Just admit there's artificial gravity already

[Galactic Fork]

It's time to just accept it. Odyssey makes no sense without it. It's OK, we already have tons of other space magic. One more won't hurt. I've never understood why Artificial Gravity was somehow more space magic than hyperspace jumps or Supercruise, anyway. How is that the line? I didn't care either way before odyssey because it really didn't matter. Now it's just sad and obvious everything was made as if there was artificial gravity. So just own it.

Reasons why there's obviously Artificial Gravity:

1) Concourses on "0G" outposts. Magnetic boots explain nothing.

a) Garbage rests on the ground.​

b) Drinks stay in the glass.​

c) Plants hang from their pots.​

d) I can run with points where both feet are off the ground.​

e) Sitting on chairs.​

2) Landing on a planet with super high Gs somehow doesn't kill us while in our ship, but we can't leave our ship because gravity is too high.

OK, I thought there'd be more numbers when I started, but that's enough.

Just say it was recently invented (last 15 to 30 years or so) and the rotating stations are retrofitted for stable gravity throughout, but they keep rotating to ease some of the strain of the Artificial Gravity Systems on such big stations. The smaller outposts don't have that issue.
This can be used in gameplay on settlements by having some interiors have artificial gravity. You can adjust the gravity to make it stronger or weaker or turn it off to make it whatever the local gravity is.


(Edit) Heck, you can even say there are weak art-g generators on our boots to allow normal walking/running gaits on low g planets. They don't prevent jumping.

 

[[Diplomacy] Carnegie]

Don't worry about the lore, it's pointless.

If you want artificial gravity and inertial damping and all the rest of the things that allow the game to 'make sense' then just accept that they're there. I mean we already have 'lore' that says our ships are simulating the sounds of engines and explosions and whatever so it's clearly okay to make up whatever nonsense suits you.

 

[Rochester]

I concur - but it’s just lazy development. Don’t get us started on ‘telepresence’!

FD set out with a clear goal for zero g interiors, where ‘space’ was a premium, and the science was practical, so every inch was utilised, both up and down etc…

FD effectively painted themselves into a culdesac. Odyssey is a prime example. Zero g combat simply was never considered, so everything is just magical stuck to the floor whilst hundreds of square footage of prime real-estate in stations just left hanging above our heads…because whoever designed it, didn’t look back at FD historical lore…or FD realised they could never achieve it, so like much of the lore - ignored it.

Dont lose sleep over it, it’s just badly written and will never get fixed.

 

[[Diplomacy] Carnegie]

I concur - but it’s just lazy development. Don’t get us started on ‘telepresence’!

FD set out with a clear goal for zero g interiors, where ‘space’ was a premium, and the science was practical, so every inch was utilised, both up and down etc…

FD effectively painted themselves into a culdesac. Odyssey is a prime example. Zero g combat simply was never considered, so everything is just magical stuck to the floor whilst hundreds of square footage of prime real-estate in stations just left hanging above our heads…because whoever designed it, didn’t look back at FD historical lore…or FD realised they could never achieve it, so like much of the lore - ignored it.

Dont loose sleep over it, it’s just badly written and will never get fixed.

There was never even a cul-de-sac to begin with - even ship cockpits were designed without a thought for zero-G.
And that comes from the nature of the flight model - by avoiding the 'turrets in space' hole and going with 'WW2 dogfighting plus' they were unable to avoid including an intrinsic 'up' and 'down' paradigm.

Not that I'm complaining, mind - our streamlined spaceships are way cooler than the spheres which are the logical shape for zero atmosphere and zero G.

 

[Rochester]

I think very, very, very early on it was considered. Some of the cockpit designs utilised what looked like zero g couches, but as time moved on and I have become far too cynical, and more likely to suspect that what we were shown early on was not what was proposed, but what had been discarded. That what we ultimately received from day 1 launch was a compromise.

There is a modicum of doubt that possibly FD felt they might return to those concepts, but likely such a period was very short lived. As FD did make a very strong stride to actively back-track on those ideas, hiding many of their earlier forum threads.

But again, Odyssey is evidence they no longer care for those earlier concepts and are essentially dead.

So going back to the original post, take it as red, this game is ridiculous, best just to suspend your disbelief, it’s not worth trying to make sense of it as it will never be resolved.

 

[Fizzatron]

I'm not going to pass judgement on Frontier about it, but I think the question of who really wants zero-g is pertinent. It's hand waved in nearly all sci-fi movies and games without barely a thought so obviously it seems to be a narrative over hard science preference that is almost universally accepted.

It seems to me that making everything zero-g, while being more correct, just adds complications to what it is that is being presented, whether in a movie or a game. Add the fact that there's nearly always the hand-waved 'hyperspace' trope that gets around all sorts of messy physics, with the hypothetical Alcubierre drive shoe horning some scientific plausibility, as Elite does, which is laudable, but is still in the realm of fantasy until we find matter with negative mass (though maybe the doomers on this forum are really running an experiment in manufacturing it). Therefore, I completely agree that if one were to extend the Alcubierre principles to allow for steering in supercruise, then why not allow it to extend a gravitational field around a ship/starport to provide a 1g environment within its confines and/or externalities up to a certain limit?

 

[Galactic Fork]

I'm not going to pass judgement on Frontier about it, but I think the question of who really wants zero-g is pertinent. It's hand waved in nearly all sci-fi movies and games without barely a thought so obviously it seems to be a narrative over hard science preference that is almost universally accepted.

