The New Content Drought

[Kira Goto]

The bubble tripling in size and the population magically expanding to fill it

It’s like when we had Thargoids killing or abducting people, or just causing them to flee, and ongoing evacuations… but systems never lost any population when they were eventually reclaimed. Except for Sol, that one went down from 26 or 22(not sure which one was the starting figure) billion to 18 and something now.

It was only after the last Titan got sent to the Thargoid afterlife, whatever it may be, that I think some other systems showed a notable population drop. Most noticeable with very large ones such as Lhou Mans and Inara near Oya which now have a count of 4 and 3.5 billion (although I don’t quite recall which is which). I think they had more before they were under Thargoid control for about a year and a half (not quite but it was close by the time they were freed).

I doubt that those ~12* billion could possibly account for what we’re seeing now though…

*Likely inaccurate guesstimate, I am just throwing a number in there in the “Go back to sleep” morning haze.

 

[Rubbernuke]

How will Fdev implement:

1. Earth-like worlds (accessible)
2. Water worlds
3. Gas Giants
4. Metal-rich worlds with volcanism
5. EVA
6. Ship interiors
7. Player outposts (customizable)
8. More accessible areas inside stations

This must be monetized such as DLC, early access, subscription, cosmetics etc. Thargoids on foot could be a free update though.

Given how ED deals with worlds in real time, I can never see Earth likes to the level people want, with faint possibilities for water worlds at low fidelity.

Gas giants? As a scooping mechanic yes, possible with whats in game. Same with basic volcanism (if you scale up what we have and apply it to the tectonic stages of Stellar Forge).

EVA can be done using a mash up of limpets, telepresence and on foot multi tools for things like space hulks perhaps.

Ship interiors- while fun PvE wise and PvP wise, its pretty redundant given we have materials and cargo dropped already. Other than capture what would it facilitiate other than 'because we can?'. In a money scarce game ship capture would be meaningful, here its easier to do a mission and buy a ship than steal one. Same goes for cargo, with a thin case for data heists.

Player outposts and more station rooms seem possible. I very much hope for example PP power stronghold FCs get interiors that blend PP station interitors with FCs / MS to create nice Vanguard club houses.

 

[Cosmo]

Given how ED deals with worlds in real time, I can never see Earth likes to the level people want, with faint possibilities for water worlds at low fidelity.

I think it would be rather basic ELW with forests, water, clouds, ice, snow, mountains. No metropolitan cities, maybe a limited, accessible area.

Gas giants? As a scooping mechanic yes, possible with whats in game. Same with basic volcanism (if you scale up what we have and apply it to the tectonic stages of Stellar Forge).

The gas giants should also have gameplay such as industrial facilities that can be built by the Architect.

EVA can be done using a mash up of limpets, telepresence and on foot multi tools for things like space hulks perhaps.

Seconded.

Ship interiors- while fun PvE wise and PvP wise, its pretty redundant given we have materials and cargo dropped already. Other than capture what would it facilitiate other than 'because we can?'. In a money scarce game ship capture would be meaningful, here its easier to do a mission and buy a ship than steal one. Same goes for cargo, with a thin case for data heists.

Ship interiors would complete the ship-experience and enables more roleplaying. Now we're stuck in a chair and pilot it around. It lacks immersion and interactivity. Interiors can be monetized with lots of cosmetics.

Player outposts and more station rooms seem possible. I very much hope for example PP power stronghold FCs get interiors that blend PP station interitors with FCs / MS to create nice Vanguard club houses.

Seconded.

 

[Hedganian]

Interiors can be monetized with lots of cosmetics.

Still waiting on that in-cockpit Hutton Mug...

 

[Rubbernuke]

I think it would be rather basic ELW with forests, water, clouds, ice, snow, mountains. No metropolitan cities, maybe a limited, accessible area.

The problem is even this is ambitious for a multiplayer game.

There was a fantastic deep dive livestream ages ago regards how FD developed the thargoid missiles and how they were matched across instances via spring like mathematical constraints. Now, think about how moons and planets are generated and the complexity of matching clouds, forests, animals etc- now imagine that tied to missions and the complexity rises exponentially as its multiplied across players. If FD can't put in NPC buggies how will ambulatory life work proc gen wise (since pathing would need to be generated on the fly?).

While I'm happy to be wrong at the same time I can't see anything complex happening, and that what you will get is very similar to concept art of super local POI like patches and not sweeping forests like 'the other game' that breaks itself to get there.

