Cockpit Legs Campaign

Low effort?

Perhaps not as low effort as you might expect.

But ok, let's assume its just a few weeks work for a relatively small team, the question from management side would be what does it add of value compared to other things those same people could be working on?

I'm sure after Odyssey's release there is still going to be plenty of work for everyone working on ED and of course, FD will need to start looking to what comes after Odyssey, which may include (we can hope) full ship interiors and space EVA and stuff.

So, looking at it from a management perspective, divert resources sooner just to add walking about cockpits, which adds zero additional gameplay value, or leave it until they are ready to tackle the whole project of walking around ships and beyond.

I see no value here in trying to push FD to prioritize such a feature at this time (not that FD would likely change their plans for the nearest future anyway in relation to this). In fact, one complaint often levelled at FD is they only deliver partial features, they don't follow through fully fleshing out systems, and basically what you are asking for here is a very partial system that adds little value.
 
Low effort?

Perhaps not as low effort as you might expect.

But ok, let's assume its just a few weeks work for a relatively small team, the question from management side would be what does it add of value compared to other things those same people could be working on?

I'm sure after Odyssey's release there is still going to be plenty of work for everyone working on ED and of course, FD will need to start looking to what comes after Odyssey, which may include (we can hope) full ship interiors and space EVA and stuff.

So, looking at it from a management perspective, divert resources sooner just to add walking about cockpits, which adds zero additional gameplay value, or leave it until they are ready to tackle the whole project of walking around ships and beyond.

I see no value here in trying to push FD to prioritize such a feature at this time (not that FD would likely change their plans for the nearest future anyway in relation to this). In fact, one complaint often levelled at FD is they only deliver partial features, they don't follow through fully fleshing out systems, and basically what you are asking for here is a very partial system that adds little value.

A feature’s value to you depends on what you value in a feature. The aim of this request thread is to gauge if there is sufficient vocal support for this feature, which would demonstrate that a significant number of people value it, which would in turn inform Frontier’s valuation and decision.

If I believed it would take a small team of developers a few weeks, I’d not have suggested it as a realistic interim feature. I still don’t believe it would consume nearly so many developer hours.

As for the supposed problem of partially developing features, I don’t agree with the logic that implementing this basic feature soon would reduce the chances of fully fleshed out ship interiors being developed at a later date. If they’re planning to do it, this won’t impact that decision, and if they’re not planning to do it, at least we’d have this. But if it’s described as the first step towards ship interiors, it shouldn’t be mistaken as a partial effort on a full feature, as it would be the required effort on one part of a larger feature.
 
A feature’s value to you depends on what you value in a feature. The aim of this request thread is to gauge if there is sufficient vocal support for this feature, which would demonstrate that a significant number of people value it, which would in turn inform Frontier’s valuation and decision.

If I believed it would take a small team of developers a few weeks, I’d not have suggested it as a realistic interim feature. I still don’t believe it would consume nearly so many developer hours.

As for the supposed problem of partially developing features, I don’t agree with the logic that implementing this basic feature soon would reduce the chances of fully fleshed out ship interiors being developed at a later date. If they’re planning to do it, this won’t impact that decision, and if they’re not planning to do it, at least we’d have this. But if it’s described as the first step towards ship interiors, it shouldn’t be mistaken as a partial effort on a full feature, as it would be the required effort on one part of a larger feature.

Yes, i understand you think it adds some sort of value. It doesn't add gameplay though, and that has to be the focus from a dev perspective.

Also, remember, we've had "first steps" before, that didn't actually turn out to be much in terms of first steps.
 
Yes, i understand you think it adds some sort of value. It doesn't add gameplay though, and that has to be the focus from a dev perspective.

Also, remember, we've had "first steps" before, that didn't actually turn out to be much in terms of first steps.

Why does gameplay have to be the focus from a development perspective? The focus on gameplay is for the purpose of player enjoyment, which for the company is expected to translate to sales. If a proposed feature that doesn’t introduce new gameplay is something that a substantial proportion of players say they would enjoy, and I’m not presuming that this proposal necessarily fits that bill, then that would translate to sales in the same way a similarly enjoyable gameplay focused feature would.

This proposal is intentionally designed to not be much of a first step, to make it realistic as a development item that can be fit into the product roadmap in the short term. In any case, as stated, it won’t impact any plans to do a full implementation of ship interiors if that is actually in the cards. If that’s not going to be, then again, I feel that cockpit legs would be something many players would appreciate in the absence of a full ship interiors implementation.
 
