Lazy method? Besides NPCs flying around, how else you can emulate POI in space?
Elite Dangerous: Horizons and Future Updates
- Thread starter Barking_Mad
- Start date
Lazy method? Besides NPCs flying around, how else you can emulate POI in space?
This! I was really wondering if your ship can be destroyed while you are out on a road trip.
Would make me feel a bit like this:
[video=youtube;ajsNJtnUb7c]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ajsNJtnUb7c[/video]
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In so many ways Pecisk!
(atleast, USS as relates to missions where you could/should be given more info about the general area of your target)
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I think it's because USS can clearly come across as a simplistic gaming mechanic, rather than the workings of a huge interesting (realistic) galaxy.
Consider RES for example... Are these even approaching anything believable? Why are a never ending queue of Wanted's turning up to these areas where before them they can see every preceeding Wanted being blown to pieces. Why are they going there? The illusion doesn't hold, the bubble bursts, and it's clear it's just a mechanics to render random ships for you to blow up for CR.
And the same is true of USS more often than not (at the moment at least).
There needs to be some sense of continuity and realism surely to give as much of these mechanics meaning and interest, along with a huge variety of them.
What I fear about Horizons is, the same approach will be taken to planetary surfaces as ED takes to space. Where it will just be a bunch of disparate obvious mini-games offered at the throw of a dice, with no clear bigger/broader mechanics at work.
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USS are simply a type of dynamic/random encounters that you see in most open world games that spawns around your character. You see the same thing in games like Skyrim/Fallout/GTA/Witcher 3 when you comes across patrols, travelling merchants, slavers, robberies and so on...these things doesn't actually exists in the world at all times, they are spawned around your character.
Then there is of course persistent locations in games like this that only exist in specific locations. Things like towns (starports), caves (RES) and more...
On the planet the static objects like starports and other structures that can't move by their nature will be persistent locations that will be shown on your planetary map that is the same for everyone (just like stations, RES, nav beacons, CZ...). Smaller things like potentially roaming patrols or maybe small loot drops could of course still be spawned around you as you approach them just like the USS in space does.
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Good and useful recapitulative of what comes. Thanks
Updates thanks to Tinman's post on Planetary maps.
· Planetary maps will be available to players [Link: 29m 16s]
· Planetary bases will exist as a permanent feature of the planets and will not be instanced. [Link: 29m 20s]
· Smaller points of interest will only show up on the scanner when you're near them. [Link: 29m 20s]
· Planetary maps will be available to players [Link: 29m 16s]
· Planetary bases will exist as a permanent feature of the planets and will not be instanced. [Link: 29m 20s]
· Smaller points of interest will only show up on the scanner when you're near them. [Link: 29m 20s]
Planetary starports will be permanent. Smaller bases will pop up in scans.
This thread will also show up on the EDCodex website once it goes live.
Now, if I read things like resources (for mining) could be found, and were a permanent feature, until they had been removed, I'd be interested!
ie: If you found a site on a planet with say 10,000t of gold to be mined, so you could then return, maybe in a Wing later to "remove" it... ie: Anything to start creating a more "solid" galaxy that isn't populated with transient encounters/mechanics.
My fear is, each time you return to a planet, you'll simply find new material to mine over and over and over simply in random locations
So you could find it this morning, but this afternoon when you scan (again), it will be gone? This is what I feared
If this is the case, I'm getting the distinct feeling FD are simply happy to "aim low"
ie: To settle for simplistic mechanics and gameyplay that don't represent the hopes we had for the game back in Kickstarter days when the impression was of nice sweaping tiered mechanics that could render a far more interesting and varied experience.
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![[VR] Mad Mike](https://forums-cdn.zaonce.net/data/avatars/m/27/27910.jpg?1553527108){kind=avatar}
Is this hear to stay do you think? whilst obviously some structures should simply be on the map - such as the legal star ports etc, it boggles my mind that the location of black markets is advertised too.
To me the no brainer mechanic should be you need to sniff these out, and only THEN do they appear on the map - and of course this should sometimes be out of date when they get closed down under stings etc.
I am a bit worried that we will jump in a system, look in a map and it will have a big sign on our system map "super secret hidded pirate base THIS WAY!" on top of a moon.
ideally imo we should be doing missions, get allied to a local faction and maybe then get given the co-ords to said base OR hints on the local system galnet news ("high number of pirate ships spotted around the 2d moon of Jaglan Beta near the the Axle Nebula (its cold bring your towel!)" but even then you should have to go and investigate and maybe snoop on radio comms etc or follow a ship down to said moon).
I will be so dissapointed if nothing is done with this. We shall see.
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So you could find it this morning, but this afternoon when you scan (again), it will be gone? This is what I feared
If this is the case, I'm getting the distinct feeling FD are happy to "aim low"
I really don't know how this is aiming low. There will be small bases, which will be goals of your missions. You destroy base, get what you want, move away.
There will be also permanent structures, like starports, and possible other POIs.
