What do you want to see added to the game?

[Arithon]

Spitballing some ideas that have come up over the last two years...

Shuttle bays for large trade ships

A class 5 shuttle bay holds small or medium shuttles which can hold 2T and 6T of cargo respectively. A Class 6 large shuttle bay holds the large shuttle which can carry 8T of cargo.
All shuttles are unarmed and not very agile, but can land at planet bases and outposts.
CMDRs can dismiss the main ship when off in a shuttle.

This opens outposts to large ships and re-cycles the launched fighter/SRV mechanic.

Shuttles should be able to dock with other ships to transfer cargo (both NPCs and other CMDRs). These would then be required for "seeking commodities" instances.


Surface mapping

If you fly over a planet surface with a detailed surface scanner in "cartography" mode, it will produce a heat-map of minerals and mark POIs.
This map will persist until you leave the surface (end of instance).
Lat / long positions can be bookmarked. Bookmarks can be shared with CMDRs in your instance or friends list.


Exploration improvements
SRV's should come with a sampler drill OR a repair arm.

• The sampler SRV could break outcrops/scoop minerals, but also drill to discover gas and oil deposits. This info could also be sold - being more valuable.
• The repair SRV could repair a ship that is on the surface (not just your own), both hull and power plant. It would need a supply of AR ammo from the mothership.

A drone bay could be added.

• This could carry up to three drones.
• These can be deployed in super-cruise to carry out detailed scans autonomously.
• They would travel no faster than the mother ship.
• They can only be reacquired in normal space, so you'd need to drop out of super-cruise to collect them and their data once they've returned to the mothership.
• They cannot be directed. - they simply head for the nearest un-scanned body, before moving on and return when no more are left in the system.
• If destroyed or worn out - they can be rebuilt or repaired in the drone bay using synthesis materials.

Mining
A new limpet is required. "Advanced prospector".
When fired it will seek out asteroids or icebergs (within its range) that contain any of up to three selected materials. e.g. (seek Gold, Platinum or Paladium)
Percentages can't be specified. So even 1% will cause a "target lock".
This doesn't make mining easier, just more targeted.

Ship transfer
Ship transfer should operate in two modes - both with in-game lore to back it up.
Option 1 is "sell stored ship and purchase local 3D print". This would be the expensive option. The remote ship would be sold at 10% loss for local price and 3D print would cost full ship price, so this would cost at least 10% of ship value. i. e. a stock Cobra would cost 34,972CR while a stock Cutter would cost 20M CR. Distance is irrelevant in this transaction. It's a print! Here's the rub. Only stock parts can be printed - Engineer mods are not on file, so while your stored engineered ship will sell for more, your newly printed vessel would be unmodified.

Option 2 is "transfer existing ship". This would cost far less, since it would be based on distance and ship pad size. small ships would be 100CR per light-year, medium 250CR and large 500CR. Each hour, on the hour a mega-transporter would arrive and depart from major stations. A capital-cargo-ship. Vessels and large cargo (those big cylinders) would load and unload and the mega-transporter would then depart.
This means summoning a large ship 119Ly would cost 59,500CR, but would take between 1 and 2 hours. However, you would see in station storage "ship awaiting transport" "ship loading" "ship in transit" and "ship unloading" in status.
You could also go outside the destination station and watch the mega-transporter arrive at the 5km point and your ship get flown into the station.

This means the distance to move, size and value of your ship and your time constraints as well as any engineer mods will dictate which method you use.

 

[Cataclysm72]

Realtime Sensors and metrics API for sim builders: speed, heading, cruise mode, g-forces, light on/off, gear state, weapon state, damage vectors, etc.

Separate selectable audio output device per audio group (comms, ship speech, internal sound effect, outside side effects, etc.) so i can route the right channel to headset or sound system.

 

[Trueno33]

I´d like to have the chance to engineer the surface scanner, so it doesn´t take that long and boots farther from the planets

 

[dubsdj]

Beacons that you can leave at planet coordinates with ability to put Message. Option to detect Other peoples beacons.

 

[Farmboy]

I'd like to have exploration missions which actually are based on exploration (exploration rank seems to be tied to 'go from a to b with this message' type mission - not a bad thing, but not directly related). A mission to go find and surface scan bodies in a given system, untimed missions which give bonus rewards for scanning terraformable, water or earth-like worlds, possibly even missions which give you specialised scanning modules (I'd guess only to cmdrs who are allied with the granting faction) which you have to take and use in appropriate exploration contexts - an asteroid ring scanner, for instance, to give some exploration value to the currently valueless bodies out there. None of these would need the cmdr to travel much outside the bubble.

This could be tied to factions which are looking to expand possibly to previously empty systems, though I guess establishing a colony by transporting colonists would be good material for a CG. (well possibly several - one to establish the surface colony based on equipment, one to establish an orbital platform for transhipment (until we can land on atmospheric planets at least) and passenger-type missions to deliver colonists).

