That’s No Moon... Environment Requests for Elite: Dangerous and our Dev Team’s Responses.
As soon as the Kickstarter campaign was announced the forum became a hive of activity, with the community speculating about what features could be present in the final game and how certain mechanics could work. These ideas were eventually dragged together into a long list of requests, which I promised to pass on to the dev team once the Kickstarter had ended.
So here we are, the Kickstarter over and the development of Elite: Dangerous well and truly underway. As promised, the list of requests was passed on for scrutiny and I can now begin to report back to you on how they were received!
In the first of these weekly updates we’ll be looking at our dev team’s reaction to some of the environment features the community requested during the Kickstarter campaign...
Galaxy Secrets
Much of the discussion on the forums during the Kickstarter campaign was to do with Easter Eggs within the game, as well as hidden tributes to people that have been important to Science and Science Fiction. On these points our team were happy to confirm both, Michael and Sandy had the following to say on this subject:
Sandy:As many as we can stuff in!
Michael:There will be tributes to appropriate people in the game and there will be fun things to discover
Another feature that was enquired about was the existence of ‘secret’ pirate markets, which aren’t associated with any of the game’s official factions. Of course it would be difficult to be a viable outlaw without somewhere to sell your wares after a raid, so both Sandy and Michael were happy to confirm this:
Sandy: There will be various forms of market – including pirate markets and others that are not specifically part of a visible star-system.
Michael:There will be different markets for trade and illegal goods. For illegal trading getting the right contacts is very important.
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Natural Wonders
There were a wide range of queries about what natural features would players be able to find within the galaxy, too many to give you each individual answer. The rule of thumb on this though, is that Elite: Dangerous hopes to replicate our own Milky Way as much as possible, therefore if it is present in our galaxy, we hope to make it present in-game. Our lead designer mentions how we hope to achieve this:
Sandy: We hope to generally base things off the NASA Gaia catalogue (or its predecessor if it’s not available in good time).
In regards to phenomena such as Black holes and supernovas, the hope is to eventually tie in as many of these sorts of things as possible but this would probably be managed more through the event system and are will likely be things that occur post-release.
One interesting idea that was pitched was that of a ‘seven wonders of the galaxy’, whether this would be natural or man-made wonders, Michael had the following to say on this idea:
Michael: It might make for a fun mission. Could also be a good one for player input, we’ll investigate after the initial release.
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Man-Made Structures
In a future where space exploration and colonisation is common-place, such as the future that Elite is set in, there will of course be a myriad of structures to see. This is another aspect that has piqued many people’s interest, what exactly can you hope to see? Here is a short list detailing our stance on a variety of things that have already been asked about:
Confirmed: Ship Graveyards, ‘Closed worlds’, a wide variety of space stations, Ruins & ‘mysterious structures’
Maybe: Space Elevators, ‘City Worlds’
No: Jump Gates, Ring Worlds, Dyson Spheres
The concept of ‘closed worlds’ is obviously a fairly ambiguous concept. The original query described it as “Closed worlds with an epic defence system”. However, our definition of closed worlds are places that will be off-limits to players, for future purposes. Here are Michael and Sandy’s stance on this element:
Sandy:There will be closed worlds with various reasons (not necessarily defence systems) for why they are closed.
Michael: There will be closed worlds for various reasons, what keeps them closed will vary depending on why it is a closed world.
This wraps up our summary of the environment requests that we received early on. Hopefully you can understand the omissions that have been made and celebrate those features that are planned! If you have any feedback about the format of these updates or any C&C to give it would be greatly appreciated and thanks again for backing Elite: Dangerous!
Thanks, Ashley
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