Collection of Ideas for Elite 4

[fasnoon]

I have always wondered what the fans would like to see in E4. Please Post replies here with your views as to what you would like to be included as part of E4....

(Maybe it will give some ideas to FD to create a similar fourm that invites ideas to help build E4. Such a site where, once an idea is submitted, that becomes a property of FD {and no financial claims/royalties can be made by us} I feel that the game itself, whenever, it comes out, belongs to us... the REAL elite fans... so why not help give ideas to boost creativity in the game or maybe in the patches/expansion packs that to come afterwards. BELEIVE ME... just the inflow of ideas (A crazy as they may be) would just be wonderful to see, even if FD does not implement them in the game)

I personally would like to see:

1 - Remember in FFE when in deep space, when your ship sometimes runs out of fuel or are being attacked and you click on the RED phone to send out a message "HELP MY SHIP IS BROKEN DOWN"... Well, it would be nice to have someone actually come and help me in to the local space station.

2 - Also, I would like to see the POLICE doing their duty for a change. So many times I have been attacked in the vacinity of a station and when I fire back, its ME who actually being attacked by the police for Illegal Firing of a Weapon near a station (and not to mention the Cr 600 fine). I NEVER see the police attacking the ships that attack me. Whats up with that?

3 - Lastly, it would be nice to get a few more ships and given the infinite nature of the game... Maybe a LOT MORE missions like in FFE.

 

[Darkman]

My thoughts on what I'd like to see in E4:

1. The ability to name the planets, moons and other bodies in each system that has been explored by you - naming the star system itself is up for debate.

2. Expanding frontier boundaries that grow as time in the game progresses and includes those systems that have been discovered on the edge of the frontier by you. It would be interesting to see new faciltities being built by the different companies and organisations in game as time moves on. New places will be popping up fairly often allowing more to explore as you continue to play the game.

3. Ability to construct facilities and space stations on or in orbit around planets/moons even asteroids for trading and manufacture of goods. The ability to own more than one ship at a time and to use them to automate trading with a crew onboard.

4. New space objects like nebulea, pulsars and black-holes (and a supermassive one at the heart of the galaxy ). Even a supernova on very rare occassions that may happen in some systems creating those black-holes or neutron stars etc.

5. Treasures/ artifacts that are hidden all over the galaxy, such as special ships and goods that can be used to modify your existing ship/s (new weapons, faster and longer distance engines etc). Some scripted missions that list the location or vicinity or where these treasures are located. Maybe the locations of such can be randomly generated with each new game.

6. Dynamic Milky Way background. As you travel around the galaxy and towards or away from the galactic core this can be represented here. One example for this could be that as you approach the core the blob at the centre of this background becomes larger and more detailed until you reach the exact centre. I think something similar was done in Homeworld ?.

Something tells me that the core should have many reasons to make the trip worthwhile such as many diamond or gold rich systems (since there are a lot of old and massive stars in the core, this makes sense). Maybe add the features of the inner-spiral and ring of nebulea in the region to make it more interesting for us astronomy fans. More supernova (4.) take place more often here so getting to those precious resources will be risky if they are located in a system with a collapsing star. The supermassive blackhole should be an interesting location to add a large swirling accretion disk (can use that for a fuel scooping challenge ?) and other graphical wonders. Maybe, just maybe this blackhole could be used in the game for some useful purpose such as a gateway to another galaxy or something - I'm sure the developers could come up with something great here. Could even be a plot device for a mission. . .

7. Tools (maybe in-game) to create new custom ship hulls that can be saved as a file to disk allowing a community of users to s*** creations but not allowing the use of them until you have your own shipyard or something.

8. Some sort of modding ability be added to the game for those that wish to create custom content - although not really essential since I get the feeling that E4 will be dynamic in a lot of its content.

9. Secondary support craft for your ship. It would be great to have smaller craft for other areas of the game, such as planetside, that are stored in your ships hanger. Shuttlecraft that can be used for escape procedures and to land small ground vehicles such as armoured cars that can even explore all seas and oceans on a planet as well as land. Maybe you could use them to deploy submersible mines to drill for oil and gas this way if necessary as well as traditional land mines. One advantage of this is that you could land your craft and drive to a deployed mine instead of having to fly and land close by for retrieval - although the Frontier/FE method should still be possible for those of us that like to do it the traditional way.