 

[Cosmo]

Now, think about how moons and planets are generated and the complexity of matching clouds, forests, animals etc- now imagine that tied to missions and the complexity rises exponentially as its multiplied across players. If FD can't put in NPC buggies how will ambulatory life work proc gen wise (since pathing would need to be generated on the fly?).

It doesn't need complex mechanics. NMS, SC have ELW. NMS has procedural alien creatures. Microsoft Flight Simulator 2024 has an almost photo-realistic recreation of Earth. Tech to procedurally generate oceans, lakes, clouds, rivers, weather has been done years ago in other games. ED just needs a bit more realistic version of NMS with a 1:1 scale. That's good enough. They could skip the alien procedural creatures for a separate DLC.

 

[Shadowsnog]

It doesn't need complex mechanics. NMS, SC have ELW. NMS has procedural alien creatures. Microsoft Flight Simulator 2024 has an almost photo-realistic recreation of Earth. Tech to procedurally generate oceans, lakes, clouds, rivers, weather has been done years ago in other games. ED just needs a bit more realistic version of NMS with a 1:1 scale. That's good enough. They could skip the alien procedural creatures for a separate DLC.

there is no way how to do this without complex mechanics, because complex mechanics are elite dangerous. you cant separate those two.
there is no such things as hurr durr just copypaste something from some other game.
to be fair i do think there is a way how some kind of elw could be implemented in elite, but it definitely wont be easy, it wont be cheap, it will take a long time and it will be a heck of a load on servers. as such it is very questionable if this would be deemed viable and profitable.

e: ah. i just now noticed the link in signature and i think i now understand better where this is coming from...

 

[Rubbernuke]

It doesn't need complex mechanics. NMS, SC have ELW. NMS has procedural alien creatures. Microsoft Flight Simulator 2024 has an almost photo-realistic recreation of Earth. Tech for oceans, lakes, clouds, weather has been done years ago in other games. ED just needs a bit more realistic version of NMS with 1:1 scale. That's good enough. They could make it less complex by skipping the alien procedural creatures for a separate DLC.

Take a look at how planets in ED are generated, and how instances knit together. Then, think about how having even simple things like clouds that were not cotton balls would work. For anything complex you'd need a general weather model, then build clouds, form areas of weather, communicate that with others (so they see the same patterns)....from that you'd have to ensure that there is no massive deviation between modes (so sunny for some is not snow for others)....you'll wind up with a realistic planet surface with cartoon weather which will annoy purists.

ED is pushing the engine to the limit as it is, going from a cube to a terrain, then populating it with POIs, communicating that with other instances along with mission parameters is going to be an order of magnitude harder in ED regardless of how other games do it, or have done it.

Far more can be done to enrich the game elsewhere IMO- C+P, more involved RNG hooks, relaxing separation between USS / POIs.....a lot can be done that does not require another EDO that risks amputating a game that has come back from the abyss.

 

[oblivionmanman 2476]

im using the so called drought period to take my fc to beagles from colonia, should have enough fuel set of with 18000+ tons enabling me to get back to colonia,but will be short for the return to the bubble , but if im lucky following the bridge route might just make it depending on the trit situation in the stop off stations,fingers crossed job.btw mining is out the equation lol want to get back before xmas.

 

[Hedganian]

im using the so called drought period to take my fc to beagles from colonia, should have enough fuel set of with 18000+ tons enabling me to get back to colonia,but will be short for the return to the bubble , but if im lucky following the bridge route might just make it depending on the trit situation in the stop off stations,fingers crossed job.btw mining is out the equation lol want to get back before xmas.

Just go without the carrier, it will be a lot faster.

 

[Cosmo]

there is no way how to do this without complex mechanics, because complex mechanics are elite dangerous. you cant separate those two.
there is no such things as hurr durr just copypaste something from some other game.

Take a look at how planets in ED are generated, and how instances knit together. Then, think about how having even simple things like clouds that were not cotton balls would work. For anything complex you'd need a general weather model, then build clouds, form areas of weather, communicate that with others (so they see the same patterns)....from that you'd have to ensure that there is no massive deviation between modes (so sunny for some is not snow for others)....you'll wind up with a realistic planet surface with cartoon weather which will annoy purists.

The star system, planet generation in ED is impressive. However, the complexity for new planet types is overestimated by Elite fans. The planet generation in Star Citizen is also complex. NMS has complex procedural planets with diverse biomes and creatures which gets downplayed by the cartoony art style.

Microsoft Flight Simulator 2024 blows ED out of the water in terms of recreating a near-photo realistic 1:1 scale version of Earth with accurate landmarks, city centers, islands, canyons, mountains, ocean surfaces, weather, traffic. ED will (most likely) never come close to the level of detail and accuracy of MSF 2024. ED does not have such tech. Earth looks different in the year 3300+. This is a cop out for Fdev to create a very different looking Earth that doesn't match real-life.

