This is one of the old videos I was thinking of.
It's something they definatly want. and the more I look at what we have in-game right now, the more it looks lok they are gearing up for that kind of gameplay.
But it's not ready, not in the slightest, they're struggling to get basic gravity concepts down let alone full Zero-G movement and the possibility of gravity artificial
gravity under your own thrust.
Ships, Elite ships and Earth naval ships alike are by nature rat-maze like. The vast majority of their internal space is occupied by actual, functional modules.
Of course, for some of the ships They clearly have disembark doros and hatches very close to the cockpit, these would make for excellent exploration ships and
personel transport.
But something like a Beluga and a Corvette won't care as much and will force the player to navigate as much as 200 meters of ship, through maze like conditions.
Honestly I think they should just embrace a short range teleport mechanic now that we have fade to black. Maybe its a thing reserved for very large ships?
Almost certaintly the cockpits have 0 collision models, and if there are any they are probably as crude as simple trapezoids.
After looking at the player models it seems the flight suit has many attachment points, both magnetic and physical on the back of the suit,My Pilot must have a magnetic bum because she doesn`t have a harness to strap her in the seat.
for air, seatbelt like connection, power, data, etc.
Also we have mag-boots that are always on metal rudder pedals.
This I think is the much greater problem, what happens if the ship moves in an unexpected way when moving about, Elite isn't like other games.
Let's say you're on a 6G planet walking about your ship hovering above the surface, then you thrusters go off and you go into a dive. you'll just fall onto the cockpti window.
And currently there is no animation or recovery method for dealing with that kind of solution, no grabbing onto things, no sliding animation.
If they're going to do it I'l like the full package thank you very much
Artificial gravity is actually just as problematic as the zero-g stuff.
Dealing with the concept of physics grids and local physics calculations and changing gravity fields is a flaming nightmare in games.
Elite doesn't have artificial gravity without thrusters and spinning and its not going to change.
And I'l like it to stay that way, its already jarring as hell having planets and outpsots and stations having people walking around like normal, with not even a mag-boot sound to justify it.
There is plenty to gameplay to be had in station interiors.
The much more pressing issue is developing that gameplay (that they clearly want) alongside the planet-side stuff as well is a bit too much for 1 update.
If you haven't noticed, there is already stuff like cutting open panels on ships, pulling power cores (Power Regulators) from fusion reactors,
charging and breaching doors.
There's lots of interesitng gameplay that could be had.
