If Elite had these features I would never give Chris Roberts another penny.

[mtfatboy3006]

The trouble with judging earnings per hour is that somebody who just plays faster gets a better earnings per hour.
With first discovery a complete sample series pays five times more than standard, the hugest standard price is 19 million giving 97 million for first discovery.

Dang! One of the updates since last I bothered buffed these payouts I knew (update 14--I just tracked it down), but I didn't realize it was that much. That is certainly not chump change. The speed of doing it will depend on the procedurally generated distribution of samples and terrain, so payout per hour is still highly variable, but last I did it, a full set at FTD was in the hundreds of thousands, not millions.

I definitely wish other aspects of on-foot gameplay followed this model (somewhat. On-foot gameplay shouldn't be staggeringly more rewarding than flight either)

 

[Fizzatron]

Quite the week for Open Letters we're having.

"Can't let the Elite players be happy with what they have, how dare they when I've got an incomplete buggy piece of trash I've spent thousands of dollars on to call a game, and I can't even complain on their forum without getting banned?"

The problem is putting ship interiors above an actual game you want to play, so the money keeps flowing to CR, still no cohesive working game in sight, meanwhile Frontier lose out on the financial resources they would need to implement ship interiors if they wanted to fulfill OPs wishes. Quite the conundrum, I wonder what the solution is?

Ship interiors, meh. I'd rather some cut scene visuals when entering/exiting the ship to go along with the sound effects already there.

That would be a nice thing to have for sure, but I also get why people want interiors, to be fair. I support the desire for them, just not the interiors or bust mantra. Sure, ship interiors are a "bust" in Elite, but the rest of the game is busted in Star Citizen, even the ship interiors half the time, plus the tons of ship interiors that are cunningly hidden behind a JPG.

 

[Therinfluffs]

We get it you spent $600 on the carrack and the med bed is still broken.

 

[Therinfluffs]

Is it? Good job I didn’t spend my money on one.

Only if you like being disappointed.

 

[Moirai]

As much as I love the concept of ship interiors, in ED it's problematic at best. Ships are just not designed externally to accommodate internal spaces, barring possibly the biggest of them. I mean, convincing me that I can fit 28 economy class passenger cabins into a DBX along with its essential internals is kind of a fail right off the bat. But you can do it. Allowing space for the pilot to move around in as well....?

Perhaps with the biggest vessels it would be somewhat feasible. But for the rest, credulity is already rather stretched, IMHO.

 

[mtfatboy3006]

As much as I love the concept of ship interiors, in ED it's problematic at best. Ships are just not designed externally to accommodate internal spaces, barring possibly the biggest of them. I mean, convincing me that I can fit 28 economy class passenger cabins into a DBX along with its essential internals is kind of a fail right off the bat. But you can do it. Allowing space for the pilot to move around in as well....?

Perhaps with the biggest vessels it would be somewhat feasible. But for the rest, credulity is already rather stretched, IMHO.

Following Elite protocol, they would still have a load screen, and could create a virtual space that just seems like it would fit inside plausibly enough for sci-fi. FDEV wouldn't have had to create a "real" space enclosed within the hull like in SC. Ships on average in ED also have more room to work with than in SC, where interior spaces do fit seamlessly within the space occupied by the hull with room for propulsion components, etc. A sidewinder is the size of two of SC's C8 Pices welded together in tandem. An Eagle is 50% bigger than an F7 Hornet. (EDIT: bad example as the F7 doesn't have an interior; consider instead that an Eagle is about 50% bigger than an Avenger Titan).

Incidentally, economy passengers don't get cabins; they get seats within a cabin. The Valkyrie dropship in SC is only a little bit bigger than a DBX and it seats 20 troops, up to 5 crew, and has cargo bays large enough to haul ground vehicles besides with plenty of dead space to make it all plausible-ish and connecting corridors to run around in. Would it fly IRL? Heck no, but it feels immersive enough when you're riding one into combat.

 

[Darrack]

At least we have a working game where you don't fall out of the ship

O7

 

[Therinfluffs]

As much as I love the concept of ship interiors, in ED it's problematic at best. Ships are just not designed externally to accommodate internal spaces, barring possibly the biggest of them. I mean, convincing me that I can fit 28 economy class passenger cabins into a DBX along with its essential internals is kind of a fail right off the bat. But you can do it. Allowing space for the pilot to move around in as well....?

Perhaps with the biggest vessels it would be somewhat feasible. But for the rest, credulity is already rather stretched, IMHO.

SC ships don't really yet either. The majority of them are very unfinished or in the PNG state. Many are released with multiple missing features that are impossible to implement now without massive reworks to the entirety of their interior and exterior models.

Currently these unfinished ships have essentially been abandoned in favor of pumping out new models for the sake of quick boosts in funding.

