Hi, Devs!
First, thanks for Elite Dangerous. It's a great game. I'm your fan since Rollercoaster Tycoon 3, which brought me to Planet Coaster, then Elite Dangerous. This suggestion here popped up in my mind with a "why not?" and "how hasn't anyone considered that before?", so I decided to bring it to you.
We all Sci-Fi fans know there is a threat looming on the horizon called Star Citizen. Although their fruitition is still far in the distance, I consider them a real competitor, since they promise to give us players great gameplay, wonderful graphics, and incredible immersion thourgh first person experience and VR. If they manage to give us this three features, they will sure stablish a water divisor in Sci-Fi gaming market.
...then I realized something wonderful:
ELITE DANGEROUS IS ALMOST THERE! So, do you want overthrow their plans and thwart their evil market domination scheme? You can, because really, you already have done the most difficult part (I mean, "great gameplay" and "wonderful graphics" parts). What you must still provide is the immersion factor through first person experience (since VR is still there!). So, here is my suggestion, in steps:
1- Design Station interiors: not much needed here, just add one blueprint for each station type - Coriolis, Ocellus, Orbis, Outpost, Asteroid Base, Capital Ship Dock, Installation and two or three for Plantary bases (all these types came from ED Wiki). You could also use this "Capital Ship Dock" blueprint with the upcoming Fleet Carriers (in case you do not desire to create specific blueprints for each one of their roles - Mining, Exploration, etc).
2- Apply different "skins" (textures and decorations) to each subtype, according to each case: Standard Station, Wealthy, Tourism, Refinery, Tech Station, Agriculture, Damaged, Damaged (ongoing repairs) and Asteroid Base.
3- Determine functionality: Do this keeping in mind we need basically:
- a Social Hub where we could see and chat with other players' avatars (something like a bigger public space with some more private ones for squadron meetings, roleplay, business and so on);
- "shops" where we could go to use the already present features we access using "Starport Services" screen (there could also be terminals where we could find the nowadays interface, for the lazy ones among us);
- Hangars / landing area where we could see the ship (feature already present in Horizons expansion, where we can see our ship when landed on planets). Of course we are talking about a landing area / hangar where we could see, outfit, repair and reload our ships (and, naturally, activate SRVs). Plantary Bases could use this hangars as a door to the outside, so we could lower our SRV from ships and use them for planetary exploration or just leave the place, by foot, to explore;
- A way to move through environments: "Performance-wise", the transitions between station rooms and between hangar and the exterior environment would be done via Elevators and Hangar Doors which would hide the loading screen and the proportion between the base interior and planetary exteriors; the same would happen when leaving a station on foot through, let's say, an Airlock - the same trick you already use when we jump from system to system. Outside, additionally to the already present objects in the game, we would also find direlict bases / crashed ships to explore, which could also be present in space, not only on a planet surface.
4- Design Ship interiors: probably this would be the most complicated due to the number of ships already present ingame. Basically, give us some place to walk in and some screens to access functions today connected to ships pilot seat. A gunner seat, probably, with access to every turreted module? Perhaps a "Personal Quarters" where we could instantly sleep and logout? A Cargohold room with terminals to manage the Inventory tab, with Refinery, Sinthesis, etc? A Social room with access to Power Play, Galnet, etc? In short, I'm suggesting dismembering the omniscient, omnipotent and omnipresent pilot seat into smaller rooms, creating an effective funcional ship. "But there are people who like everything in one place", you might say. Yes, there are. For them, we could have a module (something like a "Central Processor Interface"), something basic, tier 1 slot, which we could fit into our ship and that would enable the old HUD for the pilot seat (as a token of generosity, all ships would have an extra 1 Optional Component slot added to them so we could fit this module without further issues, lol).
With this steps, I believe we would have the experience Star Citizen aims to create. The problem is: they are trying hard, loosing time, making promises we don't know they will fulfill... and you already got it all in Elite Dangerous! You would really be "the first one" in this "simulated space race"... all the rest (including Star Citizen) would be viewed as a copycat, or a game based on ED (have you ever heard terms like "Metroidvania" or "Rogue-like"? Do you think about "Warcraft" in RTS genre or "Civilization" series in 4x? That's the kind of thing I'm talking about).
Collateral "damage": having more reasons to look great would surely stimulate us more towards clothing and appearance microtransations.
Potencial for expansion (as in terms of ingame content, as in terms of selling an Expansion Pack): in the future, we could have first-person weapons (gunfire and combat!), direlict bases (space and planetary, ruins, etc) for resource loot and exploration, small personal inventory and alien NPCs (friendly on stations and hostile on direlict bases / starships / ruins, so we could kill them when exploring)... but this is a matter for another post, in this very future.
Thanks for the opportunity to suggest here and for all the attention I'm sure you will dedicate to this post.
SmaugBR