10. I know that has been discussed already, but I'd like to see some sort of Internet multiplayer option for online play with other real people that make use of the game files already installed on single-player installations but which can be added to or modified as client patches are released. Since everything is already on your system in terms of graphic content, the on-line downloads for multi-player play will be a lot smaller. I don't know how feasible this would be.

If you made it this far, then thanks for reading !

Rant over.

 

[Moriarity]

Ideas for Elite 4

My list of things id like to see in Elite 4

1. I loved the music in elite 2. For elite 4 i'd like to see a juke box so you can play your favourite songs in game.

2. Some kind of ship designer so you can create totaly unique ships.

3. To be able to record battles onto some kind of Black box so you can replay fights from different angles/perspectives etc.

4. Id also like to be able to make a living transporting passengers from planet to planet in the same solar system, ie like from earth to mars in luxury transports or solar barges.

5. More Elite 1 kind of ship control, or an advanced autopilot that can fight for you. I think it would be great if you could create manouvers in autopilot, for example evasive pattern alpha 1, like they have in the star trek series.

6. A couple of galactic radio stations, like grand theft auto, it would be great if there was something similar.


Cheers


Moriarity

 

[Bounder]

Temperature and pressure dynamics would make a nice compliment to the physics side of things. Granted Elite already has rudimentary star and cabin thermodynamics, but temperature could play an extensive role in spacefaring. Too cold and fluids freeze. Too hot and they become unstable - this would affect life supports, cargo and crew, also things like fuel behaviour. Pressure problems could cause leaks, explosions or implosions, all good fun. How about linking the basic forces realistically? For instance a hull might develop leaks after a hard re-entry, from heat expansion. A hot hull would steam in the rain or boil the water it floated in. Likewise, pressure and temperature would play a key role in determining terrestrial and atmospheric conditions, depending on their compositions, orbits and so forth...

...and how about dust'n'rust? Hulls should show their age. Some materials might decay in contact with certain substances - ie. iron alloys might not like water, though there could be all sorts of hazardous reactions. What might a silicon-based life form build a ship from, and what would react with it? (Don't ask me).

(And don't even get me started on the aliens. Tribbles anyone? Or a "Gieger's Alien world" easter egg? Hey what about Rimm3r World?

And why can't I say "Rimm3r", or "pr0ne"?

A suggested list of further words to block:

Voluptuous
Log
Jhonny
wood
Probe
Filly
Secretion
Poke
Queef
Erection
Jerk
Flick
Barbra Streisand
Wet
Mung
Silicone
Stroke
"Pearl Jam"
Curvaceous
Ejection
Derek Smart's Chocolate Salty *****
Pink
Insertion
Hole
Rod (incl. "Rod Stewart")
Dwarf
Roger (esp. "Roger roger, rog")
Tulip

We must think of the children. These kinds of words shoudn't exist.

<Posts merged, please do not double post - Michael>

 

[JazHaz]

multiplayer ideas

I believe Elite4 should be a MMORPG (Massively Multiplayer Online Role Playing Game). In these days of fast broadband and fast PC's and next gen consoles like XBox360 and (soon) the PS3, there has never been a better time when the resources and capabilities of current hardware could make a fantastic MMORPG Elite 4.

I agree with everything Darkman said.

I think people should be able to form a corporation, and fly capital ships together. Perhaps hiring and paying people to man the guns, fly the ship, man the defence fighters that could be launched from the big ship.

I would like a big galaxy like in Frontier, where you could find unexplored systems, explore them yourself and then build your own settlements. If I found a terrestrial world, then I would like to be able to make an advert in nearby systems asking for colonists to help populate the world, and then fly those colonists in, perhaps needing a new ship - a spaceliner?

Perhaps having a spaceliner could be used by running your own "airline", a "spaceline", setting your own fares etc?

I envisage a true economic system working in the game, with mining corporations, supplying manufacturing corporations who make goods and trade ship parts to companies who build the ships and sell them in their own yards. Smaller shipyards, perhaps on the smaller worlds, that only sell used ships. Banking and service industries too. Employment agencies that run adverts for the other corporations to attract personnel from outlying systems.