 

[DjVortex]

Would you rather they spend time and resources doing those things, or doing what they have been doing, ie. things like SCO, the new ships, powerplay 2 and, especially and notably, the upcoming colonization mechanic (which appears to involve a rather substantial amount of new models, new mechanics and new gameplay)?

To be honest, while it would be nice detail if you could walk inside your ship, I don't really understand why so many people are so obsessed with them. It would be just that: A minor detail. A minor detail that would require a quite substantial amount of work, resources and time to model and implement. (I'm pretty sure it would also run into some logistic problems because ED ships are quite infamously not completely to scale, most of them being absolutely enormous in physical size in relation to what they actually contain. But anyway.)

There could potentially be one aspect of ship interiors that could actually be potentially lucrative for them, but I rarely see that aspect being petitioned. It's just "ship interiors" and that's it. (More particularly: Ship interiors, such as captain's quarters, that could be decorated with furniture, decorations, trophies, etc, some of which could be purchased by in-game credits, some gotten via mission rewards and, more importantly in terms of revenue, some of them only purchaseable with ARX. But even then, it might still run into logistic problems and not be worth the effort in the end.)

 

[Bestg86]

QOL improvement request - pinning more than one location within a settlement

Doing settlement raids/material gathering (especially now for Power Play) , it is a pain in the to have to go back to monitors multiple times to locate each power play container, alarms, data points etc. Even more so if the settlement is shut down and you've got no access to level 3 security. It would be great if you could add a couple more pins at a time, prioritised in order of selection. Just numbered 1,2,3 etc would be fine. I'd have thought in the 3300s, this kind of technology should be available to the hardened Maverick? Also showing the distance to each on the monitor would be great, but less important o7

 

[mtfatboy3006]

Where do you get that from?

...From the fact that the DBX doesn't have 28 internal spots to put 28 separate cabins in? A size 4 economy cabin has 8 seats, a size 5 cabin has 16 seats, etc.

 

[mtfatboy3006]

Would you rather they spend time and resources doing those things, or doing what they have been doing, ie. things like SCO, the new ships, powerplay 2 and, especially and notably, the upcoming colonization mechanic (which appears to involve a rather substantial amount of new models, new mechanics and new gameplay)?

To be honest, while it would be nice detail if you could walk inside your ship, I don't really understand why so many people are so obsessed with them. It would be just that: A minor detail. A minor detail that would require a quite substantial amount of work, resources and time to model and implement. (I'm pretty sure it would also run into some logistic problems because ED ships are quite infamously not completely to scale, most of them being absolutely enormous in physical size in relation to what they actually contain. But anyway.)

There could potentially be one aspect of ship interiors that could actually be potentially lucrative for them, but I rarely see that aspect being petitioned. It's just "ship interiors" and that's it. (More particularly: Ship interiors, such as captain's quarters, that could be decorated with furniture, decorations, trophies, etc, some of which could be purchased by in-game credits, some gotten via mission rewards and, more importantly in terms of revenue, some of them only purchaseable with ARX. But even then, it might still run into logistic problems and not be worth the effort in the end.)

It's not a matter of what I would rather they expend their current development energies on. It's a matter of the polish I wish were on the game these new development features are brought into. This thread got moved to the suggestion forum when I posted, but these aren't suggestions so much as rants. There's no way most of these things would be fixed at this point, period. They aren't going to go in and modify and re-record voice clips. They aren't going to develop ship interiors. They aren't going to fix surface mining. These ships have already sailed and sunk. These are the things that will always increasingly gnaw at me no matter how many new time sinks are added. These are the easily identifiable symptoms of what keeps me looking for a more immersive alternative.

I'm glad of the current development directions, for sure, but they aren't without their flaws and likely imminent pitfalls. New ships are great! But are they expanding the ship selection, or rendering all previous ships obsolete? An engineered SCO drive has a better jump range than even a double-engineered conventional drive. Nice! That kind of dumps on the effort we put into earning the size 4 and 6 drives during the Colonia Bridge events, though (not that we didn't feel dumped on all along when they couldn't take an experimental effect). Base building! Will it be thoughtfully developed, though, or will it be a tedious grind to paste one of a handful of designs in a handful of places, per precedent? Will visiting "my" colony be any different an experience for me than visiting yours, or anyone else's? Not according to precedent. So do I want them developing new content without considering and addressing the weaknesses of the existing content? I'd prefer they concerned themselves with the whole package, really.

 

[mtfatboy3006]

You’re speculating they only have seats. We are not ever given volumes of the internal slots, plus a cabin implies bunks.

Although, tbf during a thargoid attack they all seem to be sat in escape waiting to be ejected.

The inside of a passenger aircraft IRL is also called a cabin...

 

[Dragsham]

@mtfatboy3006 makes some valid points.
Guess we will just have to wait n see whether base building will be cut n paste rinse n repeat much like the odyssey on foot bases.
I do hope not. But they haven't had much time to model new stuff so my moneys on the cynical side.
Sorry !

