Answers from the Devs 15/10/15

[Drelthar]

Zac,

I have heard that the Horizons initial planetary landings, will allow you to land on "planets without atmosphere"

I got quite excited when I found a huge ball of metal with cracks and fissures full of burning lava, with no atmosphere today.

Will we be able to land on such high metal content planets

The one that look like this

Because that would be cool.

 

[Barking_Mad]

Zac, can you confirm if ice and lava volcanism is present on release or later in the season?

 

[Smugallo]

ZAC CAN I HAVE A HI-5 PLZ?

 

[Tinman]

Zac, can you confirm if ice and lava volcanism is present on release or later in the season?

Active volcanism has been said on several occasions to come later in the season.

The unclear bit is if the planets with visible volcanism are off limits until then.

Iceplanets/moons shouldn't be a problem since that would be geysers coming up out of the ice. These geysers could simply be made "invisible" in the first release.

The lava seen above is pretty hard to "hide away" so either we will not be able to land on these at all to begin with or the volcanic "layer" will be removed to begin with, basically making them rocky/metallic until the volcanism have been implemented.

Would very much like an answer to this myself!

 

[Rubbernuke]

Active volcanism has been said on several occasions to come later in the season.

The unclear bit is if these planets are off limits until then.

Iceplanets/moons shouldn't be a problem since that would be geysers coming up out of the ice. These geysers could simply be made "invisible" in the first release.

The big question is about the obviously visible volcanic planets/moons as seen above. The lava is pretty hard to "hide away" so either we will not be able to land on these at all to begin with or the volcanic "layer" will be removed to begin with, basically making them rocky/metallic until the volcanism have been implemented.

Would very much like an answer to this myself!

In the Battlezone remake, that had no volcanoes either, but the lava beds hurt when you drove over them on Io.

 

[Otis B.]

They have indeed.

Thanks for the reply.

 

[Lobstris]

Forgive me if I've missed people requesting answers to the following in the previous posts, but: 1) Are the Dolphin and Beluga + passenger missions still on the cards, have they just been dropped as the Orca is generally unpopular (i.e. Catch 22 - no one uses the Orca as there's really no niche for it, so this then gets interpreted as no need to ad the others) or are you envisaging something that needs NPCs (or other systems) in place to make such missions worthwhile? 2) Following on from 1, is another potential reason for neither the Panther or the Beluga being in 1.5 the size of the ships making them incompatible with the docking slot?

 

[Patrick_68000]

Zac,

I have heard that the Horizons initial planetary landings, will allow you to land on "planets without atmosphere"

I got quite excited when I found a huge ball of metal with cracks and fissures full of burning lava, with no atmosphere today.

Will we be able to land on such high metal content planets

The one that look like this

http://www.elitegalaxyonline.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/07/Planet-3.jpg

Because that would be cool.

You like to the hell, you !

 

[Dave G]

I love the look of the new planet surfaces. My question is around whether planets that indicate that they are ultra-hot or ultra-cold, will there be appropriate effects on the surfaces to represent this (such as a heat-haze on rocks as the sun rises, etc.). Also could this heat or cold affect the Landed Ships and SRVs so it can be dangerous landing on certain types of planet?

 

[Mu77ley]

Are the Dolphin and Beluga + passenger missions still on the cards, have they just been dropped as the Orca is generally unpopular

I think they are, as David Braben even mentioned the Beluga in passing during a live stream the other week. They may be coming later on in Season 2 at some point.

 

[knowles2]

Forgive me if I've missed people requesting answers to the following in the previous posts, but: 1) Are the Dolphin and Beluga + passenger missions still on the cards, have they just been dropped as the Orca is generally unpopular (i.e. Catch 22 - no one uses the Orca as there's really no niche for it, so this then gets interpreted as no need to ad the others) or are you envisaging something that needs NPCs (or other systems) in place to make such missions worthwhile? 2) Following on from 1, is another potential reason for neither the Panther or the Beluga being in 1.5 the size of the ships making them incompatible with the docking slot?

