Collection of Ideas for Elite 4

[VictorT]

BUMP to the wishlist thread!

this is a repost from another thread, but seems more appropriate to put here,

perhaps if cities were also laid out procedurally.. so when you revisited a planet, maybe a store has moved or is closed, or a new street or neighborhood has sprung up (or burnt down, got foreclosed, repurposed, destroyed from orbit, ad nauseum). Hell maybe even a new city. Planets are huge, scanning for power signatures, and discovering new settlements (near resource rich geologies, or whatever) to trade with/shop at would sure as hell open many cool open-ended, dynamic plot construction possibilies, living economies, if you will; Settlement X needs resources (e.g. in order to grow) from Major City Y on another continent/moon/orbital station, etc... (haha, only to return to Settlement X to discover it's too late, died of starvation)

starting the game on some random planet somewhere with just enough inheritence to visit the local docks and buy an Interplanetary Shuttle(tm) would certainly be a reasonable starting point then..

pilfering some of the abilities from the X series (i've only played X2, since it came out for linux) like ship software for trading prices, and remotely commandable fleets, ability to hire NPC pilots.. that'd rule

oh, and a dedicated server daemon, so we can host persistent worlds for our friends. =)

going waaay out on a limb, perhaps just persistent galaxies, with a remote IPC standard so we can link galaxies.. seems kinda silly tho. galaxies are gargantuhuge. nevermind that part. =)

*snip*

 

[Steve O B Have]

aye - nice work - I was just about to suggest it in the other thread

 

[Deadly Chicken]

Wow, Hi there, new poster here.

Well had an acorn electron and pretty sure we had elite for that I cannot remember getting that far tbh, I also played it on my Amiga A500, and purchased frontier for my A1200 as soon as I could.

I still have that stuff somewhere back in the UK I left it with my dad.

Anyhow I recently found the glfrontier thing where someone has made it work on XP.

so I got it all going and this last weekend just hammered the crap out of it I am above average already and loving every minute of it.

It helped me remember that games used to be good no matter the spec. it always amazed me that frontier fitted n one floppy disk. But that’s just testament to how good a game it was.

So what would I want to see in Elite IV.

Well let me first say that after a couple of minutes playing the original I was like. OMG why has no one updated this ?

it has such great potential.

My head is swimming with ideas now

Ideal world :

massively online of course, possibly have clusters of star systems dedicated to a server, so hyperspacing outside of these stars logs you into a different server ( as a way to get around how many people might be playing it )

I want the ability to have more than one ship, also where a ship requires crew I think that those crew should actually be real people. e.g. five people are playing in little one man ships, form a "clan" and decide to all chip in on a big 5 man ship. They can either tow their one man ships, keep them in the hold or leave them at a "base" for later collection ( so that they can still play as an individual if they like )

Obviously there will need to be computer controlled players, maybe an option woul dbe to purchase "bots" and a ship for the bot to go an mine for you or something ? these bots would be pretty easy to attack but could be left around to mine for you and you could go collect his fruits from time to time.

I like the trading system, and would not want to change it that much, perhaps more items, and someone who will buy items that are perhaps not even produced in some systems, and just make up a price ( like a pawnbroker ) so sometimesyou get lucky with some random item you brought that another planet has never heard of but a trader takes a chance and buys them off you..
Maybe the economy could be effected by local events so that you could predict the market a bit.

I like the idea of custom ships, if there was a simple build program included, it could charge for the ship based on how much area it takes up etc.

Again with battle, I like the way it works and do not think you need to change it much.. fighting other folk online would add all the depth needed I think, but obviously pretty grphics would make it all exciting

The main thing I would like is that the gamedoes nt get bogged down with too many extra details and thins to do, like visiting a space station, I don’t want to be able to walk around it and go into shops or bars etc. the bulletin board is plenty to see whats going on there and the trading post and ship repairs, for me being docked is all about repairs and planning your next move, I don’t want a WoW style game where you have to spend ages doing mundane stuff , when all you want to do is get out there flying your ship, doing missions, and trading.

Basicaly if you took Frontier, and gave it snazzy graphics and upped the pace a bit for me that would be awesome. If you put the whole thing online so that many of the other ships you met along the way were other people in real life. That would be unthinkably awesome. If heaps more depth gets added, it would probably turn me away from it. Might as well play homeworld or something.

I cant wait to get hometonight and fly some mor emissions

 

[DraQ]

Anyhow I recently found the glfrontier thing where someone has made it work on XP.

so I got it all going and this last weekend just hammered the crap out of it I am above average already and loving every minute of it.

