News Feature Requests Update #3- We’re not Alone

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Ashley Barley

A
Feature Requests Update #3- We’re not Alone

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Aliens have been a staple of sci-fi since its conception and, with Thargoids, Elite was no different in this trend. Many questions have been asked about the presence of other life forms in Elite: Dangerous; will there be new forms of sentient life? What about cyborgs? Well, the resounding answer from the dev team on this topic is mostly......maybe! But before we go into that, how about we just confirm Thargoids first?

Here are the team’s thoughts on Thargoids and Witch Space:

Michael: Thargoids are in the galaxy, witchspace will no longer exist as such.
Sandy: Thargoids definitely, but Witch Space is a confusing concept and needs to be discussed independently.
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With that out of the way, let’s move on to the maybes. Whilst the dev team are hoping to add as many things to the galaxy for explorers to find, the range and details of these things have not yet been fully fleshed out yet. With that in mind, there were several requests on which the verdict was still out:

Remote civilizations
Sandy: Needs a separate discussion – but something like this could be possible
Michael: Possibly even we don’t know everything that’s hidden in the galaxy yet.
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Alien race seeded into the galaxy when the game starts
Sandy: We would like alien races – but specifics need nailing down.
Michael: There will be mysteries to uncover; some of them may well be alien in nature.
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Sentient Machines
Sandy: Can discuss – needs a separate meeting
Michael: AI is very much illegal in the Elite universe. However that doesn’t mean they can’t make good bad guys.
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Cyborgs
Sandy: This would also need a separate meeting
Michael: Not specifically, but the available technology would allow it, but it’s not a generally available technology.
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As usual, not every request that was passed on to the dev team received a positive response. Whether to avoid falling into common sci-fi tropes or to keep the Elite universe consistent, there were a number of things that the dev team were not keen on:

Parasitic aliens that take over Human NPC Planets
Sandy: Can discuss – but probably not
Michael: Maybe, but it would be nice to see something different in the Elite universe.
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Super advanced aliens that largely ignore humans
Sandy: Probably not, a separate discussion could be had
Michael: Unlikely, we’d want any aliens to be a meaningful part of the galaxy’s existence.
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Energy based aliens
Sandy: No
Michael: Not specifically.
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 'Greys' alien race
Sandy: No
Michael: No.
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That’s it for this requests update, hopefully you can understand the reasons for the omissions and why some things cannot be confirmed as of yet. We’ll be sharing as much as we can with you as development continues and I will be back with another requests update next week. Until then thank you again for your support so far and keep on sharing your thoughts with us on the forums!

Thanks, Ashley
 
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Davidtq

D
Ashley Barley said:
Feature Requests Update #3- We’re not Alone

​
Aliens have been a staple of sci-fi since its conception and, with Thargoids, Elite was no different in this trend. Many questions have been asked about the presence of other life forms in Elite: Dangerous; will there be new forms of sentient life? What about cyborgs? Well, the resounding answer from the dev team on this topic is mostly......maybe! But before we go into that, how about we just confirm Thargoids first?

Here are the team’s thoughts on Thargoids and Witch Space:

Michael: Thargoids are in the galaxy, witchspace will no longer exist as such.
Sandy: Thargoids definitely, but Witch Space is a confusing concept and needs to be discussed independently.

With that out of the way, let’s move on to the maybes. Whilst the dev team are hoping to add as many things to the galaxy for explorers to find, the range and details of these things have not yet been fully fleshed out yet. With that in mind, there were several requests on which the verdict was still out:

Remote civilizations
Sandy: Needs a separate discussion – but something like this could be possible
Michael: Possibly even we don’t know everything that’s hidden in the galaxy yet.

Alien race seeded into the galaxy when the game starts
Sandy: We would like alien races – but specifics need nailing down.
Michael: There will be mysteries to uncover; some of them may well be alien in nature.
Click to expand...

oh wow, a chance we could have aliens besides thargoids. Definite win from me...
 

