What's more important to you: Space legs or atmospheric landing?
- Thread starter 2enty3
- Start date
Yep gotta agree with the spacehead there but running over commanders walking about in my SRV and getting a fine would be so much fun.
V2k.
Consider this:
Planetary landing is an existing feature which is incomplete without atmospheric landing.
Space legs is a feature which is not implemented at all and has to be build from the ground up.
I rather have them finish what they started first before going to a new great endeavor, which a fully fleshed out and functional space legs would be if you want meaningful gameplay included.
Planetary landing is an existing feature which is incomplete without atmospheric landing.
Space legs is a feature which is not implemented at all and has to be build from the ground up.
I rather have them finish what they started first before going to a new great endeavor, which a fully fleshed out and functional space legs would be if you want meaningful gameplay included.
Clearly Atmospheric Landing :
They don't know what to do with Space leg and I don't want another isolated feature that will rust for X year.
We already have Landing so Atmospheric will give less work and it will give a much needed love to existing Planetery feature : if they do it right, they could kill 2 bird with one stone.
That and ED being a complentative game, having pretty place to fly can't be wrong !
Really a better choice between the 2.
They don't know what to do with Space leg and I don't want another isolated feature that will rust for X year.
We already have Landing so Atmospheric will give less work and it will give a much needed love to existing Planetery feature : if they do it right, they could kill 2 bird with one stone.
That and ED being a complentative game, having pretty place to fly can't be wrong !
Really a better choice between the 2.
Oh, that's a cool thought. Missions to take army to war zones on planets. That would be a cool mission. Dropping soldiers while being under fire. But that would require NPCs on legs, which we don't have either. Maybe that's a good first step to our own legs?
Don't think soldiers are an option, though some combat vehicles seem doable. And actual drop would be to some mobile landing pad with no unload animation, cause I'm trying to keep my dreams close to reality.
+1000x
What's the point of space legs or atmospheric landings without interesting missions?
Walk around a planet and do what? Land in an atmospheric planet and do what? Shoot rocks?
Of the two, I would rather see space legs because maybe that would mean missions where you board a ship or something cool like that. Too much to hope for?
This a rabbit hole to theorycrafting hell. Lets not start thinking about flying dropships into warzones on atmo planets while under fire. Lets, quite literally, take one step at a time here.
Atmospheric landings first. Space legs will/would be awesome but consider: there's either going to be a huge amount of work involved, years building vast amounts of assets to fill out those huge starports, stations, installations, bases, cities, etc. (including atmospheric areas for those Orbis rings and bio domes) OR they rush it and it's all going to be samey corridors or whatever.
You could say the same about atmospheric landings, but if you start with barren Mars-type worlds, with sparse flora and fauna at best, then the tech in-game really isn't that far off it already, it's just a matter of adding weather and pretty atmospheric effects (some of which we can already see from a distance), and more things to see and do on the surface, and you have a great starting point. And most importantly, something that gives us a feeling of more variety; bright, diverse and dynamic environments that are a stark contrast to the blackness of space. What a breath of fresh air that would be.
Station and ship interiors, on the other hand, will probably have to stick pretty closely to the design principles we see currently, which means for all vast amounts of work that would have to go into space legs, we're still exploring environments that are pretty similar in tone to what we already have. As immersive as it would be, I think the player value vs dev time ratio is worse. At least for me. Basic atmospheric landings could add at least the illusion of a lot more variety for seemingly less time expenditure and developer effort. It makes sense to do that first, while working on space legs.
The day I can sit of the surface of a newly discovered moon, looking up at the vast, shadowed crescent of a ringed gas giant in a pale blue, cloud-spotted sky, I will be a happy man.
You could say the same about atmospheric landings, but if you start with barren Mars-type worlds, with sparse flora and fauna at best, then the tech in-game really isn't that far off it already, it's just a matter of adding weather and pretty atmospheric effects (some of which we can already see from a distance), and more things to see and do on the surface, and you have a great starting point. And most importantly, something that gives us a feeling of more variety; bright, diverse and dynamic environments that are a stark contrast to the blackness of space. What a breath of fresh air that would be.
Station and ship interiors, on the other hand, will probably have to stick pretty closely to the design principles we see currently, which means for all vast amounts of work that would have to go into space legs, we're still exploring environments that are pretty similar in tone to what we already have. As immersive as it would be, I think the player value vs dev time ratio is worse. At least for me. Basic atmospheric landings could add at least the illusion of a lot more variety for seemingly less time expenditure and developer effort. It makes sense to do that first, while working on space legs.
