Drew Wagar's Thoughts

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If interiors come it will be more limited in many ways than people presume. And yes, people will nerd-rage and yes, every normal adult should ignore them.

Braben already hinted at that norion in a fairly recent interview.

I don't really expect Ship interiors (if we ever get them) to match Ship outfitting - that's way to varied/random/flexible/whatever.
However, they can take the minimalist path taken with concourses - only design the living quarters and access paths, eventually based on the size of the Life support module and maaaybe on it's grade and/or manufacturer (more luxurious for Gutamaya and Saud Kruger or A-rated ones depending on path taken)
 
I'm quite happy with generic interior modules (hopefully different per manufacturer). To be honest, I'm not hugely interested in just being able to wander about my ship (which will get old very very quickly) but I'm excited about extending the settlement gameplay of breaking through hatches and acquiring security levels for missions where you steal things from ships or steal the ships themselves. Some of the settlement stuff almost feels like it was designed with this in mind.

Any wandering aimlessly around my own ship would just be a nice bonus!
 
“It is a risk,” he explains. “Some games can very much become all things to all people. We have this with Elite Odyssey as well, where people expect every ship interior to be different. [...]"

Expecting different ships to have different interiors is really the epitome of unreasonableness. /s

I think this quote is a bit silly and Mr. Braben was just upset about the response to Odyssey's release. It's not like designing 40 different models for a game would be technically impossible. Or challenging. It "just" takes some work.

Yeah, moving around a moving ship is technically challenging. Optimizing the performance is technically challenging. But making them look different? Sorry, I don't buy it.

And the way ships in Elite work, the only unique thing needed is the hallway connecting the module compartments.

David Braben was the one to decide to release those videos almost a decade ago when he wanted people's money. When he now complains that players actually want proper ship interiors I can only say "tough luck".

Anyway, ship interiors are a sidenote in Odyssey. People expect FPS in the double digits. How unreasonable of them.
 
Expecting different ships to have different interiors is really the epitome of unreasonableness. /s

I think this quote is a bit silly and Mr. Braben was just upset about the response to Odyssey's release. It's not like designing 40 different models for a game would be technically impossible. Or challenging. It "just" takes some work.

Yeah, moving around a moving ship is technically challenging. Optimizing the performance is technically challenging. But making them look different? Sorry, I don't buy it.

And the way ships in Elite work, the only unique thing needed is the hallway connecting the module compartments.

David Braben was the one to decide to release those videos almost a decade ago when he wanted people's money. When he now complains that players actually want proper ship interiors I can only say "tough luck".

Anyway, ship interiors are a sidenote in Odyssey. People expect FPS in the double digits. How unreasonable of them.
Some of the ships are similar layouts as well, so it's not like it's 40 interiors. I made a list on this forum somewhere and worked out it would be something like 27 different interiors.
EDIT: I found the post ...

Hmmm .... How many different interiors would it really be? Let's list them all (grouping similar ship models together) ....
1. Sidewinder
2. Eagle & Imperial Eagle
3. Hauler
4. Adder
5. Viper mkIII & Viper mkIV
6. Cobra MkIII & Cobra mkIV
7. Diamondback Scout & Diamondback Explorer
8. Type 6 & Keelback
9. Dolphin [1]
10. Imperial Courier
11. Asp Scout & Asp Explorer
12. Vulture
13. Federal Dropship & Federal Assault Ship & Federal Gunship
14. Type 7
15. Alliance Chieftan & Alliance Crusader & Alliance Challenger
16. Imperial Clipper [2]
17. Krait Phantom & Krait MkII
18. Orca
19. Fer-De-Lance
20. Mamba
21. Python
22. Type-9 Heavy & Type-10 Defender
23. Beluga
24. Anaconda
25. Federal Corvette
26. Imperial Cutter

[1] While you might think the Dolphin, Orca and Beluga are the same model, and they might be, the fact they are incrementally bigger ships means they would have differing internal layouts.

[2] The same applies to the Imperial Clipper and Cutter, again, being a larger ship means it would have a different layout.

So, 38 ships, 26 internal layout models. Not as much as it might seem. Is it more work than all the settlements and stations and outposts? I don't know, but Frontier are a games development company, they employ developers, it's their job to make things like ship interiors.
 
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Expecting different ships to have different interiors is really the epitome of unreasonableness. /s

I think this quote is a bit silly and Mr. Braben was just upset about the response to Odyssey's release. It's not like designing 40 different models for a game would be technically impossible. Or challenging. It "just" takes some work.

Yeah, moving around a moving ship is technically challenging. Optimizing the performance is technically challenging. But making them look different? Sorry, I don't buy it.

And the way ships in Elite work, the only unique thing needed is the hallway connecting the module compartments.

David Braben was the one to decide to release those videos almost a decade ago when he wanted people's money. When he now complains that players actually want proper ship interiors I can only say "tough luck".

Anyway, ship interiors are a sidenote in Odyssey. People expect FPS in the double digits. How unreasonable of them.

Some of the ships are similar layouts as well, so it's not like it's 40 interiors. I made a list on this forum somewhere and worked out it would be something like 27 different interiors.
EDIT: I found the post ...