Classic elite-style traders running goods between planets and systems, being another part of this economic system.

How about running a pirate corporation attacking people and selling stolen ships and goods? Or become a police officer, and choose between seeking out the pirates and bringing them to justice or becoming corrupt and taking bribes from the pirates and other corporations, at the risk of being arrested yourself?

All of these ideas could provide plenty of work for people. You could play many different roles in an open ended game.



Commander Jaz,
Somewhere in the Outer Rim...

 

[parablax]

Your in luck

JazHaz - you're in luck - the game you described already exists.

Its called 'eve online'.

 

[Kipper]

I'd just kinda like to see more of the same, but with updated graphics and sounds etc, and a much more complex economic system, a bit like they did in X where factories would pay more if they were undersupplied, etc. Though I preferred (and thought more realistic) Elite's style of having maybe one station above a planet, rather than hundreds of factories and things - the station would take the cargo and shuttles would probably distribute it to installations on the planet. (No reason why you couldnt land at installations on planet though!). The key would be to make sure you can't just find a good trade route that you can do over and over again, forcing you to spend time on station planning your next trip. Semi-random events could cause changes in the markets.

A more complex social system too - perhaps there are factions or people have friends and enemies MMORPG style, if you upset a faction you're more likely to get attacked by it and if you are friends with another you may get protection/support -- and of course missions. Better interaction with other traffic with a fully functioning radio system.

Downloadable mission content - even better if it was seamless. A lot of games these days are adding to playability with some free download content, or even booster packs well priced.

A richer space environment with nebulae and black holes and all that juicy theoretical stuff, not just for looks though, it would be nice to be able to fly through them, fight in them, etc. They might have varying effects on your systems.

The ability to design your own ship HAS to be there, being able to specify how many and what type of engine etc, which all affects the performance, looks and cost. Being able to spray/customise the decals on your ship would just be fun - and to see a wider range of ships and markings on others. There would be the common 'mass produced' sort of vessels, but you should also see other custom ships in game, which would be hitherto unidentified until you got up close and was able to a-nalyse them.

Combat more "X-Wing" for small fighters and more tactical for larger ships, which have huge amounts of shields and maybe destroyable hard points, they might trade shots with huge cannon or use small fighter fleets to battle it out.

I'm done for now

 

[basilb]

Its called 'eve online'.

combat in eve online is not very good

 

[Karl]

Hi

Just a couple of notes. I like forums that allows logistic qouting. This one tells me I can't qoute more than 4 messages? I couldn't have more than 10000 characters (okay, it was a long post, but...) And, something about smileys?

So, apparently I have to split it up into several posts instead, not my idea Sorry.

Freshman here on the forum, but thought I'd give my comments on what I have seen so far. I'll post my own ideas once they are getting more substancial and better thought through, but they are getting pretty insane My main idea on how the game should "work", is similar to the concept introduced with upcoming (atm) game called spore; massive online *singleplayer* game. That is, users simply put their creations on the internet and people can interact with their creations (but not the actual people). Keep this in mind while reading my comments.

My thoughts on what I'd like to see in E4:
1. The ability to name the planets, moons and other bodies in each system that has been explored by you - naming the star system itself is up for debate.

If I could download other peoples settled systems and trade with these, this idea would work even better. The only problem is, I'd still want to be in control if I'm going to use the random generated system or the downloaded one. Original random generated name should have first priority. Some kind of cencorship would also be required as there within short time there would pop up completely ludicruis names, system setups, exploits etc. User voting driven, or game developers hire in staff to do it.

2. Expanding frontier boundaries that grow as time in the game progresses and includes those systems that have been discovered on the edge of the frontier by you. It would be interesting to see new faciltities being built by the different companies and organisations in game as time moves on. New places will be popping up fairly often allowing more to explore as you continue to play the game.

Completely agreed. I have always loved the concept of an expanding game, not just in terms of exploration area but also weapon tech, storywise and the like. Don't think I have seen one yet. New techs invented along the way to reduce repeteability. I don't mind using hyper gates as long as drives comes along later. Such things could also be story driven, and here is a new untested concept; a full and massively complex story that hops along regardless of the players interaction with it.

