People have been begging for Ship Interiors for years. This has always been a bit of an oddity to me, since most of these people don't seem to know what they really even want.
Sure, if you press them, they can come up with any number of ideas, but those ideas don't seem to be present by default; they are created as a result of the desire, they are not the cause of the desire.
So why do people want ship interiors? I think I have an idea.
My basic idea comes from a suggestion by noted author Brandon Sanderson. He's an author who has achieved success not by great inspiration or skill, but rather, by very carefully analyzing and deconstructing the technical aspects of writing. He knows why people want what they want, and how to give it to them.
And one of the things he advocates is having a group to read your work, and give you advice. BUT - and this is where things become relevant to Elite - he very strongly advises against letting them tell you what should happen next. Instead, he says that they should tell you how they FEEL at that particular moment, and then use those feelings to create your own answer.
So the question, I think, is more basic than why people want interiors. People want interiors because they are feeling an emotion that translates into wanting interiors. Interiors, I believe, are actually just a cultural construct, built atop the cornerstone that is that basic unsatisfied emotion. But what IS that emotion?
I think it's complex.
Think, for a moment, about how you get out of your ship. It starts when you drop in 10km out, and need to fly within 7.5km to request docking permission. Then you need to fly around the station to find the slot, dodge incoming and outgoing traffic, fly inside, find your pad, deploy landing gear, go through the entire landing process, and navigate a menu to disembark. Every single aspect is designed to add realism and verisimillitude; you wouldn't NEED to have to, say, request docking permission, but needing to do so makes the game seem deeper and more realistic. Every step is like this - right up until you go to disembark your ship, at which point you vanish in a poof of smoke, have a harsh black loading screen, and appear on the ground. This feels wrong. It's completely contrary to everything that went before it; it throws you out of the game, dispels your suspension of disbelief.
Getting back into your ship is somewhat similar. You walk out and look up at your huge ship, with very obvious logical boarding locations - which you then ignore, and go to an incongruous blue circle. You then poof into your pilot's seat. It feels wrong.
Honestly, this problem has existed prior to Odyssey, too. The SRV is a prime example, and this is what really got me thinking about this.
In Elite, you run up to the SRV, which has an obvious door. You ignore that, and activate the SRV, only to get a menu you must navigate. On navigating it, you get a black screen, at which point you appear inside the SRV. There is a fairly prolonged period of time where you can notice the tiny bits of annoyance. Compare and contrast this with a game like Star Wars Battlefront 2. In that game, you run up to any vehicle, press a single button, and you are INSTANTLY inside that vehicle. You have no time to worry about how you got inside; it's time to play the game!
I think it's these little annoyances that are truly what are making players want interiors. Each on their own seems small, but combined together, they do become a significant overall negative. I don't think most of the CONTENT suggestions for interiors are very good, but I still recognize that I would find the game much more satisfying if, for example with the SRV, rather than navigating the menu and then blackscreening inside, I could press a button to open the door, and press another button to sit down, and seamlessly take control. Same goes for ships; I would find it infinitely more satisfying to activate the ladder or stairs, appear in the back of the cockpit, and walk to my seat, rather than go to the blue ring and teleport into the seat. It's almost intangible, but it's definitely there.
---
The question becomes, what sort of content could justify this? And that got me thinking. Engineering has been one of the main complaints about Elite, right? Many players feel compelled to engineer just to do much of anything. And engineering is extremely powerful. But engineering is also grindy.
What if we added an alternative to engineering? I'm talking about CALIBRATION.
Here's the idea. Inside your ship, possibly even just inside your cockpit, you could walk around and access different menus based on your different subsystems. Using these menus, you could calibrate your different modules to offer TEMPORARY increased performance, at G3-G4 levels. For example, if you wanted long-range lasers, you could do a temporary range calibration on them, increasing their range for, say, 1000 shots/1 reload. The effect would gradually wear off, reducing with each additional shot. The reason it would need to be around your cockpit instead of at your pilot's seat is because these calibrations should not be something you could change on the fly DURING a fight, since it wouldn't be much fun to always have the exact modification needed; it should be something you do before the fight to buff up.
This would allow players to access some degree of engineering without doing any engineering at all! The benefits of engineering would be that the effects would be permanent, they would reduce the difficulty of the calibration minigame, and overall increase performance beyond what is avaialble from Calibration. For example, completing the hardest minigame might allow you to get +75% range on your weapons, compared to +100% for G5 engineering; getting G1 long range would reduce that difficulty down by 25%, and getting G5 would remove the need to calibrate at all, though you could still calibrate to temporarly change effects as needed, removing the engineering effect and replacing it with a different one. Of course, some effects would not be available via calibration at all.
This would also synergize with Multicrew, since your crewmates COULD run calibrations mid-fight, to adjust your arsenal as needed.
This would offer new content, that has a reason to justify interiors, allowing for the basics to be added; namely, removing the blue circle, allowing players to get out of their ships organically, and reducing this long-term source of frustration.
