Horizons Building your own space port?

[Rardain]

I think you'll find it was...
Certainly the first with 3d graphics.

However, I'm happy to be proved wrong if you can show an earlier example.

Hi Siobhan,

The very first space trader was actually a text only game called Star Trader which came out in 1974 and was written in BASIC (for the Atari I think). There was also a multiplayer 3D space combat game in the same year called Spasim (yes you read that right...multiplayer...in 1974) which ran on the PLATO computer system

 

[Hedgehobbit]

I'm an old timer that played the original Elite on (if I remember correctly) a BBC computer or one of the early Atari PC's back in the 80's.

I didn't play Elite until after I had played Sundog on my friends Atari ST. Sundog was an awesome game; it even had space legs (more like space truck). My favorite part about Sundog was it's ship damage system. Each module in your ship (thrusters, shields, etc) had a circuit board and when a part was damage, you'd have to get up out of your seat and run around the ship replacing the damaged components. You could also buy newer, better, components to upgrade your system. Even getting a cloaking device.

Here you can see the damaged part (the explosion icon) and how only three of the four circuits are working and you are at 75% effectiveness.

 

[OGREMAN]

Like you I was an early backer of both Elite & Star Citizen.... and I was a regular player of the BBC-B version of elite back in the 90's. All I am doing with these posts is offering a possible idea for future development, if you cannot put up such thoughts here then where? It seems that so called discussion forums offer anything but DISCUSSION.

 

[Bryan]

Kinky Jalapeno
You are very correct. I have been saying this at the beginning. Elite Dangerous has the best star system ever and the stations are excellent but we need a sense of belonging a place to call home or a right to build ourselves our very own stations to exist. If we go to a grocery store and search around and find our resources we need to have a place to put them. This does not mean ED is copying any other game it just makes sense. So I wish players would look at it that from that stand point. This would be a far better game if we could build a little.

As for SC , There is no SC. What you think a garage and a small pvp arena is the game. Until the game is done which will probably be 5 more years there's no need to even talk about it. I think Elite Dangerous is a far better game because we can play it and talk about it and all of it's updates that are very nice indeed.

Well FD has went this far with a great space combat game with plenty of room to grow they might as well go the rest the way with Trade, Crafting and Base Building and keep everyone happy.
As far as I see it , I don't see anything wrong with owning your own Station on a planet if you got the permits and credits. (right)

 

[Von Roerich]

Very interesting thread. Are we trying to build Utopia in a space sim ? Because if we are, then we need to get rid of the 'profit' cancer that has plagued humanity from it's inception. See the work of 'Jacque Fresco' and the 'Venus project' for the details. I see a problem with many of the fascinating ideas put forward in this thread, moreover, it's difficult, i would assume, to cater for both casual players and those who would spend hours upon hours each day advancing towards their chosen goals. I think FD have done a good job in keeping a balance between these two groups. To realise the aspirations that many of the previous comments suggest, we would need more cooperation and less aggression and I don't have much faith in that........ Humans being what they are and all that.

 

[Chrystoph]

I think that you are thinking a bit too monolithic.

Most people can get a group of 3 or 4 associates together so long as we are not talking CG level efforts. Heck, it should be achievable by one individual if they are willing to invest in the grind.

Would organizations such as the player Power be able to do it more effectively? Yes, of course, but conceding to balance by challenging only the top end groups is discriminating against everyone else.

I would end this thought chain with the fact that there exist in the game both stations and installations whose stated function is an asylum.

 

[Nejamai]

sooooo this whole list ( except for year 1 and year 2 ) is all rubbish? .... if now i hear its not going to happen, well i just started playing the game and i like it allot, for now, but i do already start to feel the im getting bored, monster lurking, i stopped playing EVE online because i was getting bored of the whole game after years and a super advanced toon, eve always said this and that and never made it happen, so now frontier will do the same? i hope not, this game has lots of potential and bypass eve online.

i mean if eve online can do it, elite dangerous can do it even more and 1

the roadmap of elite:

Year 1 - Space

Year 2 - Horizons - Airless Planets
Features as already announced
Basic Crafting - e.g. adjusting weapons stats
Inc. Thargoids incursions into normal space

Year 3 - Space Legs
In Ship & Dock areas
Personal Hanger
First person combat
Exploring derelicts etc
also Player managed 'powers'
Multiple characters allowed

Year 4 - Atmospheres
Flying in atmospheres / Landing on atmospheric worlds without life or cities
inc worlds mid terraforming with associated infrastructure
Flying through and around clouds
'Cloud Cities' in gas giants
Space Elevators
Atmospheric flight only ships
More realistic sun corona
Solar research ship that can get closer to stars
Mining clouds
Weather / Lightning / Aurora
Also - new procedural / customisable ship designs