This sort of stuff.

 

[Soon(TM)]

Why remove anything that works for many people?

Ohh, it doesn't work for OP. Maybe then don't engage with Engineers and PowerPlay?

I personally don't engage with either, power play is one of the least used features in the game.
Why waste more dev time maintaining it when that time could be used in other areas like improving missions.

- - - - - Additional Content Posted / Auto Merge - - - - -

So with Better BGS, you're looking for something that many MMO's have with player titles?

I guess this kind of thing is in a fair few MMOs but you could say it's a proven working mechanic then?

It's something players could benefit from with the system rewards, as in lower cost of ships and weapons etc. And other players could say "Hey look at that guy, he has a title/tag, he's done something in the game and it's persistent, wow!"

 

[Krieger]

I'd like to see some gameplay that offers players the abilitiy to create their own content. Ultimately, be cool to create settlements, or small outposts. Whilst I'll inevitably get the 'this is not EvE' response I think we can have some player created assets in game without going down the full path of corps etc.

Could start off with small things and see how it goes. For example in Frontier we could drop a mining rig somewhere and come back later to collect what it had produced. This type of stuff means us players, even though a tiny spec in the scheme of things, could leave some small imprint on the game. At the moment the only visible record of us having played is the discovery tag.

Thing is, and I've said this loads of times, there is only so much content Frontier can deliver at anyone time and with modest resources and lots of competing things on the list its limiting what we as players can do. Rather than repeating gameplay loops and being spoonfed by the devs a bit of emergent persistent player content would fill the gap a bit and imo create for a much more rewarding game.

There is just so much space out there its almost pointless to have if no one can use it. So perhaps eventually instead of Frontier planting in the outposts along the way to Colonia those things could be done via gameplay from the players. Such stuff could be aligned to the main factions or an existing one. Would certainly be lots of details to work out given the heavy restrictions but worth considering..

Can't help but feel we'll always be limited otherwise and this heavy PvE only, frontier content only gameplay is stunting the huge potential the game has. Otherwise I suppose we can continue on as we are now, doing generic missions over and over, trucking, honking, and shooting endless spawning bots in CZ and RES.

/shrug

p.s. Failing that I'd love to see an indepth military career progression complete with enjoyable and varied missions, with interesting and challenging objectives. At present, ranking up means little, its not fun at all, having become a monotonous grind. The only reason to do it is to gain access to ships. The process itself could be awesome

Player created content is a problem in procedurally generated game worlds. All procedurally generated content is static (or cyclic, e.g. planet orbits). It can only change if the procedures generating it are changed. That is why the new stations along the way to Colonia will not be in-game until 2.2 is released. Overrides for dynamic and persistent content can be placed in a separate database but then the procedural generation process would have to check the database for overrides for every modifiable item in the game world. That would quickly lead to performance problems. Dynamic but non-persistent changes are supported in ED but they are lost if you leave the instance (hence RES resetting is possible).

All dynamic content in ED (Rank progression, Powerplay stats, CGs, BGS, Missions, etc) reside in the database and only show up in the game as text strings. Already we see performance problems with the Mission system and that is without them causing persistent changes to the game world. ED would need a full redesign to make the game world support dynamic and persistent content.

 

[wstephenson]

• If destroyed or worn out - they can be rebuilt or repaired in the drone bay using synthesis materials.

And have drone paintjobs and named drones. And a client log entry for "DroneDestroyedBeyondRepair" :'(

 

[Fasty]

Here's an easy one!

I want a cool visual effect when I honk the discovery scanner. That's all. Thanks

 

[Soon(TM)]

All dynamic content in ED (Rank progression, Powerplay stats, CGs, BGS, Missions, etc) reside in the database and only show up in the game as text strings. Already we see performance problems with the Mission system and that is without them causing persistent changes to the game world. ED would need a full redesign to make the game world support dynamic and persistent content.

So basically were screwed then?

 

[Darayavahush]

- more ship customizing, especially the cockpit (lighting, light/hud colors, gimmicks)
- more ship specialization (multi-roll ships should be a compromise and not overpower all others)
- more living environment: NPC traffic, which believably represents the traffic between settlements with millions of people. People at work in the hangar. People on windows (simple animations).
- bulk carriers (NPC only) with related missions (e.g. escort). shuttles that load/unload the carriers (see lively environment)
- NPC ships that play by the same rules as the player (no permanent interdictions, no instant follows in drops)
- more believable NPC behavior (a sidewinder pirat attack my anaconda? oh, come on)
- reputations you can build up and lose again (per role, e.g. for passenger transport, as an assassin or as a trader ...)

 

[Dunkinator]

Hey Brett - I've always wondered whether it would be possible to build a mission creation tool. Let the community generate missions. Would need to be moderated obviously and include some tight rules within the tools - but would be amazing to get some proper scripted missions in there which obviously Frontier don't have the time and team to produce?

