Currently in Elite Dangerous, it's not possible to land on planets or large airless asteroids. Anyone who has tried to do so will know that you just end up flying through the object when you get close enough.
With the annoucement of the Horizons expansion, players that buy the expansion will be able to land on these objects - initially on airless objects, and later on, those with atmosphere.
This has led me to start thinking about the fiction behind this ability/inabilty. Posessing atmospheric shielding would work for objects with atmosphere, but not the airless objects. FD haven't come up with a fiction-compliant explanation (AFAIK), so here's mine - feel free to use it FD
All ships have a device known as a Frame Shift Drive (FSD) which is what gives us the ability to hyperspace and Supercruise.
The FSD emits a field which is a by-product of it's function. This field is always present, regardless of whether the FSD is turned on or off.
Under normal use, this field does not have any adverse effects, except to partially interfere with the shift of the frame-of-reference when close to a planet/star/moon (ie - your 'speed'). This is why you appear to slow down or have runaway acceleration when getting close to these objects.
If however, you continue to approach these objects, the inteference between the FSD field and the gravitational field of the object gets so great that it risks completely destabilising the FSD field, leading to a catastrophic explosion and subsequent ship destruction.
At some point in the future, FSD shielding will become available 'to purchase', which enables a ship to approach, and ultimately land on objects with a large gravitational field.
With just FSD shielding, a ship will still not be able to land on objects with an atmosphere, as re-entry heating will still lead to a catastrophic explosion. To land on objects with an atmosphere, atmospheric shielding will also be required as a separate 'purchase'.
To implement this fiction, FD will need to patch the base game so that rather than just flying through objects when not having FSD shielding/atmospheric shielding, an initial distortion effect is experienced, together with a loud siren warning of impending doom, and ultimate ship destruction if the warnings are ignored.
That is all.
With the annoucement of the Horizons expansion, players that buy the expansion will be able to land on these objects - initially on airless objects, and later on, those with atmosphere.
This has led me to start thinking about the fiction behind this ability/inabilty. Posessing atmospheric shielding would work for objects with atmosphere, but not the airless objects. FD haven't come up with a fiction-compliant explanation (AFAIK), so here's mine - feel free to use it FD
All ships have a device known as a Frame Shift Drive (FSD) which is what gives us the ability to hyperspace and Supercruise.
The FSD emits a field which is a by-product of it's function. This field is always present, regardless of whether the FSD is turned on or off.
Under normal use, this field does not have any adverse effects, except to partially interfere with the shift of the frame-of-reference when close to a planet/star/moon (ie - your 'speed'). This is why you appear to slow down or have runaway acceleration when getting close to these objects.
If however, you continue to approach these objects, the inteference between the FSD field and the gravitational field of the object gets so great that it risks completely destabilising the FSD field, leading to a catastrophic explosion and subsequent ship destruction.
At some point in the future, FSD shielding will become available 'to purchase', which enables a ship to approach, and ultimately land on objects with a large gravitational field.
With just FSD shielding, a ship will still not be able to land on objects with an atmosphere, as re-entry heating will still lead to a catastrophic explosion. To land on objects with an atmosphere, atmospheric shielding will also be required as a separate 'purchase'.
To implement this fiction, FD will need to patch the base game so that rather than just flying through objects when not having FSD shielding/atmospheric shielding, an initial distortion effect is experienced, together with a loud siren warning of impending doom, and ultimate ship destruction if the warnings are ignored.
That is all.
