Exobiology improvement: hovercraft SRV (SLF)

[mnlg]

Kind of like the VTOL in Astroneer: flies (consuming fuel) up to some height, no wheels, can take off/land vertically, small landing footprint/lands (almost) anywhere.
Faster than the SRV when flying. Higher rate of fuel consuption.
Has SRV scanner, or even better, a new exobiology scanner (please).
Crews 1.
No weapons.
No cargo hold. No cargo scoop. Cannot pick up anything.
It works as a SLF and is deployed/collected when the ship is hovering.

This is an attempt to make exobiology more approachable with a large exploration ship, with which landing can be a pain in the neck occasionally, especially for certain terrains.
At first I thought about a SLF, but the more I thought about it, the more I think a hovercraft would make more sense.

 

[aRJay]

Kind of like the VTOL in Astroneer: flies (consuming fuel) up to some height, no wheels, can take off/land vertically, small landing footprint/lands (almost) anywhere.
Faster than the SRV when flying. Higher rate of fuel consuption.
Has SRV scanner, or even better, a new exobiology scanner (please).
Crews 1.
No weapons.
No cargo hold. No cargo scoop. Cannot pick up anything.
It works as a SLF and is deployed/collected when the ship is hovering.

This is an attempt to make exobiology more approachable with a large exploration ship, with which landing can be a pain in the neck occasionally, especially for certain terrains.
At first I thought about a SLF, but the more I thought about it, the more I think a hovercraft would make more sense.

Give it a very limited ground travel ability so it can be handled like the manned SRVs rather than the unmanned drone that is the SLF. That way fewer new stuff needs coding.

 

[Jack Brolin]

Exobio Sidewinder ftw I use a Hauler, it's amazing.

I do like the idea of making the large ships more viable by giving the SLF bay a landable science vessel though. Explorers already use SLFs for poking around lagrange points and stuff.

 

[roncollucci]

It probably would make more sense to have your main ship able to hover at about 20 ft from the surface and be able to drop your SRV to the ground or come and pick it up without putting out the landing gear.

 

[aRJay]

It probably would make more sense to have your main ship able to hover at about 20 ft from the surface and be able to drop your SRV to the ground or come and pick it up without putting out the landing gear.

There should also be a way to do this on foot.

Ships tend to be less twitchy with the gear down so it should be doable both ways.

 

[roncollucci]

There should also be a way to do this on foot.

Ships tend to be less twitchy with the gear down so it should be doable both ways.

That would be nice to and hope that you don't break a leg on
What kept you from Landing.

 

[Niselle]

Kind of like the VTOL in Astroneer: flies (consuming fuel) up to some height, no wheels, can take off/land vertically, small landing footprint/lands (almost) anywhere.
Faster than the SRV when flying. Higher rate of fuel consuption.
Has SRV scanner, or even better, a new exobiology scanner (please).
Crews 1.
No weapons.
No cargo hold. No cargo scoop. Cannot pick up anything.
It works as a SLF and is deployed/collected when the ship is hovering.

This is an attempt to make exobiology more approachable with a large exploration ship, with which landing can be a pain in the neck occasionally, especially for certain terrains.
At first I thought about a SLF, but the more I thought about it, the more I think a hovercraft would make more sense.

Exactly what I wanted to suggest, I created an account here just to bump this up

Everytime I do exobiology (especially on dark planets looking for bacteria) I wish we had hoverbike with implemented scanner. It would bring so much new joy to exobiology! To feel the proverbial wind in my hair would be somewhat freeing, all this planetary surface stretching over the horizon, just for me and my hoverbike! (and my samples of course)

This is the only thing I really, really, really wish was added in the game..

o7

 

[Nidoboros]

Code-wise, how is SRV fuel calculated? Because if it's based on distributor draw... it can work like a normal SRV, just 4-pip engine can fill up fast enough to be able to perpetually thrust. So now when it's on the ground, normal fuel use, when in hover, it burns through quick(er). This does mean you can effectively fly up until you run out of fuel, or might have to pulse like with the Scarab.

Maybe add a toggle so it is always a low thrust to hover... or a throttle for it. Like right now we have 100% thrust, or 0% thrust. It's going to be different for each planet's gravity, but that'll give people s reason to pay attention to the local gravity sign. It still needs to be able to turn off and land for when you get out.

Omni-directional lighting when you disembark would be great to help you see things. The smallest of guns with a terrible distributor draw (I don't know about hostile lifeforms or needing to shoot terrain things).

