What's more important to you: Space legs or atmospheric landing?

Atmospheric flight should come first, for me.

ED is the sequel to the earlier Elite games. I will see ED as a "true sequel" once ED allows us to do everything you could do in the older Elite games, only better. Things like "spacelegs" I see as bonus features, not as the core gameplay of Elite. There are of course many things in ED that you couldn't do in the earlier games (like exploration, BGS manipulation and driving around in a dune buggy); those are bonuses too. Some things you could do in the old Elite that you can't fully do now in ED are:

- Land on atmospheric planets.
- Mine planetary surfaces with a "mining machine".
- Hire NPC crew.
- Have a "proper" auxiliary military career, with military objectives and medals won for jobs well done.
- Talk to and interact with mission-givers (bargain for a higher mission payout, ask about permit requirements, etc) and other NPCs.

Granted, many of these things were not "done well" in FE2/FFE, so I can understand some reluctance on FD's part to not release such things until and unless they are much better than what we had in FE2/FFE.
 
Far and away, atmospheric planets would be my choice. In terms of sheer variety of the visuals (different combinations of gases in the atmosphere mixed with the light from central star could create all kinds of beautiful skies) as well as the interesting weather physics that may be included, far outweigh anything space-legs could add to the game.
 
A whole new flight model due to, well, atmosphere? :p

He's got a point. As much as I would love Atmospheric Planets, the ships would need some massive overhauls or add-ons to make them flyable in atmosphere. They're just not either aerodynamic enough or have the wings/control surfaces necessary to stay airborne. Retractable wings maybe? Or maybe each ship could have a hangar for an Atmospheric Recon Vehicle that you could launch from orbit that would specifically designed to fly in atmosphere? Anyhoot, there'd be a lot of complicating factors, but if anyone can make it work, I'm betting FD can.
 
He's got a point. As much as I would love Atmospheric Planets, the ships would need some massive overhauls or add-ons to make them flyable in atmosphere. They're just not either aerodynamic enough or have the wings/control surfaces necessary to stay airborne. Retractable wings maybe? Or maybe each ship could have a hangar for an Atmospheric Recon Vehicle that you could launch from orbit that would specifically designed to fly in atmosphere? Anyhoot, there'd be a lot of complicating factors, but if anyone can make it work, I'm betting FD can.

The Dolphin, Orca and Beluga all have wings/fins and flaps that serve no purpose without a medium upon which to act... like an atmosphere or an ocean... So how about Atmospheric Planets first and water worlds in which to swim these mammals. I'd love to take my passengers to see some under water canyons! :)

Legs can come a lot later when my passengers learn to scuba dive!
 
I was referring to original Elite games which didn't have "spacelegs".

But considering how little planetary landings added in FE2 and FFE, I don't see that the primacy argument has much weight.

He's got a point. As much as I would love Atmospheric Planets, the ships would need some massive overhauls or add-ons to make them flyable in atmosphere. They're just not either aerodynamic enough or have the wings/control surfaces necessary to stay airborne. Retractable wings maybe? Or maybe each ship could have a hangar for an Atmospheric Recon Vehicle that you could launch from orbit that would specifically designed to fly in atmosphere? Anyhoot, there'd be a lot of complicating factors, but if anyone can make it work, I'm betting FD can.

Not at all, our ships don't need any kinds of wings as they have powerful thrusters. If you can land on a 9g airless planet now, nothing will stop you from landing and flying on a 9g atmospheric planet then. Of course your momentum will bleed off more or less quickly depending on atmospheric density, but that's the extent of what Frontier needs to do really.
 
He's got a point. As much as I would love Atmospheric Planets, the ships would need some massive overhauls or add-ons to make them flyable in atmosphere. They're just not either aerodynamic enough or have the wings/control surfaces necessary to stay airborne. Retractable wings maybe? Or maybe each ship could have a hangar for an Atmospheric Recon Vehicle that you could launch from orbit that would specifically designed to fly in atmosphere? Anyhoot, there'd be a lot of complicating factors, but if anyone can make it work, I'm betting FD can.

Fully agree and it is point that is often overlooked. Lets be honest, some of the current ships have the aerodynamic characteristics of a brick. I like the idea of a shuttle, big enough to carry lets say a half a dozen containers with an SRV (basically replaces the current SRV model as it is now). You drop out of SC above the planet, jump into the shuttle, dismiss your ship (so its safe), head down to the surface and do your thing, either in the shuttle or in the SRV, or hell even on foot if that part come to fruition. Then you head back up into the black, recall your ship and dock.
 
I want to dance naked in my ship! And my friends ships to ! Need legs to dance dammit! [where is it]

On a more serious note. Unless space legs consists of actual fun game play with a fps style shoot em up feel and stuff to do aside from derp around planets and "observe", then i would prefer landing on cool planets. I doubt we will ever see any type of meaningful first person/third person view of our commanders combined with cool gameplay. Asking for that would be like asking them to re-haul the entire game engine and turn ED into something like Star citizen. Don't think that will ever happen. So why bother with the space legs? Just to walk around a ship? Walk around a planet? Walk around a star port? If we cannot dance, If we cannot play soccer or kick our crew mates, If we cannot run around and shoot each other with sci fi Halo guns, then what exactly is the point of even having space legs? Some would argue Immersion but i would argue it will probably just mean we have to get up out of our ship and walk into the star port and accept our missions. Thus making the game a few more steps more tedious. Elite already takes to long to do a lot of things. Stuff that should just be the push of a button is made into 3 pushes of 3 separate buttons. I don't want space legs to just add to the time sink element of the game. I only want space legs if we have cool stuff to do with em. Like dance with our friends and shoot each other.
 