Bikky

Bikky
Nice, Alien races, and primative races would be good. Probably maybe as an addon for later as Aliens would start to appear in frontier then central systems gradually.

Primative races (similar to the PERN novels from Kerr) could have occurred through generation ships going awry, or a freak wormhole on the basis of Kelewan (from Feist). Or just similar to the human scattering from DUNE novels.

Lots of things need seperate discussion's and meetings though according to Sandy. :p
 

Davidtq

D
Bikky said:
Nice, Alien races, and primative races would be good. Probably maybe as an addon for later as Aliens would start to appear in frontier then central systems gradually.

Primative races (similar to the PERN novels from Kerr) could have occurred through generation ships going awry, or a freak wormhole on the basis of Kelewan (from Feist). Or just similar to the human scattering from DUNE novels.

Lots of things need seperate discussion's and meetings though according to Sandy. :p
Click to expand...

Indeed, this updates opens doors that I thought were slammed shut, and opens all sorts of possibilities.
 

cassius

cassius
Bikky said:
Lots of things need seperate discussion's and meetings though according to Sandy. :p
Click to expand...

Reminds me of Father Jack:

"That would be an ecumenical matter" ;)

Liking the idea of alien races out there in the great unknown. Whether they're intelligent or not, or space-faring or not, i think in a galaxy as big as this we're going to find something... even if its a moderately stupid plant :)

Was suprised to read this though:
Sentient Machines
Sandy: Can discuss – needs a separate meeting
Michael: AI is very much illegal in the Elite universe. However that doesn’t mean they can’t make good bad guys.
Click to expand...

I didn't realise AI was illegal. Is there a reason in the canon for this... like the Butlerian Jihad in Dune?
 

Penthux

Penthux
Ashley Barley said:
Here are the team’s thoughts on Thargoids and Witch Space:
Michael: Thargoids are in the galaxy, witchspace will no longer exist as such.
Sandy: Thargoids definitely, but Witch Space is a confusing concept and needs to be discussed independently.​
Click to expand...

​
Witchspace will no longer exist as such. Are you kidding? Then what will you replace it with? Where will you misjump to (if, indeed, you will be able to misjump at all)? Where will the Thargoids "hang out"?

Witchspace may be a confusing concept but it was more than possible to understand in FFE over 15 years ago! Did witchspace suddenly become uncodeable due to advancements in technology or something?

Witchspace _HAS_ to remain. It's become an institution in the Elite universe!
 

Cody

Cody
I tend to equate witchspace with hyperspace. If I suffer a mis-jump, I get dropped into interstellar space - 'here be dragons!' But that's in immersion mode in another game - how Elite: Dangerous will handle it, I know not.
 

Bikky

Bikky
Penthux said:
[/INDENT]Witchspace will no longer exist as such. Are you kidding? Then what will you replace it with? Where will you misjump to (if, indeed, you will be able to misjump at all)? Where will the Thargoids "hang out"?

Witchspace may be a confusing concept but it was more than possible to understand in FFE over 15 years ago! Did witchspace suddenly become uncodeable due to advancements in technology or something?

Witchspace _HAS_ to remain. It's become an institution in the Elite universe!
Click to expand...

Witchspace was the term given to the area between the two endpoints of the wormhole. IE, If I witched out from here to Arcturus, and misjumped and the hole collapses, I'd just end up somewhere between Sol and Arcturus, and rather than taking seconds to get there, it would take days/weeks.

Cody said:
I tend to equate witchspace with hyperspace. If I suffer a mis-jump, I get dropped into interstellar space - 'here be dragons!' But that's in immersion mode in another game - how Elite: Dangerous will handle it, I know not.
Click to expand...

I'm assuming the basis will be the same, but it will be a hyperlight tunnel, and drive malfunction can cause destabalisation dropping you out between, or navigation malfunction can cause the tunnel to terminate somewhere other than the destination.

Garthyre said:
Sorry - did I miss something?