3. Ability to construct facilities and space stations on or in orbit around planets/moons even asteroids for trading and manufacture of goods. The ability to own more than one ship at a time and to use them to automate trading with a crew onboard.

Yes, sort of. If it could be done with more ease and less complex compared to the X2/X3 games. I love their economic system, it's just gone beyond mad in terms of complexity.

4. New space objects like nebulea, pulsars and black-holes (and a supermassive one at the heart of the galaxy ). Even a supernova on very rare occassions that may happen in some systems creating those black-holes or neutron stars etc.

Again, yes. But.... Such things should be extreeeemely rare. Give us all-kinds-of-radar-equipment-scanners and allow us to go out on pure exploration missions. I'd really love if Betelgeuse were to go supernova at some time in the game, preferably random time. Or venture through the crab nebulae in interstellar space. Whatever is done, don't do it the X-game ways, with utterly dense fog or whatever in all systems. These things are quite rare (from a local standpoint), it must not be overdone. Space is black and boring with harch lighting conditions, although I like the idea of user controlleable ambient lighting (in 0.01 steps, as 0.1 it too much for a 0-1 range), and a possibility to adjust the black background color of space just to i.e. a very dark blue just to see the difference between unlit body and space itself. Please do not go completely unrealistic/ballistic with nebulae, fog, color, and brightness.

The rest in subsequent posts if this finally works...

 

[Karl]

5. Treasures/ artifacts that are hidden all over the galaxy, such as special ships and goods that can be used to modify your existing ship/s (new weapons, faster and longer distance engines etc). Some scripted missions that list the location or vicinity or where these treasures are located. Maybe the locations of such can be randomly generated with each new game.

Yes and no. Such things tend to ruin game balance all the places I have seen it. There should be common items, maybe even powerful common items, but stay clear of the uber items. However, uber items could be more possible if they were seeded from the start of the game; at no point could you just look it up on the internet and get there. (Agreed on what you say, just noticed the last part )

6. Dynamic Milky Way background. As you travel around the galaxy and towards or away from the galactic core this can be represented here. One example for this could be that as you approach the core the blob at the centre of this background becomes larger and more detailed until you reach the exact centre. I think something similar was done in Homeworld ?.

Why not use Celestia as a game "engine" type. Think of being in the Sol system, hitting the button named "Flash Constallations", and picking your destination system directly from the front view before making the jump? Would have been so cool. But somewhere there should be filter settings saying how much is drawn both in terms of star magnitude and star distance. If jumping is the thing, there is no point in showing stars on the other side of the galaxy no matter how bright. Maybe showing jumpable stars with a coded name label? I also like getting actual star information, like using the game for scientific learning (Frontier is alone responsible for getting me interrested into this ) Btw; the center of the galaxy is not a place I really want to visit But I went across to another arm in Frontier... Took a while though.

Something tells me that the core should have many reasons to make the trip worthwhile such as many diamond or gold rich systems (since there are a lot of old and massive stars in the core, this makes sense). Maybe add the features of the inner-spiral and ring of nebulea in the region to make it more interesting for us astronomy fans. More supernova (4.) take place more often here so getting to those precious resources will be risky if they are located in a system with a collapsing star. The supermassive blackhole should be an interesting location to add a large swirling accretion disk (can use that for a fuel scooping challenge ?) and other graphical wonders. Maybe, just maybe this blackhole could be used in the game for some useful purpose such as a gateway to another galaxy or something - I'm sure the developers could come up with something great here. Could even be a plot device for a mission. . .

Completely agree. But again, keep things like this relatively sp**** and hard to get to. How about launching long lasting expeditions to map a regular nova shelling, find out the secret about cepheids (lol), detailing pulsar radio emmissions up close putting the recording available on the internet, quasar work, doing scooping from comet tails etc. The possibilities are endless, but hopefully they will have some educational scientific meaning to the players. The best games are those I feel I learn something from, such as realistic WWII FPS which teaches me a little history (if accurate). Not so sure about going to other galaxies.

7. Tools (maybe in-game) to create new custom ship hulls that can be saved as a file to disk allowing a community of users to s*** creations but not allowing the use of them until you have your own shipyard or something.