A friendly tip:
Ctrl+E switches rendering modes in GLfrontier.

Ideal world :

massively online of course

And this is the moment when some people, like me, say "thank you" and lose interest in the game.
Besides, relistically scaled, frontier style, systems and MMO are mutually exclusive.

I wouldn't want frontier to lose one of the key aspects that set it apart from
your typical space-sim.
The only multiplayer capability possible in frontier-style game is coop where all players man single ship and DM where a point in space is chosen and combatants spawn in close proxmity (this can be extended to team DM with different ships, "capture the cargo", etc.).

I want the ability to have more than one ship, also where a ship requires crew I think that those crew should actually be real people. e.g. five people are playing in little one man ships, form a "clan" and decide to all chip in on a big 5 man ship. They can either tow their one man ships, keep them in the hold or leave them at a "base" for later collection ( so that they can still play as an individual if they like )

That would be cool.

Maybe the economy could be effected by local events so that you could predict the market a bit.

Very cool idea.

I like the idea of custom ships, if there was a simple build program included, it could charge for the ship based on how much area it takes up etc.

I don't think it's possible with frontier-style ships to a degree larger than it was implemented in FE2 and FFE (buying the hull and messing around with equipment).

Basicaly if you took Frontier, and gave it snazzy graphics and upped the pace a bit for me that would be awesome.

Uh, what's wrong with Frontier's pace?

If heaps more depth gets added, it would probably turn me away from it. Might as well play homeworld or something.

Don't you dare diss the Homeworld, for my mass-drivers are swift and accurate.

 

[sowen]

Well, I've only just found these forums (amazingly enough). You'll all have to forgive me, I'm just going to state what I'd like to see:

Adaptive news articles:
Rather then giving a set of set newspaper articles I'd like to see something a little more dynamic, for example, if a player decides to take up piracy for a living they might see wanted or reward notices for them in the associated press.

Scripted story lines:
I'd love to see the idea of there not being 1 story line but being several, especially if scripting was introduced as that would practically make it limitless.

Industrial:
A little out of X's book, the ability to create your own factories or colonies so a player could actually build up their own power base.

Battleships:
Having ships that could dock smaller ships and having wingmen.

Orginastions:
The ability for the player to be a part of one or more orgainsations, not just the federation or empite but private orgs as well that could be linked in with the multi-storyline ability.

Thargon:
Sorry, but had to be said. I'd love it if INRA were actually the good guys and everything you found out in First Encounters was a deception and the Thargon were actually the bad guys and there modest/humilitarian stance was for survival and nothing else. Just for a twist.

Aliens:
The introduction of further alien species would be great, especially if it involved the player through exploration.

Growing universe:
If the player and others were able to slowly expand the known universe by exploration. This could also serve to make each game unique.

Extensibility:
Through new scripts, mod community additions to equipment, ships etc.

More then 1 known pilot:
If the game could have 10 or so pilots that its AI actually controlled fully, so that their names appeared in the press as well, just so that the player almost felt like they were competing for press attention. If one of these pilots is destroyed, the game could generate another to take there place.

At the end of the day though, I'm not really worried about what goes into Elite 4, as long as it supports DirectX and contains the same or mroe then the previous game then I'm more then happy.

 

[Glyndo]

After reading through everyone's ideas, I thought I should post mine. Most of these have already been mentioned, but I want to contribute!

For me, a major thing I want to see in Elite IV is an expandable universe. I've only played FFE (no, really!) and in that game there were countless systems that were labelled as unexplored and "no registered settlements" when a check of the system map showed an Earth-like planet. What I would like is for there to be some way that travelling to those systems and maybe orbiting each planet or even landing on them (ones that are possible to land on ) would gather data on said planet. Once you've travelled back to "inhabited" space then you could maybe sell the information or just pass it to one of the powers (Feds, Imp or Alliance - I'm using FFE as a guide here).

Another thing I would love to see in E4 is the scripted storylines. I remember the first time I caught a sniff of one of these was when I paid 50,000 credits for that bit of information that may interest friends of Jo Meirion (or whoever and however it was spelt!). That made me pay a bit more attention in my earlier saves, which led to the chance discovery of Mic Turner's funeral and the plans for a new Turner's Quest. It only took me 10 years to get my hands on a Thargoid ship! I like sowen's idea of multiple storylines; as the game will probably have no defined "end" then randomly generated events would, in my opinion, be a great way of keeping the game fresh and interesting. Or maybe scripted events happening at random times - outbreaks of war, famine, disease, etc.

