Don't expect Ship Interiors in EDO

[VR Golgot]

I know lots of us would love to see 'em (and the associated gameplay), but I think it's unlikely they're coming in EDO. Here's why:

They're not coming at launch:

While Odyssey will see players explore a wide range of on and off world locations including station interiors, ship interiors will not be included at launch. (source)

EDO isn't a Seasonal delivery like prior DLCs

Seasons have been dumped:

Firstly on the season plan; I don't think people liked having to pay for multiple updates in one go, so that is something we are going to move away from. (source)

We have announced that the ‘season pass’ business model will be superseded by an alternative after the release of 2.4 The Return. (source)

EDO is considered more of an 'all in one' affair:

Going by these snippets from the last few Lavecons anyway...

So this time they're completing the entire mega-update in advance and not telling anyone what's in it until they're absolutely sure about what is going to be delivered. (2018)

The way they told me things, since Horizons was such a, let's stick with the term 'hard lesson', they decided to go with an 'everything at once' approach for the next expansion / update thing. So taking off time to actually work on the thing was necessary but in result as a whole it'll provide a more unified and refined experience that Horizons did not manage. (2019)

'Station Legs' & 'Ship Legs' were planned to be 2 separate expansions:

Ye Olde Lifetime Pass Roadmap:

We do intend to release small, free updates after launch, but expansions that include significant new features and content will be charged for separately:

• Walking around interiors and combative boarding of other ships
• Combat and other interactions with other players and AIs in the internal areas of star ports

The gameplay outlined for ships interiors + EVA = a lot of dev:

• EVA & external ship repair (source)
• Sneaking in amongst the cargo (source)
• Fighting fires, dealing with toxic spills (source)
• Combative boarding of ships and repelling of boarders.
• Having hull breaches make the internal ship space contiguous with the external space. IE 'Seeing your cargo flying out into space' etc. (source)
• Potentially stealing player ships (source).

TLDR, their objective seems to be to add game tech and mechanics, not just a cosmetic additions etc.
(Whether they achieve any of that is another matter, but it's the type of thing they've floated, and essentially pre-sold with the Lifetime Pass).


Taken in concert, these aspects suggest ship interiors won't be inserted as some form of purely cosmetic add-on. Or arrive as a bonus update to EDO. It's just too much work, not how the DLC system seems to be structured now, and it's all been pre-sold as a stand-alone expansion.

 

[Flimley]

I’m a sad panda....

Flimley

 

[scadh]

I've always wondered -- and would guess that others have long ago worked out the math -- whether the ships as currently designed actually have the physical volume to hold all of the internal modules. If not, showing interiors becomes problematic without some "just because" logic (which is a entirely legitimate explanation sometimes, just ask my wife). If the ships were not originally modelled with this eventuality in mind, the spacing issue is unlikely to work out.

It's also possible this can be worked around because, to my knowledge, we've never been shown the physical size of any modules or how they relate to one another. Have we? For instance, while a size 6 storage compartment should, by nature, be exactly twice as large as a size 3, the same isn't necessarily true of a Frame Shift Drive. Perhaps the 6A and 3A FSD are the same physical size but the 6 is more powerful, similar to how car engines of the same size can be engineered to different performance capabilities. We have been shown the MASS of the modules, though, and unfortunately, it's seemingly in direct contraction of that possibility. Indeed, FSD mass doubles with each step up in size such that a 4A is twice the mass of a 3A (which makes the 6A eight times more massive than the 3A).

But you know what? The truth is I don't really care about the math. We're talking about a game with faster-than-light travel and ships where my collector limpets take up 1 unit of cargo space each, but the thousand tons of Materials I use to craft the limpets take up none. I would gladly suspend belief over the physics of the ship size in order to walk around inside it. I'm guessing most commanders would feel the same.

 

[VR Golgot]

I've always wondered -- and would guess that others have long ago worked out the math -- whether the ships as currently designed actually have the physical volume to hold all of the internal modules. If not, showing interiors becomes problematic without some "just because" logic (which is a entirely legitimate explanation sometimes, just ask my wife). If the ships were not originally modelled with this eventuality in mind, the spacing issue is unlikely to work out.

