One of the ideas we've been presented with for Odyssey is that being in a spacesuit will be super dangerous. You're millimetres away from an atmosphere you can't breathe. Will your suit have enough power and life support to reach your next destination? And so on.
It sounds cool in principle, and it's one of the things that had me pretty intrigued. But I've just been scooting around on a planet in my Scarab, and by the time I was done my ship had naffed off to orbit on autopilot, and I had to summon it back. And that got me thinking: just how much risk actually is there of you being stranded without your ship? If I can summon my ship to me while in my SRV, surely I should be able to do that while I'm on foot as well, right? I suppose it's possible that they could use some "the transmitter in your suit isn't powerful enough" logic to deny us that mechanic while on foot, but that seems a bit iffy to me: stepping foot off your ship without a decent radio to be able to call for help seems pretty short-sighted.
There's still danger of your suit getting damaged/breached of course, whether by actions during exploration or thanks to the intervention of other Commanders. But the whole situation has me thinking about Subnautica as an analogue: instead of swimming we're walking, instead of the Sea Moth we can hop in our SRV and refill our O2/power, and instead of the Cyclops we trundle back and dock inside our ship. Except that Subnautica relies on tight spaces and high pressures that your larger/safer modes of transport won't fit into. That's much harder to do on a ginormous planet, unless you start adding caves and narrow ravines and things into the equation, and I don't know how much the science behind the procedural generation allows for that.
I guess I'm just curious how much incentive we'll actually have to walk around, aside from a) novelty, and b) gardening. There are going to be those little village/settlement places and the social hubs... but actual hiking/exploring? Is that just for people whose ship/build doesn't include an SRV bay?
It sounds cool in principle, and it's one of the things that had me pretty intrigued. But I've just been scooting around on a planet in my Scarab, and by the time I was done my ship had naffed off to orbit on autopilot, and I had to summon it back. And that got me thinking: just how much risk actually is there of you being stranded without your ship? If I can summon my ship to me while in my SRV, surely I should be able to do that while I'm on foot as well, right? I suppose it's possible that they could use some "the transmitter in your suit isn't powerful enough" logic to deny us that mechanic while on foot, but that seems a bit iffy to me: stepping foot off your ship without a decent radio to be able to call for help seems pretty short-sighted.
There's still danger of your suit getting damaged/breached of course, whether by actions during exploration or thanks to the intervention of other Commanders. But the whole situation has me thinking about Subnautica as an analogue: instead of swimming we're walking, instead of the Sea Moth we can hop in our SRV and refill our O2/power, and instead of the Cyclops we trundle back and dock inside our ship. Except that Subnautica relies on tight spaces and high pressures that your larger/safer modes of transport won't fit into. That's much harder to do on a ginormous planet, unless you start adding caves and narrow ravines and things into the equation, and I don't know how much the science behind the procedural generation allows for that.
I guess I'm just curious how much incentive we'll actually have to walk around, aside from a) novelty, and b) gardening. There are going to be those little village/settlement places and the social hubs... but actual hiking/exploring? Is that just for people whose ship/build doesn't include an SRV bay?