I think the most important thing I'd like to see in E4 is bugs, or the lack thereof. FFE was released far too early and there are several bugs that with a little bit of extra testing would have been discovered and sorted. I've lost count of the number of times I've crashed into a planet while Autopilot and max dream has been on and I've been reading the news!

I've read a few posts here mentioning the combat situations needing changing; personally I didn't have any problems in FFE and I don't want that to change too much!

With DB and the rest of the team's track record - Elite, Frontier, FFE, and more - I'm sure they've got some brilliant ideas of their own and are not too big-headed to ignore some of the suggestions mentioned in this thread. As long as the essence of the earlier games are present, I think almost all of us here will be satisfied. There will be people that are disappointed by E4; there always will be. Whether that is because they have overhyped the game or their expectations of it are unrealistic, who knows? All I can say is I can't wait to play it. That, and Outsider!

 

[Prycon]

A lot of good ideas guys. I would love Elite4 to be like FE2 and FFE only with tons of new stuff and better graphics. But I would like to have more real stars and less made up one, I know that will make Elite4 look different than FE2 and FFE, but I love the realism in these games. And I do not want a massive online multiplayer game, I don't like what these games do to people. And I think it fits more with a X3 universe than Elite universe.

I also want more options like building factory's, farms, mines etc. on planets. Maybe even buy planets, and build starports and spacestation to orbit them. It would make the game more interesting when it comes to exploration.

The problem with FE2 and FFE is when you get rich, you don't have anything to spend your money on.

You should be able to start your own company. Buy ships and hire pilots to fly them between system and let them do the trade for you. You could even buy those big starliner and cargo ship that you see docked bye the spacestation in FE2/FFE, and make the routes that will give you the most profit.

It would be nice to own more than one ship, and this will open for owning places to park the ships. And real estate comes to mind. Nice to own your personal starport on Earth or Mars, to park all your beautiful shiny collection of spaceships. Kind of like mansion with helipads, or a private air strip, in real life.

 

[DraQ]

I'd be delighted if there were more variety in types of stations. How about hydrogen extraction stations floating in upper layers of atmosphere of smaller gas giants, 'artificial planets' (stations on circumstellar orbits) in wordless and even some normal systems, temporary mobile mining bases in systems where there is some prospecting and mining, etc.

 

[Deadly Chicken]

ok to clarify to say massively online I guess what I meant was not the standard idea of a MMorpg.

each server ciould maintain a cluster of stars, obviously some such as the core systems would get a hammering and might need a cluster of servers just for it. but the further away you go the fewser servers you need, clans could colonise a system that has yet to be colonised and make their own market and run the system from a server.

I dunno tbh I had not really thorugh it thrgouthrough, just got excisted and posted

basically I like the idea of space battles taking place between real people as well as AI controlled people.

but in all honesty if you had just a single player game that was elite but with more ships, beautiful graphics, more missions, etc then it would probably still be the greatest game ever

I guess we are pushed into online.by todays standards, it must be online to be a winner.

maybe you could have an offline game and then the onlinepart could be only a limited number of systems to start with. As the game grows maybe more could be opened up?

what isf it was a largely offline game, as in single player, but that every stop you made, your PC loggedinto a server and updated it with what you had been up to, that way you don't have to interact with actual other real people. But what they do can effect what you do. Like you go to anothe rplanet to buy all the robots and sell them somewhere else,. but while your docking, someone lands on your target planet and buy s all the robots, when you get there, they are all gone.

Also the ability to place bulleten board messages might be good,

dam endless .. its endless.

no wonder its such a headache getti this game off the ground

 

[DraQ]

ok to clarify to say massively online I guess what I meant was not the standard idea of a MMorpg.

As far as I can see, any kind of MMO and Frontier-like mechanics are mutualy exclusive.

basically I like the idea of space battles taking place between real people as well as AI controlled people.

DM would be cool.

but in all honesty if you had just a single player game that was elite but with more ships, beautiful graphics, more missions, etc then it would probably still be the greatest game ever

Or at the very least among the greatest.

I guess we are pushed into online.by todays standards, it must be online to be a winner.

Not really. There are quite a few recently relased games that were very successsfull despite no multiplayer capability.

what isf it was a largely offline game, as in single player, but that every stop you made, your PC loggedinto a server and updated it with what you had been up to, that way you don't have to interact with actual other real people. But what they do can effect what you do. Like you go to anothe rplanet to buy all the robots and sell them somewhere else,. but while your docking, someone lands on your target planet and buy s all the robots, when you get there, they are all gone.

Also the ability to place bulleten board messages might be good,

dam endless .. its endless.

