Another Ship interior thread, and some suggestions

[Elyssaen]

Ah, but yes, it does... you can keep the blue teleportation circle. If you want to enter the ship as usual, just do it. On the other hand, you could enable the option to go up the ship's stairs and enter through the door.

One feature doesn't have to kill the other; both can coexist. That's also the developers' misconception or excuse: keep the teleportation.

Yep, this is the obvious solution, and one adopted successfully by other space games I've played. Ship interiors don't have to take anything away from existing gameplay, and the of course template for this is already in the game – Odyssey's introduction of Inter Astra didn't take away the ability to interact with shipyard services from a screen in your cockpit, it just gave players a new option.

Ship interiors aren't just a Kickstarter promise, central to the game's vision at the outset, that was important to many of us. It's also a natural a fit for a game that's all about immersion and all about our ships, a natural a fit as it ever was. More than that, Odyssey and have fleet have laid a lot of important groundwork for it, so I hope we do get it eventually.

 

[Raedawn]

Ship interiors are home to some of the best content in other space games, and while the feature poses challenges, I think they're surmountable and it's well worth Frontier doing.

Some thoughts:

• I think each ship interior should programmatically be in a different space than the spaceship flight. The lack of windows in ships helps, and for the cockpit window itself (when out of the seat) it should be possible to draw a viewport onto the "spaceship flight" space from the "spaceship interior" space so you can see what's happening outside.
• Internal to external space mapping doesn't have to be perfect. We can fudge the Sidewinder.
• They probably shouldn't try too hard to make things like inertia during turns or even general zero-g accurate. They already don't!
• You should be allowed to just teleport from pilot seat to exterior, and back, if you want.
• There can be a significant degree of modularity. Each ship interior would be: a) living quarters (may be same/similar between some ships), b) key reserved spaces like the cargo bay door and where a vehicle hangar goes, c) core/optional internal spaces and d) a network of corridors connecting everything. All the cores/optional internals are of course modular between different ships.
• A size X+1 module will likely need to be more than twice the size of a size X, to account for awkward ship size scaling. An Imperial Cutter isn't really that much bigger than an Eagle but it's roleplaying that it is, and it doesn't hurt to just make the big modules look bigger to fit the vibe.
• Telepresence could allow you to holographically 'return' to the cockpit instantly if you suddenly need to fly the ship.
• Customisation options for real money. There's a lot of room for revenue generation here for Frontier.

Then... gameplay! Awkwardly this is an RPG that uniquely has many fans who frame progression mechanics as power creep, when they're just core to the RPG experience. It's awkward because we can't introduce gameplay inside our ships without giving us something worth doing, and that means progression / power creep. My idea is module tuning, a skill-based manual activity that has a secondary effect of increasing module integrity (not a repair, but an overshield effect), but a main effect that's more interesting and specific to the module type.

The ideal balance would see most tuning not improve the core properly of the module, like an FSD's range, power plant's power generation or weapon's damage. Ideally it's genuinely worth tuning some modules depending on what you're doing, but not worth bothering with all unless you enjoy it. e.g. tuning an FSD might reduce cooldown times and heat generation, which would save explorers time for long trips (esp. if they're skilled and can do it fast) but non-explorers might not bother. Getting out in an EVA suit and tuning your weapons might just save on heat generation and not matter for some builds.

Other than tuning, ship boarding is a huge area of gameplay. It'd interact amazingly with existing hostage rescue missions and it'd be able to use a lot of Odyssey content. It should offer another way to do piracy, as well as a way to outright steal ships, and we could get experiences like salvage operations boarding derelict ships – classic sci-fi stuff

• Please name a space game that added in-ship walking and moving about 10 years after it was created because we need to compare apples to apples not oranges to apples.
• You are going to have to fudge more ships than just the Sidewinder, the Eagle as one example would have you leave your set and fall onto the entrance stairs. The Eagle clearly has fighter-jet written all over it and as we both know, they don't have stairway entrances, they have, scale the side of the cockpit entrances for a reason; that being wasting internal space on stairs just to add stairs is a poor decision.
• Allowing people to teleport back and forth to their seat, "if they want to", is a good example of why walking around in ships makes no sense for ED, it doesn't fit ED game play.
• Putting, " [ living quarters, reserved spaces and connecting corridors ] ", inside an Eagle is going to break any sense of realism. It would have to be 5 times it current size to even begin down this line of thinking. Yet another example of why walking in ships should be avoided, rather than a reason why it should be implemented.
• An X+1 module needing to be more than twice he size of X. This only increases the problem caused by the point I made directly before this one.
• Adding Telepresence to get around how bad an idea this is for ED doesn't solve any problems but only highlights reasons to never allow walking in ships.
• ED is very capable of making money and lots of room for revenue generation with good additions to the game, like being able to name stations you built during colonization.