Most dynamically created POIs will be very small, most likely thrown together bases or wrecks. As for resources - good point. As FD generates planet, I suspect they know which places can bee deemed as good mining spots, so I expect those to be persistent.
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Not really. What Edward said was this:
I'm guessing the bases we will be able to attack will be permanent in the same way conflict zones are (something everyone can see).
What "smaller points of interest" actually are we don't know yet.
There is also no reason why even smaller things couldn't be "permanent" on a planet if they used a static seed as basis for generating them.
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This conflicts with message they carried during streams. But ok, if that's really true...I don't mind either way
Now, if I read things like resources (for mining) could be found, and were a permanent feature, until they had been removed, I'd be interested!
ie: If you found a site on a planet with say 10,000t of gold to be mined, so you could then return, maybe in a Wing later to "remove" it... ie: Anything to start creating a more "solid" galaxy that isn't populated with transient encounters/mechanics.
My fear is, each time you return to a planet, you'll simply find new material to mine over and over and over simply in random locations
So you could find it this morning, but this afternoon when you scan (again), it will be gone? This is what I feared
If this is the case, I'm getting the distinct feeling FD are simply happy to "aim low"
First of all...we don't actually know anything yet...
However, I assume the issue here is just the enormous effort that would be required for the servers to keep track of every single individual POI in the game both in space and on the ground if all of them had to be synced and updated across for all players. I can see a middle ground where a planets yield slowly decreases over time depending on how many people fly around there, but I'm very much sceptical about that level of detail in regards to individual POI.
The locations doesn't have to be random BTW (unless we are talking about mobile encounters like patrols). Just like locations in Minecraft or NMS aren't random since they are based of a static seed.
Because if "things" just appear clearly at random, that's hardly giving a sense of a living breathing universe, with nice deep interwoven mechanics! Instead it gives the sense of a bunch of dice being rolled.
Until we have broad intelligent mechanics, with persistent objects/NPCs and effects, ED will feel "empty" IMHO.
Consider two similar scenarios...
Scenario 1
You go to a planet and scan it. Up pops "Pirate Base". You attack it and get some CR based reward. You know full well, if you hadn't of attacked it, and come back 5 minutes later, it would be gone. The dice would have rolled a different number.
Scenario 2
You enter a system, and notice a Wanted ship heading towards a remote moon. You follow and see it disappear down on to the surface. You scan and pick up a base. Do don't want to risk attacking yourself, so later that day you return with two of your friend to attack it, only to find another group of CMDRs already attacking it. Do you leave? Do you attack the CMDRs?
Ideally we want to see a more living breathing universe with balanced/interwoven persistent mechanics & objects, and not a bunch of localised mini-games offered by the roll of a dice.
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I guess what would be nice would be to have:
A pre-calculated number of tonnes of mineable assets that exist on any planet/moon.
The amount would depend on the size of the planet/moon and the rarity of the minerals etc on it.
The total amount would be unknown to players, but its locations could be found by scanning the planets/moons.
Mining stations in individual areas would deplete the total amount until it is all gone.
As bases can be attacked it will be interesting to see how this plays into the entire dynamic of factions/powers.
A pre-calculated number of tonnes of mineable assets that exist on any planet/moon.
The amount would depend on the size of the planet/moon and the rarity of the minerals etc on it.
The total amount would be unknown to players, but its locations could be found by scanning the planets/moons.
Mining stations in individual areas would deplete the total amount until it is all gone.
As bases can be attacked it will be interesting to see how this plays into the entire dynamic of factions/powers.
I'm quite worried that they'll go down the scenario one route. While I like your idea for scenario two, ideally I'd like to see the situation where you find the pirate base, return to port, get rewarded for locating the base - this could include scanning the base and identifying how strong it is, then the port spawns missions on the bulletin board to attack that base. Once the base is destroyed, which could work using a sort of community goal type mechanic to give everyone a chance at the action (including pirates who could defend it) it's gone completely, until a new pirate base is found.
Anything to give some persistence, more intelligent and broader cause & effect mechanics.
Remember back in Kickstarter days when these exact things were being talked about by DB. With the implication being if a system was found with lots of resources, you could earmark it for yourself, or hand in the data. Ultimately it would result in the resources being mined, the system getting busier and as the materials were shipped in/out of the system, neaby markets/economies being effected...
So is Horizons keeping that approach in mind? Because alternatively, I guess we could just throw some dice, and randomly get some USS and things to mine on the planet.
Which sounds the better solutions to aim for?
I'm fearful they will too
And given the thought processes that gave us PP are probably at work within Horizons, I'm very fearful frankly. So I suspect we're destined for more detached mini-games I truly hope I'm wrong, and we instead start to see some broader mechanics starting to appear. At the very least, hopefully the new mini-games could be interesting/engaging?
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This can't be emphasized enough. With so many people on the forums accusing Frontier of "breaking promises", "price gouging", "moving goalposts" and the like, it's good to have the evidence that what Frontier are doing, and what they said all along they would do are one and the same.