Commander Fulsom's Ruminations on The Future of Elite

[Cmnd Fulsom]

So, I've been thinking for while now about what the next big updates are going to be, and I've come up with what I think is a plausable order for the big stuff.

3.0: (lifeless) Atmospheric bodies
4.0: Shipboard and Station FPSing
5.0: Habitable bodies
6.0+: ???

I suppose it's possible that the introduction of the ability to walk around on stations and the like wouldn't guarantee the ability to do it on planets. But I would be legitimately disappointed if it didn't.

Frontier have said that they're on a ten year plan but the big stuff, if they follow the release schedule they have previously, and we have no reason to believe they won't, is, roughly, 5 years of content. And after that? maybe they'll just focus on adding functionality to the
big sections of the game, perhaps trying to to frame, relatively, small additions to the games as the headline item. Like capitol ships.

 

[Dad Rock]

For 6.0 I'd hope to see us able to travel outside the Milky Way. On the Galaxy map you can see objects in the distance but there is no real way of getting to them. It might be something they could tie in to the game lore, as David Braben has already said there are other sentient creatures in the Elite game and not just Thargoids. That would be pretty neat from an exploration point of view. You could eventually gain "Cordial" relations with alien races and be allowed to trade or travel in their systems.

Another thing that could be cool is the ability to set-up hideouts. By that I mean a place where people can stash treasured items in, or for pirate groups to operate from. You might be able to steal from them too, or discover abandoned and long forgotten player stashes. There are so many planets out there, you could hide out anywhere, and then deploy your own "outpost" style hideouts. Other players or NPCs could attack and even destroy them. Perhaps it would be possible to find auto-defenses that you can purchase, and you can give clearance to certain friends in the game.

Graphically, I'm hoping in ten years we start to see more variety in the style of stations and docking bays, at the very least. I love this game, but it's still far too generic in some areas.

 

[Patrick_68000]

and we have no reason to believe they won't, is, roughly, 5 years of content. And after that?

The passage of the game in a cluster of galaxies

 

[Cmnd Fulsom]

More Galaxys could be possible, it porobably wouldn't even take up signifigantly more space on the player side. But that brings up the question, how to reach these galaxys? Certainly not with the FSD technology on our ships. I wondered if Elitee might not one day let us use black holes as transportation between points in space.

Our super cruise already seems to be based on some kind of gravity manipulation, so who knows, they might be capable of allowing you to survive the tidal forces of a back hole.

 

[Tinman]

My version:

3.0 Ship interiors and the ability to get out of the chair as a headline feature and later in the season atmospheric lifeless planets. Atmospheric lifeless planets will at this stage mostly be played pretty much as we are already doing it from the SRV just with more types of environments. First examples of NPC avatars can now be interacted with face to face on ships (passengers for example). Boarding might come as a 3.x update.

4.0 Station/settlement interiors as headline features. Now with more fleshed out NPC avatars. Might also allow us to get into bases on foot to steal/kill stuff and so on...

5.0 Potentially planets with life and vegetation...but not full outdoor cities.

6.0 To far ahead to speculate...