We were promised atmospheric planetary landings

[Ralph Vargr]

Ships that can be within five light-seconds of the sun, and survive long enough to skim fuel, must be pretty tough, and have great radiation shielding.

Of course, there is *still* no artificial gravity.

 

[Lucian667]

Which is currently extremely shallow. Frontier need to add additional gameplay, otherwise whats the point?

The point is that despite the current shallowness of the planetary gameplay, many players still love to land on airless worlds and drive around exploring them, and until they figure out some sort of deep, rewarding, fun gameplay for planets, why not let people do exactly the same thing on Earthlike or other atmospheric worlds? Lots of people just like to explore and take pretty pictures and IMO that's enough to start with.

The only thing I do on airless worlds is stick my bum out of my SRV and try to terraform the planet for methane breathing life-forms. Oh, that and shoot rocks.

Well, just imagine the fun you could have doing that on an Earthlike world, if the atmosphere is dense enough you'd actually be able to hear the results of your terraforming efforts.

 

[777Driver]

I do think there would be some difference in handling, even with thruster-only maneuvering. Imagine throwing a frisbee on the moon, vs. Earth, or Mars. The flight path will be different due to aerodynamic forces on the disc. On an airless world, diving at 500m/s and then pitching up rapidly to a 90 degree angle to the dive would, at minimum, have a non-trivial braking effect on the vessel's hull. In turbulent, stormy conditions (which certainly must be modeled on any atmospheric world) the ship would require constant thurster cycling to counter the atmospheric effects (something which I think would be not unlike the "wobbly" ship effects we see now on some airless worlds).

However, if for gameplay purposes we imagine the ships with near infinite thruster power (even though we can see on high-G airless worlds where some thrusters meet their limits)... These effects could probably be ignored within a reasonable margin.

Oh I definitely agree that parasitic drag will be a factor if the ship is not generating any thrust . My comment was about our ships capability to overcome drag, with thrusters operational it will be no different to flying in an airless world, these ships have unlimited thrust available, thrust is artificially limited in space and low g worlds.

Our ships are capable of handling any high G world, even with E-rated thrusters - The devs call it overcharging , either way the overcharging provides unlimited thrust no matter what engine class you have installed.

With all that being said, the devs could make changes once atmospheric landings come into play, followed by a typical forum outcry for screwing things up. Am fairly certain the devs said that heavy ships would have severe difficulties in high g worlds, that turned out to not be true.

 

[Kaltern]

Atmospheric landings will come because they have to. A rather hefty portion of the community would quit outright upon the official news that atmospheric landings were not coming, especially explorers who are only really playing in anticipation for this.

This is probably the main reason that they never say never. Any game developer that says a certain feature that had been mentioned in the past will now not be done will always end badly. So Elite will just have the Soon® tag applied to everything. Atmos landings might well come, but I bet it won't be for a while, and I bet they bring absolutely nothing new other than graphical effects.

 

[MickyG1982]

And now FD is saying it's too hard, that it's "extremely difficult." Well, I don't care how difficult you believe it is, hire the right people and get it done. We want atmospheric planetary landings. We want flora and fauna. We want to be able to scan them and obviously kill them (what's the point of leaving them alive?) We want to find primitive cultures and corrupt their society. We want to find advancing civilizations on the verge of deep space travel and cripple their research so they can't progress. Who wants competition? Right?

So, FD; the only thing I want to hear from you is "we are releasing atmospheric planetary landings. We have hired quite a few people to specifically address the difficulty of creating this advanced content, and we hope to have a release in the near future."

Make it happen.

They didn't say it was ever going to happen in Horizons....

 

[Ralph Vargr]

The point is that despite the current shallowness of the planetary gameplay, many players still love to land on airless worlds and drive around exploring them, and until they figure out some sort of deep, rewarding, fun gameplay for planets, why not let people do exactly the same thing on Earthlike or other atmospheric worlds? Lots of people just like to explore and take pretty pictures and IMO that's enough to start with.



