A small observation regarding ship interiors.

Stealthie

Stealthie
Blame Lave Radio for this, cos I've been binging their podcasts recently.

I keep hearing the justification for no ship interiors being "ships are huge and that's a phenomenal amount of data to punt around persistently".

I think that's a bit of a straw-man argument.

Thing is, I don't see why ship interiors would need to be fully realised.
Sure, it'd be nice if you could wander around a vast cargo bay in your Annie but it wouldn't, necessarily, be vital.

Seems like ship interiors could be limited to a cockpit/bridge, living quarters, a personal storage room and some kind of engine room (as a minimum) regardless of what ship you were flying.

The various modules in your ship could be represented within the confines of these smaller areas, with various bits of machinery and electronics visible, which'd represent the various things you have attached to your ship.

As, primarily, an explorer, I've always thought it'd be nice if you needed to do "stuff" to maintain your ship while you were out in the black.
As long as there were enough areas to allow a player to potter about, collecting stuff using it to do stuff and then putting it away again, I'd be okay with that.
Ideally, I'd also be able to land on a planet, go to my storage room, grab my tools, disembark and then go and make external repairs to my ship too.

I realise there'll be people who do want to wander all around the interior of a T9 or Annie, like some flying space-catherdral but, realistically, that's unlikely to ever be possible, given the modular nature of ship-configuration but a smallish variety of areas with fixed design would probably be more do-able.
 
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Vernier

Vernier
Stealthie said:
Seems like ship interiors could be limited to a cockpit/bridge, living quarters, a personal storage room and some kind of engine room
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Spot on! Just the living quarters and the bridge would be enough unless FDev adds a repair feature, in which case the engine room might be nice. I'm an explorer too and spend most of time out in the void.
V
 

Gentleman_Raven_

Gentleman_Raven_
Having played ED and NMS, I can tell you the "space legs" ended up being the focus of game play in NMS, and not satisfying in the least. There is so much emphasis on "space legs" in NMS that it takes up about 80% of the game, which is supposed to be a space flight game. And given NMS constantly bugs you about building bases on planets- more leg work- that takes away from flying.
 

Agony_Aunt

Agony_Aunt
I can kind of understand why FD went with the blue circle. I think blue circle followed by stock anim showing the commander entering the ship then fade to black, getting into seat would have been received a bit better, a bit like how GTA does its interior transitions. Problem is, each ship has its own way of entering, so each would need its own cut scene.

But if FD were going to do interiors, then what I don't want is yet another half-bottomed implementation. Its what FD get the most flack for overall. Things half done. CQC, multicrew, powerplay, etc. So if they were going to do interiors, i'd want the full Monty.

Even the modularity of our ships could be accounted for, with areas sectioned off and replacable depending on what you have in your interiors. Behind Door Number 1, is it a cargo bay? Is it a passenger bay? Is it a SCB or fuel scoop (open door, see machinery, eg, some big metal thing saying "Scooped Fuel Processor")?

I think its doable. It would just take a lot of work.

But a compromise solution, where its basically entrance and direct to cockpit, then i'm kind of meh on that. It would be half-bottomed.
 

Stealthie

Stealthie
Agony_Aunt said:
Even the modularity of our ships could be accounted for, with areas sectioned off and replacable depending on what you have in your interiors. Behind Door Number 1, is it a cargo bay? Is it a passenger bay? Is it a SCB or fuel scoop (open door, see machinery, eg, some big metal thing saying "Scooped Fuel Processor")?
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Said it before but, if full ship interiors was viable, the easiest way to implement it would just be to leave it up to players to position stuff.

I'm thinking there could be a simple 3rd-angle depiction of your ship and you'd just move modules onto the drawing, position them however you want and then link them with corridors and ladders etc.

That way, if a ship ended up looking like an Escher or Dahli painting inside, players would have nobody but themselves to blame.
 

here_it_comes

here_it_comes
Rat Catcher said:
Be honest, however Frontier addressed interiors it would be complained about...
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If FD actually implemented things their playerbase wanted to see, they wouldn't be in the position they are of being constantly complained about in the first place. Speculating on how interiors would have been received first requires us to imagine FD acting fundamentally different than they actually do. Giving FD the courtesy of imagining an alternate reality where they listen to their players, and simultaneously imagining their players being unhappy about the results, is a pretty flimsy way of pegging FD's woes on the players.