Sounds sound, as long as it wouldn't be obligatory. Still, such a limited multiplayer capability would probably be waste of resources from dev's point of view.

 

[Glyndo]

I don't see the need for E4 to go online; to be honest I'm not sure how it would work - for example you couldn't really be a pirate because the likelihood of a ship coming out of hyperspace near you would be infinitesimally small. The only online interaction I can really envisage is combat, but again, how would that work?

I can't see how an online aspect of E4 would relate with the offline story. Maybe that's just me!

I like the idea of being able to build starports and space stations and the like. As Prycon said, when you get rich in FFE you can't spend the money. What I'd like to see if this ever came to fruition would be the ability to build a massive colony ship and then travel to the unexplored areas of the galaxy and settle there. Then go off somewhere else and repeat the process.

What I really want to see, most of all, is decent graphics. Even at the time FFE was released the graphics were poor so having an up-to-date Elite universe would be quality

 

[Prycon]

Single player game with online chat service included, for those with internet connection. Every starport and spacestation having their own chat rooms, and the only way to access them is through the game. Let say you land on London on Earth, you could access the London chat room and talk to everyone around the world playing Elite4, and currently docked at London. And you could fly to Boston Base in Bernard Star and talk to everyone docked at Boston Base, and so on... When you enter a system through hyperspace you could broadcast a message to get a list over which starport/spacestation where there are people online, and how many at each place. This could guide you to where you want to go in the current system.

The chat room does not take in to account the time, year or situation different players are in. It is just a chat room that has little to do with the gameplay, except that the chat room is chosen by which starport/spacestation you are currently docked at. Should be optional. Nice thing to keep Elite fans closer together. Just an idea.

This also brings up the idea of having use profile(s). A profile where you chose your nickname and looks. And write a little bio about your character, like which planet/spacestation you where born on, favorite Frontier drink/food and stuff. The game saves will also be in the profile section.

Please forgive my spelling errors.

 

[Steve O B Have]

Hey, I quite like that idea. It certainly has some possibilities. It could certainly translate to perhaps some 'Bullitin Board' style trading or exchanging of goods. The problem that I could see coming up is the online aspect being reviews as being half hearted - the question being asked as to why it's not an all or nothing situation. But I really like the idea of space station/ space port interaction.

 

[Prycon]

I think of this idea as addition to singleplayer side of the game. The multiplayer should also be included, but how do you add multiplayer to Elite4?

The only 2 way I can think of, if it follows the physics of Frontier, is to have a super perfect hyperdrive in multiplayer, that will take you about ca 100 km of your destination (or above surface, if on a planet). You must choose your destination starport/spacestation before you enter hyperspace. And you must come out fare enough to be attacked by pirates, but close enough to reach you destination in a few minutes. The star dreamer must not be functional.

The other solution would be letting the stardreamer be a sub-hyperspace, and not a time accelerator. When you use the stardreamer you will go extremely fast, in a stat of hyperspace inside a solar system, but when you get close to another ship you will fall back to normal speed, with the warning "Ship is under attack!". In this solution you would also use the stardreamer in multiplayer as in singleplayer. But it will act differently in terms of that it will not speed up time, it will make you go faster (or travel through an invisible hyperspace). But it will look and act the same as in singleplayer, except time will go at normal speed.

The third solution I won't mention because I HATE JUMPGATES!!!!! This is Frontier, not Babylon 5 (I like B5, don't get me wrong). If I wanted jumpgates I would play the X series, for crying out loud!

 

[Steve O B Have]

I think of this idea as addition to singleplayer side of the game. The multiplayer should also be included, but how do you add multiplayer to Elite4?

The only 2 way I can think of, if it follows the physics of Frontier, is to have a super perfect hyperdrive in multiplayer, that will take you about ca 100 km of your destination (or above surface, if on a planet). You must choose your destination starport/spacestation before you enter hyperspace. And you must come out fare enough to be attacked by pirates, but close enough to reach you destination in a few minutes. The star dreamer must not be functional.

The other solution would be letting the stardreamer be a sub-hyperspace, and not a time accelerator. When you use the stardreamer you will go extremely fast, in a stat of hyperspace inside a solar system, but when you get close to another ship you will fall back to normal speed, with the warning "Ship is under attack!". In this solution you would also use the stardreamer in multiplayer as in singleplayer. But it will act differently in terms of that it will not speed up time, it will make you go faster (or travel through an invisible hyperspace). But it will look and act the same as in singleplayer, except time will go at normal speed.

The third solution I won't mention because I HATE JUMPGATES!!!!! This is Frontier, not Babylon 5 (I like B5, don't get me wrong). If I wanted jumpgates I would play the X series, for crying out loud!

