Cockpit Legs Campaign

[M00ka]

Ok, now I'm intrigued! People want a gameplay mechanism for cockpit legs? Now we have one. I am all over the fancy coffee angle. I would fly a Diamondback Scout if it makes the best cafe mocha. I have totally changed my mind, I am now absolutely upvoting this thread.

That, Commander is only the tip of the proverbial iceberg. Just image the angst when Commanders find out their favourite ship only has the old, boring drip coffee machine. There will be outrage, the internet will be awash with Open Letters, angry content providers lambasting FD on the youtube all demanding every ship in the game be retrofitted with only the best expresso coffee machines available. Then those that don't like coffee (damn heathens) will get involved, wanting to know where the kettle is so they can boil water for there tea - in fact where is the damn tea pot! And the young ones who haven't been indoctrinated into the wonderful world of coffee (and I guess tea) will be wanting a fridge install in the cockpit to store their favourite soft drinks.

And then the horror will dawn on all - THERE IS NO TOILET!

 

[VR CMDR Novindus]

Single crew:
I am imagining the player complaints because of collision detection, player getting stuck issues. With no actual gameplay added.

Muticrew:
2+ players walking around the cockpits? I realize multicrew is currently telepresence holograms. So maybe they can pass through the physical pilot and artifacts (tables and chairs). Wouldn't look very pretty, mishmash of visual graphics. And it would hurt any future ideas of having additional physical crew. (2+ crew walking around in a cockpit with full collision detection?). Overall it would really suck with muticrew. Again, issues & complaints with no gameplay added.


If FD can pull it off and its great, fantastic! I would love it The fact that they haven't after 6 years suggests its not a simple game addition.

I don’t understand why you think collision detection in the cockpit or between players in the cockpit would be such an issue when players will be running into each other all over the place in Odyssey, with rooms and planets full of objects to collide with.

The physical and telepresence question is still up in the air as far as what players know about it I think. If everyone is in their ships via telepresence, then how does that become physical presence when you exit your ship and walk into another player’s ship? I think it’s most likely that Frontier is just going to treat all characters as if they’re physical, in the graphical and collision sense at least, because it’s easier and allows for the required gameplay, such as FPS, but it will probably still technically all be “telepresence” because otherwise when you die you’d actually die, and lose everything.

Frontier has been considering fleshed out ship interiors with added gameplay for over 6 years, which would require a huge effort. They haven’t been considering this just recently suggested idea of cockpits only with no new gameplay for 6 years, so the fact that they haven’t implemented it yet does not suggest anything about the amount of effort required. I think they probably haven’t seriously considered it because they likely don’t think many players would appreciate it as an interim step towards more fleshed out ship interiors.

 

[Captain Willard]

Bottom of the list for this idea. Many other interests are more important.

 

[VR CMDR Novindus]

Bottom of the list for this idea. Many other interests are more important.

That depends on how you value things of course, and I’m assuming you’re speaking for yourself.

More generally though, the assessment is typically value over investment. A Product Manager will determine the value they think a feature will add to the product, and a Tech Lead will estimate the development time, which is the investment, and then work would be sequenced by the results of the value/investment calculations for each proposed feature, in descending order. There are exceptions to this, such as features that have promised delivery dates taking precedence over the rest, and in some cases development work to take advantage of perceived market opportunities will be prioritised as well.

With game development, the value applied to a feature may be informed by popular opinion or requests among the player base. While I do think a lot of commanders would appreciate the immersion and role playing value this proposed mini/interim-feature would bring, I don’t know that Frontier would make the same assessment. However, due to the relatively low required investment when compared to other features, if this proposal is considered by Frontier, it may be higher on the list than you’d expect.

For example, a feature that Frontier values at 1,000, and which has an investment value of 120 could be considerably lower on the list than this proposed feature if it was only valued at 300, but with an investment value of just 10, as the higher value feature would get a result of 8.34, whereas this lower effort proposal would get a result of 30 for sequencing, placing it higher on the list.

 

[BirdWisdom]

Ship interiors are one thing that is important if you are playing in a large galaxy. This would make me feel more at home and less alone when I travel deep into the galaxy. Think of yourself when you sit at home in safety when there is a real storm outside, it will be a safe feeling.

Without ship interiors, I get the same feeling when I watch a movie that is censored.

But so far this is just a dream and I wish this exists in the future so we can only hope

 

[lefty1117]

i won't mind if it comes into the game at some point, but I'm not supportive of delaying Odyssey to put it in. walking around the inside of the ship is not the killer feature for me

 

[Greasetrap42]

Would I like to be able to walk around the cockpit? -> Absolutely, yes.

Would I hate this feature unless it was 99.9% perfect -> Absolutely, yes.

Would I pay real $$$ for this feature? -> No

 

[Franc Kaos]

Would I like to be able to walk around the cockpit? Yep.

Would I hate this feature unless it was 99.9% perfect? -> Nope.

Would I pay real $$$ for this feature? -> Depends how much, if they just modelled the bridge and a lift to the exit I'd expect pricing close to the paint jobs, but if they added new gameplay loops and more of the ship to explore I'd pay a DLC price.

 

[Greasetrap42]

Would I pay real $$$ for this feature? -> Depends how much, if they just modelled the bridge and a lift to the exit I'd expect pricing close to the paint jobs, but if they added new gameplay loops and more of the ship to explore I'd pay a DLC price.

The OP's proposed idea on this thread does not include changes/additions to gameplay. It is described as a mechanic that simply lets us walk around the cockpit, nothing else.