Can't remove Power Play and Engineers. Coded into the game, and a ton of developer time went into making those two major updates function.

Missions are by far and beyond above the most requested thus far.

So with Better BGS, you're looking for something that many MMO's have with player titles?

 

[Gorgonaut]

I'd like to see more functionality integrated into the ships' systems. Or rather, menus.
As someone mentioned earlier, access to bookmarks and plotting course from left-hand menu. GalNet availability on-board.

I'd like to see placeable planetside waypoints/bookmarks. A way to share them selectively with friends. (We all have our planetside spots we'd like to keep secret)

I'd love to see more ships. They don't have to fill special niches, but offer players even more choice when staking out their careers. They'd also add to the feeling of a more varied, interesting galaxy.

I'd like to see repair drones. And caves (yeah, I know- not currently possible). And shuttlecraft!

Also, mission chains, choices, haggling!

 

[pocketmoon]

as some have said

Ship Naming

A way to create/buy/steal a place to call home. Just how cool would it be to have a planet base to store ships, modules, cargo etc.

Optionally enable the 'VR' style menus for EDTracker users

NPC's flying big ships, not just fighters. If have a billion creds I want to build a small army

 

[knowles2]

Missions that have in depth storylines attached to them and characters you can invest in. Have these stories lines unfold over days and weeks.

Generating this procedurally is a major challenge through.

Frontier is going to get there through, with all the story content being added to NPC characters and tourists locations there should be enough material there to work with and to create a procedural story creator.

I like to see the ability to manually dump fuel to increase range of your FTL drives.

A overhaul of scanners to make them a bit more logical.

I know they say it a technical challenge but adding NPC characters to escape pods must be a must.

Slaves of all sort must also become passenger style NPCs in the future.

 

[Colonel Kenney]

SCIENCE SCIENCE SCIENCE - EXPLORATION!

No supercruise exit / enter. Make each solar system an entire instance so there are no delays.

Allow us to see supercruise lights.

More types of SRV that can repair hull, mine a lot of resources etc.

More more more geology - realistic geology. More things to find and explore.

and for the love of god.. more life out there! The galaxy should be full of it! Ruins, lifeforms that have risen and fell. Use procedural tech.. something! Then just hand craft the ones you only want us to interact with on a meaningful level.

 

[WindWpn]

Perhaps some upcoming/known "astronomical phenomenon" such as a planetary comet impact, supernova, man-made disaster, etc... something that is known to be coming, based on science of the time and news network. Perhaps similar to a community goal, a need to evacuate a planet or system per impending doom. Then with thing such as a astroid/comet impact, a way to see it happen from comfort of ship.

Also related to Galnet News, perhaps video feeds, or other in-game media to bring it a little more alive. Perhaps even driven by community to create content to be seen in-game.

Focus on planetary experience with atmospheric landing for living worlds. Cities rather than just planetary outposts where applicable. No so much a NMS planetary experience but rather the mid level visuals for majority of worlds, but high level experience around landing areas/points of interest on planet.

"Campaigns" drafted into the game (kind of like community goals) but much more scripted/directed, though generic enough to make experience open. Though these "campaigns" would be small elements place into game at FD's whim, and not with announced info (such as done with a patch), but rather through in-game news tidbits, or even a collaboration with something like Sidewinder Radio to "announce" in game, and spark CMDR's interest to participate.

 

[CMDR Reaper]

I would like to see something meaningful and rewarding (credits) while down exploring on the planets out in deep space. Maybe something like taking soil samples and collecting data, that can be sold when you return to the bubble.

 

[Andovar]

I'd love to see more dynamic or 'pop up' missions. I want things to happen around me (other than interdictions) without me having to go to a mission board to initiate a task.

Computer: "Incoming message on secure channel..."
CMDR now has option to accept and open comms, or decline.
Computer: "Comms link established"
NPC: "Commander, I'm in desperate need of help. I need to get this load of titanium delivered, and can't get these pirates off my tail. If you could provide escort, I'd make it worth your while."
CMDR has option to accept or decline.

Also, I'm greedy, and want all this done with the awesome voiceovers that the audio team does.

Another thing I'd love to see is NPC SRV's zipping around planetary bases, or run into one occasionally elsewhere. Would make things feel alive.

Of course this kind of stuff should only happen in/around inhabited space. Deep space should still feel cold, dark, and lonely.

 

[Lateralus]

If more ships were added, what would make NewShipA and NewShipB better over an Asp or Vulture?

Depends what the new ship's purpose was for...

We're currently missing a good selection of high-end combat ships (nearly every dedicated PvPer flies an FDL which leads to zzzzz metas).. yet less experienced players have a huge choice of entry level ones. Also we're obviously missing Alliance faction ships and a selection of outlaw themed ships would certainly be cool

There are also so many ships from the old Elite games that the community would like to see included.

Not sure about everyone else, but I find new ships the best part of a major update