Why does gameplay have to be the focus from a development perspective? The focus on gameplay is for the purpose of player enjoyment, which for the company is expected to translate to sales. If a proposed feature that doesn’t introduce new gameplay is something that a substantial proportion of players say they would enjoy, and I’m not presuming that this proposal necessarily fits that bill, then that would translate to sales in the same way a similarly enjoyable gameplay focused feature would.

This proposal is intentionally designed to not be much of a first step, to make it realistic as a development item that can be fit into the product roadmap in the short term. In any case, as stated, it won’t impact any plans to do a full implementation of ship interiors if that is actually in the cards. If that’s not going to be, then again, I feel that cockpit legs would be something many players would appreciate in the absence of a full ship interiors implementation.

It doesn't always have to be, but when compared with just cockpits, then yes, i think it does.

Adding full interiors has a stronger case because at that point you have a case for removing loading screens and associated gameplay that could come with that.

What will you do with the ability to walk around cockpits? Take some screenshots? Pretend to make coffee? Or just have to spend a few extra seconds getting to the loading screen to transition?
 
My take is :

We don't really need ship interiors without actual tied gameplay. (like zero-G repair stuff or ship boarding).

OTOH, it fade-transition into the airlock rather than out of the ship would kind of be neat IMO. With commands
to cycle the air in/out, deploy the ramp and open the outer door. Miss one step for lolzy fails.
 
It doesn't always have to be, but when compared with just cockpits, then yes, i think it does.

Adding full interiors has a stronger case because at that point you have a case for removing loading screens and associated gameplay that could come with that.

What will you do with the ability to walk around cockpits? Take some screenshots? Pretend to make coffee? Or just have to spend a few extra seconds getting to the loading screen to transition?

Again, that comes down to how many players would value it, and how much. I take it from your comment that you don’t think enough players would value it enough, which is a reasonable opinion. Personally I’m not presuming either way, but my guess is that given how much immersion means in a game like Elite, plenty of players would appreciate this either as a small interim step, or as a consolation if ship interiors aren’t going to happen.

As for how it would be employed, other than being able to explore the cockpits of 38 ships and whatever new ships are created, it’s very much a role playing experience, which I don’t think should be discounted as trivial or of low value. Of course, screenshots would definitely be a thing, and content creators, specifically storytelling ones like Turjan Starstone and Ghost Giraffe would make good use of it, and it may encourage others.
 
My take is :

We don't really need ship interiors without actual tied gameplay. (like zero-G repair stuff or ship boarding).

OTOH, it fade-transition into the airlock rather than out of the ship would kind of be neat IMO. With commands
to cycle the air in/out, deploy the ramp and open the outer door. Miss one step for lolzy fails.

I think you can easily make the case that we don’t need it. Because we don’t. But then it’s not being proposed as an alternative to full ship interiors with related gameplay, but rather as a small first step towards it that should be doable in the short term. Or in the worst case, if ship interiors aren’t going to happen, it would at least be something.

I’m all for full ship interiors, and will continue asking for it. Also, I think a better transition to and from the cockpit and ground should have been manageable even without any of the above, but if cockpit legs were a thing, it could be used to facilitate commanders getting up and walking to the airlock leading to the ramp. The nearest door basically could be used for that. You open the door, and when you enter it fades to black and you find yourself in the airlock, which opens up to the ramp.
 
Actually, decent floating, spinning, holding, and pushing off of animations with apt controls would be very cool.
It would be cool. Could that induce nausea though? 'Eyes Maintain Horizon' couldn't work in space. However, seeing as there is no horizon whilst in space, it may not cause motion ('sea' when a horizon is involved) sickness after all. Put Shortly, I've just proved to myself that I haven't got a clue what I'm talking about.
 
Yeah, I don't know. I tumble the spaceships around a bit and that doesn't seem to be an issue. On the other hand, I had a buddy over and just looking down past my Commander's feet in a Vulture to see out the lower canopy bothered him a bit.
 
Yeah, I don't know. I tumble the spaceships around a bit and that doesn't seem to be an issue. On the other hand, I had a buddy over and just looking down past my Commander's feet in a Vulture to see out the lower canopy bothered him a bit.
I don't have any sickness in the ships. The SRV sometimes brings on mild nausea, and other times none. I used to sail boats, and never suffered sea sickness, so it's likely a frame rate issue on my end, combined with body sensations not corresponding to what the horizon says I should be feeling that's causing it.
 
Simply put, Frontier please let us walk around in our cockpits when Odyssey launches, or soon after.