Well, just imagine the fun you could have doing that on an Earthlike world, if the atmosphere is dense enough you'd actually be able to hear the results of your terraforming efforts.

We have already seen Planet Legs from Another Game, and it is called (REDACTED)....LOSS OF CARRIER

 

[Vasco Sapien]

If Fdev suddenly surprised us with Atmos landings (at least basic) out of the blue.

I'd love them. Love them i would.

 

[VR StarLightPL]

First of all, I wonder why everybody are hell-bent on making that a real life simulated model of a real planet. Gaming world is full of smoke and mirrors, many things can be trivialised or abstracted and other things are not as hard as we make it out to be. We do have flying simulators with varying weather effects since the '90-ties. Its just a matter of healthy dose of plausibility and immersion to make player believe he is seeing something utterly complicated while under the hood it really isn't.

Secondly, I really can't understand people who "stand in the way of progress" and want outright eradicate the atmo landings and space legs mumbling something that this is a game of flying a spaceship. Well, spaceships can land on planets, all kinds of planets and I want that aspect too. If you're unsure, go play "teh other right space game" during the free fly week(end) and see how much of depth is added by simply having legs. And I'm not talking about the FPS module - totally ignored it back then, it creates some nice possibilites for gameplay (hand over your ship or I will blast you because you come here unarmed you moron!).
That universe is much more believable and immersive while at a tech demo state than E: D currently is. Too bad it probably will be DoA under the current hype like Duke Nukem (that took) Forever. And also they ditched VR, too bad. But I digress.

I have tried a thought experiment once - to come up with a believable and engaging gameplay separately for atmo landings and space legs. The more I tried to do for atmo landings, the more I found my legs missing . These two should come together, and I would be glad even if they were built upon release by release. Because I have first hand experienced it what EVA and on foot gameplay does to Scam Citizen. Think immersion times 10.

Then there is the "mile wide inch deep" stigma which needs to be addressed - currently in E: D "everything is optional" and "no action has a meaning". Until that changes, Elite is very similar to Scam Citizen, in that it is a set of very disconnected mechanisms whose change nothing in the overall outlook of things. Powerplay is great in organised group (or rather was great until it collapsed under 5c and general Fdev negligence), and great "battles" and victories were happening each week... only to have zero effect on the galaxy. Until that's addressed (sewing the components together to have a meaning, which currently FDev avoids like a plague) we will still get a bunch of mingames in Elite universe no matter how much "fleshed out" they will be. And while on that topic...

If (that's a big if) FDev were able to deliver meaningful gameplay loops and all these things discussed in this thread (waterworlds, earthlikes with flora and fauna) at the cost of a monthly subscription - I wouldn't hesitate and bought it. For now we have a game with schizophrenic personality, trying to be "SOLO MMO PvE PvP Carebear and Griefer Friendly and Foolproof", with a set of very disconnected, sterile mechanisms with no ties to each other whatsoever, and bogus design decisions ("You will not get commodity storage because you will hack the BGS" - lead designer Sammarco). I sincerely hope that Sammarco will "man up" after Brookes leaves for another project and then things will change, but I digress again. Currently there is no way in hell that I would buy a subscription, game is messy and they have to redeem themselves in my eyes after a year delay in executing Horizons. But if they prove that funds from subscription can make a much better game than it is now - why not? Think how much you spend on fastfood/alcohol/cigarettes/whatever fleetingly pleasures you each month, and the subscription fee will probably not look as bad anymore.

 

[Jenner]

I really want atmospheric landings and space legs as was promised way back in the Kickstarter. I know it takes time to do it well, though.

The Other-Game-That-Must-Not-Be-Named is showing some promise in this area as well. I watched one of their tech demos recently on planet generation and such with wrecks and small bits of plant life, etc.... That's the kind of stuff I'd love to see in Elite, too. As people have said there needs to be gameplay that makes it all worthwhile, though.