Those opposed to your idea are not as you classify us, afraid of power creep, we are afraid of terrible ideas finding their way into Elite Dangerous. Also, you apparently don't understand what power creep means so; 'Power creep is the increasing power of new game mechanics comparatively to previous ones such that previous game mechanics become obsolete". While this seems to be happening with regards to new ships being added to the game with SCO drives that will significantly, if not completely take all non-SCO ships into the pasture of obsolescence; this has nothing to do with ship interiors.

Ship power tuning as a concept has been thoroughly fleshed out in Elite Dangerous and senselessly adding more JUST to get ship interiors into the game expresses clearly the lengths you will go to justify walking in ships.

"The ideal balance would see most tuning not improve the core properly of the module, like an FSD's range, power plant's power generation or weapon's damage. Ideally it's genuinely worth tuning some modules depending on what you're doing, but not worth bothering with all unless you enjoy it"

I will reword this, add a near pointless thing to the game so that I can walk around in my ship because Im so desperate to walk in my ship.

Other than tuning, ship boarding is a huge area of gameplay. It'd interact amazingly with existing hostage rescue missions and it'd be able to use a lot of Odyssey content. It should offer another way to do piracy, as well as a way to outright steal ships, and we could get experiences like salvage operations boarding derelict ships – classic sci-fi stuff.

You do realize that ships in ED are intentionally generic with only 'leanings' as to what one might do with them. Adding game play as specifc as hostage rescues, piracy, ship theft and salvage operations requires specific interiors to make any sense when they must also be used to haul tonnes of minerals and other items best carried in a hold without interior features or at best an empty box into which another box of minerals is placed. Your interiors would need to accompany people with things like benches, seats, some sort of access hatch for piracy, etc. These are mutually exclusive and further highlights that you are throwing ideas out in a desperate attempt to justify walking in ships.

 

[Raedawn]

Yep, this is the obvious solution, and one adopted successfully by other space games I've played. Ship interiors don't have to take anything away from existing gameplay, and the of course template for this is already in the game – Odyssey's introduction of Inter Astra didn't take away the ability to interact with shipyard services from a screen in your cockpit, it just gave players a new option.

Ship interiors aren't just a Kickstarter promise, central to the game's vision at the outset, that was important to many of us. It's also a natural a fit for a game that's all about immersion and all about our ships, a natural a fit as it ever was. More than that, Odyssey and have fleet have laid a lot of important groundwork for it, so I hope we do get it eventually.

So your point in favor of adding ship interiors is that they can be avoided. This really makes an argument against adding them in the first place.

All shipyard interactions occur via a screen and as we know from our real lives screens can be anywhere and thus Inter Astra changed almost nothing. It just added a screen device in another area of the game. I see no way in which this is a relevant argument in support of walking in ships.

You were promised walking in ships and carriers fulfill that promise. Even if they proposed walking in ships in a more general sense then that during the Kickstarter campaign they have met the minimum requirement as we have ships and we can walk in them.

"a significant degree of modularity. Each ship interior would be: a) living quarters (may be same/similar between some ships), b) key reserved spaces like the cargo bay door and where a vehicle hangar goes, c) core/optional internal spaces and d) a network of corridors connecting everything. All the cores/optional internals are of course modular between different ships"

• How does this add immersion to an Eagle when it clearly only has room for a pilot, fuel and a thruster body. It would now have the interior space of a house !

Though your arguement is lengthy and clearly poorly thought out; in the end it makes more case examples of why walking in ships should be avoided rather than included in ED.

 

[Kraenor]

So your point in favor of adding ship interiors is that they can be avoided. This really makes an argument against adding them in the first place.

All shipyard interactions occur via a screen and as we know from our real lives screens can be anywhere and thus Inter Astra changed almost nothing. It just added a screen device in another area of the game. I see no way in which this is a relevant argument in support of walking in ships.

You were promised walking in ships and carriers fulfill that promise. Even if they proposed walking in ships in a more general sense then that during the Kickstarter campaign they have met the minimum requirement as we have ships and we can walk in them.

"a significant degree of modularity. Each ship interior would be: a) living quarters (may be same/similar between some ships), b) key reserved spaces like the cargo bay door and where a vehicle hangar goes, c) core/optional internal spaces and d) a network of corridors connecting everything. All the cores/optional internals are of course modular between different ships"

• How does this add immersion to an Eagle when it clearly only has room for a pilot, fuel and a thruster body. It would now have the interior space of a house !

Though your arguement is lengthy and clearly poorly thought out; in the end it makes more case examples of why walking in ships should be avoided rather than included in ED.