So...what do you think?
Sure, if you press them, they can come up with any number of ideas, but those ideas don't seem to be present by default; they are created as a result of the desire, they are not the cause of the desire.
So why do people want ship interiors? I think I have an idea.
My basic idea comes from a suggestion by noted author Brandon Sanderson. He's an author who has achieved success not by great inspiration or skill, but rather, by very carefully analyzing and deconstructing the technical aspects of writing. He knows why people want what they want, and how to give it to them.
And one of the things he advocates is having a group to read your work, and give you advice. BUT - and this is where things become relevant to Elite - he very strongly advises against letting them tell you what should happen next. Instead, he says that they should tell you how they FEEL at that particular moment, and then use those feelings to create your own answer.
So the question, I think, is more basic than why people want interiors. People want interiors because they are feeling an emotion that translates into wanting interiors. Interiors, I believe, are actually just a cultural construct, built atop the cornerstone that is that basic unsatisfied emotion. But what IS that emotion?
I think it's complex.
Think, for a moment, about how you get out of your ship. It starts when you drop in 10km out, and need to fly within 7.5km to request docking permission. Then you need to fly around the station to find the slot, dodge incoming and outgoing traffic, fly inside, find your pad, deploy landing gear, go through the entire landing process, and navigate a menu to disembark. Every single aspect is designed to add realism and verisimillitude; you wouldn't NEED to have to, say, request docking permission, but needing to do so makes the game seem deeper and more realistic. Every step is like this - right up until you go to disembark your ship, at which point you vanish in a poof of smoke, have a harsh black loading screen, and appear on the ground. This feels wrong. It's completely contrary to everything that went before it; it throws you out of the game, dispels your suspension of disbelief.
Getting back into your ship is somewhat similar. You walk out and look up at your huge ship, with very obvious logical boarding locations - which you then ignore, and go to an incongruous blue circle. You then poof into your pilot's seat. It feels wrong.
Honestly, this problem has existed prior to Odyssey, too. The SRV is a prime example, and this is what really got me thinking about this.
In Elite, you run up to the SRV, which has an obvious door. You ignore that, and activate the SRV, only to get a menu you must navigate. On navigating it, you get a black screen, at which point you appear inside the SRV. There is a fairly prolonged period of time where you can notice the tiny bits of annoyance. Compare and contrast this with a game like Star Wars Battlefront 2. In that game, you run up to any vehicle, press a single button, and you are INSTANTLY inside that vehicle. You have no time to worry about how you got inside; it's time to play the game!
I think it's these little annoyances that are truly what are making players want interiors. Each on their own seems small, but combined together, they do become a significant overall negative. I don't think most of the CONTENT suggestions for interiors are very good, but I still recognize that I would find the game much more satisfying if, for example with the SRV, rather than navigating the menu and then blackscreening inside, I could press a button to open the door, and press another button to sit down, and seamlessly take control. Same goes for ships; I would find it infinitely more satisfying to activate the ladder or stairs, appear in the back of the cockpit, and walk to my seat, rather than go to the blue ring and teleport into the seat. It's almost intangible, but it's definitely there.
---
The question becomes, what sort of content could justify this? And that got me thinking. Engineering has been one of the main complaints about Elite, right? Many players feel compelled to engineer just to do much of anything. And engineering is extremely powerful. But engineering is also grindy.
What if we added an alternative to engineering? I'm talking about CALIBRATION.
Here's the idea. Inside your ship, possibly even just inside your cockpit, you could walk around and access different menus based on your different subsystems. Using these menus, you could calibrate your different modules to offer TEMPORARY increased performance, at G3-G4 levels. For example, if you wanted long-range lasers, you could do a temporary range calibration on them, increasing their range for, say, 1000 shots/1 reload. The effect would gradually wear off, reducing with each additional shot. The reason it would need to be around your cockpit instead of at your pilot's seat is because these calibrations should not be something you could change on the fly DURING a fight, since it wouldn't be much fun to always have the exact modification needed; it should be something you do before the fight to buff up.
This would allow players to access some degree of engineering without doing any engineering at all! The benefits of engineering would be that the effects would be permanent, they would reduce the difficulty of the calibration minigame, and overall increase performance beyond what is avaialble from Calibration. For example, completing the hardest minigame might allow you to get +75% range on your weapons, compared to +100% for G5 engineering; getting G1 long range would reduce that difficulty down by 25%, and getting G5 would remove the need to calibrate at all, though you could still calibrate to temporarly change effects as needed, removing the engineering effect and replacing it with a different one. Of course, some effects would not be available via calibration at all.
This would also synergize with Multicrew, since your crewmates COULD run calibrations mid-fight, to adjust your arsenal as needed.
This would offer new content, that has a reason to justify interiors, allowing for the basics to be added; namely, removing the blue circle, allowing players to get out of their ships organically, and reducing this long-term source of frustration.
So...what do you think?
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