Agreed. I love the way Galactic Civ 2 has done it when it comes to designing ships.

 

[Karl]

8. Some sort of modding ability be added to the game for those that wish to create custom content - although not really essential since I get the feeling that E4 will be dynamic in a lot of its content.

Indeed. A lot of todays games doesn't allow me to change sounds, modify textures, and the like. Files have been hidden inside gigabyte sized archives impossible to "hack". Those games have a very short lifespan on my computer, often uninstalled without playing all the way. I like to expand, recreate, modify, and "hack" with ease -- without the need for special unpackers, repackers, editors, crazy formats and the like. Files in the open, I say! Take a look at Flight Simulator i.e.

9. Secondary support craft for your ship. It would be great to have smaller craft for other areas of the game, such as planetside, that are stored in your ships hanger. Shuttlecraft that can be used for escape procedures and to land small ground vehicles such as armoured cars that can even explore all seas and oceans on a planet as well as land. Maybe you could use them to deploy submersible mines to drill for oil and gas this way if necessary as well as traditional land mines. One advantage of this is that you could land your craft and drive to a deployed mine instead of having to fly and land close by for retrieval - although the Frontier/FE method should still be possible for those of us that like to do it the traditional way.

A competely love the idea of doing support work for land based military operations. Also owning (in due time of course) a carrier ship containing fightercrafts, like in X games, could be fun. But I think there are too many challenges with this to be feasable. I mean, my companionships in X3 often don't make it through to docking via autopilot, they crash And I think, this is the easy part.

10. I know that has been discussed already, but I'd like to see some sort of Internet multiplayer option for online play with other real people that make use of the game files already installed on single-player installations but which can be added to or modified as client patches are released. Since everything is already on your system in terms of graphic content, the on-line downloads for multi-player play will be a lot smaller. I don't know how feasible this would be.

Actually, I'm against full multiplayer interaction for this kind of game. But downloadable content would be great, see what others have explored. How about a common community effort to explore every system in the galaxy? Fog of War on the visited and mapped systems would be a great feature in this I think.

My list of things id like to see in Elite 4

1. I loved the music in elite 2. For elite 4 i'd like to see a juke box so you can play your favourite songs in game.

Hehe. Agreed indeed! Those classical tunes are increadibly nice and fits the game brilliantly. I've even made my own "Frontier Mix" from actual recordings of these songs, and I listen to it all the time, missing my times with Frontier. Mixed it down with lots of special effects sounds, sounds like I'm playing Frontier, except with far better sounds Okay, this was ranting and not a bit constructive from my side, but yes; include the original tracks as professional recordins, add some new ones, and yes, let the whole experience be fully customizeable in terms of playlists etc. Hmm... Internet Elite Radio channel anyone?

 

[Karl]

2. Some kind of ship designer so you can create totaly unique ships.

Yup. In the lines of Galactic Civ 2 would be extremely nice.

3. To be able to record battles onto some kind of Black box so you can replay fights from different angles/perspectives etc.

Nice idea. Post them on the internet too, and let bulletin boards play them out like parts of news etc.

5. More Elite 1 kind of ship control, or an advanced autopilot that can fight for you. I think it would be great if you could create manouvers in autopilot, for example evasive pattern alpha 1, like they have in the star trek series.

Agreed, but fighting software only for turrets. As for control, I'm a Frontier fanatic, sorry. User should be able to choose between Pitch/Yaw (FPS style) and Pitch/Roll (Flightsim style), it doesn't really matter in a computerized ship you just give commands to. However, regardless of input style, only Newtonian physics is the deal for me; I point the nose where I want to point, not where I actually want to go. No instant reversal of direction of flight just because you turned the ship. Attacker and defender has "equal" relative motion if attack is executed properly and as such the fight can take place normally. The only thing this doesn't allow is full front to front assault as the ships would take forever to turn if at high speeds. Maybe not the most common way of gaming, but...

6. A couple of galactic radio stations, like grand theft auto, it would be great if there was something similar.

Hehe. Very nice I love those radio stations, but I'm not sure they would fit in as good in Elite since it not supposed to be a humoristic game.

