Horror elements while out in the black

[Lord Baron Von Vaderham]

I can't be the only one who thinks it would be fun to have some spooky stuff happen out in the black.

1) Ghosts on the sensors that appear, do strange things, and then vanish
2) Whispers or strange noises in the cockpit
3) Odd comments from the the COVAS
4) Things that can only be seen on night vision and then vanish, especially in SRVs
5) Things on the fringes of your view in witch space
6) Dropping out of hyperspace for no apparent reason, or to experience any of the above.
7) Escape pods that follow you somehow, or vanish from your inventory if you pick them up.
8) Remnants of large space battles that vanish after you leave them, labeled as distress calls

 

[g0oglyeyes]

All these ideas sound fun except for 6) which I vehemently against, because it screws people over if they don't have fuel to redo the jump. Thargoid hyperdictions have the same issue, but you are far less likely to be jumping on the last block of fuel and it is clustered around the bubble where scoopable stars and stations are plenty.

The rest of it should be centered around a Halloween even, but maybe not all the time. You can chalk it up to space madness, but remember this is still a sim. You wouldn't want random gremlins taking your plane apart in MSFS

 

[Rubbernuke]

Misjumps too: https://forums.frontier.co.uk/threa...and-finding-your-way-out.535921/#post-8253986

 

[aRJay]

Planet surfaces at night can be creepy enough already there is no need to boost the creepiness of the whole game as a general thing after all while OP might not be the only one who likes that sort of stuff there will also be plenty who dislike it.

A few things such as Halloween which have a limited duration and date are fine and an occasional creepy event that happens in a limited location wouldn’t be too bad but no more than that.

 

[ethelred]

It would be great if they added anything to make the universe feel alive but I don't think the engine would support things like this.

We could totally have a mystery that causes strange phenomena in a region - ideally we have it unannounced so it's discovered with players noticing certain effects in and around a volume of space for something story led and needing CMDRs to work together to solve.

I think other priorities, if it's even possible, are focusing the devs right now though, mind.

 

[Jmanis]

I can't be the only one who thinks it would be fun to have some spooky stuff happen out in the black.

1) Ghosts on the sensors that appear, do strange things, and then vanish
2) Whispers or strange noises in the cockpit
3) Odd comments from the the COVAS
4) Things that can only be seen on night vision and then vanish, especially in SRVs
5) Things on the fringes of your view in witch space
6) Dropping out of hyperspace for no apparent reason, or to experience any of the above.
7) Escape pods that follow you somehow, or vanish from your inventory if you pick them up.

The biggest problem is... why?

Specifically... nobody cares about these things. Pirates don't attack in the deep black because FD removed that sort of thing. USS get ignored because either they're universally bad unless you have a specific reason for seeking a specific type... and explorers* as a general rule think anything taking away from their massive LY range is a bad idea, so nobody is out there to interact with signals anyway.

All that's left after that is "random mechanical failure" which is bad.

Starsector, however, does this well.

Sensor ghost

Sensor ghosts are anomalous sensor readings encountered in hyperspace. Although they generate the same sensor pings as actual unidentified fleets, approaching closely reveals the absence of a material object if it's of such a type- which most often is the case. Many or most are decorative and do...

starsector.fandom.com

That's because, although it might be hard to tell if you aren't familiar with the game:

• the sensor ghosts described matter in various ways, especially the one which mimicks a large fleet boosting towards you... getting that one wrong can result in big problems
• the things you want to seek out might look like sensor ghosts, and so you might take risks to seek out one, only to find out was a ghost, costing you time, fuel and likely extra damage to ships

So... ghosts are all well and good, but they only work if the real things are things people care about in the first place.... which they aren't.

8) Remnants of large space battles that vanish after you leave them, labeled as distress calls

This is literally how distress call USS work now.

 

[Factabulous]

Lots of spooky sites out there already. Generally people ignore them unless they are farmable.

Holloway Bioscience Research Station 15 in Snake Sector GW-W C1-1 is a spooky story that sticks in my mind.

 

[DjVortex]

Could also have some one-in-a-thousand-times spooky events at space stations, as happened to me due to a weird glitch.

