(Elite Dangerous: Odyssey) Will walking around ships be added eventually?

[Thatchinho]

Weirdly enough, Frontier has given us conflicting statements on that. Yes, they've said Odyssey won't be a season but a single release.

But whenever somebody asks "will feature X be part of Odyssey" we get the answer "not at launch", which implies there will/may be feature updates.

True, but equally I think it's a bit risky to read implications into the 'not at launch' statement.

Personally I would suggest it's best to read it as 'we are not making any binding statements on that particular matter and we retain the option to adjust the approach if we think there is sufficient case for us to do so*'.

(*Which is to all intents and purposes is exactly what the situation should be expected to be by default, just stated explicitly.)

I think to summarise the situation;

• The broad approach is to pack everything into a single major release
• That doesn't mean they can't add things to it subsequently
• It just means that as it stands that what they're selling is the single major release, not the single major release plus a bunch of subsequent releases
• Buying should be done according to the above
• Buying on the basis that it'll be the major release followed by things that FD have not committed to is not sensible and is done so at the buyers risk

 

[khalismur]

Tea in Elite Dangerous is already brewed! Got 'ya!

That would be much more inefficient, you'd be transporting 99% water by weight

 

[Wimmer]

That would be much more inefficient, you'd be transporting 99% water by weight

I need to think about it and will return later

 

[wenkman]

doh, you can dehydrate the brewed tea.

on destination you just add water and ready.....

this is the future.

 

[Thatchinho]

Yeah the issue is that they went for cargo racks by weight and not by volume.
Just as an example:
512 tons of gold occupy at least 27 liters (which is very small, as gold is one the most dense elements)
512 tons of water occupy at least 512 liters
And water has a high density compared to anything not metal. Imagine how much space would be needed to transport 512 tons of tea

Cargo racks by mass isn't as ridiculous as it might sound at first sight. Mass is a critical factor in hyperspace rage, and the amount and distribution of mass within the ship would be a critical factor in how the ship handles in real space. Standardising things so that 1 cargo unit has 1 standard unit of mass would have significant benefits in terms of how to load and distribute cargo in order to maintain optimal handling and performance.

(Not that I think the effects of changing the distribution of mass within the ship are modelled currently, or necessarily would be. It's just a reason why standardising by mass rather than volume would be beneficial. There's cons to standardising by mass rather than volume as well, obviously.)

Edit - just to add, the Annie has (or had in the original Elite at least) active load distribution tech built in to enable it to move its cargo around to improve manoeuvrability. It is (or was) the only ship to have it. (Not sure if that's been specifically carried over into ED as well or not.)

 

[askavir]

Even for immersions sake, on larger ships, having to walk 150m to get to the rear exit every time you dock - you're soon going to be screaming 'get me the teleporter - now !!'

None of the current ships has the exit anywhere near 150m away from the cockpit (except possibly the beluga as I don't know where the beluga exit is).

And even then, a game with walking has also sprinting, and sprinting speed in games is typically faster than sprinting in real life, so expect to cover any 150m in about 10, 12 seconds tops.

Anyway, Odyssey with start with teleport outside from the cockpit, and I doubt that will be removed later even when ship legs become a thing, so everyone will still be able to exit the ship as he wishes, either manually or by teleporting to outside the door..

 

[askavir]

I expect its a trade-off of resources expended for active useful gameplay. Sure it'd be pretty, but that would soon wear off - what else would you do with it, without introducing irritatingly unnecesary interaction?

EVA activities.

Without ship interiors we will never be able to EVA in space (unless you just pop out of the ship into space and later back in, which would be incredibly lame), so no accessing derelict ships, generation ships, stranded ships, destroyed ships, abandoned ships, space facilities, satellites, etc. for missions / theft / salvage / scavenging / rescue / etc. We will also not be able to enter NPC ships, or crashed / landed ships on planets. We will also never be able to join other players on someone else's ship to take part in some legs mission together, or just some planetary activity/exploration.

All that stuff and much, much more requires having ship interiors as a basic foundation.

 

[khalismur]

Cargo racks by mass isn't as ridiculous as it might sound at first sight. Mass is a critical factor in hyperspace rage, and the amount and distribution of mass within the ship would be a critical factor in how the ship handles in real space. Standardising things so that 1 cargo unit has 1 standard unit of mass would have significant benefits in terms of how to load and distribute cargo in order to maintain optimal handling and performance.