It seems to me that making everything zero-g, while being more correct, just adds complications to what it is that is being presented, whether in a movie or a game. Add the fact that there's nearly always the hand-waved 'hyperspace' trope that gets around all sorts of messy physics, with the hypothetical Alcubierre drive shoe horning some scientific plausibility, as Elite does, which is laudable, but is still in the realm of fantasy until we find matter with negative mass (though maybe the doomers on this forum are really running an experiment in manufacturing it). Therefore, I completely agree that if one were to extend the Alcubierre principles to allow for steering in supercruise, then why not allow it to extend a gravitational field around a ship/starport to provide a 1g environment within its confines and/or externalities up to a certain limit?

Interestingly, last year a physicist proposed an alternative method to the Alcubierre drive without exotic matter. It's still in the realm of space fantasy. But yeah, I'm not attacking FDEV or anything, I just don't get why it's not already a part of Elite Dangerous canon. It's obvious the designers didn't get the memo. Just own it and run with it, I say.

 

[Old Duck]

I can run with points where both feet are off the ground.

As someone who as tripped and fell floated away in 0G in Space Engineers, I totally get where you are coming from. Also, when using magnetic boots, I can walk on walls and ceilings in zero G. Can you do that in Odyssey?

 

[[Diplomacy] Carnegie]

As someone who as tripped and fell floated away in 0G in Space Engineers, I totally get where you are coming from. Also, when using magnetic boots, I can walk on walls and ceilings in zero G. Can you do that in Odyssey?

The walls and ceilings aren't made of metal - they're compressed guacamole.

 

[Nadreck]

Bridge security in Carriers makes no sense in zero-g. You have to pass the sentry and use the guarded elevator because nobody can just jump up from the "cinema" deck, the bridge is too high up. Hello?

Logically, as we have force-fields that can interact with matter (shields that stop bullets, and mailbox shields that hold the air in), we must have artificial gravity: all it takes is a weak forcefield pushing stuff downwards.

Maybe stations spin because that solution saves power.

 

[Brrokk]

You can see artificial gravity every time you watch a Beluga dock. The passengers are sipping their cocktails without spilling any all through those high-g manoeuvres.

 

[xzanfr]

The lore went years ago when project runner after project runner ignored what the previous one had done.

It's best to just enjoy the freedom that having no lore-rules gives.

 

[Dillon Fallon]

To some extent you've got to let something like this go because on planets you still have gravity. Even the Mars moons have gravity and they're small enough that you'd struggle to land in the first place (yes, in theory you could jump fast enough to reach escape velocity, but it's not like inanimate objects could do that).

Whilst this isn't the case in outposts there's the more relevant problem of what floating rubbish would do to gameplay performance. I'd rather a hit to immersion than my framerate really.

Although if it is to be a zero g environment there's the question of why you'd have rubbish about the place at all. Last thing you need is bits of last night's pizza floating around the life support electronics.

 

[Ian Doncaster]

To some extent you've got to let something like this go because on planets you still have gravity.

Yes - though Odyssey takes a fairly hand-waved approach to that, too, where the gravity level affects how high you can jump/jetpack, but doesn't affect your performance moving around on the ground.

Sure, we're wearing powered form-fitting suits, they can compensate for that even without technically requiring artifical gravity, pretty good chance that simulating it properly would be cool but make gameplay beyond wandering about too difficult outside a much narrower G range.

 

[CMDrAdam]

The magnetic boot only explains why the character cant jump

 

[Leadfoot]

Of course, in real life, flying around for months or even years in zero g does very bad things to the human body and that's why they should have had artificial gravity in the first place. Landing on a planet with 9 g's or more would normally kill us. It's amazing that our heart lungs spleen and everything else doesn't get crushed into our pelvis when landing on a planet with that much gravity. But it is what it is.

 

[Galactic Fork]

Don't worry about the lore, it's pointless.

If you want artificial gravity and inertial damping and all the rest of the things that allow the game to 'make sense' then just accept that they're there. I mean we already have 'lore' that says our ships are simulating the sounds of engines and explosions and whatever so it's clearly okay to make up whatever nonsense suits you.

Well that's kinda the point. They said the sound is simulated as a handwave to enhance gameplay, and in Odyssey they included that handwave as part of engineering options. So if they'd just admit there's artificial gravity they can move on and add features that use the fact that artificial gravity exists.
It means nothing if I "accept that their there" or if I "make up nonsense.". But Frontier can do it and run with it.

 

[ubermick]

It boggles my mind that in a game which shatters the laws of physics left and right, it’s the bleedin’ pizza boxes that are wot breaks da immershin.

 

[Factabulous]

It boggles my mind that in a game which shatters the laws of physics left and right, it’s the bleedin’ pizza boxes that are wot breaks da immershin.

Don't worry - they'll get the pizzas removed (and then complain that everywhere looks the same), and then move onto the next bugbear. Always more to complain about

 

[Fizzatron]

To some extent you've got to let something like this go because on planets you still have gravity. Even the Mars moons have gravity and they're small enough that you'd struggle to land in the first place (yes, in theory you could jump fast enough to reach escape velocity, but it's not like inanimate objects could do that).

Whilst this isn't the case in outposts there's the more relevant problem of what floating rubbish would do to gameplay performance. I'd rather a hit to immersion than my framerate really.

Although if it is to be a zero g environment there's the question of why you'd have rubbish about the place at all. Last thing you need is bits of last night's pizza floating around the life support electronics.

Allowing for artificial gravity not only makes the current station interiors make sense, it frees up the possibility of having settlement-like offworld base locations and removing the movement (jumping etc.) restrictions in outposts, it also actually opens the avenue for zero g gameplay in areas where it would be of benefit, ie; EVA type stuff. Though for that to be effective we would have to be able to maneuver our onfoot commander in all axes of directions when using the jetpack.