 

[DjVortex]

@mtfatboy3006 makes some valid points.
Guess we will just have to wait n see whether base building will be cut n paste rinse n repeat much like the odyssey on foot bases.
I do hope not. But they haven't had much time to model new stuff so my moneys on the cynical side.
Sorry !

On the other hand, one could think positively and realize that the same company is also developing games that are heavily based on building and customization, such as Planet Coaster, Planet Zoo and Jurassic World Evolution. Hopefully some of that knowledge and experience gets transferred to Elite Dangerous.

 

[mtfatboy3006]

Nice switch. Your claim was they didn’t even get cabins. Even if you use the aircraft definition, they must have a cabin.

And it certainly looks like they have bunks…
View attachment 408287

Passenger Cabin

A Passenger Cabin is used to transport passengers. They come in a variety of sizes and four quality classes: Economy, Business, First, and Luxury. Passengers can be housed in cabins of equal or higher quality than their listed requirement. All VIP passengers will occupy an entire cabin...

elite-dangerous.fandom.com

Dude, I literally said "they get seats within a cabin;" I haven't switched anything. I'm switching now, though, because you're partly right. Economy cabins appear to have bunks/drawers within a cabin and not seats. That's still 8 passengers in a cabin, not 8 cabins.

To be fair to both of us, if ships had interiors, we wouldn't have to wave our contradictory suppositions at each-other, we could just look, and the game would be better fleshed-out and more immersive

 

[mtfatboy3006]

On the other hand, one could think positively and realize that the same company is also developing games that are heavily based on building and customization, such as Planet Coaster, Planet Zoo and Jurassic World Evolution. Hopefully some of that knowledge and experience gets transferred to Elite Dangerous.

I'm not sure that comforts me. The trial and (error)^10 process for designing coasters in Planet Coaster is an exercise in madness, and customizing static features often just breaks them. There's endless potential variety, but finite combinations that work, and no way to learn besides grinding resources and failing again and again and again until you manage a marginal success (or copying the results of content creators who had incentive to grind through the madness). And parks in JWE are like systems in Elite Dangerous. Every park is a unique arrangement of the same few dozen elements again and again and again. I put a few hours in one game and a few dozen in the other and haven't gone back. I haven't tried Stranded from Foundry, though. If it has well-developed base-building systems that can be migrated over and adapted, then maybe there's hope. Maybe there's hope that FDEV will just produce something great from scratch. There are great things about Elite, or none of us would be here now.

 

[sfried]

It would be nice if there were some further optimizations and enhancements done on the graphics and engine side of things. I also think it is about time Elite Dangerous gave us the option to use DLSS(2/3+), FSR (2/3+), and XeSS (1+) given how ubiqutous all three of these upscaling technologies are implemented in many games now. (I'm not even asking for Frame Generation, although that would also be nice...)

I do think the lighting system could be further enhanced to at least have bounce lighting or some implementation of SVOGI (Sparse VOxel Global Illumination).

 

[mtfatboy3006]

7. The moving hands animation when running on foot needs to go. It would be fine if they weren't always int he same position on the screen regardless of where the head is turned. Just try to envision the positions a person would have to be running in for the hands to flash in and out of the screen like that in the same places every time. It's immersion breaking, not immersive. Someone worked hard on that, and shouldn't have.

 

[mtfatboy3006]

8. Jumping directly to known, lesser celestial bodies (planets, moons, etc) within a previously visited system with a ship (like plotting a carrier destination)--This would have been a much cleaner solution to the un-played portions of the bubble than the SCO drive. Granted, it would have taken much more work, but it would have had the advantage or keeping existing ships and game balance fully relevant. Now there are three capable ships in the game and everything else is obsolete. That's a broken fix.

A more complicated alternative taking less work (maybe even less than the SCO drive) would be to fit a tritium-fueled Brewer jump module to internal slots of sufficiently massive size (7+, for instance) allowing large ships to plot jumps like carriers but with reduced range. I envision requiring tritium to fuel, but having a smaller range than a Drake class carrier (and shorter delay), somewhere between 100-250 light years, maybe depending on the size of the drive. I further envision two new ship classes to make this more workable--XL and shuttle. Shuttles would fit within bays installed in optional slots (size 7+), might not have interstellar FSDs (although I imagine the smallest existing small ships being reclassified as shuttles), and would be necessary for visiting stations from XL ships (like the mythical Panther Clipper XL), which would be too large to dock on existing pads or to land/take off at planetary surfaces (insufficient propulsion when mass locked to reach escape velocity). XLs could optionally also fly conventionally (although with even less maneuverability than a type 9, conventional jumps to a star could be hairy)---but I'm digressing into daydream. Simply jumping to any known/mapped celestial bodies is the feature I think should have been in the game.