Passenger missions are confirm, someone even poster pic of a folder called passengers missions.

David have said other features need to be added to the game before Passenger missions are introduced. In my dream world that would be procedurally generated faces and NPC interactions, with eventually NPCs being given physical bodies you can see walking around your ship and will occasionally get up to no good. Or they will be NPCs you have to break out from a prison colony or criminals running away from authority. Not all of the mission descriptions should be accurate, so you never really know what kind of passengers you are picking up until you pick them up.

 

[Darkprince048]

Really annoyed at the quality of the "new ships" they have been adding. We were promised the full 30 UNIQUE ships. They have completely thrown out unique ship designs like the Panther Clipper, Beluga Liner, Dolphin, etc, for these ridiculous remakes of the same ships we have had since the beginning. The federal gunship/assault ship is the dropship with different internals. The imperial eagle is just the eagle with an imperial flare. The asp scout, viper and cobra mk (insert roman numerals) are a cheap way to throw in content to say they fulfilled a half- promise. News flash, taking old ships and spending 5 mins warping some of their features to make a slightly different looking ship and smacking a mk 4 at the end of its name does not count as a new ship. That's just lazy development.

And they counted the fighter craft as new ships??? They don't even have FSD drives! What happened to truly unique ships like the Panther Clipper? And seeing as they left out the passenger ships Beluga Liner and Dolphin, I am assuming passenger missions are taking a back seat, if being implemented at all. Leaving the Orca as an utterly useless addition. I am deeply disappointed.

 

[Commander Guathix]

No horizon for mac.
when Horizons was first announced. (pre announcement) It stated that "Big news for mac and pc" Not "Big news for pc"
I know that you couldn't have seen the future and foreseen the shaders issue, but still. Just a huge stab in the back, really do hope you can overcome this.

 

[Arubeto]

Passenger missions are confirm, someone even poster pic of a folder called passengers missions.

David have said other features need to be added to the game before Passenger missions are introduced. In my dream world that would be procedurally generated faces and NPC interactions, with eventually NPCs being given physical bodies you can see walking around your ship and will occasionally get up to no good. Or they will be NPCs you have to break out from a prison colony or criminals running away from authority. No all of the mission descriptions should be accurate.

What you describe there is essentially what I consider the "best case" for the implementation of passenger gameplay (https://forums.frontier.co.uk/showthread.php?t=117500).
By that definition, the worst case would be passengers being nothing more than relabelled cargo, without any special gameplay, interaction or visualisation.

The fact that David said that there need to be some other things in place before passenger missions would make sense is encouraging, I hope. IMO, the more time we give FD to first introduce the required mechanics for interesting passenger missions - NPC comms to interact with them, character creation to give them individual faces, more mission variations to have more interesting stuff to do, different classes of passenger cabins to give ships like the Orca some special purpose and perhaps even some kind of NPC persistence to be able to meet passengers multiple times and build up reputation with individual NPCs - the better the passenger gameplay might eventually become!

 

[Warwick Red]

I am assuming passenger missions are taking a back seat.

You forgot to say "pardon the pun" ...

 

[Shocken-Orr]

I'm glad we were able to spoil you.

Truth be told the answers from the devs thread kinda just comes out when it's ready. There is no set day or time to it.

Having them on seperate days is ideal and certainly something we'll think about but we didn't want to hold back the info until next week.

Also, don;t forget you still have Community spotlights on a Monday, Comms Chatter on a Tuesday, Meet the team Wednesday, Dev update Thursday and Peek of the Week and newsletter Friday.

Thanks,

Zac

What! Nothing for Saturday's and Sunday's?