(Not that I think the effects of changing the distribution of mass within the ship are modelled currently, or necessarily would be. It's just a reason why standardising by mass rather than volume would be beneficial. There's cons to standardising by mass rather than volume as well, obviously.)

Edit - just to add, the Annie has (or had in the original Elite at least) active load distribution tech built in to enable it to move its cargo around to improve manoeuvrability. It is (or was) the only ship to have it. (Not sure if that's been specifically carried over into ED as well or not.)

Absolutely not. Cargo racks are by volume ALWAYS. The ships has mass limits for sure, but the cargo racks themselves must be by volume. If you're transporting 100 m3 of gold, of course that'd go much over the ship's mass limits, but if you're transporting 100m3 of tea that'd be easy.

The volume able to store cargo has nothing to do with the mass the ship should be able to transport. Imagine transporting 512 tons of feathers or foam, you'd need a couple dozen T9s worth of volume, but a cobra mk3 could fit inside surely 512 tons of gold, but clearly not lift it up in gravity worlds.

 

[Danieros]

Cargo racks by mass isn't as ridiculous as it might sound at first sight. Mass is a critical factor in hyperspace rage, and the amount and distribution of mass within the ship would be a critical factor in how the ship handles in real space. Standardising things so that 1 cargo unit has 1 standard unit of mass would have significant benefits in terms of how to load and distribute cargo in order to maintain optimal handling and performance.

(Not that I think the effects of changing the distribution of mass within the ship are modelled currently, or necessarily would be. It's just a reason why standardising by mass rather than volume would be beneficial. There's cons to standardising by mass rather than volume as well, obviously.)

Thrusters and the FSD have their mass maximum, so I think the cargo hold would simply not accept more weight if it reached those limits.

Very greedy traders would love going for that maximum weight For example my fully laden barebones Python trader weighs 768.5 tons, but the engineered 6D thrusters (note that it's a D class, so it's not even the "best") can support all the way to 1498 tons, and the 5A FSD engineered FSD has an optimized mass of 1689 tons. No python will ever come close to those limits due to the cargo holds being weight-based.

This is especially noticeable now that Frontier made missions rewards based on tonnage. 180t of biowaste might end up giving close payouts to 180t of gold, but a gold delivery mission should potentially go to much higher tonnage amounts, and more strain on your ship.

 

[Wimmer]

None of the current ships has the exit anywhere near 150m away from the cockpit (except possibly the beluga as I don't know where the beluga exit is).

And even then, a game with walking has also sprinting, and sprinting speed in games is typically faster than sprinting in real life, so expect to cover any 150m in about 10, 12 seconds tops.

Anyway, Odyssey with start with teleport outside from the cockpit, and I doubt that will be removed later even when ship legs become a thing, so everyone will still be able to exit the ship as he wishes, either manually or by teleporting to outside the door..

I see myself when I'm doing those two things. If I was doing a quick port-to-port missions I would choose the "teleport" option. But if I was returning from a long journey - from exploration for example - I wouldn't resist to take a long, slow walk all through my ship with satisfaction and role-played fatigue on my face.

 

[Alien]

Would anyone be able to point me to a (RECENT) official roadmap or the like confirming or denying wether this feature will be added later?

No, they can't. The only ones who know what's coming for Elite Dangerous are Frontier themselves, and they're not saying.

I want walking around in ships, but I doubt if it will ever happen. It would require the ships being completely re-worked .... not impossible, but probably too large a task to warrant the man hours for the relatively little return in profits.

 

[Danieros]

Yeah the issue is that they went for cargo racks by weight and not by volume.
Just as an example:
512 tons of gold occupy at least 27 m3(which is very small, as gold is one the most dense elements)
512 tons of water occupy at least 512 m3
And water has a high density compared to anything not metal. Imagine how much space would be needed to transport 512 tons of tea

This is a great point, and one I will keep in mind for future discussions.

 

[Thatchinho]

Absolutely not. Cargo racks are by volume ALWAYS. The ships has mass limits for sure, but the cargo racks themselves must be by volume. If you're transporting 100 m3 of gold, of course that'd go much over the ship's mass limits, but if you're transporting 100m3 of tea that'd be easy.

