Braben teased a future update, said the next logical step would be to introduce settlements on planets

Cosmo

Cosmo
Braben teased a future update, said the next logical step would be to introduce settlements on planets

"Braben also teased future updates for Elite: Dangerous, saying that the next logical step would be to introduce 'settlements' on planets."

https://www.neowin.net/news/tencent-buys-9-of-elite-dangerous-developer-frontier-developments

What kind of settlements? I think it's important that we can see NPCs walk and drive around, because that makes it feel alive. The current surface ports feel like ghost towns. Frontier should use the crowd tech of Planet Coaster.

Player groups should be able to build and manage a settlement. That would add real depth to the sandbox.
 
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FoxTwo

FoxTwo
Cosmo said:
Player groups should be able to build and manage a settlement. That would add real depth to the sandbox.
Click to expand...

I wonder how that would look to a solo player (ie, me)... a Ghost Town when I land there? Or just regular NPCs walking around? Can I talk to any of them? Run them over in my SRV? :D
 

Leo Sagan

Leo Sagan
My thoughts exactly. Maybe he meant "settlements with meaningful gameplay", like not barren with non interactive audio records. Maybe a few NPCs, some activities ... anything. "Populated settlements," if you like ?
 

M_Biscotti

M_Biscotti
Maybe he didn't talk about something like that but...

As time goes on, we all can see improvements on planets, whether we can land on them or not. For now inhabited atmospheric planets have textures for "towns" (more gigalopolis than towns). The next step for these ones could be "settlements", giving far more consistency by reducing the light places to something more realistic (at now they would use so many resources that "planets" wouldn't survive more than 50 years), giving shape to towns.

It could also simply be "living" settlements with missions and trading available within the srv.

It could also be Thargoid settlements :D
 

Leo Sagan

Leo Sagan
verminstar said:
Ah I remember with fondness how he talked about gas giants...some 18 months ago give or take...

Little teases are all well and good, but when do we actually see something?
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In France, we often quote a politician (who made a lot of empty promises himself) who said once : "promises only bind those who believe in them".
I'm pretty confident this motto qualifies as worldwide wisdom :-(
 
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Lobstris

Lobstris
Whilst I'm not interested in base-building, or player-owned stuff, I'd be plenty interested on having procedurally-generated eye-candy around surface starports. More Microsoft Flight Sim, less Minecraft please! :)

*Edit* Thinking about it, what would make the Elite world more alive, a few thousand player-owned settlements scattered across '000s of worlds, or an automated way of getting a planet with supposedly millions or billions of inhabitants to look that populated when flying across planet? Personally I'd take the latter, but getting things to work with SRVs, simulating other ground traffic etc. would be a nightmare, so I suspect he meant the former.
 
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Xenith

Xenith
Mostly Hamless said:
Logical? Yes. Realistic? No.

It still makes me laugh that systems can contain billions of people, yet there is never a soul to be seen.
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Yes, but we have to be practical, how difficult is it for them to create the necessary models, animate them, and then have these 'people' walking/floating around at a facility? It's not going to be something which can be done quickly, that's for sure.
 

insanephoton

insanephoton
Xenith said:
Yes, but we have to be practical, how difficult is it for them to create the necessary models, animate them, and then have these 'people' walking/floating around at a facility? It's not going to be something which can be done quickly, that's for sure.
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<points in the direction of Planet Coaster>
 

William J Smith

William J Smith
And after the people walking /driving about at the planetary settlements are added will it be that a commander takes out his SRV.............. and plays deathrace 3304... [hotas] :eek:

Bill

"Look blind pedestrian... 40 bonus points...." :D
 

verminstar

Banned
verminstar
Leo Sagan said:
In France, we often quote a politician (who made a lot of empty promises himself) who said once : "promises only bind those who believe in them".
I'm confident this motto qualifies as worldwide wisdom :-(
Click to expand...

Politicians promise the mob all sorts of shiny to distract them...they very rarely deliver anything meaningful. Similar to what's happening here...natives are restless so distract them with the promise of shiny.

Thing about it being that one has heard it all before and it's now become akin to the story of the little boy who cried wolf...only works the first couple times but when it's one fail after another, one simply doesn't feel the hype anymore.

