Don't expect Ship Interiors in EDO

[CMDR Karrde Sun]

Is this the right thread to suggest that i wish they chose to do the ship interiors expansion first?

Guess it makes sense to make the pond even wider before making it deeper?

 

[VR Golgot]

Right, two Odyssey features that won't be available at launch. You're implying it's a deception because the expansion will launch unfinished? This is FD we're talking about here.

If "not available at launch" means "will be part of another expansion" I'd be very surprised.

Why would that mean the DLC is 'unfinished'? They never advertised a feature set for EDO. (And the old plans make clear they were never pledging to add all the big expansion stuff in one DLC etc).

I’m just noting that the language used for VR was identical. IE "Currently, Elite Dangerous: Odyssey will not be VR-compatible at launch".

And after much pushing from the community, that was clarified to mean essentially 'want to do it, but have not budgeted or roadmapped it'. IE: full integration a possibility in the future but unconfirmed, etc.

Of course the VR community managed to push for a compromise solution in the interim. And maybe such a compromise will happen for interiors? (Say cockpits as transition zones for example). But currently ship interiors just aren’t on the feature list for EDO ¯\(ツ)/¯

 

[VR Golgot]

The tricky thing I see with a lot of this is that it would make things broadly speaking harder for the ship owner, so there'd be a major advantage to not having the "walk on your own ship" expansion.

This is the fun problem: automation and ships in general are designed around single players. If you tease away roles to multicrew players (other than gunnery) you are really going backwards in capability. For example I'd love a flight engineer role, where you intelligently allocate energy / repairs etc....but as you point out its done already now, and is 'the best' it can be.

Yeah this is exactly the conundrum I was trying to explore with the 'Mobile Mechanic' thought experiment:

The Mobile Mechanic: Legs + Multicrew [Gallery]

Dealing with a hull breach. - Maps can also be filtered to display decompressed areas. - Hazards can be used as defensive measures against boarding parties. - Mobile debris can become a hazard in its own right. Drones will break chunks down and collect the ore if given no other task...

forums.frontier.co.uk

How could they:

• Provide gameplay that competes with the Helm role for fun
• Complement existing Helm gameplay, without 'stealing' functions

And the answer seems to be: Only via a deranged amount of dev

 

[Navigare Necesse Est]

....

• 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.

Oh great, so I grind my rear off for 500 h just to have it stolen in a minute?

 

[VR Golgot]

Oh great, so I grind my rear off for 500 h just to have it stolen in a minute?

The grand Braben said 'potentially'.

And hey, you’ve got LTI right

 

[Old Duck]

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).

Sounds like Space Engineers

 

[andrewg_oz]

I would not be surprised to find that we are initially going to be able to get out of our cockpit chair and walk to the doors at the back in order to get outside / to the SRV. We know that cockpit graphics were upgraded for the Kraits and Mamba - that was almost certainly a general cockpit upgrade pass in preparation for Odyssey and it would make sense that the cockpit graphics upgrades for prior ships would be held up for the Odyssey release.

Frontier know that being able to walk around in our ships is something a huge number of people have been wanting - just like walking around in general has been. Well, we've got the walking around bit. Frontier have just focussed on the walking around bits that make the most sense for an initial release - station interiors and FPS. I have no doubt that ship interiors are being worked on and will be released when ready. I just hope it will be sooner than five years.

 

[Leadfoot]

For example I'd love a flight engineer role, where you intelligently allocate energy / repairs etc....

You can do that already. Granted, its reverse engineering, but still

¡¡¡ɹǝʍod ǝɹoɯ pǝǝu ǝʍ 'ʎʇʇoɔs

 

[Cosmo]

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.

I think releasing ship interior DLC per ship for people who want early access is the best way. Skeptics can wait for the full expansion (all ship interiors), others can buy early access with the interior DLC of their favorite ships.

What is the get out of your seat, take your first steps on a planet experience? Some people are happy with a bare minimum of walking in the cockpits -> go to the door -> fade to black -> climb down a ladder or use the lift (elevator) to set foot on a planet.

 

[VR Golgot]

I think releasing ship interior DLC per ship for people who want early access is the best way. Skeptics can wait for the full expansion (all ship interiors), others can buy early access with the interior DLC of their favorite ships.

What is the get out of your seat, take your first steps on a planet experience? Some people are happy with a bare minimum of walking in the cockpits -> go to the door -> fade to black -> climb down a ladder or use the lift (elevator) to set foot on a planet.

My suspicion is that biggest blocker to that is dev resources. Opening ED up to foot transit means a lot of corners need to be filled out (and they say more locations are due to be revealed). With all the stations & settlement variants, planetary updates & flora, POIs, & X other ones to come (and possible content updates / Thargoid reveals), it seems like a lot of art.

It would kinda fit with their 'only pay for cosmetics' ethos perhaps, I see your thinking there.

My suspicion is that the cockpit spaces you mention are the more likely locales that they’re still pondering (and so thinking they might add after launch). IE they still hadn’t sorted the disembarking process last they spoke of it.

 

[Danieros]

Well, I certainly don't mind if the ship interior content is made it into its own expansion, it's not like they promised anything about it coming with Odyssey.

Anyway, Odyssey will give us a better idea of what to expect in these everything-at-once expansions... and what will be done in-between them.

 

[Quantis Trap]

All of the info from the OP old news.

Elite Dangerous is, in my opinion, the best space sim game in existence right now and I play nearly all of them. That said, I expect several space games to surpass Elite Dangerous in the next few years if trends continue. I hope Odyssey is awesome and proves me wrong.

 

[VR CMDR Novindus]

I’d be happy with a staged approach as part of Frontier’s semi-regular free updates post-DLC.

Being able to stand up and walk around the cockpit would be the obvious first stage, and would improve immersion and help role playing. While auto-docking/launching or waiting on approach with Supercruise Assist active, there would be opportunity to do so whilst “playing”, but of course you could simply get up and walk around anytime you wanted.

I think also that whilst not in your seat, you should still be able to issue commands for anything that doesn’t involve navigating menus, steering the ship, or triggering hard points, be they weapons, mining tools, or scanners. This would work especially well with VoiceAttack, but won’t require it. Moreover, this first stage should include bridge view for Fleet Carriers.

It would also be a good time to finally get that “Request Docking” single mappable command that would automatically target the nearest dockable object.

 

[ubedead]

If the DEv's would only consider a VR option for this DLC then all of the "problems" would go away for everyone.