 

[Aashenfox]

In even more addition to what I've already said (I probably should think of all this before hitting "post"), we have absolutely no idea of the pressure resistance of our ships. We know they're made of some kind of advanced, very strong alloy, so who is to say that our ships therefore are designed solely for pressures of 0-1 atmospheres? There are atmospheric planetary landings in the Elite Dangerous novels, and it's never actually mentioned about whether or not the hulls will strain under atmospheric pressure, so I think it's probably a safer bet to assume that our hulls can survive many atmospheres of pressure, as well as going underwater. Hey, it's a future alloy, so why not?

Big difference between a few atmospheres on venus, and a few thousand on Jupiter, you need to be more specific.

 

[leeG]

The problem I see with atmospheric landings is Earth. They need to model the whole planet in considerable detail.

We all know as soon as atmospheric landings are possible, everyone will be landing near their home and jumping into their SRV to drive over and see how things have changed since the 21st century. Definitely not a modeling job I would want. And if I were Frontier, I'd put it off for as long as I could too.

 

[-VR- Max Factor]

The problem I see with atmospheric landings is Earth. They need to model the whole planet in considerable detail.

We all know as soon as atmospheric landings are possible, everyone will be landing near their home and jumping into their SRV to drive over and see how things have changed since the 21st century. Definitely not a modeling job I would want. And if I were Frontier, I'd put it off for as long as I could too.

I think something like earth and other human inhabited earthlike planets you will likely have landing zones. I doubt earth government or other governments would want any ship flying around peoples house's with massive weapons at their disposal.

 

[Crash1099]

The problem I see with atmospheric landings is Earth. They need to model the whole planet in considerable detail.

We all know as soon as atmospheric landings are possible, everyone will be landing near their home and jumping into their SRV to drive over and see how things have changed since the 21st century. Definitely not a modeling job I would want. And if I were Frontier, I'd put it off for as long as I could too.

Love to see the city's destroyed during the energy wars and get a tour. Instead of scan beacon.

 

[leeG]

I think something like earth and other human inhabited earthlike planets you will likely have landing zones. I doubt earth government or other governments would want any ship flying around peoples house's with massive weapons at their disposal.

So we just land at the closest spaceport, then drive home in the SRV?

 

[-VR- Max Factor]

So we just land at the closest spaceport, then drive home in the SRV?

I don't know. We will have to see how it is implemented when it's ready. SRV's may also not be allowed and we will have to use other forms of transport.

 

[Deleted member 110222]

I don't know. We will have to see how it is implemented when it's ready. SRV's may also not be allowed and we will have to use other forms of transport.

I would want a futuristic VW Golf. Complete with ricer kit.

 

[dubsdj]

you know I would just be happy with water worlds and giant oil rigs to land on. They could use precedual generation underwater and have a module for your ship that allows underwater travel. Other than animating the ocean (And a couple of squids), the rest of the tech is already there!

Just to see blue sky would be great!

 

[Jenner]

The problem I see with atmospheric landings is Earth. They need to model the whole planet in considerable detail.

We all know as soon as atmospheric landings are possible, everyone will be landing near their home and jumping into their SRV to drive over and see how things have changed since the 21st century. Definitely not a modeling job I would want. And if I were Frontier, I'd put it off for as long as I could too.

I doubt they'll ever allow landings on Earth for that very reason. It's immersion breaking when the limitations of the stellar forge are so obvious when viewed through the prism of our own day-to-day familiarity with our own planet.

So much easier to suspend disbelief when rolling around on an earth-like orbiting a distant star.

That's fine by me, btw.

 

[Vasea Azure]

Guys, currently we have rocky biomeless balls with 3-6 geysers on them because of some technical issue with distribution. Landable Earth likes? Forests? Animals? Cities?! Thats way way in the future... or even galaxy far far away. I`m very pessimistic.

 

[Crank Larson]

Complete with ricer kit.

For when you absolutely have to rice something?