It's also possible this can be worked around because, to my knowledge, we've never been shown the physical size of any modules or how they relate to one another. Have we? For instance, while a size 6 storage compartment should, by nature, be exactly twice as large as a size 3, the same isn't necessarily true of a Frame Shift Drive. Perhaps the 6A and 3A FSD are the same physical size but the 6 is more powerful, similar to how car engines of the same size can be engineered to different performance capabilities. We have been shown the MASS of the modules, though, and unfortunately, it's seemingly in direct contraction of that possibility. Indeed, FSD mass doubles with each step up in size such that a 4A is twice the mass of a 3A (which makes the 6A eight times more massive than the 3A).

But you know what? The truth is I don't really care about the math. We're talking about a game with faster-than-light travel and ships where my collector limpets take up 1 unit of cargo space each, but the thousand tons of Materials I use to craft the limpets take up none. I would gladly suspend belief over the physics of the ship size in order to walk around inside it. I'm guessing most commanders would feel the same.

Yeah as far as we know they've only sketched out the interiors / how they might work. IE that's what these old quotes suggest:

• "We're designing the ships with the interiors in mind. How the cargo is unloaded, all that sort of thing." (2012)
• "We do have rough layouts of how the ships work." (2015)
• "One of the things that we've implemented on some of the larger ships is based on a grid system of meter squares so the cockpit is of a certain size and within that there's a lift shaft and that shaft will then channel down and be the same position throughout the ship on all the lower decks" (2014)
• "It still makes sense for there to be some sort of general orientation to the ship where people walk around inside and you need to have a concept of up. But also we design it in mind the fact that it will spend some of its time in zero-g, so there are some interesting design philosophies that come from that, and you'll see that over the period of development" (Feb 2013)
• "Eventually you'll be able to see from inside this, you'll be able to walk around this, you'll see this being unloaded. This is designed so that all of the cargo tessellate, so they touch each other well, but there's also room for them to be offloaded, which will happen automatically" (Jan 2013)

And there are various obvious clunky issues with even the current entry / exit points and the additions of SRV & SLF bays. (The SRV bay clips into the Sidewinder cockpit, other bays are essentially smack in the way of the exit door, things clip through the exit ramps. Stuff like that).

But ultimately yeah, I'm with you. I think total 1:1 'physicalising' of all the internals would be excessive if/when they come to do it. Having some stuff modelled would be cool. (And damageable in a firefight, or able to leak coolant or overheat or whatever, to add some weight to any onboard clashes and infiltration shenanigans.)

As SC learnt with their ships though, if you try and model everything down to the toilet, you end up having to bloat and distend your ship designs a fair bit to squeeze things in. I'd be fine with a bit of flex. Model some key stuff, hide the rest behind the wizard's curtain

 

[Rubbernuke]

The question for me will always be that grey area where we have physical multicrew, disembarkation via foot / SRV / SLF.

 

[VR Golgot]

The question for me will always be that grey area where we have physical multicrew, disembarkation via foot / SRV / SLF.

Yeah transitions are a big question for now. Will it just be fade to black for the moment?

Will we get the snazzy seat animations of the Cmdr Chronicles, and the apparent flappy door of the SRV?

Will they turn that stuff into minor social moments and spaces for dallying if so? IE Legs in the cockpit?

(Will it all be tied to big old lengthy animations, which will make VR-heads pout? :/)

Until they say otherwise, I'm guessing it's gonna be 'black screen straight to buddy in a seatbelt'. But never know

 

[Rubbernuke]

Yeah transitions are a big question for now. Will it just be fade to black for the moment?

Will we get the snazzy seat animations of the Cmdr Chronicles, and the apparent flappy door of the SRV?

Will they turn that stuff into minor social moments and spaces for dallying if so? IE Legs in the cockpit?

(Will it all be tied to big old lengthy animations, which will make VR-heads pout? :/)

Until they say otherwise, I'm guessing it's gonna be 'black screen straight to buddy in a seatbelt'. But never know

As you point out, FD have already done transitions ironically, especially in the Krait Mk 2 Commander Chronicles video- and cockpits (and adjacent places) modeled. Fading would be sad, especially for dropship legs combat.

 

[Chorda]

I'm expecting walkable cockpits to be a cosmetic buy-in per ship, nothing more. Maybe you'll get some generic modular rooms linked via the elevator / rear cockpit doors.

 

[Semivivus]

Why not make the font size even smaller.

 

[VR Golgot]

I'm expecting walkable cockpits to be a cosmetic buy-in per ship, nothing more. Maybe you'll get some generic modular rooms linked via the elevator / rear cockpit doors.