Yeah but that is pretty much the same as jump gates isn't it? I think half the attraction of Frontier was the being able to explore a planetary system using stardreamer to stop it feeling like you're playing Eve Online. I don't want to sit for hours/days to get anywhere.

 

[DraQ]

Yeah but that is pretty much the same as jump gates isn't it? I think half the attraction of Frontier was the being able to explore a planetary system using stardreamer to stop it feeling like you're playing Eve Online. I don't want to sit for hours/days to get anywhere.

QFT.
Time compression AKA Stardreamer is essential in implementing newtonian cross system flight that contributed so much to Frontier's atmosphere and keeping the game playable at the same time.

 

[Prycon]

I want Elite4 to function as FE2 and FFE when it comes to game dynamics. And I too think the stardreamer is the only realistic method in terms of exploring, so I want it to stay the same. I hope Elite4 will be a singleplayer game with multiplayer support, if it can't be done I want it to be a singleplayer only.

I agree the solution nr1 is out of the question, it it still free hyperspacing, but you will likely loose the explorer part.

Solution 2 can work, but only in the multiplayer part. I don't know if you understand the idea as I explained it, I think I have a hard time dealing with the English language. Sorry about that. In solution 2, the stardreamer works exactly as in Frontier, but the only difference is that it isn't a time compressor, it is a space compressor.

Example: When you use the stardreamer in FE2/FFE, you go fast, time goes fast. In solution 2, the Elite4 multiplayer idea, you go fast and time goes at normal speed (real time). Again I would like to say I only want this for the multiplayer part of the game, and not for the singleplayer part.

It could work because now time will be the same on all players computer, and you can still use the stardreamer and explore. But when 2 or more ship meet you will go back to normal speed, lets say in a range of 30 km, as it does in FE2/FFE. This will make the delivery dates on multiplayer missions to be sett on a quicker time line than on singleplayer missions, since time will go at normal speed. Everything will work as in Frontier. You hyperspace in to a new system, you are about 9 AU form your destination, you use the stardreamer and reach destination after 2 minutes.

Sounds like warp speed?

It will feel unrealistic when it takes 3 minutes to take a trip from Boston Base in Bernard Star to Abe Lincoln in Sol. And spaceships that speed up like magic. But at least you get multiplayer that might work. Maybe it would be an idea to have two time system, on time for you private and another time for online use. When hyperspaceing and using the stardreamer the private time advances fast like in Frontier, but the online time will go at normal speed (real time, system time or Greenwich). Use the private time when doing missions on the BBS, and the online time doing missions with online players.

 

[DraQ]

The problem with accelerated in-system travel is that entire newtonian mechanics goes down the drain. And it is too cool to drop.

It was the thing that allowed me to celebrate finally putting my ship in stable orbit after countless attempts and hasty approximations.
It was the thing that gave me the sense of accomplishment after my Asp with hull integrity at about 50% and disabled both side thrusters (rendering any control mode, but full manual unusable) finally touched down on an earth-like planet of 2.5 Earth masses after close encounter with IC equipped with 20MW beam.

I wouldn't be able to experience all that I was just zapping around on some sort of close range warp drive and I believe many other players have similar memories they cherish as well.

 

[Glyndo]

The problem with accelerated in-system travel is that entire newtonian mechanics goes down the drain. And it is too cool to drop.

I agree completely. I think the whole stardreamer idea in FFE was spot-on; I don't want that to change. I think there could be a few refinements to it, I didn't like the fact that you were dropped out of stardreamer mode right next to the ship attacking you! If you weren't paying complete attention at that exact moment in time you were as good as dead!

 

[DraQ]

I think there could be a few refinements to it, I didn't like the fact that you were dropped out of stardreamer mode right next to the ship attacking you! If you weren't paying complete attention at that exact moment in time you were as good as dead!

I wholeheartedly agree, we need proximity warning as soon as there is another ship in 50-100km radius. Also, we need colored blips on system map again. It would also be a nice idea if you wouldn't be able to detect targets when there is another object in the line of sight - terrain for close range scanners, major body in system map. System map could also render zones inaccessible to your scanner behind major bodies. Now if you added intercept warning (as soon as computer determines there are objects, even distant ones, at intercept course it would notify the commander) to standard proximity warnings it would allow for some interesting tactics forcing pirates to prepare ambushes, for example in the scanner shadow of some gas giant when attacking fast ships (of course if your trajectory doesn't pass in reasonable proximity of such objects they'd have to chaseyou as in good old days).