Is not that simple.
And no matter that design choice they go for, there will be plenty of voices to nuke them down.
Just look at the way outfitting work and how many different modules and modules sized one can fiddle with when configuring a ship.

IF they go for living quarters only, some will come to say that FD are lazy because the interiors do not match the unique outfitting their precious ship has.
And going for ship interiors that are a 100% match to the zillion of outfitting possibilities seems quite impossible to me.
 
Who has their money on ....

1) no ship interiors ever
2) cockpits only. Functional - walk in, sit down.
3) walk around the inside, up corridors, down corridors, into passenger cabins, and then inspect whichever of the 100's (1000's) of the available size/type/class modules you've installed, each individually crafted. Interview the passengers and serve them drinks. Use space hammers to fix a module while 4 NPC pirates are trashing your ship. Fight off a dozen boarders every time you lose an interdiction. Gaze upon your trophies in a commander's cabin (tm) with coffee machine and personal robot servant.

I would say 2 is very likely one day.

And yet elements of 3 is what I often see thrown around whenever many people talk ship interiors. Unfortunately, if FDev do provide #2, it will still make a lot of people very unhappy.

(I prefer boarding through the blue circle, and if we do get cockpits and ramps/elevators I sure as hell hope the teleport option is still available.)
 
[...]
And going for ship interiors that are a 100% match to the zillion of outfitting possibilities seems quite impossible to me.

What do you mean? The ships are modular, so should the interiors be. Frontier won't need to create a zillion of unique interiors to cover all possible combinations.
 
I'll try not to laugh......


rofl @ the part with Drew's retirement, the voicing was spot on. 😂 😂

The Ante-Pre-Penultimate Farewell Comeback Tour

Scribbling Senator and chronicler of the life and times of Lady Kahina "Salome" Loren, CMDR Drew Wagar, has announced that he's about to retire again, but only after he completes his farewell tour of all 400 billions stars in the galaxy.
The publicity-crazed senator plans to livestream his entire tour to his many fans and followers from around the Galaxy, and to reminisce about how much better things were back in the day when everything was in wireframe and you had to load the program for your ship's navigation and trading systems from a portable cassette player
 
What do you mean? The ships are modular, so should the interiors be. Frontier won't need to create a zillion of unique interiors to cover all possible combinations.

Not certain about that .. a Class 1 slot in a Sidewinder might be a different shape to a Class 1 in a Cobra. All limpet controllers might look the same but there are a fair number of different modules you can fit regardless of that. TheSRV and SLF slots MUST be in the right pace, amidships and after Class 1 there's Class 2,3,4 so it's not entirely straightforward. I'm pretty sure most people would prefer to see the module rendered, so it can be tinkered with in gameplay if you are going down that route.
 
Who has their money on ....

1) no ship interiors ever
2) cockpits only. Functional - walk in, sit down.
3) walk around the inside, up corridors, down corridors, into passenger cabins, and then inspect whichever of the 100's (1000's) of the available size/type/class modules you've installed, each individually crafted. Interview the passengers and serve them drinks. Use space hammers to fix a module while 4 NPC pirates are trashing your ship. Fight off a dozen boarders every time you lose an interdiction. Gaze upon your trophies in a commander's cabin (tm) with coffee machine and personal robot servant.

I would say 2 is very likely one day.

And yet elements of 3 is what I often see thrown around whenever many people talk ship interiors. Unfortunately, if FDev do provide #2, it will still make a lot of people very unhappy.

(I prefer boarding through the blue circle, and if we do get cockpits and ramps/elevators I sure as hell hope the teleport option is still available.)
Option 4: Full interiors but with most of the gameplay revolving around OTHER people's ships. Multiplayer stuff, boarding, missions to steal things from ships and steal the ships themselves. So it's more about sneaking about, cutting through panels and gaining security access than it is about faffing about with modules. I'm not convinced you can do meaningful gameplay on your own ship that wouldn't involve rewriting and rebalancing the way ships work in general -- which I can't see them doing.
 
Option 4: Full interiors but with most of the gameplay revolving around OTHER people's ships. Multiplayer stuff, boarding, missions to steal things from ships and steal the ships themselves. So it's more about sneaking about, cutting through panels and gaining security access than it is about faffing about with modules. I'm not convinced you can do meaningful gameplay on your own ship that wouldn't involve rewriting and rebalancing the way ships work in general -- which I can't see them doing.

They will never go for ship stealing. This is not a Hardcore Full Loot PVP MMO
 
What do you mean? The ships are modular, so should the interiors be. Frontier won't need to create a zillion of unique interiors to cover all possible combinations.
No, they won't. As far as I'm concerned they can be as repetitive as the stations, outposts and settlements, because that seems to be pretty common throughout the Milky Way. That one kickstarter video also claimed the ships were being designed with all this in mind, so hopefully they didn't let that go along the way (cough Cutter cough).
 
They will never go for ship stealing. This is not a Hardcore Full Loot PVP MMO
Even though ED takes place in some regressed, dystopian future, the insurance schemes are absolutely stellar (no pun intended). If you can get an exact engineered replica of your ship when it gets blown up, why wouldn't you when it gets stolen? ;)
 
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