You really need to flesh out your idea a bit more in my opinion. Coming from a background in technical support, all I can think of are all the problems your suggestion would cause in gameplay. So the key is when and where one is allowed to get up from his seat and roam around the cockpit. Because these are just a few I thought of sitting here, I'm sure there are more.

*What happens when I accidentally hit the "stand up and roam" keybind in combat?
*What happens when I'm walking around my ship and I'm interdicted by an NPC? Am I notified? If so, how? Will I have time to react? Will there be a grace period?
"What happens when I'm walking around and a player decides to gank my ship? What are the mechanics of that?
*Will we issue flight commands to our ships while we're away from chair?

One can go on and on. Since everything happening to our ships and outside of them are communicated through the Left-panel and the Info display, obviously you'll have to duplicate that somehow while one is on foot. Do I look at a Smartwatch or something? How does that work exactly?

Also this will open up Pandoras Box so to speak. Once players have this, they will start making all kinds of demands. Like wanting to walk down to Engineering and fix their drives manually or something. So this could be a never ending thing where players will want to physically interact with every single aspect of the ships on foot.

And this isn't even getting into all the potential exploits players will discover with this walking idea.

So your 'simple' stopgap idea is actually tens of thousands, if not hundreds of thousands, of lines of coding. With assorted support burden to go along with it. So if you're passionate about this, and it seems you are, it would help if you gave a lot more details and trouble-shooting of how this will actually work and how it can handle existing gameplay situations we all encounter from our pilots chairs.

Just my opinion.
 
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Ship interior (walking) will come in next (post-Odyssey) DLC with some new kind of planets to walk/drive/land/fly on, in about 2-4 years, every DLC need to have enough content to make them sell:

Horizons added first basic planets to land among many base game upgrades like engineers and eventually Fleet Carriers.

Odyssey will add new kind of planets and walking on them (besides driving on them in a SRV), and many different kind of station/settlement interiors to walk around in (even changing depending on what faction is in power in there, or what is economy), opposite to as how we were previously literally stuck on our pilot seats (so already a good base/reasoning for moving inside a ship).

So I bet next DLC in 2-4 years will have more complex and diverse planets and interiors, and I bet including ship interiors as all obstacles to walk inside a ship will be resolved during odyssey at minimum.

Maybe eventually there will be a DLC for much more complex planets with even life on them, but I bet FD will need to wait for better gaming PC´s and new gen consoles to be much more common among Elite players community than they are now, to go for something so complex.
So maybe 4-6 years for 2nd post-Odyssey DLC?
 
You really need to flesh out your idea a bit more in my opinion. Coming from a background in technical support, all I can think of are all the problems your suggestion would cause in gameplay. So the key is when and where one is allowed to get up from his seat and roam around the cockpit. Because these are just a few I thought of sitting here, I'm sure there are more.

*What happens when I accidentally hit the "stand up and roam" keybind in combat?
*What happens when I'm walking around my ship and I'm interdicted by an NPC? Am I notified? If so, how? Will I have time to react? Will there be a grace period?
"What happens when I'm walking around and a player decides to gank my ship? What are the mechanics of that?
*Will we issue flight commands to our ships while we're away from chair?

One can go on and on. Since everything happening to our ships and outside of them are communicated through the Left-panel and the Info display, obviously you'll have to duplicate that somehow while one is on foot. Do I look at a Smartwatch or something? How does that work exactly?

Also this will open up Pandoras Box so to speak. Once players have this, they will start making all kinds of demands. Like wanting to walk down to Engineering and fix their drives manually or something. So this could be a never ending thing where players will want to physically interact with every single aspect of the ships on foot.

And this isn't even getting into all the potential exploits players will discover with this walking idea.

So your 'simple' stopgap idea is actually tens of thousands, if not hundreds of thousands, of lines of coding. With assorted support burden to go along with it. So if you're passionate about this, and it seems you are, it would help if you gave a lot more details and trouble-shooting of how this will actually work and how it can handle existing gameplay situations we all encounter from our pilots chairs.

Just my opinion.

I have a more fleshed out version of this in the Suggestions forum, which in hindsight I should have linked.

I don’t believe anything further needs to be done in terms of notifications of events in the ship. You’ll still hear the “under attack” alert or the interdiction sound if you’re standing up, and it will (and should) be up to the player in what circumstances they leave their seat, with any consequences that come with that. No grace period or anything else is needed to cater for this.

As for additional features players might want, that’s not something to be avoided, because the idea is to have this in the short term as a small step towards full ship interiors, and ideas flowing from players about what they want added as a part of that is a good thing.