That’d be a bit of a roadblock to any future interiors DLC. Practically P2W

Not seeing that one. But by god there will be cosmetics. No doubt...

 

[Flimley]

At the very least it would be proper to leave the pilot seat, open the door at the back of the cockpit/bridge and walk down the ramp?

Flimley

 

[IamMe]

Not that ship interiors are important but maybe they will be included in next dlc after Odyssey.....ED:New Worlds (Dense atmos with weather, Water worlds and ship interiors)

 

[thistle]

I'm shocked, shocked I tell you!

First Frontier tell us we won't be getting ship interiors, and now you tell us that in fact we ... won't be getting ship interiors?

This is too much.

 

[Jibroni Gibironi]

Source: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EM0Gcl7iUM8&t=4m29s


Good lord, never heard so much baloney in one video in my life. They somehow managed to outdo even Chris Roberts with the promises, and that's really saying something. I can guarantee you we'll never see 99% of any of this stuff. Even if all these aspirations were legitimate, it would take a monumental effort to get it done with such small man power and resources to work with.

 

[thistle]

They somehow managed to outdo even Chris Roberts with the promises, and that's really saying something.

 

[Marc_Hicks]

Good lord, never heard so much baloney in one video in my life. They somehow managed to outdo even Chris Roberts with the promises, and that's really saying something.

Wow, lay off the drugs, dude. 8 years on & Star Citizen is still in Alpha, & Squadron 42 is still just a pipe dream, yet Roberts has still managed to con his little fanbois into handing over MILLIONS of dollars of cash....often just for nothing more than JPEGS of ships. I'd put more faith in Braben's team to deliver on their promises than in Roberts.

 

[Marc_Hicks]

I know lots of us would love to see 'em (and the associated gameplay), but I think it's unlikely they're coming in EDO. Here's why:

They're not coming at launch:



EDO isn't a Seasonal delivery like prior DLCs

Seasons have been dumped:





EDO is considered more of an 'all in one' affair:

Going by these snippets from the last few Lavecons anyway...






'Station Legs' & 'Ship Legs' were planned to be 2 separate expansions:

Ye Olde Lifetime Pass Roadmap:






The gameplay outlined for ships interiors + EVA = a lot of dev:

• EVA & external ship repair (source)
• Sneaking in amongst the cargo (source)
• Fighting fires, dealing with toxic spills (source)
• Combative boarding of ships and repelling of boarders.
• Having hull breaches make the internal ship space contiguous with the external space. IE 'Seeing your cargo flying out into space' etc. (source)
• Potentially stealing player ships (source).

TLDR, their objective seems to be to add game tech and mechanics, not just a cosmetic additions etc.
(Whether they achieve any of that is another matter, but it's the type of thing they've floated, and essentially pre-sold with the Lifetime Pass).


Taken in concert, these aspects suggest ship interiors won't be inserted as some form of purely cosmetic add-on. Or arrive as a bonus update to EDO. It's just too much work, not how the DLC system seems to be structured now, and it's all been pre-sold as a stand-alone expansion.

Problem is that this is almost entirely based on outdated information. Who knows what they will choose to do in the hear & now.

 

[Chorda]

Good lord, never heard so much baloney in one video in my life.

Damn naysayer. I still hold out hope that one day I'll be able to log into Elite only to find David Braben has stowed away on the back of a giant space dinosaur in the cargo hold of my Panther Clipper.

 

[Commander Biscuit]

"Not available at launch"
Implies they're coming later as part of Odyssey rather than a future expansion.

 

[VR Golgot]

Problem is that this is almost entirely based on outdated information. Who knows what they will choose to do in the hear & now.

Lots of it yes, and tons of it may have changed. The release of thin atmospheres alongside the Legs focus of EDO makes that super clear. (Although I’d argue that the Legs components still sit within the old 'station legs' DLC outline. I suspect those technical challenges were split up originally for a reason. Because they’re big ).

I’d also note that the 'all in one' aspirations for EDO are from more recent years. And the feature set revealed to date is looking increasingly like the major focus of the team’s output. As in, it is substantial.

The only way I could see ship interiors being a downstream addition to EDO is if they’re mainly cosmetic. And I’m just very sceptical that they’d put teams on that, when filling out the Legs lands are going to be big art and technical challenges.

On balance, I’d still say ‘don’t expect' is the best category to put ship interiors in for now.