I am not obsessed about atmospheric landings. In fact I'd propose Frontier remove landings on some non-atmospheric landings currently we have in the game.
For example, none of our ships should have been able to land on anything >0.5g. Even in our planet with only 1g we require huge rockets and fuel storage to send a "ship" the size of a hong kong bathroom to leave the atmosphere, and that's with an atmosphere supporting its back side (denser air at its bottom, lighter air at its top). It wouldn't make any sense that Cobras, Sidewinders and Vultures or even Corvettes to be able to lift off from any planet bigger than 0.5g.
You probably would require as large a fuel tank taking off (and exhaust them all) when landing. There is no "glide" if there is atmosphere. Nothing is fighting against the gravity other than your little thrusters (you use your large thrusters to lift off yet use only tiny underside thrusters to land??? what is this? fantasy game??)
That is only true for chemical rockets.
Fusion Torches, on the other hand, have the potential to be
much more powerful, and don't require
nearly as much reaction mass either. IIRC, the Elite Universe has had fusion torches since around the 23rd century. As of 3303, our ships use these monsters as
reaction control thrusters, and have been measured, in game, of being able to produce accelerations up to 10g.
Then there's our FSDs, which kick Newton to the curb, and thumb their nose at Einstein. It's part of my headcanon that our ships use our FSDs to augment thruster performance, which explains two particular bugbears of mine about this game: the apparent "inertial dampening" our Commanders experience, and "space friction" that slows down our ships. Both of these phenomenon are seen in Supercruise, and it makes sense to me that any ship design would take advantage of this technology as much as possible.
But Space Legs would be much welcomed. There is absolutely zero sense in picking up missions from a mission board. You got to leave the ship and meet the people and seek missions, especially shady ones. How could shady missions popup in an official power controlled Mission Board? You got to leave your ship to operate cargo and to operate the cargo levers, or inject synthesis into your modules or sort out minerals and ore mined. (What? do all the ore cut from mining lasers are of the same exact size that they can be sorted by automated refinery bins? This is absolutely immersion breaking and is ruining the game!)
Besides the fact that the Pilots' Federation controls all station Mission Boards, which IMO paints a rather sinister picture of the PF, I've long assumed that my Commander is in the Elite Universe 24/7, while I play the
interesting parts of her day. I have no interest in being
required to do something my ship has the equipment to do, or my Commander can do off screen. And yes, it is part of lore that our ships come equipped, standard, with automatic cargo handling system, and I assume its adaptable enough to handle sorting things for the refinery.
That doesn't mean I wouldn't want the option of
assisting the automated processes in getting things done, if it means getting better results during a critical mission, but it also means I'd need, at least, an NPC crew that can handle everything else while I'm away from the cockpit. But without NPCs handling what I would consider the (*cough*)
interesting part of mining, what you describe above would involve me running between cockpit and refinery. This reminds me too much of survival game mechanics, which I find fun only in small doses.
That being said, it would be nice to see that process in action, but my chief interest in space legs is getting out of the ship, and finding those missions where the mission giver can't afford the Pilots' Federation fees to post on our completely secure Mission Boards. As long as that process is interesting, and more productive than the Mission board, I'll be happy.
And then let's talk about the positives. It would be the first game where we can have zero-G travel in our own ships either to the cargo bay or to the beds or to the engines. Or we could orbit around a large planet and take advantage of its gravity to walk around our own ships on our feet. Or we could set the ship to auto roll so as to generate enough centripetal force that it would feel like gravity and we'd be able to walk on our ships. THere are so many things we could explore in this sandbox, stuff that even the science fiction world hasn't thought of.
And that's why I am obsessed with Space Legs.
First, objects in orbit are technically in freefall, so they don't experience gravity.. People inside a space ship in Low Earth Orbit are technically experiencing about 9 m/s
2 of acceleration towards the planet IIRC, its just that because the ship is also moving
sideways at 8km/s, there's nothing pushing against them, like the surface of a planet, to make the people inside
feel anything. Thus "zero-g".
Second, you can't roll a ship and expect to experience a reasonable simulation of gravity
everywhere on the ship. You certainly can't do it fast for any kind of
significant force to be applied without the coriolis effect wrecking havoc on you Commander's inner ear. Those Orbis stations, with their eight kilometer wide habitat rings?
That's what you need to simulate earth gravity without making people dizzy and nauseous in the process.
What
could be done, and what I assume my Commander
does when exploring, is to use your ship's ventral thrusters to accelerate upwards at a constant 13.6 m/s
2 (Inga's technically a heavyworlder
) and simulate gravity that way. Thanks to our ships' fusion torch reaction control systems, this is easily done, and they have plenty of reaction mass to do so. In my headcanon, it requires disabling her FSD first, which lowers the performance of her thrusters, but it's a small price to pay to experience
proper "gravity" out space.
