The thing is that once you have seen the animations for say repairs for the 10th time you will want to skip it. Thats why its not included. Proper immersion will be when you can exit your ship and walk into the bar, check the galaxy map while your there, read galnet, talk to other players in the bar, or maybe play old arcade cabinets etc.
Immersion: Things Take Time in Ports
- Thread starter JohnnyDangerous
- Start date
I think it was suggested a long time ago, that it might be enough to create some actual dynamic content in each station. So if I sit on the landing pad, trucks come to service my ship, engineers wander about, a guy with a squeegee wipes my windshield, etc - its not a part of any repair/outfit menu option, simply life in a station or outpost - if you add more reasonably realistic life, its immersive. a dozen trucks driving at the same distance around the same loop and never stopping, not so much 
How to add the immersion without making people want to punch the computer:
1. Make it so clicking Repair has a decently animated few mechanics appear in the bay with equipment when in Outfitting or viewing externally. Still let repairs be instant. Just let them make noises when in cockpit view, suggesting drills and blowtorches and all that. Clicking launch ends the noise, and you never actually see the mechanics "disappear" so it feels like they stopped working and left as the ship was taxi'd out. As a part of this, repairs SHOULD require being pulled inside the hangar, and that's a gripe I've had since I first took damage anyway.
2. The rotation makes sense, as the system that would pull you into the hangar is automated and it would be far less expensive to make a platform that rotates every single time than one that has to determine what to do by ship model and angle. Leave that alone.
3. Add cockpit vanity items to the game. Do not make them more microtransaction like the paint jobs. Instead, run ads in the "Home" view. If the player clicks one, they might be able to buy nonsense like fuzzy dice, or a soda that sits in a Clipper's cupholder, etc using their CR. This also would give Frontier a new way to make money by selling the ad space to real-world companies that want to claim they are still around in a few thousand years (i.e. a 7-Up Cool Spot bobblehead on the dash of your Vulture that you can purchase).
4. Refueling needs a sound and possibly a graphic representation similar to repair. Same with rearming. I'd say you could have all three functions actually use the same "techs in the bay" approach, but with different sounds (which can all be active for a given duration).
5. When a black market is present, either dont' give it a menu option and instead just make "illegal" or "stolen" entries in the normal market, or if there is a separate entry, add a buy option. Then, tie risk of a fine (from detection) to volume purchased (not sold). This would balance smuggling and stop it only being worthwhile to smuggling missions, as well.
1. Make it so clicking Repair has a decently animated few mechanics appear in the bay with equipment when in Outfitting or viewing externally. Still let repairs be instant. Just let them make noises when in cockpit view, suggesting drills and blowtorches and all that. Clicking launch ends the noise, and you never actually see the mechanics "disappear" so it feels like they stopped working and left as the ship was taxi'd out. As a part of this, repairs SHOULD require being pulled inside the hangar, and that's a gripe I've had since I first took damage anyway.
2. The rotation makes sense, as the system that would pull you into the hangar is automated and it would be far less expensive to make a platform that rotates every single time than one that has to determine what to do by ship model and angle. Leave that alone.
3. Add cockpit vanity items to the game. Do not make them more microtransaction like the paint jobs. Instead, run ads in the "Home" view. If the player clicks one, they might be able to buy nonsense like fuzzy dice, or a soda that sits in a Clipper's cupholder, etc using their CR. This also would give Frontier a new way to make money by selling the ad space to real-world companies that want to claim they are still around in a few thousand years (i.e. a 7-Up Cool Spot bobblehead on the dash of your Vulture that you can purchase).
4. Refueling needs a sound and possibly a graphic representation similar to repair. Same with rearming. I'd say you could have all three functions actually use the same "techs in the bay" approach, but with different sounds (which can all be active for a given duration).
5. When a black market is present, either dont' give it a menu option and instead just make "illegal" or "stolen" entries in the normal market, or if there is a separate entry, add a buy option. Then, tie risk of a fine (from detection) to volume purchased (not sold). This would balance smuggling and stop it only being worthwhile to smuggling missions, as well.