It can have a cargo scoop, but give the other SRVs a boost so the Hover SRV won't outshine it... and maybe give us a dedicated mining SRV that's even better. Maybe a mining gun that will multiply the number of chunks from rocks.

I don't want to say 'more engineering for custom SRVs,' but... we got that for suits and guns, why not for SRVs, it would be dope.

 

[Marcus Bronco]

It probably would make more sense to have your main ship able to hover at about 20 ft from the surface and be able to drop your SRV to the ground or come and pick it up without putting out the landing gear.

This goes hand in hand with the feature of dropping Pilot as a parachutist.. the game says also Eject eject but unfortunately has never developed in 10 years this! It's just pure non sense, this is why I strongly criticize new updates free or not free of this game, bringing new things but not augmenting, enhancing, improving and balancing the game that is already there which would bring so much potential this game has to Boom for good in a positive extremely positive way.

Dropping out can happen Eject (escape pod) that is emergency stuff
And also Dropping below (positive let's say but used also for other reasons) maybe, when you want to go out without escape pod ,, unless this also is going to be done with a pod (helldivers style?!! lol) in order to get on ground with conflict zones or in other cases.

Instead of having the landing.

Such thing of course would need us to buy such capability (while the eject as pod would just need us to buy the POD all the time we have used one), in some ships the pods should be stockable, sidewinder can have only 1... incremental stacking of a "storage magazine of pods" in other bigger ships.

So u have summarizing it up.

Eject vertically up or down, done in different cases and being very much different:
Eject upward is very fast and uses the cockpit as a pod?
Eject downward is or without pod maybe possible at a certain height from the ground (max 80 meters?... depending on Gravity too!.. higher distance allowed if low graivity planetary body)

As you can see all thechnical fun aspects can be built on this, also buying and personalization aspects, it also allow more different gameplay, roles, and actions ...
Eject downward without pod (select it) can also be done in future for EVAs, which will be something Maintenance mechanics will do (missions) of various types in openspace...

 

[Marcus Bronco]

I m strongly for: connecting the dots of the game, with balancing, filling holes and so on that do not work, or stuff that is there and should have effective stuff , actions, interaction, we should be able to do, I hope developers besides opening new things do rememebr what game they have and give value to what they have: maintenance, improvement of instances (OPEN), connecting lore and actions example made above: Eject is not there... you should be able to eject yourself in a pod.

The gameplay continues like that. You have limited oxygen... you can be saved. It means emergent gameplay , you can be killed also or taken.
It's damn fun, I really don't udnerstand why this is not being done... It's a game, it's so fun potentially.

 

[Riverside]

One of the things I hoped Odyssey & physical multi-crew would add was the option to physically fly an SLF and land it independently of the mothership. I'd use it for exibio but it could have other uses too.

Only being able to dock with the mothership while both are in flight wouldn't be a hindrance, nor would not being able to land/dismiss the mothership or the 26km range.

However I believe the SLF doesn't have a fuel gauge, that would probably need to be addressed. Adding a comp scanner to the SLF would be nice too, I don't recall whether they already have that.

It seems so close to being do-able with what we have already

 

[Easy]

I think the Goliath Drone model would be a very good candidate for this.

FDEV did a great job with the whole deployment and docking of an SLF or for the drop and pick up of the Scarab and Scorpion.

I'd be willing to forgo the animation of pick up and drop off (just fade to black and fade from black), to get access to a Goliath deployed out of an SLF bay for the purposes described above. It could be limited to planetary deployments, weapons nerfed or maintained depending upon version.

 

[Marcus Bronco]

Yes sort of "instant" or semi instant ejection would be nice here and there, an element of diversity, also underlining and giving value at the same time to the actual more mechanical interactions\ actions that can be input in this game which taste is anyway care for details ( something I would not want it to give up ever, becoming an arcade nullity)
So I think that stuff needs always to have a sequence of things also for technical reasons (it allows loading to be hidden behind such process as some PC are not all good as ours so that they can also play, having the loading of space around them completed before another instance is freely interactible.

This regarding the ejection or sort of helldiver jump is something very suggestive of how cool would be jumping from the back for some special troops insertions or even yourself before the ship takes the LBO (low body orbit) or another far away area and waits in safety...
Such a jump or exiting would be so cool thing... maybe hand in hand with ship interiors ... ehm ehm.

Won't divert the topic from OVERCRAFT and EXOBIOLOGY suggestion request anymore, I hope the messages added something more than take away from the topic.

 

[MakashiGames]

Gotta say I have to agree with this one. We need a Guardian Hover bike. Maybe it is out there for us to uncover and research!