Dreams are all lots of fun but it's what those dreams become that matter, and so far the majority of musings have turned out to be just that...words and not much else ^
 

Andovar

Andovar
Based on the referenced article, it sounds like they're just expanding on the 'generation ships' idea:
https://www.neowin.net/news/elite-d...s-about-his-next-big-project-coming-next-year

One of our conceits is that humans tried to settle other worlds as soon as it was possible. If you look at history, that's what's happened over time. Look at the 15th, 16th, 17th century. People who feel that their lot isn't a good one will get together, save what money they can, and depart. Not Columbus himself, but so many who came not long after him – within 10 or 20 years – a huge number of them just didn't make it. And we don't know exactly what happened to them.
In the last few decades, with better diving equipment, we're starting to see what happened to them. Some made it to the US coast. That's the spirit of the Generation ships in Dangerous. Even though it was dangerous, people still wanted to try to get away. Whether they shared a religion, or just wanted a different society, whatever. Our story is that most of them made it, and you are now discovering the ones who didn't. They each have their own sad stories. We've got a richness in trying to learn from history. Same with the wagon trains. A lot of those didn't make it.
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Ian Skippy

Ian Skippy
verminstar said:
Politicians promise the mob all sorts of shiny to distract them...they very rarely deliver anything meaningful. Similar to what's happening here...natives are restless so distract them with the promise of shiny.

Thing about it being that one has heard it all before and it's now become akin to the story of the little boy who cried wolf...only works the first couple times but when it's one fail after another, one simply doesn't feel the hype anymore.

Dreams are all lots of fun but it's what those dreams become that matter, and so far the majority of musings have turned out to be just that...words and not much else ^
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' How is this even remotely like 'politicians promise all sorts of shiny.' and 'natives are restless so distract them with shiny'? Its a one sentence remark in a interview about a trade deal. If they wanted to do anything what you suggest they would put it in a newsletter, make an announcement or anything. You really are going out of your way to be grumpy lately.

"FD dont care about us, they never communicate, not even a scrap. Wait, I found a tiny scrap without context in a trade interview! They are distracting us! They are just like politicians!"
 

SentineI

SentineI
Cosmo said:
Braben also teased future updates for Elite: Dangerous, saying that the next logical step would be to introduce 'settlements' on planets.
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Please check the original source, because Braben is being taken out of context, and IMHO did NOT intend "settlements" in the way you mean. Here's a slightly fuller quote:
One of our conceits is that humans tried to settle other worlds as soon as it was possible. If you look at history, that's what's happened over time. Look at the 15th, 16th, 17th century. People who feel that their lot isn't a good one will get together, save what money they can, and depart. Not Columbus himself, but so many who came not long after him – within 10 or 20 years – a huge number of them just didn't make it. And we don't know exactly what happened to them.

In the last few decades, with better diving equipment, we're starting to see what happened to them. Some made it to the US coast. That's the spirit of the Generation ships in Dangerous. Even though it was dangerous, people still wanted to try to get away. Whether they shared a religion, or just wanted a different society, whatever. Our story is that most of them made it, and you are now discovering the ones who didn't. They each have their own sad stories. We've got a richness in trying to learn from history. Same with the wagon trains. A lot of those didn't make it.
Click to expand...

So when he says "settlements" he is IMHO talking about the STORIES of past attempts to settle the galaxy. Why did many settlement attempts fail & what is the story behind those failures? (And maybe some successes, whose settlements have perhaps stayed hidden for their own isolationist reasons - perhaps good stories in their own rights.)

IMHO we can probably expect more audio logs, but at failed settlements (rather than failed colony ships).
 
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Ian Skippy

Ian Skippy
Cosmo said:
Braben also teased future updates for Elite: Dangerous, saying that the next logical step would be to introduce 'settlements' on planets.

https://www.neowin.net/news/tencent-buys-9-of-elite-dangerous-developer-frontier-developments

What kind of settlements? I think it's important that we can see NPCs walk and drive around, because that makes it feel alive. The current surface ports feel like ghost towns. Frontier should use the crowd tech of Planet Coaster.

Player groups should be able to build and manage a settlement. That would add real depth to the sandbox.
Click to expand...

I dont think we'll hear anything major before the FD expo, so its not much point in reading much into this line. We have little context, so noone knows what the discussion really was about when he said it. If anything it seems to be about the progression of the story.
 
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znôrt

znôrt
insanephoton said:
<points in the direction of Planet Coaster>
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planet coaster is a cartoon world. it's an easy compromise provided you have good enough art direction.

ed aims for realistic looks, thus the props behavior must be realistic too and that is a lot harder. trust me, you just don't want a bunch of holo-me characters stupidly walking around or hitting walls, that gets old in minutes.
 
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