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I've zero desire to see "space legs" (seriously, is there not a better way of expressing this concept yet?!?) implemented in this game. If they go for it, I will probably enjoy it and I will probably quit the forums to assist with my overall enjoyment.

I can only imagine the absolute crap flinging festivle that would break out on these forums if FDev rolled out space legs. At least half of the uber slingers of dung would be those that lobbied for it the most. Honestly, I just can't envision a realistic deliverable that the majority of the proponents of this feature wouldn't pick apart and rage over.

I can imagine landing on lush planets working, based on what I've seen with PC and JW, and this isn't something that would require entirely new types of gameplay to be developed.

Getting out of the ship is so foregin to everything about ED that I just don't see hope for satisfying customers, even if it is good.
 
I've zero desire to see "space legs" (seriously, is there not a better way of expressing this concept yet?!?) implemented in this game. If they go for it, I will probably enjoy it and I will probably quit the forums to assist with my overall enjoyment.

I can only imagine the absolute crap flinging festivle that would break out on these forums if FDev rolled out space legs. At least half of the uber slingers of dung would be those that lobbied for it the most. Honestly, I just can't envision a realistic deliverable that the majority of the proponents of this feature wouldn't pick apart and rage over.

I can imagine landing on lush planets working, based on what I've seen with PC and JW, and this isn't something that would require entirely new types of gameplay to be developed.

Getting out of the ship is so foregin to everything about ED that I just don't see hope for satisfying customers, even if it is good.

Why would space legs be so foreign about ED? I know it's supposed to be all about the spaceships, but isn't ED trying to be a simulation of sorts? Our ships aren't our avatars. We are people piloting them and I would love to be able to walk around our ships and stations in what would be a MUCH more immersive game. I'm not talking about making this a FPS shooter on top of a spaceships simulator, I'm talking simple immersiveness. I would love to waste time hanging out in one of the station's bars or lounges, just chatting with other players while watching ships dock and take off and NPCs come and go.

We already have our avatar models right? So part of that development is already done (albeit the easy part).

IF they can do proper atmospheric planets though that would be amazing. I honestly don't think they can right now. It's a massive undertaking, way beyond adding space legs to ships and stations. They'd need to add life - alien life not trees and green grass. And atmospheric worlds without that would be like Mars which is pretty much what the current landable planets are.
 
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I've been off line for just over a month so sorry for jumping in late.

Atmospheric landings on lava worlds and other thin atmosphere-type worlds would more than make up the delay in space-legs for me. I'd love EVA missions out the back door of my ship but I can wait. I know this is a work in progress.
 
Why would space legs be so foreign about ED? I know it's supposed to be all about the spaceships, but isn't ED trying to be a simulation of sorts? Our ships aren't our avatars. We are people piloting them and I would love to be able to walk around our ships and stations in what would be a MUCH more immersive game. I'm not talking about making this a FPS shooter on top of a spaceships simulator, I'm talking simple immersiveness. I would love to waste time hanging out in one of the station's bars or lounges, just chatting with other players while watching ships dock and take off and NPCs come and go.

IF they can do proper atmospheric planets though that would be amazing. I honestly don't think they can right now. It's a massive undertaking, way beyond adding space legs to ships and stations.

We already have our avatar models right? So part of that development is already done (albeit the easy part).

I meant foregin in the context of existing game mechanics and content, relative to atmospheric landings. That is to say, at present we are never out of our chair and introducing walking around would require new content and game play mechanics to support making walking something other than just another vehicle.
 
I meant foregin in the context of existing game mechanics and content, relative to atmospheric landings. That is to say, at present we are never out of our chair and introducing walking around would require new content and game play mechanics to support making walking something other than just another vehicle.

Oh ok gotcha. Yeah it would require new content and mechanics, but honestly I think proper atmospheric planets (because most people are thinking water planets and alien life) would require a lot more to keep it believable and interesting without it feeling so rushed that most alien life looks like Earth's life - I mean like red trees instead of green with blue grass and a red sky, but it's still so much like Earth that you know the devs didn't put much effort into it.
 
I love how almost everyone assumes that "space legs" is going to be an FPS shooter. Nobody from FDev has said anything other than "We want to do space legs at some point". I certainly don't advocate for an FPS addon, but I do want to be able to get out of my ship when I am in a port, and take care of biz at the local office of what ever I am doing. I also want to be able to walk around in my ships, look out the window, tinker with the FSD or the engines... There's a ton of immersion things that letting us walk around can add, that would be more interesting than what we already have only with an atmo.
 
I love how almost everyone assumes that "space legs" is going to be an FPS shooter. Nobody from FDev has said anything other than "We want to do space legs at some point". I certainly don't advocate for an FPS addon, but I do want to be able to get out of my ship when I am in a port, and take care of biz at the local office of what ever I am doing. I also want to be able to walk around in my ships, look out the window, tinker with the FSD or the engines... There's a ton of immersion things that letting us walk around can add, that would be more interesting than what we already have only with an atmo.

There will definitely be combat involved. Frontier have used the phrase "combative boarding of other ships" before.
 
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