An Eagle is an Eagle...that's a ship without a ship interior, like an F22 plane... simple as that.

No wonders why an alpha state game has more funding than ED.

I will keep doing some mining and some combat until I get bored and that's it, if this game doesn't change the scope, because every time that players (costumers) ask... beg at this point to implement a feature for years and the company does not comply...well that's why a lot of the player base just leave.

Just think that, as a business, for example, they have a loss with me and many other players, I guess.

When I spent $500 on an alpha version, Frontier gets $50 a year from me, maybe less. And don't be offended by this comment; it's a fact.

This game is losing potential clients. I'm talking at that level, because I pay to play, I don't care, I respect the work of devs, and they deserve from us to get payment for their work... but that's when you as a developer deliver. Don't let 5 years go by to implement something... And this game is not delivering for a lot of players.

They should be grateful the game is still alive, because not all players of other games wait that long…

Simple and sadly cruel as that.

This is the last message from me to this topic.I'm not going to waste more time trying to suggest ideas, what for? .... That's a waste of time for customers.

Good luck and have fun.

 

[Pville_Piper]

Wow, very neatly explained.
Thanks!
Love seeing actual thought being put towards ideas as opposed to just spamming nonsense.

Well done!

David Braben once stated that all ships were designed to accommodate ship interiors around the time that Elite released.

 

[Elyssaen]

An Eagle is an Eagle...that's a ship without a ship interior, like an F22 plane... simple as that.

This is interesting. The lack of ship interiors has maintained an illusion that our ships are smaller than they are.

The closest plane to the Eagle in terms of dimensions that I can find is the IPTN N-2130M, a proposed 104 seat passenger liner. But the Eagle is a bit longer, a bit wider, and has more internal volume – about 1066 cubic metres, equivalent to a 10x10x10 cube, to the passenger liner being less than half that. It's substantially larger than a house!

You can design cosy living quarters that are about 2.2x2.2x2.2 metres in size, a little room with a bed on a raised shelf above storage and an enclosed shower cubicle in a corner with toilet and sink that fold down from the wall. Even the Sidewinder has plenty of space for that, which is significantly smaller than the Eagle.

It'd be really interesting if we did get ship interiors to see the optical illusion break for everyone.

 

[Ian Doncaster]

It'd be really interesting if we did get ship interiors to see the optical illusion break for everyone.

I do wonder if that's a minor part of the reason they haven't (along with the further mess it would do to the "there isn't any artificial gravity" claim).

The Beluga has the approximate volume and aesthetics of the largest ocean cruise liners of today. They carry high thousands of passengers and crew, while the Beluga can go up to a maximum of 184 passengers in economy class, or a mere 75 with a more comparable mix of first and business class (less than that, with basic safety precautions such as shields)

If people are wanting ship interiors for "immersion" then drawing attention to the basic scales of (especially the larger) ships making no sense isn't going to be a good start.

 

[zimms]

I think most of a ship's volume would have to be inaccessible and hidden away. Machinery, piping, wiring etc. would have to be the "head canon".

Ships would need a hallway (that could be somewhat unique to each ship) that connects the modules (which are standardized and reusable anyway). Maybe add a living quarter for the captain and what else they could need for new gameplay.

 

[Koma Pahu]

I think most of a ship's volume would have to be inaccessible and hidden away. Machinery, piping, wiring etc. would have to be the "head canon".

Ships would need a hallway (that could be somewhat unique to each ship) that connects the modules (which are standardized and reusable anyway). Maybe add a living quarter for the captain and what else they could need for new gameplay.

Why would you have access to the modules when you don’t have access to machinery spaces?

It would be far less complicated to have (fixed) machinery spaces for each ship than have access to (interchangeable) modules.

What do you do with a class 7 slot with only a docking computer in it? Edit: it would be far easier to hide modules behind locked doors.

 

[aRJay]

Why would you have access to the modules when you don’t have access to machinery spaces?

It would be far less complicated to have (fixed) machinery spaces for each ship than have access to (interchangeable) modules.

What do you do with a class 7 slot with only a docking computer in it? Edit: it would be far easier to hide modules behind locked doors.

I agree.

There are lots of reasons why we shouldn’t have access to cargo from the ship and likewise reasons why passenger cabins shouldn’t have access into the ship.

 

[Lahgtah]

Honestly I'd be happy with just being able to walk up the boarding ramp and into the cockpit instead of the archaic teleporting. There's also very little reason to have things like cargo bays or machinery accessible: just the crew areas/quarters would be nice, even if only accessible while landed since I imagine there's technical difficulties with moving objects in space with players walking around on them.