Ok, phew. So much for being subtle. My longest post ever... And I'm just beginning! Well, I'll post my own stuff in a separate post, but later...

 

[VR jefranklin18]

Hi there,

Some of my E4 ideas (some of which I have posted on AFE):
- ability to sell your ship without replacing it, allowing you to use other forms of transport around the galaxy
- an insurance option that sends out a recovery ship when you breakdown (like the AA or RAC).
- a flight logger so that you can see where you have been, jobs done etc.
- an SDK that allows players to create their own ships, missions, etc
- ability to advertise on bulletin board
- different classes of cabins (luxury, economy)

I have a couple more, but will write them up when I am on a pc, & not my pocket pc

JamesF

 

[ToadMan]

I think there are a lot of good ideas already listed.

However, I'm not sure I'd want to go too far down the X route of building stations etc - that get's boring after the first one or two anyway. Trading is OK, but I think X has taken it too far and missed out on the space/combat sim part.

What I think could be cool is to give your own character more life in the game. In particular how about a limited lifetime along the lines of Sid Meier's Pirates?

Given it's a long way in the future, I guess you could say that humans can manage 200 years say. It might make the gameplay a bit more focused. As it is, people start trading, then may be do a mission or two, perhaps a bit of assasination, back to trading, exploring etc etc. With a limited life you could only conentrate on one or two goals per "life" as such if you really want to achieve them.


I like the naming of discovered planets/systems etc - particularly if you can keep them in your game database so they stay with your game.

One other cool thing might be more detailed ship interaction and control. How about more detailed crew control for bigger ships, and the ability to interact with them in 3D (thinking along the the lines of Silent Hunter 3 here). The same with space stations and planets - be cool to walk around them a bit. Making sure of course they all have a suitably decaying environment (Mos Eisley spaceport, or cyberpunk style, rather than Star Trek...).

Definitely the ability to have ship hangars on larger ships, coupled with shuttles for planetary landings, ship to ship transfer etc.

One final thing would be some kind of dynamic campaign in the universe - not necessarily an outright war as such, but how about changing fortunes over time. For example, a police state becoming democratic due to economic and political force - if the player can influence this in some way (a mission by rebels to kill the dictator for example) even better. Further, perhaps if you go down the military route, a war can break out, again with dynamic campaign elements.....

Well, to sum up, more of the same as FE, just different!

Toad.

 

[Kipper]

What I think could be cool is to give your own character more life in the game. In particular how about a limited lifetime along the lines of Sid Meier's Pirates?

I like this idea, it focusses you as a player. Maybe a 'career' game would have this, and you could still play an 'unlimited' / non-scoring game. Pirates! is a cool game but you have to pretty much focus from day one if you're on a hard level, to get as much done as you can (finished it first time on the easy level!). Doesn't leave much time to explore, potter around, do your own thing.

The same with space stations and planets - be cool to walk around them a bit.

Only if there was a point to it. If there wasn't a point there better be a shortcut key because there's only so many times you'd do it before the shinyness wore off and it would get up your nose.

One final thing would be some kind of dynamic campaign in the universe.

Loving this - it should be unscripted so as to provide the possibility of a different game every time. Changing economies, political situations, etc, would give the game infinite playability.

If there was to be a storyline mode that put all players on a level playing field (though, why would you) it could be set as an option to follow a fixed pattern / seed. Perhaps it could generate a code so if you liked the way one game was going, you could get the chance to re-run it with the same events happening. Or you could have it completely different. That way two different players could trade codes to play the game in 'that' universe.

Systems/planets changing hands, wars starting and ending, power struggles, growing/diminishing police forces making places more/less dangerous... etc, NPC types discovering worlds, colonies being created... fantastic.

 

[ToadMan]

Only if there was a point to it. If there wasn't a point there better be a shortcut key because there's only so many times you'd do it before the shinyness wore off and it would get up your nose.

Yes, you're absolutely right there. 3D wondering like that is often limited in its appeal.

Pirates of the Caribbean had a reasonable system - you could wander around the port, visit the bar, townhall, merchant etc and talk to folk on the way, even fight in 3D. I would still like a quick key shortcut though. However, if 3D walking around is going to take a lot of effort to develop, I'd say this would be a low priority compared to other stuff.