ED still has broken anti-aliasing, no path tracing, no global illumination, no nanite virtualized geometry, low polygon Megaships and facilities from Horizons. ED is almost a generation behind current video game graphics. People need to lower their expectations for ED. Lots of people would be happy with SC level of detail ELWs in ED.

 

[Shadowsnog]

saying

People need to lower their expectations for ED.

and

Lots of people would be happy with a SC level of detail ELW in ED.

in one breath?

ok dude...

 

[Cosmo]

]

saying "People need to lower their expectations for ED." and "Lots of people would be happy with a SC level of detail ELW in ED." in one breath? ok dude...

Yeah, it's not easy, but this is plausible for Fdev to implement if they wanted. First do the ELW-tech. Skip the alien procedural creatures for a separate DLC.

there is no way how to do this without complex mechanics, because complex mechanics are elite dangerous. you cant separate those two.
there is no such things as hurr durr just copypaste something from some other game.

Of course it requires complex mechanics, but a lot of games and engines have already done weather and procedural landscapes. Fdev doesn't need to reinvent the wheel and create mechanics from scratch.

 

[aRJay]

I think it would be rather basic ELW with forests, water, clouds, ice, snow, mountains. No metropolitan cities, maybe a limited, accessible area.
…

Metropolitan cities would be much easier to implement than forests, water and weather.

Nice solid regular structures.

 

[metatheurgist]

there is no way how to do this without complex mechanics, because complex mechanics are elite dangerous. you cant separate those two.

Complex mechanics like single commanders building entire colonies by hauling? Or the magical population explosion? Of 11 years of CGs with binary outcomes delivered at tier 1? 4 day wars? 6B pop star systems being controlled by a handful of uber drivers?

 

[Shadowsnog]

Complex mechanics like single commanders building entire colonies by hauling? Or the magical population explosion? Of 11 years of CGs with binary outcomes delivered at tier 1? 4 day wars? 6B pop star systems being controlled by a handful of uber drivers?

i know you like to smear elite at every possible opportunity, but you are losing yourself in this one

 

[Hedganian]

Too many development teams - and not just games or software, but across many if not all industries - get caught up in trying to add every new idea to the product rather than just picking a date and saying "no, anything after this date doesn't get done, we'll put it in the next one" and focussing on actually implementing the plans they already have to the best possible degree.

 

[Hedganian]

I still believe that Odyssey's on-foot content, especially the combat, was outsourced to a third party; Odyssey combat zones play nothing like the rest of the game and feel like a below-average arena-shooter bolted onto the side of Elite.

The on-foot content is in desperate need of being fixed - exobiology is incredibly tedious with having no way to detect the biologicals from ship or SRV and only the short-range ping from the hand scanner when on foot. Combat, as I already mentioned, is a death-filled fortnite knock-off and the reason why combat bonds now don't get lost when you die, because there's seemingly no way to avoid multiple deaths when doing an on-foot CZ. Other on-foot missions just don't seem worth the time to try to overcome the ridiculously-steep learning curve (I guess that part, if nothing else, is in keeping with the rest of the main game.) and the bar and station interiors are badly implemented and lacking in function. If I could hand in biological date from my ship, I'd probably never bother disembarking at a station, because there doesn't seem to be any other benefit to doing so.

The point about ship interiors is well made, in the sense that if there's nothing to DO with them, there's no point adding them to the game. However, with on-foot combat being an option, and station interiors already existing, why haven't we seen combat inside a station, or boarding actions on a megaship, or that sort of thing? Shoot your way through a combat zone, penetrate a station's defences and force a landing then disembark and clear the place room by room.

The ship-based gameplay and on-foot gameplay need to be bridged, because at the moment they operate like two totally separate games, with one being so much better than the other.

People might engage with the on-foot content more if it was better, and I'm not convinced that using lack of engagement with a poor feature as a justification against developing some other features makes a whole lot of sense.

But as I discussed earlier, fixing the features that are already there should be higher priority than adding new things. Odyssey content is already there, so revamping it wouldn't count as adding something totally new.

 

[metatheurgist]

i know you like to smear elite at every possible opportunity, but you are losing yourself in this one

There are mechanics in ED that if you described them as simple would be insulting to simple things. That's just a statement of fact.

 

[Rat Catcher]

*As it’s already been mentioned I’d appreciate it if no-one jumps on me for using it as a comparison.

Spoilsport...