Elite's FPS component is a mess.
Here's the first thing about PVE Shooters; to be enjoyable, they need a significant amount of diversity. On-foot gunplay is, at its core, simple. Everyone knows how to run, jump, and shoot. We've all been doing that for years. Doing that against the same type of enemy over and over gets dull very quickly, unless there's something to spice things up.
Games CAN get away with simplicity, IF they are very fast-paced. If you die in one or two shots, then that can be fun because the skill ceiling is so high.
But as games become more slow-paced, with shields and armor, they need more diversity to keep players interested, and that's where Elite doesn't do very well. Unfortunately, Elite combines the diversity of a fast-paced game with the kill speed and low risk of a slow-paced game, like Mass Effect. This leads to only one inevitable result; everyone running around with two rocket launchers, the only thing which allows them to achieve some semblance of the fast-paced gameplay they crave.
Other PVE games like Mass Effect achieve balance through a wide variety of enemy types, with encounters designed to combine them in innovative ways. For example, combine sniper type enemies who keep you pinned down in cover, with aggressive berserkers that force you OUT of cover. Or mid-range troopers that keep you distracted, while engineers set up turrets behind them to assert map control. The fact each type of unit has different tactics and strategies that interact with other types of unit, creates a constantly dynamic experience that you need to adjust to on the fly, and keeps the game enjoyable.
I believe Elite could emulate this approach. However, it will need a fair degree of new enemy types to make it work, the existing settlement maps need to be slightly redesigned, and several of the current mechanics need to be reworked.
The Sniper Rifle and Missile Problem(Lines of Sight)
One thing a lot of people notice right away in Odyssey is that there is essentially no sniper rifle. Yes, there is the plasma rifle, which is ostensibly a sniper, but in practice its slow bullet velocity and the shield gate of enemies means that in practice, it's not a sniper at all.
Unlike others however, I would argue that the lack of sniper rifles isn't a simple design mistake, but a deeper concession to a fundamental design flaw; this game has too many sight lines. You can get a bead on an enemy guard from a kilometer away, and if you could actually kill them from that distance, you'd never do anything else, because it's not like they could shoot BACK. Settlements are HORRIBLY designed from a defensive standpoint. They are wide open to the surrounding planet surface, and can be sniped or bombarded with missiles with virtually zero effort. This is a huge problem, because it essentially calls into question the entire PURPOSE of on-foot combat. Why on earth are we sending in soldiers, when a ship with missiles can just vaporize the entire surface with zero effort?
Even once you get into the settlement, the problems persist. Despite the fact the outside requires an environment suit to protect from the lack of air and radiation, few settlements are actually built to allow passage between buildings. This means any outbuildings are basically irrelevant for combat, because they are completely disconnected from the rest of the map and typically contain exactly one door and no reason to go inside. It's quite odd how settlements built on alien planets are built more like shantytowns or beach bungalows than what they'd really look like, more akin to a base on Antarctica.
But even setting the realism standpoint aside, it also makes for bad map design. The current system essentially is nothing more than a wide, empty combat arena with no meaningful details. Nobody goes into any buildings because they have no REASON to go into any buildings(not to mention rockets and grenades making going inside pointlessly dangerous), and because jetpacks exist, cover is also largely irrelevant, leading inevitably to the dual-rocket meta. Why would you ever pick anything else, when you can get into the sky and obliterate everyone on the ground in two shots with a large splash radius?
View attachment 434504
Take a look at this map. The orange is where 95% of fighting is going to take place, and the red dot is a single location where you can literally see all of it. NPCs will run haphazardly into it and repeatedly die, making for a bland and emotionless experience.
View attachment 434505
Now, let's make a few small modifications. First, add some low walls along the tops of the roofs(yellow), to give a protected line of sight on the areas below. Then, add access points(purple) to allow NPCs multiple ways of reaching the tops of those roofs and attacking you from behind. Then, add a connecting hallway(green) and skyway(blue) between three of the four buildings, allowing those buildings to go from being useless, to being a full half the map. Lastly, let's add a Red tunnel, not only giving a second access point to the uppermost building, but also a back entrance to the open area. Suddenly, you can't just sit out there anymore, you actually need to run around, expose yourself to danger, and enter hostile situations!
Lastly, add overhangs to many things to protect people in cover from being attacked from the air, and walls around the outside edge to protect from snipers.
Relatively small tweaks like this can take maps from bland to far more interesting. And some maps should have more of each of these things. Some maps should take place primarily inside; others primarily outside.
2. The Orbital Bombardment/Rocket Launcher/Sniper Rifle Problem
This is both a gameplay problem and a realism one. If ships can bombard settlements and kill everyone there fairly effortlessly with rockets, what point is there in on-foot combat in the first place? Why don't sniper rifles exist?
The obvious answer is shield generators and shield generator grenades. First, shields need to be changed to have a brief 'Shield Gate', to prevent from instakilling enemies with multiple projectiles. After that, shield bubble grenades need to be made much more common, and NPCs need to be coded to use them when bombarded. Then, settlements need to have much larger shields, which prevent ships from getting too close and snipers from shooting from beyond the bubble. This could have an opening or openings about 5m off the ground to allow SRVs and players inside, and even to allow for careful sniper shots, but I don't really see any other way to solve these issues.
3. Weapons, Suits, Enemies
These changes are, unfortunately, just a start. They create the conditions under which an enjoyable game could be made, but to really do that, it'll take a fairly comprehensive reworking of weapons, suits and enemies as well. Does anyone REALLY think it's reasonable that EVERYONE in the galaxy uses the same exact suit type in combat? That grenades are limited but rockets are unlimited? That tools have no combat utility?
This is, fortunately, where a lot of monetization could come in. Imagine each faction(Empire, Federation, Independent, and Anarchy) has their own set of troop types, each with distinctive and thematic behaviors, and which players can acquire and apply cosmetics to? Imagine cosmetics for tools, not just weapons, and that tools can be freely swapped between different suits with different playstyles? The more suits players want to own, the more cosmetics they'll want, and the more money Fdev can make. I won't dig too deep here because quite frankly it's a style decision, but you can understand the basic principle by now.
Done right, Odyssey could be really good!
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