Elite Dangerous - internal ship hijinx needed here.

I had a negative ah-ha moment with 400+billion stars and making the planetary systems even remotely interesting and exciting.

Assume frontier succeed in this, it might have the odd effect of making the most exciting, interesting, beautiful, significant and majestic into "just yet another" unforgettable drop of beautiful awe inspiring water in an ocean of stunning thing.

In order for the space-stations and planetary landings to succeed there has to be a number of concessions, which I'm worried about. Even if we are accurate, going of our own solar system, How is mecury's surface really any different from a desert on earth, mars, or an asteroid?
What will distinguish one gas-giant from another. Even in our own solar system we have a lot of sameyness and barren-ness. And not all planets can be visited. Venus's toxic atmosphere will disolve your hull, and neptune would rip you out of the sky with turbulent winds travelling at super high velocities.

Although tracking down that bounty hunter in that derrilict asteroid base (battle beyond the stars) does have it's appeal.

One thing I snapped up on, and haven't been able to drop is how to solve this is the space ships themselves, and as one of the devs said, the "hijinx" the ship would entail,

and the answer to all of this is Red dwarf.

Err Boff, don't you mean 2001, Star Trek or something a little more, serious and classy.

Nope I seriously mean Red Dwarf as a serious form of creative inspiration.

You see, those boys had barely any budget, they were salvaging jokes and ideas from scrapped scripts. They cut corners everywhere they could.
Entire episodes back to back on the same sets, in the same space ship, in the same cockpit as they tried to outmanoeuvre something (and usually failing) even the albanian state washing machine company were more technically sophisticated.

The ship never changed, but the drama and action did, even if they found themselves in the same core situations, marooned, crashed, bartering for a component or material to get Starbug up and running.
The ship never changed, but the context did, and enjoyment of that ship altered with it.

It is who is on that that space ship, what has happened to it, or in it that made it seam different from week to week.
The canteen/living quarters take on a different context, you could start episode starting off with them annoyed at the smell of Beer and curry as they sat around the table,
To having the Starbug buried hull deep in snow/rubble on an asteroid, with the boys strategising about survival, exchanging stories, jokes and insults.
That's where the show was, conversation drama, bromance derived from the circumstances their ships would land in. Bartering with the Gelfs, raiding ships and old stations for supplies.
Digging out the landing stations.
Trekking over terrain to another downed ship.

Even the Millenium Falcon is well remember because of this, not just because of the barrel rolls, but the moments made onboard, a talk about how the galaxy works by the way of magic and fate or by the gun, yeah, the falcon is well remembered because of the bromance/bonding in the cockpit/fixing the hull, and romance shared onboard whilst having a pit-stop on an asteroid. The cosiness and vulnerability of a damaged ship, hiding, made a worthless asteroid have such fond memories,

We may not need fully explorable planets,
but what will need are some explorable ships, with messy bunks, a smelly kitchen area, even if they are a cupboard / wardrobe <= see the International Space station tours on youtube.
But it's *our* canteen area, in our own comfy Winnebago with wings (<= spaceball nailing the idea squarely on the head).

And as for people who ask if the the ships interior are in zero g.

Just tell them you intend to put the ship on autopilot for in a high velocity loop'da'loop for a few hours whilst you prepare a special dinner or bath.

We're going to need a number of hijinx scenario's and equipment.
Specific landing gear to land on rough surfaces which are unstable that will disperse the weight. Grappling hooks to keep us pinned down. Different ways of leaving the ship that doesn't involve the parade down the steps.

We need the chance to do a Robbinson crussoe. Forcing Elite Dangerous to suddenly have habitable planets be it atomsphere or colony domes where you can play out ground-missions in buggies counting your tanks of air, as you attempt to repair your cobra to being space worthy again (Paul Woakes Mercenary stile). How many sci-fi scenarios have that?

Comedy writers tends to be the best observers of the genre, and the dev's need to start looking to Red Dwarf (even hiring in Mr Grant / Naylor) and start applying their hijinxes to our ships and mission structures.
 
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