The day I can sit of the surface of a newly discovered moon, looking up at the vast, shadowed crescent of a ringed gas giant in a pale blue, cloud-spotted sky, I will be a happy man.
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Jenner
I wish I was English like my hero Tj.
I'm surprised by the majority support for atmo planets first. There have been many discussions on this forum about the potential gameplay of space legs, but comparatively little about atmo planets. What will being able to land on atmo planets really bring to the table gameplay-wise? Sure, it's 'cool', but what else?
If the goal is gameplay, to me space legs win simply on account of the potential there. If the goal is more Asps in front of things, then yeah.... atmo planets.
If the goal is gameplay, to me space legs win simply on account of the potential there. If the goal is more Asps in front of things, then yeah.... atmo planets.
All content creation functionalities involved with creating atmospheric planets will also be useful for creating environments for space legs. They could probably use even the same engine for procedural generation based on a common seed for an indoor garden or an outdoor world. Also all the environments made accessible with atmospheric planets will also be available then for walking about. As I said in my first post: "What's the point of space legs when you can't go fishing on Ross 154?"I'm surprised by the majority support for atmo planets first. There have been many discussions on this forum about the potential gameplay of space legs, but comparatively little about atmo planets. What will being able to land on atmo planets really bring to the table gameplay-wise? Sure, it's 'cool', but what else?
If the goal is gameplay, to me space legs win simply on account of the potential there. If the goal is more Asps in front of things, then yeah.... atmo planets.
Gameplay wise, other than adding more locations for what we already have in Horizons, a greater variety of exploration POIs could be added, researching life, cataloging exploitable flora and fauna, more complex chemistry could allow to move from elements for engineering to rare compounds and an extension of outcroppings to more, different resource nodes.
Atmospheric (and aquatic) environments will add due to the way they limit and influence flight add scenarios for planetary missions which require you to take these into consideration. Recovering those crates of moonshine from the bottom of a sea in a stormy 50 atmospheres planet may pay extraordinarily well but you will need a hull reinforcement to withstand the atmosphere and a submarine vehicle to get down to the crash site. Just as an example.
And not to forget the possibility of cold fuel scooping from a gas giant. Just don't drop too deep or get into a storm.
It isn't so much the ability to land on atmospheric planets that is important to me, it's more how much better they will look from orbit, especially low orbit. My dream is that one day is that this games' graphics will rival those images we see of Earth from the ISS - dynamic realistic looking clouds and weather especially lightning, aurora etc. I could spend literally forever just taking in the views. This is what I want from exploration, endlessly varied awe inspiring vistas. The more interesting and complex geology and topography of atmospheric worlds is a big plus too.
Space legs would be very cool - imagine walking on the outside of one of the rings of a rotating space station, mind blowing. But I still want landable atmospheric planets first.
Space legs would be very cool - imagine walking on the outside of one of the rings of a rotating space station, mind blowing. But I still want landable atmospheric planets first.
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I'm surprised by the majority support for atmo planets first. There have been many discussions on this forum about the potential gameplay of space legs, but comparatively little about atmo planets. What will being able to land on atmo planets really bring to the table gameplay-wise? Sure, it's 'cool', but what else?
If the goal is gameplay, to me space legs win simply on account of the potential there. If the goal is more Asps in front of things, then yeah.... atmo planets.
Immersion, really. It would also be cool if there were atmospheric weather effects such as turbulence and precipitation. The thing is, I just don't see what legs would add to the gameplay, not at Fdev's development pace, anyway. If they plonked legs in there right now we'd just have XRebirth.
Someone posted a visual roadmap to atmos. landings in another thread. Wish I'd bookmarked it. I can't find it now but if anyone can I think its worth repeating here. Would allow incremental drops of Gas Giants (atmos. flying) atmos (dry), atmos (liquids), etc. right up to ELWs. I also seem to remember DB showing a brief demo of atmos. flight. So, personally I think they are working on it at some level and would love to see it begin next year.
In 2012 Braben made a speech about the gaseous planets and showed a demo that involved procedural clouds ... stop. To date, there is nothing.
https://youtu.be/iTBvpd3_Vqk?t=4m23s (4:23)
Hope to see soon(TM) the spacelegs... other blank "with nothing to do" planets would only be useful for making screenshots. no thanks.