Year 5 - Planet Life
Landing on planets with life but no landing near or entering large cities
Full range of life
Varied procedural Biomes based on science and environment
e.g. takes account of micro climate at that location
Hunting, Trading and Collecting life
Collect personal cabin Pets! (inc trumbles!)
Conservation (Eco terrorist attacks on hunters / miners)
Exploration
Science Missions
Reward for discovery (al a No Mans Sky)
Some non-technology native intelligent species
think Ewoks!
Basic barter system with natives
Trading collected indigenous artefacts
also Fully Explorable Stations
Owning cabin in stations

Year 6 - Cities!
Fully Explorable Cities on planets
Faction Territories/Countries on planets
Wars/conflict between these factions
Owning and managing stations
Building depots / outposts in space and on land

Year 7 - Species
Introduces a couple of PLAYABLE species!
Also New economy. Everything fully self craftable / tradable including auction house
also Head up display improvements (option to view the universe in various non-visible light)
e.g. in radio spectrum. This will make space a lot prettier without breaking realism

Year 8 - Subterranean
Caves, surface mining
Improved 'geology'
Scan for sub surface minerals
Then mining them
Full Realistic Mining
Landscape deforms based on quantities of materials removed.
Size and density of Asteroid fields reduce with mining
Open cast and deep mines
Sub-surface cities
research stations
geo-thermal energy
military bases
Settlements in the sides of canyons, mountains and craters
Ability to for our character to 'climb' when exploring first person on surfaces

Year 9 - Underwater
Underwater Life / Cities / Ships etc
More life to survey / hunt / collect etc
also Mega Structures such as orbital rings

Year 10 - Witch Space (Thargoids)
Playable Thargoids!
A whole new domain of sub-space
Thargoid mega structures / cities in witch space
I put this last as I'd rather see the normal domains of the galaxy complete before they invent new ones.

Year 11 - Ring World civilisations discovered in far corner of galaxy :)
fully explorable ring-worlds
part of a Large scale invasion of an advanced species from Andromeda

Year 12 - Full moding of your own galaxy content
FD starts selling the raw galaxy engine (the stellar forge) for use in other games such as Star Wars, Star Trek and Star Gate
Also we take the fight back to Andromeda having reverse engineered their technology.

Year 14 - ED Universe. Player owned galaxies ;)
This is should be really easy to do btw.
All we need is the Galactic Hyperdrive back and the a new 'seed' for each galaxy.
pps ... all the above is pure speculation in case that wasn't obvious! Feel free to submit you own versions of the 10 year roadmap.

 

[Marcus Machiavelli]

It says at the bottom that it is all speculation.... and to put in your own 10 year road map..... so sorry that list was never true, even when it was first written....

 

[Rardain]

It says at the bottom that it is all speculation.... and to put in your own 10 year road map..... so sorry that list was never true, even when it was first written....

I was reading that with interest until I realized it was a wish-list lol, still it would be nice to see an official road-map even in broad terms. Of course the danger in doing that and the reason we will never see it is that there are those sections of the community that would hold FD to that time line and then whinge like all hell that things weren't progressing as promised.

Getting back to the original thread of this post though, I could see a base builder sub-routine working in the game. I am not talking huge mega-constructions but maybe the ability put together a blueprint using prefab buildings and interconnecting them with link tubes (ready for when there is a first person aspect to the game). I am thinking something like the base in National Geographics tv series MARS or The Martian with Matt Damon.

You would need a ship capable of transporting the prefabs and raw materials required, you would need power generators that would work either from geothermal or wind/solar energy, a hydroponics section for growing food, a storage section for equipment, a living/sleeping section and of course a waste section (ewwww).

You would need to be able to find a section of a planetoid where you could construct the layout. There would also need to be a way to put all this together - maybe a new kind of SRV with a hoist and manipulator arms and limpet/drone technology for automated construction. If that all went well it could be expanded later on to include excavation equipment so that a hangar could be carved out of the rock and maybe the base too.

 

[Nejamai]

well wish list or not, this is the road map they should follow or at least 50% of it, if they want elite to survive that is.....

 

[Nejamai]

talking about something else, whats up with the passenger module the economy class, i mean i select 1 mission that has like 4 people that use economy class and my module has like 34 seats, and then the whole rest of the 30 seats in economy class are not usable anymore??? have the devs ever flown in a commercial jet? people sit next to each other all the time in the same cabin, economy, first class, and business class, soooo why not here...
thats just stupid.

starting to dislike the game / sim more and more, think im going to get a refund as its NOT what i thought it would be, also it starts to look more and more like EVE online with devs doing what they want, changing things just like that. no roadmap no clear ideas on what is coming pff nah i might go for star citizen, way beter and also way clearer with the road map.

 

[joshman72nd]

why go for a station when you can hope for a personal mega ship/ carrier to have your fleet in?