It's a real shame I couldn't get a video capture of it, but it was so perfect that I swear for a second I was second-guessing if it was intentional rather than a bug.

 

[Lord Baron Von Vaderham]

This is literally how distress call USS work now.

I don't think I've ever seen a mega ship in a distress call USS. Ghost ships in general could be fun.

All that's left after that is "random mechanical failure" which is bad.

There's a reason I didn't add that to the list.

explorers* as a general rule think anything taking away from their massive LY range is a bad idea,

Not only have I never understood this mentality, but I found exploration to be painfully boring. I made it all the way to Colonia in a Beluga during my second month of playing and the only time I ever felt any degree of excitement was when I accidentally pancaked into a high gravity landable. I also realized that, as a new player, I had no idea if I was looking at anything even remotely interesting or not. Sure, that's a really pretty red gas giant with awesome stripes and a huge ring. But how many millions of those are there out in the galaxy? Inversely, I know I missed more than a few things that I shouldn't have because I just never though they were worth checking out. Having something obviously out of place as you're jumping in, jumping out, flying around, scanning, etc could be a good way to tip players off to look closer. I don't want "terror", I want "dread".

What got me thinking about this was The Man In The Wall from Warframe. Sometimes you will be walking around your ship, which should be empty, and suddenly there will be a doppelganger of you. It was just rare enough that you would forget about the guy before hearing "Hey, kiddo" and jumping out of your skin. The place I saw him most often was sitting on the Codex console (think looking back in an Alliance Crusader and seeing somebody sitting on the left hand co-pilot console.) He would then just vanish the moment you looked away. Seeing as how we are never getting ship interiors, this isn't really an option.

 

[KRISXR]

I'd like to share a story.
When I returned to the game there was alot of new content. One of the things I had learned about was gaurdian tech. I watched a video from down to earth astronomy and headed to Synuefe NL-N C23-4Planet: B 3 in an non engineered anaconda. Got there and was just in awe of the experience, I was a having a ton of fun running around that site, i had a list of the materials needed for the guardian tech i wanted. Spent two or three nights there.

I was starting to feel comfortable not ever seeing any blips on the radar. No coms chatter. Nothing but silence, black, and the headlights of the anaconda illuminating this ancient site. Made me feel safe. At the end of the second night I was taking a break, sitting in the cockpit with just my thoughts and my mind stimulated with all of the new things i'm going to experience, I had been reading and watching videos about the lore, thargoids, settlements, gaurdians, I was smack dab in the middle of nothing, thinking of the dangers of one wrong jump, noobie piloting error, and how risky it is just being nowhere. I was tiered, and content.

With my tiered mind wandering my eye had noticed movement on the radar, I watched it, it was jittery, knowing something was just out of range of the D rated sensors, the contact went solid. A squirt of adrenaline entered my blood stream and my mind bagan to snap to alertness, the contact was on a slow direct approach. The anaconda has a good field of veiw, so I reeled my head around looking directly in the location of the contact... nothing. My mind now is conjouring up all kinds of scenarios of being attacked and the methods of my potiential escape. Feeling confident I watched, closer and closer, it's right on top of me, no visual contact. A faint errie sound bareley audible in my headphones as the contact approached. I follwed the contact all the way to the ground where it landed beside me at the 11 o'clock postion, no visual contact. I imdediatley had thoughts of being boarded (member im a return player not knowing this isn't possible, yet), the adrenaline rushed a little more, I'm staring directly at the contact, no visual, my mind started searching in the aparition realm, or possibly I have worn out my welcome with the gaurdians. I began to feel aggitated through fear.

After a few more moments of trying to make a visual contact, I said "enough!" and firered up the engines. The contact took off as well. I brought the gear up and pursued the contact, it was on an escape trajectory, it was running. I stuck to it like glue using the radar, no visual contact, while chasing it I felt like I was being toyed with, then the contact vanished... No fsd wake, no sound, just >POOF< and gone.

I Don't know what I experienced. I don't think it was a bug or a glitch, everything about it did feel deliberate, an element unknow in the Elite code.

¯\(ツ)/¯​