A problem with Space Legs™

[z993126]

Piloting a spaceship is a task (in supercruise, at least) that requires all your attention (Hutton Orbital runs notwithstanding). Automated reboot/repair functions are accessible through the systems interface panel.

Disabling, matching rotational and velocity vectors, then boarding and attempting to commandeer another vessel sounds exciting, but what happens when you win and now have two ships to deal with? Or, what happens when you lose? Where do you respawn? In the nearest station, far away from your ship, which your former victim now has to deal with? In the pilot's seat of your ship?

It seems, then, that space legs might necessarily be restricted to a function of multicrew for many 'gameplay' elements.

Getting out of the pilot's seat while docked, landed planetside, or idling, on the other hand, is another matter entirely.

 

[iFred]

Ever thought of space legs being something like they did in the first mass effect? Station = citadel, running around to several offices to get missions, pay bounties, shop stuff, outfitting? would be a first step. second step could be onboarding srv for materials etc.

whatever.

 

[zombieapocalypse]

I just want to be able to get out of the pilot's seat, walk to the back of the cockpit, then make myself a nice hot cup of joe — as black as the sky on a moonless night

 

[GroundxZERO]

Honestly, I just want to walk around lol. I don’t think the current tech is going to support the kind of gameplay you’re referring to without very serious drawbacks.

 

[Vasea Azure]

The only problem with space legs is that they are not in Elite yet

 

[Hellakitty]

Ever thought of space legs being something like they did in the first mass effect? Station = citadel, running around to several offices to get missions, pay bounties, shop stuff, outfitting? would be a first step. second step could be onboarding srv for materials etc.

whatever.

People would do the citadel once, then get bored of it. Why spend time running about getting stuff when you can just click a few buttons on the station menu and do it all much more efficiently. Novelty would soon wear off and no-one would be using it.

 

[WR3ND]

Just stay in the pilot's seat as needed or get up and do whatever when you can and feel like it.

For "real" (non-telepresence) multicrew, players could just eject themselves and be transferred back to where they met up to join the other player's ship crew, if the ship owner was being bothersome or something along those lines.

Not really seeing the issue here.

People would do the citadel once, then get bored of it. Why spend time running about getting stuff when you can just click a few buttons on the station menu and do it all much more efficiently. Novelty would soon wear off and no-one would be using it.

I'd probably spend 75% of my time at Jaques Bar. Just saying.

 

[Hellakitty]

For an example of how tedious space legs are, see Star Citizen.

Wake up, get out of bed. Run down to summon ship. Run to airlock. Wait for airlock to cycle. Run outside, find ship and run to it. Get in ship, wait for getting in ship animation to finish. Walk to cockpit, sit in seat and wait for ship start up animation to complete.

Then you can fly your ship.

In a game about flying space ships I'd rather just fly my space ship.

 

[WR3ND]

For an example of how tedious space legs are, see Star Citizen.

Wake up, get out of bed. Run down to summon ship. Run to airlock. Wait for airlock to cycle. Run outside, find ship and run to it. Get in ship, wait for getting in ship animation to finish. Walk to cockpit, sit in seat and wait for ship start up animation to complete.

Then you can fly your ship.

In a game about flying space ships I'd rather just fly my space ship.

I think much of the spacelegs gameplay should be optional or an expansion on top of what we can already do in the game, not limit it. I'm thinking sort of like Horizons/non-Horizons content, minus the Engineers, maybe.

I agree though that this is primarily a sci-fi spaceship pilot game.

 

[Pyrotiger]

Am I the only person who actually would want a 2D space legs-implementation? Similar to the original Grand Theft Auto?

Probably!

 

[Marra Morgan]

In a game about flying space ships I'd rather just fly my space ship.

This!

 

[Vasea Azure]

For an example of how tedious space legs are, see Star Citizen.

Wake up, get out of bed. Run down to summon ship. Run to airlock. Wait for airlock to cycle. Run outside, find ship and run to it. Get in ship, wait for getting in ship animation to finish. Walk to cockpit, sit in seat and wait for ship start up animation to complete.

Then you can fly your ship.

In a game about flying space ships I'd rather just fly my space ship.

Star Citizen is a example on how not to make a space game/or game in general, I believe FD could do SL much better. Not that hard to do things better than SC to be honest.

 

[zombieapocalypse]

In a game about flying space ships I'd rather just fly my space ship.

And be able to make coffee?

 

[Hellakitty]

And be able to make coffee?

I fly a diamond encrusted platinum Cutter.

My maids make me my coffee, and they get punished severely if they do it wrong.

