An idea about ship designs

[Vaerkone]

I really enjoy the aesthetics of the ship designs in ED, I like everything with the ships the game currently has and wouldn't want to change any of them.

My favourite ship designs however, are from 70's and 80's sci-fi's such as Alien(s), Star Wars 4-6 and Battlestar Galactica, but also from series such as Firefly or games such as Homeworld. What makes the designs interesting is that they look very worn and functional, almost a bit dirty.

While I like lasers just like the next person, and the spotless and sterile cockpits the ships currently have, I'd love to see an additional faction or manufacturer in the game going the retro and vintage path. I'm thinking projectile weapons and mass drivers, thrusters with a bronze-gold glow instead of the sterile blue of the Sidewinder.

Instead of the neat interactable holographic displays we currently have in our cockpits, these ships could have CRT displays, buttons and switches much like the space ships in Alien(s). One game that is going for the 70's scifi-look is Alien: Isolation, and while it is not a space combat sim, the designs are truly beautiful and could easily be implemented.

It would also be a nice nod to the era when the earlier Elite games were made.

I would like to note that I do not have Beta access, and the only ships I've seen are those in videos on youtube and the screenshots on Elite wikia.

What do you guys think? Would this fit in with the lore?

 

[Yaffle]

If you look about the sidewinder cockpit you'll see it's held together with bits of gaffer tape and jubilee clips. Not exactly sterile!

 

[usernametaken]

We already have projectile weapons, and the rail gun is bascially a mass driver!

 

[Uridium]

We have projectile weapons.

 

[Bobbydylan]

One thing I do hope FD steal from the Arena Commander is the 300i side cannons. I would love for a slow firing , more powerful cannon. Something like a Bofors cannon.

 

[Vaerkone]

If you look about the sidewinder cockpit you'll see it's held together with bits of gaffer tape and jubilee clips. Not exactly sterile!

Haha I stand corrected, it does however use holographics for displaying information.

We already have projectile weapons, and the rail gun is bascially a mass driver!

We have projectile weapons.

My apologies, I forgot the projectile weapons shown in one of the youtube videos showing off the Anaconda. As I said, I do not have Beta access and can't check the ships and hardpoints myself.

However, if we look inside of the cockpit, what do you guys think of additional ships being added to the game that have a retro-scifi look? My opinion is that it would add flavor and more immersion if ships from different factions or manufacturers have different cockpit designs.

 

[Schnittertm]

The designs, in my mind, are functional enough, even though I probably would have gone for different philosophies on many things. The displays, while holographic, are, at least if technological progress goes on like it does, quite retro by 3300. I mean let's just look at Star Trek TNG, the had the PADD there, a bulky and quite unelegant version of todays tablet PCs, which can also connect to the internet and gather a lot of data.

On Kickstarter you can find the first, crude version of a tricoder sensor being offered https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/903107259/scio-your-sixth-sense-a-pocket-molecular-sensor-fo?ref=category .

In a way, many of the things that were shown in Sci-Fi movies back then are quite low tech by even todays standards.

To be honest, most space ships by projection of what we have today and should we find a way to create an affordable, consumer type of frameshift/hyperdrive/warpdrive/whateverdrive to get to destinations, we can't possibly imagine today, will in all likelyhood be more controlled by computers than by people. The people would still have to get certification and training for navigation, flight controls and such, but most of the time would not use them or interact very little. Todays fighter aircraft can't be flown by people, should all flight control computers fail (though they usually are there in three or four times redundancy), as those aircraft are unstable. Todays airliners have automated systems that can even carry out a fully automated landing with no interaction required by the pilot. Piloting large airliners is more about supervision, programming the flight computers and flight/fuel planning, rather than flying the airplane itself.

Many of those planes are going more and more the so called glass cockpit route, having mostly color LCD screens for displaying flight information, rather than the old dials. Only a few of those, if any, are still kept for backup purposes. Again, if we project from this development, then ED, even with its holographic displays, is quite retro, as you have to fly the spaceship yourself and even manage a few of the systems and that is more for playability reasons, as a spaceship that flies itself would make for a very boring game.

 

[Vaerkone]

The designs, in my mind, are functional enough, even though I probably would have gone for different philosophies on many things. The displays, while holographic, are, at least if technological progress goes on like it does, quite retro by 3300. I mean let's just look at Star Trek TNG, the had the PADD there, a bulky and quite unelegant version of todays tablet PCs, which can also connect to the internet and gather a lot of data.

On Kickstarter you can find the first, crude version of a tricoder sensor being offered https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/903107259/scio-your-sixth-sense-a-pocket-molecular-sensor-fo?ref=category .