For issuing commands whilst standing, in my suggestion I talked about being able to issue any command except for steering the ship, or anything that requires menu navigation. But that isn’t critical to the idea, and can be left out.

Generally speaking, the idea is to keep it as simple as possible so that it’s more realistically achievable in the short term, so my original post really contains all that essentially needs to be done. Other than that, I leave it up to the developers to determine whatever else they can include as part of the feature without requiring significantly more time or resources, if anything.
 
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Ship interior (walking) will come in next (post-Odyssey) DLC with some new kind of planets to walk/drive/land/fly on, in about 2-4 years, every DLC need to have enough content to make them sell:

Horizons added first basic planets to land among many base game upgrades like engineers and eventually Fleet Carriers.

Odyssey will add new kind of planets and walking on them (besides driving on them in a SRV), and many different kind of station/settlement interiors to walk around in (even changing depending on what faction is in power in there, or what is economy), opposite to as how we were previously literally stuck on our pilot seats (so already a good base/reasoning for moving inside a ship).

So I bet next DLC in 2-4 years will have more complex and diverse planets and interiors, and I bet including ship interiors as all obstacles to walk inside a ship will be resolved during odyssey at minimum.

Maybe eventually there will be a DLC for much more complex planets with even life on them, but I bet FD will need to wait for better gaming PC´s and new gen consoles to be much more common among Elite players community than they are now, to go for something so complex.
So maybe 4-6 years for 2nd post-Odyssey DLC?

You’re probably right or close to it about the years required to bring in ship interiors, and that’s why it would be nice to be able to at least walk around the cockpit in the interim.
 
It would be cool. Could that induce nausea though? 'Eyes Maintain Horizon' couldn't work in space. However, seeing as there is no horizon whilst in space, it may not cause motion ('sea' when a horizon is involved) sickness after all. Put Shortly, I've just proved to myself that I haven't got a clue what I'm talking about.
The excellent VR-only game “Lone Echo” does zero-G where you mainly propel yourself via handholds and pushing off surfaces - it defaults to a “maintain horizon” style whereby there is always the same “up” + “down” directions. There is an advanced setting where grabbing a surface with both hands allows you to change that by rotating around, and it’s a bit trippy the first time doing it 😅

For flatscreen Elite’s hypothetical zero-G I suppose it could be a bit like underwater sections in other FPS games, with a few inverse-kinematic animations for grabby-handholds. I’d expect our suits to have micro-thrusters to help us get around, as well as the already announced mag-boots.
 
Again, that comes down to how many players would value it, and how much. I take it from your comment that you don’t think enough players would value it enough, which is a reasonable opinion. Personally I’m not presuming either way, but my guess is that given how much immersion means in a game like Elite, plenty of players would appreciate this either as a small interim step, or as a consolation if ship interiors aren’t going to happen.

As for how it would be employed, other than being able to explore the cockpits of 38 ships and whatever new ships are created, it’s very much a role playing experience, which I don’t think should be discounted as trivial or of low value. Of course, screenshots would definitely be a thing, and content creators, specifically storytelling ones like Turjan Starstone and Ghost Giraffe would make good use of it, and it may encourage others.

Well, at the end of the day, its up to FD, and from what we have seen, and considering the timing, i'd give good money they won't change their thoughts on the matter at this point in time, and that post Odyssey release, they are going to have more than enough work on their plate for a few months ;)
 
Well, at the end of the day, its up to FD, and from what we have seen, and considering the timing, i'd give good money they won't change their thoughts on the matter at this point in time, and that post Odyssey release, they are going to have more than enough work on their plate for a few months ;)

You’re probably right. I stand by the idea though, and still think it’s worth asking and being done.
 
TBF, on the Internet, everyone is these three things: A developer, a politician and a lawyer.

What claim do you want to test my credentials against?

Okay discussion and then this.. sigh. Stopped reading here.

Trying to give credentials on anonymous internet forum to prove expert status makes someone sound like a 12yo kid trying to convince everybody that he's a big boy and "knows lots of stuff". ---> It has opposite effect.
 
I would have done something like the Sidewinder or Cobra Mark III, so players could role play the "one small step for mankind" in EDO. For me that so far is the big miss for EDO its crying out for that walk from the cockpit to ground or SRV. Since its not in I would see it as payable DLC, work out the popular ships and do those first. No need for any other gameplay. See what the take up is and decide if you do more ships or just park it. If you do all ships you can go to gameplay.
 
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