 

[LaTokk]

Don't see much point to "space legs". You could wander about the station from office to office to meet contacts that are currently on the missions board, but you're basically just going to go for a sit-down meeting with them, so why not just give us a station map and jump to the relevant locations if the atmosphere of a meet location is important. Walking from place to place will get very boring, very quickly.

Boarding/exploring derelicts is more suitable, but would more realistically be achieved by controlling a drone - would you really put yourself or crew at that kind of risk?

Aside from the drone mentioned previously, I think we'd be better served for small-scale activities outside the ship by "space arms" rather than "space legs" - I'm thinking something like the pods in 2001: A Space Odyssey. Would be easier to implement too - and replace limpets for some tasks.

On-planet the SRV is better than space legs as it gives you speed of travel, in space a pod would allow most 'spacewalk' type activities. Where is there any real gain beyond those by going spacelegs, which requires a whole different movement mechanism. Walking about also doesn't really work very well in VR - vehicles do.

I also think introducing space legs will lead to Elite rapidly becoming yet another variant on the first-person shooter - given the demanding nature of PvP players.

 

[WR3ND]

Am I the only person who actually would want a 2D space legs-implementation? Similar to the original Grand Theft Auto?

Probably!

What, no parkour in special monkey suits?!

Think Spock in the first Star Trek movie with his propulsion spacesuit. [yesnod]

 

[777Driver]

I just want to be able to get out of the pilot's seat, walk to the back of the cockpit, then make myself a nice hot cup of joe — as black as the sky on a moonless night

You don't need spacelegs for that, just a HMD. Although I wouldn't recommend walking around with a cup of hot coffee whilst wearing a HMD ;-)

 

[Suvi Anwar]

The only problem with space legs is that they are not in Elite yet

^^^This right here!

People would do the citadel once, then get bored of it. Why spend time running about getting stuff when you can just click a few buttons on the station menu and do it all much more efficiently. Novelty would soon wear off and no-one would be using it.

I lived on the BioWare social site for many years (right up until the point they shut it down), and I can confidently say that the vast majority didn't have that issue. A good portion of the story took place on the Citadel, and players could drag that out or speed through it as they saw fit.

Many of us would love to just be able to get out of that damn chair, if not for anything else but to take photos of our CMDR standing in the window looking at some interesting system. But, with basic legs we could have a pretty varied range of play that doesn't include pew pew, which has been discussed in a dozen or more other threads.

 

[Iskariot]

Piloting a spaceship is a task (in supercruise, at least) that requires all your attention (Hutton Orbital runs notwithstanding). Automated reboot/repair functions are accessible through the systems interface panel.

Disabling, matching rotational and velocity vectors, then boarding and attempting to commandeer another vessel sounds exciting, but what happens when you win and now have two ships to deal with? Or, what happens when you lose? Where do you respawn? In the nearest station, far away from your ship, which your former victim now has to deal with? In the pilot's seat of your ship?

It seems, then, that space legs might necessarily be restricted to a function of multicrew for many 'gameplay' elements.

Getting out of the pilot's seat while docked, landed planetside, or idling, on the other hand, is another matter entirely.

I don't think stealing a ship will be one of the first things added when spacelegs is introduced.
And I am not even talking about stealing ships from other players. There are so many problems with such a mechanic.

Personally I do not care about stealing ships.
What I want from 'walking around' game play is being able to see the interior of my ship, perhaps do some stuff like small repairs, repair a hull breach.
I also would like some cool space suit gameplay. Hop around on planets, have to infiltrate a base, steal some data, assassinate a pirate. etc.
Or visit a black market contact on foot, get some info, sell some info, get a secret mission from a military intelligence officer etc.

As far as "What happens when you lose" is concerned.
Right from the start, when the game was still in alpha, I saw this one coming. That is why I proposed the introduction of a more developed death mechanism/narrative.
I proposed the introduction of a cloning mechanic, comparable to what is used in the Takeshi Kovacs trilogy by Richard K. Morgan.
This system could be used to add some cool pve gameplay mechanics to the first person part of the game and it could be used to make our inability to die more acceptable, story-wise.

 

[777Driver]

Personally I do not care about stealing ships.
What I want from 'walking around' game play is being able to see the interior of my ship, perhaps do some stuff like small repairs, repair a hull breach.
I also would like some cool space suit gameplay. Hop around on planets, have to infiltrate a base, steal some data, assassinate a pirate. etc.
Or visit a black market contact on foot, get some info, sell some info, get a secret mission from a military intelligence officer etc.
.

If the devs implement a fraction of what is available in Helion, I'd be happy.


[video=youtube;yaTHjUMuLKg]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yaTHjUMuLKg[/video]

And steal the goods parts of Lone Echo for us VR users.

[video=youtube;eIT32JbSZac]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eIT32JbSZac[/video]