Ill try to split it up how i see it.
SPACE STATIONS: These operate like current sea ports around world. In that sailors are not allowed ashore other than to limited areas, or with special day passes out for specific community events during which they are in essence chaperoned to specific play zones.
The area they could go to would have special items to purchase that are of use in other game play activities not yet in the game. specific types of missions could be obtained on shore that are not available onboard ship and specialist items could be bought or sold such as trade data.
I see it looking like an airport departure lounge in our current society but with holographic windows of the supposed idyllic life on board the stations. This to make us envious of the unobtainable.
I think we have clues as to future combat duties on stations in the form of the local galnet posts we see now, when systems are for example in lockdown or civil war. I see a player being able to sign up as a police deputy or become a mercenary for a faction engaged in fighting. Players, would travel down a travel tube (a la moonbase alpha
http://catacombs.space1999.net/main/cguide/umtravel.html )which would in reality be a screen transition to one of a number of combat arenas, whereby they could put down a riot peacefully or maybe just shoot a rival factions forces with none lethal weapons, or maybe even lethal ones earning bounties or gaining bounties.
TIONISLA GRAVEYARD & THE MISSING:This for me represents a gold mine of gameplay. Think of all those derelict ships that are flying tombs that may contain all sorts of secrets. Players could eva to space ships, then have to solve puzzles to gain access to ships and their secrets. The ships would sometimes possess booby traps and so it would involve Tomb Raider style activity. The puzzles would in some cases be quite easy and others would require group activity on the scale that Cannon operate with. We have seen this is popular with the Guardians and Thargoid sites and the mysteries and puzzles they contain.
OWN SHIP ACTIVITY:This is a tough one, as walking around your own ship is boring and worthless unless there is something to do. While your doing something, who is then flying the ship? Would walkabout activity require multicrew or will we just have to purchase or get auto fitted with an advanced flying module which will ensure you dont fly into a sun or crash on a planet . Would this auto flying module be usable when your sat in your cockpit or just when away from seat. This though raises all sorts of issues about such a module allowing players to basically go away from keyboard instead of flying a spaceship in a spaceship flying game.
Would having things go wrong onboard ship while doing a trade run be fun or just annoying if you have to walk down to lets say the poweplant and then play a mini game to get things working properly again. We have seen how the passenger mission wrinkles whereby passenger says to take me to such a special destination or get me three items of clothing, can be annoying rather than fun. Perhaps we may need to have to EVA from our ships to repair damage caused by Thargoid weapons.
PLANET STUFF: Just being able to walk around planets for a short period would present emergent gameplay activities particularly on low g worlds, You only have to look at the silly stuff people do with SRV's to see people trying similar stuff on foot. High G worlds i would see players requiring mech suits to get about.
I would give players only limited oxygen for walking planetary activity to build a sense of danger and stop people trying to walk around a whole planet. Instead planetary walkabout would be for searching abandoned bases or crashed ships. Maybe some Alien activity will require walkabout as it is too small for an srv to travel down. This would again be tied into Tomb raiding type activity but would also involve potential combat against unknown foes.
Base building is an area of gameplay people have asked for, and while there are fun activities to be had around such things. I do wonder if it would detract too much from the core game of flying a spaceship. It all depends on if Frontier are wanting to create a game in which you can do pretty much every type of gameplay trope in existence.
There are two options with regard to Elite Feet introduction. First is do it in stages. This is the current frontier approach of learning to walk before you run. This as we have seen causes much impatience in the community who want everything now and cant wait 6 months or 12 months to have say walking around planets opened up. It does allow things to be tested before hand and for frontier to gain feedback on what works and doesnt work for players.
Second option is to do it all in one big expansion pack fully complete. While this allows players to know what they are buying into. This would likely probably take frontier 2 years to complete if done properly. This begs the question of what would be happening in the two years we are waiting for all this walkabout gameplay. We would therefore need other additions in the meantime, otherwise just as with option one, the community would start throwing salt at Frontier.
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