I consider the way that cargo loading, repairs, refueling, etc. are done to be placeholders as they are now. Hopefully, when the expansion for out-of-ship first person content comes out, those aspects will be properly fleshed out. I.E. you could queue up those tasks from inside or outside your ship and watch them unfold or go into the "lower" levels of the station and talk to some agents who need some work done or go find the local watering hole and chat "in person" with fellow CMDRs over virtual Leestian Evil Juice. I also remember David Braben mentioning sneaking on board other players' ships in stations or doing EVA repairs as potential features among other things in one of the Elite development videos.
Fun times ahead if those come to fruition.
Fun times ahead if those come to fruition.
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Yes, it's not about taking more time, just to be less boring. Another option would be to see background animations of loading, fueling, etc. while you're doing things like trading and checking out the bulletin board. Right now, it's a hologram projecting in front of the cockpit you have been looking at for a thousand light years. How about seeing things happening in the background like in "Wing Commander" when you'd land and your crew chief would get mad at you for getting shot up?
It's unbelievable to me that you want to micro-simulate everything.
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You'd probably love bar-fight cut-scenes too.
I honestly don't care what mechwarrior had. I found it boring and only played it twice. Sparks flying?
You want to micro-simulate everything. I hate that. I don't want a button to "skip" useless cut-scenes. I don't want useless cut-scenes in the first place. I guess if they do ever make it into your dream cut-scene game then I would hope there is a "disable cut-scene crap" option in settings.
I'd like an animation of your ship being loaded and tended to, but it would HAVE to be skippable. Just something that starts playing when you're docked that you can see out of the window, or when in external view, but you can still launch whenever you like. That way those who want the immersion can sit there and wait for it to finish.
And cutscenes? Interesting once, but when you're forced to watch the same thing 50 times per play session? No thank you. I'm already sick of having to way for my bay to rotate.
And cutscenes? Interesting once, but when you're forced to watch the same thing 50 times per play session? No thank you. I'm already sick of having to way for my bay to rotate.
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No to cut scenes, but some sort of robotic arm doing stuff to your ship that you can see through the windscreen, like sparks and flashes or spraying paint, that'd be pretty neat! A few seconds, not tens of seconds or a minute though. Something like that would look neat when you can eventually leave your ship and see it happening from the outside as well...
Also, I'd add that there are a few things that you see repeatedly in the game that I find never get tiresome and are always quite delightful to see, like coming out of Supercruise, or the Station Services menu opening, or that new material discovery notification in the SRV, or the way the ship HUD panels animate when they appear I think repairs/resupplying could be like that if it were short and sweet.
Also, I'd add that there are a few things that you see repeatedly in the game that I find never get tiresome and are always quite delightful to see, like coming out of Supercruise, or the Station Services menu opening, or that new material discovery notification in the SRV, or the way the ship HUD panels animate when they appear
I think repairs/resupplying could be like that if it were short and sweet.
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If we ever intend to have walking in stations or planets, we'll need to redesign the way we currently look for missions and purchase cargo. Ultimately, missions could always be accessed by a sort of intranet (no, not internet, I used the right word) and cargo could always be picked up or dropped off from within the ship (loaders would do the work) but commerce would take time. Loading and unloading would take minutes at least for large orders. However, standard missions would likely be picked up and turned in instantly. Fueling should take a few seconds to maybe half a minute at most, depending on the ship type of fuel tank volume (the larger the tank, the more time... so packing extra tanks means longer fueling times.).
Generally speaking, the game will need to be redesigned to make walking something worth doing while you wait, otherwise people wouldn't really bother except maybe to mingle... but given how we rarely even see other players, even that's a stretch. Really, we need more players and a single server. That would help immersion more than almost anything else.
Generally speaking, the game will need to be redesigned to make walking something worth doing while you wait, otherwise people wouldn't really bother except maybe to mingle... but given how we rarely even see other players, even that's a stretch. Really, we need more players and a single server. That would help immersion more than almost anything else.
It's only a time sink because every single elevator and port is just about the exact same.
I want super realism but not with this...
I am totally OK with the enter hanger thing because I can click that and click BB and get on with other stuff while it does its thing. So yeah it would be good to see the ship getting repaired, refilled, etc. but as long as I could do other stuff while it did it