Slackers all of you ;-)

 

[Edelgard von Rhein]

Horizons questions
These questions are specific to surface travel and gameplay in the 2.0 release (so no questions about SRV atmospheric tolerances or multicrew ship-SRV co-op play). Some may seem obvious but I thought it would be better to ask than to make assumptions - I have tried to collect together everything that has occurred to me since Horizons was announced that has not yet been answered in the livestreams/Q&As that I've seen (my apologies if I have missed any details).
1) Exploration
a) surface adhesion: can dusty and icy surfaces be slippery or sticky? Can the SRV become stuck/frozen to the surface and need rescuing?
b) surface temperature matters:
i) what are the operating temperature limits for the Scarab SRV? Icy worlds can have surface temperatures as low as 20K, high-metal worlds can be well over 1000K.
ii) are daytime and night-time surface temperatures different? (This might lead to some worlds being explorable in the SRV only at night or in the daytime. Permanently shadowed craters might be a haven - or a hazard.)
c) surface hardness: can the SRV take damage just by driving normally around rocky/icy terrain? (Look at the damage done to the MSL Curiosity rover's wheels on Mars, even with careful driving.)
d) can the SRV's wheels be punctured or otherwise individually damaged?
e) exploring at night could potentially be very dangerous, so:
i) is the SRV's ability to determine the local surface environment restricted to its lights at night?
ii) is the surface height information on the planet something that you need to survey in Orbital Cruise in order for it to appear on your SRV scanner display?
iii) can you launch flares from either your SRV or your ship to temporarily light up regions of interest?
2) Smuggling
a) does line-of-sight affect whether objects are registered by scanners on the surface (as happens in CQC)?
b) does dust kick-up affect whether an object registers on surface scanners?
3) Combat
a) does gravity affect mines and projectile weapons? (This would allow bombing and indirect fire.)
b) do heavy (e.g. ship-mounted) weapons deform the surface causing craters (presumably temporarily and only whilst the instance survives)?
c) will there be specialised ground attack ordnance? (e.g. 'bunker buster' guided munitions, cluster bombs)
d) damage to the SRV is inevitably going to occur, so what are your options for repair?
i) will there be any reboot/repair option to get broken systems back online, as can be done with a ship?
ii) can SRVs be fitted with a mini-AFMU to repair damaged subsystems?
iii) can SRV subsystems/hull be repaired in their hangar on board your ship?
4) Surface Outposts:
a) will it be possible to leave a SRV in storage at any outpost or space station or only at surface outposts?
b) are surface outposts' facilities/details visible in the system view like those of space stations?
c) access:
i) how can a player tell in advance whether or not a surface outpost has a landing pad large enough to accommodate their ship?
ii) do any surface outposts have large landing pads?
iii) can SRVs be bought/outfitted only at surface outposts or is this service also available at some space stations?
5) General
a) are surface colours affected by the spectral type of the star illuminating the planet?
b) do some stars or surface materials pose a radiation hazard to a SRV?
c) SRV endurance:
i) how long can the Scarab spend away from your ship (driving normally)?
ii) is the Scarab solar-powered or does it use fuel (or both)?
d) do SRVs have their own debug camera?
e) can SRVs be fitted with tow cables to rescue stuck/damaged SRVs or to help get themselves out of trouble?
f) what happens to your ship if you land on an occupied planet, drive to and park your SRV at an outpost, then buy a new ship and leave?
******
Many thanks to all the community management team for your efforts. There is clearly a lot going on for you to communicate from the developers and very many questions from the players. Sorry to be adding to your workload! (I suppose I could just wait until Horizons actually comes out but planning journeys of exploration is also fun and the sooner details like these are revealed, the sooner that can begin.)

 

[-VR- Max Factor]

Will you put a force feedback system on the PC version for people with force feedback controllers / chairs (not sure if its present on the XBOX one version).

 

[Gryphorim]

When will weapon balance/options be addressed? A lot of us want to see missiles being more useful than they are now, or want to see more Class 4 options. Personally, I'd like to see variation of similar weapons of different classes; Class 3 beam lasers are double barreled, shoulnd't we see double beams?

 

[Monsoon]

EDIT: nevermind...found the answer earlier in the thread