The volume able to store cargo has nothing to do with the mass the ship should be able to transport. Imagine transporting 512 tons of feathers or foam, you'd need a couple dozen T9s worth of volume, but a cobra mk3 could fit inside surely 512 tons of gold, but clearly not lift it up in gravity worlds.

I think you might have misunderstood what I meant.

Yes, individual cargo containers or spaces within the racks can (and apparently do) have a set volume. Let's call that 1 unit.

However, there's then two ends to the spectrum to how that can be approached:

1. Standardise so that 1 unit is filled such that it gives a set mass (regardless of what volume of the cargo that ends up being, within the constraints of the unit size)
2. Standardise so that 1 unit is filled to a set volume regardless of what mass of the cargo that ends up being in the unit in question.

A is a sensible approach for a lot of reasons. (That's not to say B is wrong, I hasten to add. Both approaches have pros and cons.)

 

[askavir]

Yeah the issue is that they went for cargo racks by weight and not by volume.
Just as an example:
512 tons of gold occupy at least 27 m3(which is very small, as gold is one the most dense elements)
512 tons of water occupy at least 512 m3
And water has a high density compared to anything not metal. Imagine how much space would be needed to transport 512 tons of tea

I think that has already changed some time ago, the game initially mentioned "tons", but now it displays only "units".

 

[Thatchinho]

Thrusters and the FSD have their mass maximum, so I think the cargo hold would simply not accept more weight if it reached those limits.

Very greedy traders would love going for that maximum weight For example my fully laden barebones Python trader weighs 768.5 tons, but the engineered 6D thrusters (note that it's a D class, so it's not even the "best") can support all the way to 1498 tons, and the 5A FSD engineered FSD has an optimized mass of 1689 tons. No python will ever come close to those limits due to the cargo holds being weight-based.

This is especially noticeable now that Frontier made missions rewards based on tonnage. 180t of biowaste might end up giving close payouts to 180t of gold, but a gold delivery mission should potentially go to much higher tonnage amounts, and more strain on your ship.

It's not just the mass of the cargo containers, it's how they are distributed within the ship which effects handling. (I'm speaking in principle here - like I said in a previous post, I doubt the effects of changes to mass distribution within the ship have been modelled as it stands.)

If things are standardised such that a single container is always filled to a specific mass, rather than to maximum volume, then dealing with the distribution of mass within the ship becomes much much simpler.

It could be argued that that's far more important for a spaceship, and particularly for those having to fly it, than maximising the volume of goods that can be put into a single container.

 

[Chaines]

Weirdly enough, Frontier has given us conflicting statements on that. Yes, they've said Odyssey won't be a season but a single release.

But whenever somebody asks "will feature X be part of Odyssey" we get the answer "not at launch", which implies there will/may be feature updates.

IMO not at launch is the polite way of saying 'no'

 

[wenkman]

just eject cargo and look at the capsule.

the "standard cargo capsule" (TM)

• has a fixed volume
• always weights 1 metric ton.

so, maybe, one capsule of feathers is not completely full, but at least limpets and cargo rack "racks" can be of standard size.

also the loading process can be streamlined. i expect a chute to connect to the ship's cargo bay and load 700 capsules in seconds.

 

[Ian Skippy]

I'm not sure about imposible, this fanmade Video does a pretty good job of including a varity of things such as srv, cargo rags etc

He also did several other videos showing how all possible compartments would fit to current ships Krait Phantom example

No, it shows one example,hand-crafted. The issue is with the modular nature of the ships. Not impossible, but not nearly as trivial as you may think it is.

 

[avow555]

We getting the Quake experience in game don't expect more.
Gib time.

 

[Deleted member 48160]

No, it shows one example,hand-crafted. The issue is with the modular nature of the ships. Not impossible, but not nearly as trivial as you may think it is.

To be fair I just said it wasent imposible, but you are right its alot of work and not a trivial task at all

However, I also think you overcomplicate the issue by presuming that every part of the ships modules has to be accessible. I would be fine with only having acces to living quaters, flight deck and corrdiors (with observation deck possibly, Anaconda) to the exit. This in itself would be a significant amount of work, but you wouldent have to deal with individuel module configurations.

Then maybe later frontier could add accessibility to everything if they can figure out a good way of doing it, but it wouldent be strictly nececary imo