Ships should feel a lot more personal imo, but when you're restricted to just the pilot's seat, never allowed to see anything else about it, it feels very detached.

This is interesting. The lack of ship interiors has maintained an illusion that our ships are smaller than they are.

The closest plane to the Eagle in terms of dimensions that I can find is the IPTN N-2130M, a proposed 104 seat passenger liner. But the Eagle is a bit longer, a bit wider, and has more internal volume – about 1066 cubic metres, equivalent to a 10x10x10 cube, to the passenger liner being less than half that. It's substantially larger than a house!

You can design cosy living quarters that are about 2.2x2.2x2.2 metres in size, a little room with a bed on a raised shelf above storage and an enclosed shower cubicle in a corner with toilet and sink that fold down from the wall. Even the Sidewinder has plenty of space for that, which is significantly smaller than the Eagle.

It'd be really interesting if we did get ship interiors to see the optical illusion break for everyone.

Yeah it's easy to think the 'small' ships in the game are merely the size of modern day fighters, but often they're tremendously bigger. There are reasons why it feels like this:
1 - How they move. Even the most cumbersome ships are rather agile for their size. What would otherwise be regarded as a capital ship is fluttering around like fighter plane
2 - You only ever see out the front
3 - The canopies are WAY oversized. Lakon and Falcon Delacy are the worst offenders of having way too much wasted space, but every manufacturer does it. IMO, the only reasonable canopy to ship size ratio is on the corsair and sidewinder.
4 - The way the pilot is positioned makes it feel like the dashboard hud is...well...just a dashboard, but because of where the PoV is and how the cockpits are shaped, they never feel like the actual size they are.

Even simple interiors, like a single corridor from boarding to bridge, would shatter the illusion.

 

[Tifu]

I now think ship interiors won't appear till there's gameplay for it. Examples would be:

EVA

exploration & scavenging of derelict stations and ships

Exploration of atmospheric planets

If FD shows any signs of doing any single one of these then it'll be a sign

 

[dcsignal]

Honestly I'd be happy with just being able to walk up the boarding ramp and into the cockpit instead of the archaic teleporting.

I'd be OK with a walk up the ramp to the hatch which then teleports you to the Cockpit.

 

[Koma Pahu]

I'd be OK with a walk up the ramp to the hatch which then teleports you to the Cockpit.

This is what some of us were expecting with the “Armstrong moment”. Maybe a lift from the cockpit to the door and then walk/jump out onto the planet. But alas…

 

[Lahgtah]

I now think ship interiors won't appear till there's gameplay for it. Examples would be:

EVA

exploration & scavenging of derelict stations and ships

Exploration of atmospheric planets

If FD shows any signs of doing any single one of these then it'll be a sign

One gameplay part I can easily think of is for long term exploration, especially if exobiology and surface prospecting gets developed a bit more. Having a lab on board to make your own studies and finds, where you could create research data and maybe learn to improve parts of your ship for the journey(even if only temporarily, as a sort of field test experiment.) It'd be a sort of refinement of data. Likewise, having a navigation room where you can see your full past courses and current laid-in course, so certain space routes could be recorded and referenced later, would be neat.

At the end of the day, I just kind of hope for the ship to be less of a mere tool for credits, and more like the proper 'home away from home' it seems it's supposed to be. Our pilots basically live in their ships, as does the crew we hire...yet it doesn't quite feel like it.

 

[KRISXR]

I think there are two types of mindsets in players, players who try to maximize every second and hurry rush rush for that shinny carrot dangling, and the second are players who soak in their game time and go about doing things at a casual pace, knowing all those shinny carrots dangling will come in time.

The first is annoyed by long distances, interactions with menus and procedures, and consider that mundane and unnecessary. The second enjoys the aesthetics, the surroundings, and the effort put into the fine details of the game. If my mindset of my game time is like the first, I don't enjoy it, the game feels like a chore, like work, and when the rewards that are earned come, I don't feel it was worth the effort, and I usually burn out quick.

Stuff like ship interiors makes my imagination sink deeper into the game environment, adding to the experience. My game time is the momentary escape from the real life mundane, and the unnecessary insanity of the world.

Wow that got way deeper than I thought it would.

 

[Hank]

There could be a lot of gameplay and NPC interaction if they would finish the flight deck or bridge. Instead of using menus to tell your crew to go take the SLF and run escort or take a hike, you could turn and look at them (while they're sitting in those seats FDev so carefully modeled); or stand up and walk up to them and dialog with them. If they would simply animate the bridge and allow us to get out of the captain's chair, there is a lot of potential. Currently you are your ship (like most space flight games - until recently).
Have a wonderful day as I pound this horse mercilessly