In a way, many of the things that were shown in Sci-Fi movies back then are quite low tech by even todays standards.

To be honest, most space ships by projection of what we have today and should we find a way to create an affordable, consumer type of frameshift/hyperdrive/warpdrive/whateverdrive to get to destinations, we can't possibly imagine today, will in all likelyhood be more controlled by computers than by people. The people would still have to get certification and training for navigation, flight controls and such, but most of the time would not use them or interact very little. Todays fighter aircraft can't be flown by people, should all flight control computers fail (though they usually are there in three or four times redundancy), as those aircraft are unstable. Todays airliners have automated systems that can even carry out a fully automated landing with no interaction required by the pilot. Piloting large airliners is more about supervision, programming the flight computers and flight/fuel planning, rather than flying the airplane itself.

Many of those planes are going more and more the so called glass cockpit route, having mostly color LCD screens for displaying flight information, rather than the old dials. Only a few of those, if any, are still kept for backup purposes. Again, if we project from this development, then ED, even with its holographic displays, is quite retro, as you have to fly the spaceship yourself and even manage a few of the systems and that is more for playability reasons, as a spaceship that flies itself would make for a very boring game.

Thank you for the well-worded reply.

Although I understand what you mean (needing pilots to fly the ship itself in the year 3300 could by itself be considered 'retro'), I think - in this case - that realism need to take a back seat in favour of fun-factor and artistic representation of visuals. Since as you said yourself: A space sim where the ship flies itself would make it a boring game.

Because of this, we should assume that the ships that currently exist in Elite are in fact modern and technologically sound for Elites timeline. So if holographic displays and human dependency is the norm in Elites universe, then surely physical displays are what the ships had before (probably not CRT screens however).

Thinking about immersion, how does one justify that some space ships have old displays when even the most basic fighter that currently exist in Elite have holos? Well, it's a big galaxy, and there must be a lot of backwater worlds and stations who doesn't have the technological know-how to produce and maintain state-of-the-art space ships, or maybe they don't have the money to build them. Think about countries today who still uses old Russian or American tanks are fighter jets, some are over 30 years old but are still being used.

As to why I think these ships should have CRT displays instead of modern LED or equivalent; Well, I like the retro-look of CRT's in the old movies.

 

[Bomber]

New Ship design

It would be a good idea for the ED team to hold a competion for users to design a new ship at some point.
It could be for a future expansion pack and would be open to everyone and all ED users would have a vote on the winner.
The ED team could set the design specs e.g cargo hold, weapon ports etc and say what they need it for e.g. Police, mining whatever.

 

[Teefur]

...we should assume that the ships that currently exist in Elite are in fact modern and technologically sound for Elites timeline. So if holographic displays and human dependency is the norm in Elites universe, then surely physical displays are what the ships had before (probably not CRT screens however).

Thing is though, by the time of Elite: Dangerous the Cobras, Sidewinders, Eagles and Anacondas are already well over 100 years old. In fact I'm surprised (pleasantly) that any of them are still flying.

 

[Vaerkone]

It would be a good idea for the ED team to hold a competion for users to design a new ship at some point.
It could be for a future expansion pack and would be open to everyone and all ED users would have a vote on the winner.
The ED team could set the design specs e.g cargo hold, weapon ports etc and say what they need it for e.g. Police, mining whatever.

Great idea, CCP did this for EVE-Online and had a fan competition for four of the ships designs.

Thing is though, by the time of Elite: Dangerous the Cobras, Sidewinders, Eagles and Anacondas are already well over 100 years old. In fact I'm surprised (pleasantly) that any of them are still flying.

I see , I don't know as much of the lore as I wish I had, so I didn't know that the ships were that old, is it not possible that while the frame is that old, the ships various systems has been upgraded and retro-fitted?

How about this for an explanation: Ships with the retro-style cockpits that I proposed are as old as the ones you listed (maybe a bit older, maybe a bit newer), but the faction/manufacturer of the retro ships are not as technologically advanced. I'm thinking of how the Iranian space program is a technological achivement for Iran considering all the trade embargos against, but compared to the West, they are decades behind.

I can't help to compare Elites factions technological achievements with the various countries on our Earth. Compare for example the United States with North Korea. Both exist today in 2014, both have computers, but North Korea is really far behind with their hardware.

Or if you'd like: Compare to the Halo universe where the UNSC's colonies are these big metropolitan worlds or high-tech agricultural planets, and uses smart AI's while the Independents in the Outer Colonies live in run down towns, uses paper money and old computers.

Or as in the Firefly/Serenity universe, where the Alliance is state-of-the-art while the outer planets are more like the Wild West (but in space).