You can be certain of player outrage if the mechanic doesn't work reliably. If a cmdr gets stuck on features, falls out of glitched walls, whatever during gameplay players will be furious. Losing your Billion Credit Cutter and its entire cargo haul because your cmdr's avatar got stuck and then got attacked by NPCs would not be cool. The mechanic would need to be crazy reliable. Hence I stated 99.9%. Edit: If that can be achieved, cool.


Original Post:

Cockpits are already there, Odyssey is bringing legs, so put the two together for an easy win, relatively speaking.

...

Don’t care about walking around the cockpit with no new game mechanic added? Do you think it’s a novelty that will wear off quickly? That’s fine. To each their own, and it’d be no change to your gameplay.

 

[Vorxian]

what would be nice, is if someone was walking around their cockpit, and another pilot rammed their ship, that they pancake on the wall.

(only joking)

Cockpit legs thumbs up here

 

[Drelthar]

Lol.

When it launches?

They already said this isn't happening, you're seriously expecting them to build a whole new raft of gameplay features in the run up to release?

Walking around the in the cockpit of your ship would be a huge amount of gameplay encompassing massive variation depending on where the ship was.
And adding the ability to walk around only when docked at a star-port would be super lame and not worth the dev time.

 

[Kantaris]

Lord Braben has said ship interiors will be part of the game. CM's have said it's planned but not at Odyssey launch. We all know ship interiors are coming sooner or later in Elites 10 year roadmap.

The biggest hurdle will be making these ships not look empty....large ships get to be VERY LARGE and taking time to run full speed through the ship to your airlock will take a chunk of playtime, even if you have an elevator or something in your cockpit, what will you do? Always use the fastest route to get off the ship, or to the SRV bay, or cargo hold. Nobody wants to spend a few minutes walking through their ship to get to the SRV bay, it's going to be cool to see once or twice before it becomes tedious and I would rather them figure out how to make it efficient to traverse the inside of your ship then having to walk through a gigantic empty warehouse full of corridors.

 

[khalismur]

Lord Braben has said ship interiors will be part of the game.

Do you happen to have a source on that?

 

[Franc Kaos]

The OP's proposed idea on this thread does not include changes/additions to gameplay. It is described as a mechanic that simply lets us walk around the cockpit, nothing else.

You can be certain of player outrage if the mechanic doesn't work reliably. If a cmdr gets stuck on features, falls out of glitched walls, whatever during gameplay players will be furious. Losing your Billion Credit Cutter and its entire cargo haul because your cmdr's avatar got stuck and then got attacked by NPCs would not be cool. The mechanic would need to be crazy reliable. Hence I stated 99.9%. Edit: If that can be achieved, cool.


Original Post:

We can be certain of player outrage if the game were Shangri La but their girl / boy / non binary -friend whinged at them that morning. Player outrage is as natural as the sun rise and as inevitable as Superman coming back to life but yea, if those things happened it would be bad (side effect of multiplayer I guess and not being able to save when you want - or at least in stations), but I kind'a assumed the player would be locked to their seat until parked on planet / base / station - I certainly never leave my seat when driving (even when they're huffing lines of <redacted> in the back seat).

Tho thinking about it, X4 allows you to leave the pilots chair in mid flight and an AI NPC takes over (who generally flies / fights better than me). So, if we had NPCs on the bridge who could take over, we'd be much more invested into getting them trained to Elite status to keep us safe.

 

[Kantaris]

Do you happen to have a source on that?

Source: https://youtu.be/EM0Gcl7iUM8?t=177

 

[khalismur]

Source: https://youtu.be/EM0Gcl7iUM8?t=177

Thanks!

 

[Greasetrap42]

Source: https://youtu.be/EM0Gcl7iUM8?t=177

Excellent video from 2012. Very exciting, well worth watching.

"We want to do it properly, whats really important is we do things really well.... at a later date we will add more and more functionality".
- Braben

I think if the OP watches this (yes its from 2012) a better understanding of why something seemingly so easy has not yet been done isn't slapped together.

 

[askavir]

Nobody wants to spend a few minutes walking through their ship to get to the SRV bay, it's going to be cool to see once or twice before it becomes tedious and I would rather them figure out how to make it efficient to traverse the inside of your ship then having to walk through a gigantic empty warehouse full of corridors.

It would never take minutes to exit a ship, unless ships were made into sadistic rat mazes.

Most games exaggerate sprinting speeds, so expect at worst to run 100 meters in around 10 seconds (similar to the fastest humans) or even less. So sprinting from one end to the other of an Imperial Cutter would take less than 20 seconds. But the thing is, all ships have either the cockpit / bridge or the exit near the center of the ship, so the distances involved to exit a ship would be much smaller. For instance, the exit of the Imperial Cutter is right behind the bridge area. Corvette and Anaconda bridges are near(ish) the center. T-9 / T-10 have more width than length.

In the worst case scenario would it take something like 15 seconds or so to exit the ship with the largest distance from cockpit to exit (perhaps the Beluga?), if you're in a hurry.

 

[CmdrKull]

I thought space-legs would include ship interiors, and I also thought space-legs would include EVA, so therefore (because I think it) ship interiors will come with the EVA update, and the content will mostly be related to salvage and stealth aboard NPC-owned ships as well as outposts. Walking around your own ships and fleet carrier will be a side effect of those environments being fleshed out for the missions.

And you know what? You can’t prove me wrong. Only time (or Braben) will tell.

 

[Chaparral]

Yes agree with OP. And walk around ship in docking bay please.