One final unrelated suggesting is largely graphical. I think the engines on most space sim are pointless. The games seem to assume massive technology advances, but also depict graphically engines which basically throw stuff out the back of the craft.

It seems to me the idea of "rocket-like" engines and thrusters as we know them today will have to be overhauled for the kind of space travel depicted in these games, so personally I'd get rid of the rocket trails altogether. For replacement, you might have exhaust ports to vent waste, but I'm not sure I'd even bother with that. I'd just have no particular output from the ship - remember the thargoid ships in Elite, they had no discernable engine output and that was fine.

Toad.

 

[Darkman]

Yes, you're absolutely right there. 3D wondering like that is often limited in its appeal.
Toad.

I would love to be able to walk around on planets. Okay, it would be cool to walk along beaches, explore mountain ranges, swim in the ocean and jump off cliffs etc if that is what you want to do from time to time. But what would make it more purposeful would be to explore the cities themselves and be given the possibility of entering buildings such as the ship yards, bars, equipment dealers and the various types of cargo suppliers that are around. I'm sure you could add to the list, but being able to own and even rent property might be worth looking into. You could give this option to passengers or anyone that is advertising for it on the bulletin boards and may provide an extra source of income on a regular basis. There must be more than just buildings to see in cities though. Parks and attractions come to mind, but something unique to each city, like the Effiel tower or nice scenery would give something extra to explore. Or make a few unique buildings spread over each territory to look out for, kindof like easter eggs. But none of this would be essential to the game, but could be added by the game community itself.

 

[Karl]

Actually, I have never been a fan of the idea of walking the planet as it just seem senseless and way too hard to do in order to get nice buildings and cities and a random procedural fashion which would be necessary in a universe as diverse as would be required. Not until today.

Reason? A pretty new idea called procedural modelling of CG architecture someone posted a article about somewhere. It would have to be changed in order to make it look futuristic of course, but if cities and building could be done this way, walking the planet would be far more attractive for a game such as Elite IV.

Thinking about being able to sit on my hard earned balcony on a science station on a barren pile of rock in a binary system far far away, having a saturn like planet rise in front of the major star causing an eclipse in the process... Well, I just want to cry

Procedural buiding creation here for those interrested:
http://www.vision.ee.ethz.ch/~pmueller/wiki/CityEngine/Documents

However, I'm not going to hold it against the developers if this is not implemented There are far more important issues than this in a space simulator/game.

 

[basilb]

a minor idea which is worth evaluation at least is money/banking and/or telecomunications.
in our reality communication (of data) can not be transferred faster than the speed of light. this is bearable on earth alone, but in space it would mean personal information wouldn't necesarily be easily/quickly communicated.
so bank accounts couldn't be set-up over multiple systems, because if u made a withdrawal in one system jumped through hyperspace to another, your banking details in the 2nd system would not yet know of your withdrawal.
One option would be that jump gates were de-facto throughout developed systems so that telecommunications could be transfered through out networks such as the federation and empire. this would then mean u could possibly use ships which didn't have hyperdrives themselves but only travel along these set lines of jump-gate routes.

 

[ToadMan]

a minor idea which is worth evaluation at least is money/banking and/or telecomunications.
in our reality communication (of data) can not be transferred faster than the speed of light. this is bearable on earth alone, but in space it would mean personal information wouldn't necesarily be easily/quickly communicated.
so bank accounts couldn't be set-up over multiple systems, because if u made a withdrawal in one system jumped through hyperspace to another, your banking details in the 2nd system would not yet know of your withdrawal.
One option would be that jump gates were de-facto throughout developed systems so that telecommunications could be transfered through out networks such as the federation and empire. this would then mean u could possibly use ships which didn't have hyperdrives themselves but only travel along these set lines of jump-gate routes.

NOOOOO - Not jump gates!!!!! - AAAAHHHHHH!!!

Jump gates have killed every modern space sim - they make it feel like you're flying in a box! See BC/UC, X, Freelancer, Privateer......

Given current research, I think there are plenty of ways communication faster than the speed of light can be achieved.

For example, if ships can travel that far using some device, surely a less powerful device can be used to transmit a signal.

Toad.