

A game? SC isn't a game. It's a broken piece of trash. I mean yeah, you'll infallibly notice you are trying to play something that pretends to be a game (but is in reality just a milking machine for gullible people) when you fall through the floor while climbing the cockpit ladder, throw an empty bottle on the floor or are trying to get off a chair you're somehow glued to.

I don't necessarily disagree with your assessment of Star Citizen, one of the reasons I quite playing it was the adding of medical gameplay in a game that kills you often and quite randomly.

Getting off topic a bit, but I played a fair amount back around update 12 or so and left around update 14 when they completely changed the way energy and kinetic weapons work as it killed any fun I had in the game. Beyond that, I did look at the game and see the many positive things that it had going for and good ideas and wished they could be a thing in Elite. Space walking, the way you move around/ access ships, surface mining, crime and punishment and multicrew are all far superior to Elites implementation if it even exists at all in Elite.

The biggest issue with SC is that they are trying to do way too much and can't rein in mission creep, this is something that Elite tends to do well, but in the reverse, they tend to undershoot a bit too much.

 

[Old Duck]

This is how to do ship interiors..

Hey frontier, and any elite only player who's put their foot down that ship interiors will be useless. Here's an excellent example of what i would personally like to do with ship interiors. In the example below, replace water with space, and the submarine with a python. Also use your...

forums.frontier.co.uk

Just saying.

I see your thread and raise it:

https://forums.frontier.co.uk/threads/what-would-you-pay-for-ship-interiors.613721/