The only real hope anyone has with FD at this point is to release stuff that isn't broken and unfinished. That's it, the bar is low. If they were to have released minimal interiors for only a portion of the ships initially, but it actually worked and had things to do, the ED playerbase would be absolutely stunned with wonder.
 

here_it_comes

here_it_comes
Frillop Freyraum said:
Perhaps it's the extreme range between very old players (many veterans from around 1984) and very young players...
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EDO is certainly reminiscent of an FPS from 2 decades ago. What's hilarious is the older crowd, who make up the bulk of EDO defenders, openly say they don't care for FPS, and the younger crowd who do like FPS say that EDO FPS play is mediocre at best. Who did they make EDO for? I don't think they know.

Frillop Freyraum said:
...what a long journey Elite has already been on...
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Like Elite has been slowly and continually evolving for nigh 40 years. 1-800-come-on-now.

Frillop Freyraum said:
What other game has such a long tradition?
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Ah yes, Elite's long running pedigree. Very real, no sarcasm or snark meant. It is richly deserving of respect . . . that's why they bolted on the domination FPS? Would have been nice if they had stuck to their rich pedigree, but here we are . . . eyeing Elite⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐ and shooting Goldeneye era bots with the cheapest imitation of low gravity possible whilst being told tectonic plates are taken into account for the heightmap surfaces. I truly wish they had stuck to Elite's pedigree, rather than trying to pander to younger gamers with the perspective of a gamer who retired 3 years ago. It's comical really, unfortunately the comedy is at the expense of an illustrious title.

It's the hands that currently hold ED that generates the playerbase's climate. Everyone knows it. The people calling the shots should revisit a song from their haydays.
 

CMDR Flavius Funk

CMDR Flavius Funk
Rat Catcher said:
Be honest, however Frontier addressed interiors it would be complained about - they at least appear to have the common sense not to waste any time on them currently.

Perhaps the future might bring detailed interiors - wait and see.
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For me, common sense would have been to enhance this great game rather than ask your player base to pay for an unfinished and incomplete expansion.

But we have an industry that has conditioned it's customer base not only accept unfinished products, but to pay for them in advance.
 

CMDR Sheehy

CMDR Sheehy
here_it_comes said:
EDO is certainly reminiscent of an FPS from 2 decades ago. What's hilarious is the older crowd, who make up the bulk of EDO defenders, openly say they don't care for FPS, and the younger crowd who do like FPS say that EDO FPS play is mediocre at best. Who did they make EDO for? I don't think they know.



Like Elite has been slowly and continually evolving for nigh 40 years. 1-800-come-on-now.



Ah yes, Elite's long running pedigree. Very real, no sarcasm or snark meant. It is richly deserving of respect . . . that's why they bolted on the domination FPS? Would have been nice if they had stuck to their rich pedigree, but here we are . . . eyeing Elite⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐ and shooting Goldeneye era bots with the cheapest imitation of low gravity possible whilst being told tectonic plates are taken into account for the heightmap surfaces. I truly wish they had stuck to Elite's pedigree, rather than trying to pander to younger gamers with the perspective of a gamer who retired 3 years ago. It's comical really, unfortunately the comedy is at the expense of an illustrious title.

It's the hands that currently hold ED that generates the playerbase's climate. Everyone knows it. The people calling the shots should revisit a song from their haydays.
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Lots of assumptions and box holing going on there.

The majority of players have been talking about Space Legs every since Elite Dangerous released. I, for one, am one of those who spent too much time in the original Elite. I spent my time afterward imagining what I would like out of Elite if I were designing it. Then came Frontier: First Encounters and we got planets to land on and cities to look at from our cockpit.

Finally ED lands and we get to see inside the space stations and there is soooo much potential - and people like me - who could only dream of flying those other ships now see the full potential - and that potential is exploring those spaces we only once imagined and now temptingly see more and more.

The pew pew stuff was simply the first and easiest thing to bolt onto the base of Space Legs and was an easy win to actually make legs useful and fulfil that ache to walk out among that which we see and experience the interiors of places we once visited only by ship. Exo-Biology was easy win number two. I fully expect more in the future.

Elite is different from other games. It was not built to make profit - but to fulfil the dreams of a lot of people. For that reason, people like you just don't get it. Sorry for you, but what can we do, you are either along for the ride or you are trolling the rest of us having abandoned the game a long time ago.
 

CMDR Sheehy

CMDR Sheehy
CMDR Flavius Funk said:
For me, common sense would have been to enhance this great game rather than ask your player base to pay for an unfinished and incomplete expansion.

But we have an industry that has conditioned it's customer base not only accept unfinished products, but to pay for them in advance.
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Elite Dangerous was a kickstarter. We have always paid for it in advance, accepting hope as currency.
 
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