What does 'Grays' alien race allude to?
Click to expand...

The stereotypical alien type look with big head, big but slanty eyes, and grey skin. Think of PAUL.
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1092026/
 

Davidtq

D
Penthux said:
[/INDENT]Witchspace will no longer exist as such. Are you kidding? Then what will you replace it with? Where will you misjump to (if, indeed, you will be able to misjump at all)? Where will the Thargoids "hang out"?

Witchspace may be a confusing concept but it was more than possible to understand in FFE over 15 years ago! Did witchspace suddenly become uncodeable due to advancements in technology or something?

Witchspace _HAS_ to remain. It's become an institution in the Elite universe!
Click to expand...

Witchspace has varied a lot already. In the darkwheel it was a very interesting region that I would love to see explored, there seemed to be stable set entrances to witch space in some parts and jump anywhere in others. In Elite of course there was no set entrance points for witchspace and no advertising hoardings etc.

By time we got to frontier \ FFE it was far more of a wormhole type effect rather than a seperate region of space. I definetely think the darkwheels witchspace (not too disimilar to 40ks "warp space" was the richer more interesting (and less probable) fiction.

As far as I can remember witchspace wasnt in the frontier manuals even any more.
 

Selezen

Selezen
Isn't "witchspace" just a nickname for interstellar space? The big empty bit that doesn't have a star system nearby?

The concept of the "witchspace thargoid encounters" in Elite was described as them ripping you out of hyperspace into the interstellar void - logical as you're in transit between two points.

I thought that was still the concept.
 

Davidtq

D
Selezen said:
Isn't "witchspace" just a nickname for interstellar space? The big empty bit that doesn't have a star system nearby?

The concept of the "witchspace thargoid encounters" in Elite was described as them ripping you out of hyperspace into the interstellar void - logical as you're in transit between two points.

I thought that was still the concept.
Click to expand...

Not in the Darkwheel it wasnt, witch space was very different there.

The Darkwheel said:
You move through this chaos and a new voice begins to call for attention. Now you're with the
Faraway Orientation Systems Controller; FOSC—or SysCon—sets you up for the big jump. You're going to cover maybe seven light years in a few minutes, and you might think that's a lot of space to get lost in, but that isn't how it works. Faraway is a tunnel, like any other tunnel. Inside that tunnel is the realm called
Witch-Space, a magic place, a place where the normal rules of the Universe don't necessarily work. And every few thousand parsecs along the Witch-Space tunnel there are monitoring satellites, and branch lines, and stop points, and rescue stations; and passing by all of these are perhaps a hundred channels, a hundred
'lines' for ships to travel, each one protected against the two big dangers of hyperspace travel: atomic reorganisation, and time displacement.

Jump on your own through hyperspace, across more than half a light year, and you'll be lucky to make the same Universe, let alone your destination.
You might emerge from Witch-Space turned inside out (which is not a pretty sight).

You might be stretched in all the wrong angles, and although the ship keeps travelling, that jelly mass of broken bone and flesh inside the cabin is you.

According to legend, you might come through okay and breathe a sigh of relief, only to go into
Earth orbit and wonder why that big lizard, with the teeth and the long tail and the green scales is roaring up at you, and warning you off of his nice Jurassic patch of prehistoric desert.
To go Faraway is a killer, unless you obey the rules.
Click to expand...

The Darkwheel said:
They say that Witch-Space is haunted. Maybe that's why they call it 'witch'. Time turns all around, and atoms turn inside out, and gravity waves billow up, and things move there, lifeforms, or shadows, or atoms, or galaxies, who knows? No-one has ever stopped and gone outside to find out. Only robot remotes exist there, switching stations, monitors, rescue Droids and the like. Whatever lives in Witch-Space, in the
Faraway tunnels, will remain a mystery always.

But there are ghosts there. The ghosts of the early ships that went in to Faraway, and didn't come out again.
Ghosts . . .
And shadows.
Click to expand...
 
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